Ahh...

It's not the flu...it's pneumonia. My doc has put me on what she says are "powerful" antibiotics (they're fat and yellow) and given me some of the good cough medicine (y'all know the kind I mean, heh heh) and told me to stay in bed all week, which as you know I cannot do.

I am taking tomorrow off, though.

Weekend With Flu

I've just had another weekend with the flu -- it was supposed to be gone, but it came back. I spent Saturday in bed with a racking high fever, trying, every few hours when I surfaced from the fever dreams (which were extreme, let me tell you), to get mr. delagar to feel sorry for me.

Which he wouldn't.

"Help," I would gasp, when I finally got him to come near me. "Help. I'm so sick."

"What do you want me to do?" he would say. "I'm trying to deal with the kid."

"Wheeze," I'd say. "Hack."

He'd wander away and not come back for two hours.

It was charming.

I think he reckons he dealt with me sick once already this year and that was his quota and so he's done.

Anyway, I was a little better yesterday and today I have foolishly come to work where I am wandering ghosty through the halls, not actually able to teach but coughing in a very impressive fashion (too bad I am not teaching Vic Lit this semester, I would be perfect at the sound effects) all through my classes. I'd go home, but there's a meeting I have to make this afternoon.

ID indeed

From over there on Pharyngula:
(http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/)


God Design Workshop Audience: Ooh! Get you!

God: Get me indeed. Let me take you through the specs of this ultimate species. As you can see it's bipedal - we did toy with six legs but the economics of keeping the females in shoes was too horrific to contemplate. These things here at the ends of the arms are called "opposable thumbs". Boffins in the lab came up with them and, if they work out as we think they will, then we'll roll out upgrades to the other species, probably starting with the caterpillars.

Audience Member: Sorry, God, may I? These whatever-they-are thumbs; what are they for?

God: Opposable. They have many uses but one I'm particularly fond of is this ... hang on ... there, it's called a sock puppet and do you see how I can form the mouth?

Audience: Ahhh!

God: Okay, back to the human. Trichromatic vision, two eyes for depth perception, air breathing so it can fit in and manipulate the planet more easily. Notice the large skull; we've got the biggest and latest brain model to go in there. Here in the throat we've added the capability for speech to develop too. No more grunting and pointing and hitting! Any questions?

Audience Member: I can't see a carapace and the exposed flesh looks quite soft. I assume the bones are strengthened to prevent crushing or snapping and there's protection for the organs too.

God: No. Anything else?

http://www.neonbubble.com/a/designed-by-god

Amen

From the Rude One:

The only thing significant in the entire evening was the treatment of two mothers who lost children in the Iraq War. Bush recognized the parents and widow of Sergeant Dan Clay, killed in Fallujah last month (didn't we secure Fallujah by leveling it?), who stood to applause and cheers from the slavering politicians. Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan was arrested and led out of the gallery for revealing a t-shirt that read, "2245 Dead. How many more?" She didn't even get to hear Bush promise to kill more soldiers like Dan and Casey, as well as more Iraqi civilians, in order to honor them. He may as well have dug up their corpses and made them dance, dance, grotesquely, horribly, in celebration.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

More on Brokeback

Over on his blog, Lance Mannion wonders why he should see Brokeback Mountain, terming it "mush." He says he's open to persusion as to why it's worth seeing -- why it's not just mush.

Mouse sent me a link today that answers that question.

From the article:

The movie...jumps over the years, four or five at a stretch, as each fights against what turns out to be his true nature, and forces himself to genuflect before the stations of the cross of heterosexual culture: marriage, family, responsibility. Yet if the love doesn't speak its name, it certainly sings its tune. The two sneak away over the years for trysts, and eventually each spouse learns the bitter truth.

Finally, the inevitable tragedy and the realization by one man of what a misspent life he's had. How he should have to his own self been true; how happiness has evaded him forever. It's hard to argue that the movie constitutes any kind of threat, or pro-gay propaganda. For one thing, there's too much authentic pain in it, it's too bloody sad. The final image of the aloneness of the survivor is heartbreaking. He was never a crier, of course, but you know inside he's sobbing. The film shows, convincingly, that love comes from the heart, not the glands, and if the heart is engaged, the body follows.

It also shows a lot of conventional heterosexual romantic themes in full bloom: the idea of the special person or "fate" bringing two kindred souls together; the idea that the basis of love has to be trust and friendship, not just lust; the idea that over the long term, a loved one grows to accept the other's foibles; and finally the idea that certain things are meant to be, and without them, life seems somehow incomplete and miswired.

There's a lot more, and it's all good.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020102477.html?referrer=emailarticle

Barely Legal

I just like this blog...

....it is times like these that I wish that politics was more like pro wrestling.

Alito would have been one of Bush's goons, always helping Bush cheat to win matches, and running in and saving him from beatings by his opponents.

They would team up to take on challengers, culminating in a tag team match at Wrestlemania, Bush and Alito (aka The Conservative Connection) vs. John Kerry and Al Gore (aka The Blue Streaks).Bush and Alito would be winning handily, really rubbing it in.

The Conservative Connection's manager, Trent Lott (aka The Southern Dandy), would distract the ref so Bush could use some brass knuckles he was hiding in his tights on Kerry. Then Bush would pin Kerry, and the match is over.

Bush and Alito raise their arms in victory. But as soon as Bush turns to taunt the crowd, Alito picks up a folding chair and whacks Bush over the head. Alito then joins the Blue Streaks as they stomp on Bush, and Trent Lott for good measure.

Then the three of them join arms and raise their hands in unity, as the Blue Streaks music blasts through the arena and the crowd goes wild, with a dazed Bush laying in the middle of the ring, the victim of an elaborate set-up.

http://barelylegalblog.blogspot.com/

Yep.

Here's a post my students -- and about 3/4 of the women I know -- need to read:

The violence embodied in the Western harem is less visible than in the Eastern harem because aging is not attacked directly, but rather masked as an aesthetic choice. Yes, I suddenly felt nor only very ugly but also quite useless in that store, where, if you had big hips, you were simply out of the picture. You drifted into the fringes of nothingness. By putting the spotlight on the prepubescent female, the Western man veils the older, more mature woman, wrapping her in shrouds of ugliness. This idea gives me the chills because it tattoos the invisible harem directly onto a woman's skin. Chinese footbinding worked the same way: Men declared beautiful only those women who had small, childlike feet. Chinese men did not force women to bandage their feet to keep them from developing normally—all they did was to define the beauty ideal. In feudal China, a beautiful woman was the one who voluntarily sacrificed her right to unhindered physical movement by mutilating her own feet, and thereby proving that her main goal in life was to please men. Similarly, in the Western world, I was expected to shrink my hips into a size 6 if I wanted to find a decent skirt tailored for a beautiful woman. We Muslim women have only one month of fasting, Ramadan, but the poor Western woman who diets has to fast twelve months out of the year...

http://sibylla.livejournal.com/749828.html

My mother has lived her entire life focused, very nearly, entirely on what she eats: what she weighs: whether she is fat or not.

So have many of the woman I know.

So do many of my students -- to the extent that they will take dangerous drugs, that they will destroy their bodies and their minds (that comparison to footbinding up there is apt) and their futures in the attempt to become some ideal woman's shape: because only that shape will make them of value: because if they do not have that shape, they are worthless.

I've had women insist to me that they aren't doing this because they want to please men, or because they want that ideal shape, but because being thin is healthier: but this is proving, of course, to be untrue -- dieting is the killer, not weight -- and none of them are stopping in the face of that news.

And really. Really. No kidding. This is the only life you have. Surely you have something more important to do with it that worry about how many pounds your scale registers this week?

Come on. It's just a body. Fuck it.

Best Post

I don't know if you read this one when it was posted, back when the story first broke. It's been nominated for the Koufax Award for best post, and for my money the story didn't get half enough play.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/9/174518/797

Go read it and send it around again, will you?

Conversation in the delagar household

(Scene: at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, reading, afternoon, after school, before picking up the kid)

me: I had one of those being oppressed by the patriarchy dreams last night.

mr. delagar: what sort of dreams?

me: you know. You're in a compound sort of thing. Deep woods, no refrigerators, bearded patriarchs oppressing you? Probably has something to do with the Alito confirmation.

mr. delagar: (blank stare)

me: maybe you don't get those dreams.

mr. delagar: I had a wild sex dream. You were in it.

me: so. You had a better night, then.

Read This

If you don't read anything else today:

We tend to think of heroes as men like Rambo, men with nothing to lose letting loose with guns and one-liners blazing, or of women like Norma Rae or Karen Silkwood who sacrifice themselves with bold stances and the desire to make the world a better place. We tend to overlook the heroes who quietly refuse to bend in the face of danger, who don't jump up and down, rabble-rousing and setting off sparks....

http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/2006/01/harper-lee.html

That flea has done it again.

You're Dr. Who?

Given that we're not living in the fourteenth century anymore, you wouldn't think this would be a problem, but yikes is it.

http://sciencewoman.blogspot.com/2006/01/proper-name-for-woman-part-1.html

(Via green gabbro, my hero: http://greengabbro.net/index.php)

I got married to mr. delagar nine years ago.

(Or wait -- is it ten? I don't know. He keeps track of shit like that. Anyway.)

I did not take this last name. We had a minor, not very interested conversation about whether I would, some years before we ever even decided to marry, in which I said something like I'll flip you for it and if you lose you have to take my last name instead and he chortled and that was it.

When we had the kid, we have her both our last names, in a row, mine first and then his -- my one nod to the fucking patriarchy.

Ever since then? Endless shit, at airports, at checkouts, at banks, at the MONTESSORI SCHOOL, for heaven's sake, where I would EXPECT better, but no, I got a call from the MONTESSORI school not two months ago over this issue (though they at least were abject in their apologies about it).

My own parents give me shit about it, may I add? My father addresses letters to me under mr. delagar's name. Dr. Him, he calls me. I don't know if he thinks this is funny or if he thinks this is actually my name. Might be either, with my father.

But seriously.

Why is this even an issue anymore?

Some women don't take their husband's last names when they marry. (Some women do, of course: that's that whole choice thing. See how that works. Cool, huh?) That's been happening, folks, not for two years, or ten, or thirty, or fifty, but for a few hundred years.

Not like it's new, in other words. Or, you know, rocket science.

So what's the deal?

Supporting the Troops

Here's a story run by SF-Gate about that guy in the famous photograph the Wingers like so much, the "Marlboro Man" soldier that's meant to represent our real American soldier in Iraq.

He's back in Kentucky now that Bush is done with him.

He's quieter now -- easier to anger. He turns to fight at the sound of a backfire, can't look at fireworks without thinking of fire raining down on a city. He has trouble sleeping, and when he does, his fingers twitch on invisible triggers.

The diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder.

(Snip)

James Blake Miller was born in Pike County in the hills of eastern Kentucky, where Daniel Boone is said to have walked and where moonshine is still consumed. An average family here makes about $24,000; the only decent-paying jobs are down at the coal mine.

(snip)

For a while, Iraq didn't seem all that bad. Miller and his fellow Marines settled into a routine in Anbar province in western Iraq, setting up hiding places among the palms and sand, and watching for the white pickups that insurgents would use to plant bombs and fire mortars.

There also was time for candy and laughter with the Iraqi children who came running to see the American troops. Miller felt like he was helping.

Then, on Nov. 5, 2004, in the middle of a sandstorm, the Marines got the word that they might be heading for an assault on Fallujah -- at the time, the capital of the Iraqi insurgency.

(snip)

The assault on Fallujah began Nov. 8, 2004, when U.S. planes, using a combination of high explosives and burning white phosphorus, hammered the city in advance of the artillery push. Miller was under fire from the moment he stepped out of the personnel carrier.
It lasted into Nov. 9 -- the day that, for a while, would make Miller's face the most famous in Iraq.

As Miller remembers that day, he was on a rooftop taking fire and calling for support on his radio - a 20-pound piece of equipment that he had to lug around along with nine extra batteries, hundreds of extra rounds of ammunition, and a couple of cartons of cigarettes.

As insurgent bullets from a nearby building pinged off the roof, a horrified Miller heard footsteps coming up the stairs behind him. He raised his rifle -- and barely had time to halt when he saw it was embedded Los Angeles Times photographer Luis Sinco.

Miller returned to his radio, guiding two tanks to his position. When they opened fire, he said, the thunder left his body numb -- but the building housing the attackers had collapsed. Later, he said, they would find about 40 bodies in the rubble.

"I was never so happy in all my life to take that handset away from my head," Miller said. "I lit up a f -- cigarette."

His ear was bleeding from the sound of the tank firing -- Miller still can't hear out of his right ear. His nose bled from a nick he took when his rifle scope and radio got tangled up midfire. He looked at the sunrise and wondered how many more of those he would see.

He was vaguely aware that elsewhere on the rooftop, Sinco was taking pictures.

At a briefing the next day, Miller's gunnery sergeant walked up to him, grinning, and said: "Would you believe you're the most famous f -- Marine in the Marine Corps right now? Believe it or not, your ugly mug just went all over the U.S."

The Marines wanted to pull him out of Fallujah at that point, Miller said, not wanting the very public poster boy to die in combat. But he stayed.

He won't talk about the weeks that followed. He only mentions moments, like still frames from a film. The day his column barely survived an ambush, escaping through a broken door as bullets struck near their feet. The morning he woke up to discover that a cat had taken up residence in the open chest cavity of an Iraqi body nearby, consuming it from within.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/29/MNGMHGVCEV1.DTL

There's more.

Exercise!

One of my students just sent me an article filled with research proving that if you exercise thirty minutes a day -- this has to be aerobic exercise, mind you -- you need less Xanax.

Hah! say I.

Obviously, if you take more Xanax, you can do without the fucking exercise.

The Enemy of Truth

I used to think we could co-exist with the religous folk. But frankly, I'm starting to doubt that possibility.

Here's Richard Dawkins:

...you can't judge by example. We don't judge Christians by Hitler's claim to be one, and it is equally irrelevant that many Christians, like many atheists, are nice people. The point is that faith, even moderate faith, is pernicious because it teaches that believing something without evidence is a virtue. Moderates, as Sam Harris shows in his devastating book, The End of Faith, "provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed". Or, in Voltaire's words, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities". One of my TV locations was a London school that follows the (American) Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) syllabus.

The day after watching my show, three colleagues told me they had interviewed, for a place at university, a young woman who had been taught (not at the same school) using ACE. She turned out to be the worst candidate they had ever encountered. She had no idea that thinking was even an option: her job was either to know or guess the "right" answer.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200601300002

And you know, he's right. I see this with many of my students, students who are bright enough -- some of them are very bright -- but have home-schooled by well-meaning, intelligent fundie parents. I get them into freshman comp, where I'm meant to be teaching them critical thinking and how to evaluate texts, and it's hopeless.

"You've got to argue with the text," I tell them. "You've got to read against the grain. What's not being said on the page?" I say, and the fury and dismay builds in their eyes, because that is wrong, wrong, wrong. They do not argue with the text. They do not challenge the authority of the text. The authortity is paramount. The authority is there to lead them to righteousness, it has been given to them by God, it's not something to be challenged.

And I'm an agent of Satan, to suggest any other thing.

Or, you know, a Leftist.

Same thing.

Well, how am I meant to educate -- turn into thinking beings -- people who have minds cast in that mold?

And who want to keep that shape to their minds? Because most of them do. They like that worldview. They cling to it. They've come to the university not to be enlightened -- Good Gosh, no! -- but to get a degree in cleaning teeth, or in keeping books, or something that will let them buy their own Hummers, like Jesus means them to, somewhere down the road.

They have no interest at all, in other words, in critical thinking. Or in challenging the text. Or in challenging any sort of authority.

Educate these folk? Influence these folk? Don't I wish.

Boldly Going

Gotta love that Gay Agenda:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/01/27/notes012706.DTL&nl=fix

(Via DED Space http://www.dedspace.blogspot.com/)