Mike Ballard sent this, a link to a blog featuring the director’s cut of Passion of the Christ.

Jeff has some interesting questions and observations over at Thrashing Stinks. (He also turned me on to a film I’ve put on my rent someday list!).

I started a response but it got to be unwieldly — one of those ridiculous 6 ‘graph reveries I spin as my fingers fly and I drop typhos like the witch in a Bugs Bunny cartoon drops hair pins.

So I thought I’d better edit it. I thought it was a decent response, but there are so many questions packed in there and I have different responses to each one. Plus, I’m wondering, “Who’s the enemy? Who made it this way? If we find out what that answer is — what is the process, ideology, whatever that is responsible for these things — then I’d feel like I know where to start — since then I’d know what we had in common. Can’t have much of a good argument without sharing a whole lot in common to begin with.

I worked with a feminist mentor in grad school who specialized in, among other things, analyzing gendered life history narratives, asking about the so-called ’stages of life’ (a theory that was quite popular in the 70s-80s). J argued that the famous claim that women reach their sexual peak later in life isn’t based on any solid scientific evidence — and if J was anything, she was a stickler for quality scientific research. (I know, I know. Some of you are laughing your furry asses off over the idea that anything other than physics, etc. is a science. What. Ever.)

At any rate, this article was interesting in so far as it added another data point to what Ken’s wife, who worked as a cashier in an upscale sex shop in Tornonto said: women were a significant portion of the clientele. For some great writing from a woman who, with her husband, is running a woman-positive sex shop in Illinois (IIRC), check out One Good Thing. She’s a riot.

From an article in the Toronto Star:
< ...>
Case in point: A recent survey by the U.K.-based Health Plus magazine found 77 per cent of female respondents over 40 enjoy sex more in their 40s than in their 20s. In total, 69 per cent said they felt more sexually adventurous and 45 per cent said they had a greater sexual appetite.

Call it confidence, call it experience, but whatever you call it, it’s good news. Annie Sprinkle (more on Annie Sprinkle here) is someone who knows more than a bit about sex at 35 and older. She’s a sexologist, porn-maker, former porn star, former prostitute, performance artist and author of Dr. Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex (Penguin Books).

At 51, she is often disappointed by the pornography currently on the market, largely because of the ages of performers.

“I have absolutely no interest in seeing 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds having sex,” she says. “To me, they don’t know anything. They’re crap lovers. They’re just starting out!”

At Lovecraft, one of Canada’s oldest sex shops, owner Anne Amitay says that women in their mid-30s to their late 40s make up the bulk of customers that come into the store.

“These are women who are confident in their sexuality. You can just tell they’re enjoying themselves.”

Amitay, 59, says that her most satisfying sexual years were later in life. “Once you hit menopause, the hormones change things a bit, but sex was the most fantastic for me from 40 to 50.”

Julie B. is a 36-year-old mother of two who lives with her fiancé. The sex she had in her 20s doesn’t even compare to the sex she’s having now. “In my early 20s, I think I was trying to be something I’m not. I wasn’t confident in myself or comfortable with my body,” she says. “I had an idea of what a sexual relationship was supposed to be like and I tried to replicate that, regardless of whether I enjoyed it or not.”

She wasn’t aware of her sexual dissatisfaction until later.

“At the time, I thought I was enjoying it. It wasn’t until I grew older that I learned what sex was really all about.”

Sprinkle says women don’t enjoy sex later in life in spite of their age, but because of it.

“Older women have developed their sensitivity and have far more knowledge and awareness,” she says. “They’re much more advanced and powerful sexually. Perhaps society puts down the vintage Venus because she is so much more sexually powerful: a beautiful, savvy queen.”

The idea that sex is largely for the young, the firm and the beautiful is one that is bought and sold regularly in our youth-obsessed culture.

Faces might wrinkle and body parts might sag, but it’s nice to know that, especially for women, a sex life is one thing that really does get better with age.

I love it. A new (to me) Bay area blog that popped up on the radar. I love this story, “How Gauche.” Also, sorry for my dorkness earlier tonight. I get in a reverie like that and next thing you know…. Really, it’s fookin’ pathetic. All I can say is: I haven’t slept in more than 36 hours: work.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

What’s _your_ downfall among the seven deadly sins?

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Swiped from the SexPosFemme Journal.

I really love how I’m greedy because, since I have no money to actually give away at the moment, I report that I only volunteer. And, I guess, since I have a nearly 15 year old SUV that I bought second hand for a steal, while traversing 240 miles a day in upstate NY hill country, I’m some kind of greedy asshole!

Yep. Abstain from pre-marital sex rather than support a vaccine that would fight an STD, the papillomavirus, which is a primary cause of cervical cancer. That according to this opinion piece in the NYT. All I have time for right now is, bite me you conservative fruithats

FORBIDDEN VACCINE Every year, about 500,000 women throughout the world develop cervical cancer. In the United States alone, the disease kills about 3,700 women annually. This year, scientists developed a vaccine against human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that is the primary cause of cervical cancer. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the 6,000 women who received it as part of a multinational trial. As soon as the vaccine is licensed, some health officials say, it should be administered to all girls at age 12. But the Family Research Council and other social conservative groups vowed to fight that plan, even though it could
virtually eliminate cervical cancer. Vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease, they say, would reduce their incentive to abstain from premarital sex.

Oh, and another thing, if this is truly your position? I’m willing to grant that distortions take place in opinion pieces like this all to frequently. But, if it’s your position? Then fuck you fuckers, too. Bite me first, though.

From the ACLU as posted on Dave’s list and on their site:

From: Barry Steinhardt
Date: December 29, 2005
Subject: NSA Spying on Americans

As has been made plain by the many submissions to IP, the significance of the Bush/NSA spying scandal continues to grow each day.

The ACLU has just posted a number of materials on our web site aclu.org and the new nsawatch.org that we hope will add to the debate.

Those items include:

1. A new ACLU ad calling for a special counsel to investigate the President’s illegal surveillance of U.S. Citizens.The add appeared in today’s NY Times, as well as the web site along with related materials at http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/.

The text of the ad compares the words of President Nixon and President Bush, both of whom denied allegations of illegal spying. Next to the image of Nixon, the advertisement says: “He lied to the American people and broke the law.” Below that is an image of President Bush, with the words, “So did he.

2. The Updated NSA Watch site (formerly known as Echelon watch): http://www.nsawatch.org/ which contains a wide variety of materials and links documenting the NSA’s extraordinary communication interception capabilities (”sigint”), which are part of an international arrangement sometimes referred to as “Echelon”.

3 A new piece explaining how the “NSA Spying on Americans is Illegal” at http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/23279res20051229.html

Since the Administration has sought to cast its unprecedented and lawless spying on American’s as “legal”, I have included the text of our piece below. You are, of course, free to use as much or little of it and the rest of this message as you would like.

Have a good New Year,

Barry Steinhardt

ACLU Technology and Liberty Project

NSA Spying on Americans is Illegal http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/23279res20051229.html

What if it emerged that the President of the United States was flagrantly violating the Constitution and a law passed by the Congress to protect Americans against abuses by a super-secret spy agency? What if, instead of apologizing, he said, in essence, “I have the power to do that, because I say I can.” That frightening scenario is exactly what we are now witnessing in the case of the warrantless NSA spying ordered by President Bush that was reported December 16, 2005 by the New York Times.

According to the Times, Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to monitor without a warrant the international (and sometimes domestic) telephone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds or thousands of citizens and legal residents inside the United States. The program eventually came to include some purely internal controls ­ but no requirement that warrants be obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and the foreign intelligence surveillance laws require.

In other words, no independent review or judicial oversight.

That kind of surveillance is illegal. Period.

The day after this shocking abuse of power became public, President Bush admitted that he had authorized it, but argued that he had the authority to do so. But the law governing government eavesdropping on American citizens is well-established and crystal clear. President Bush’s claim that he is not bound by that law is simply astounding. It is a Presidential power grab that poses a challenge in the deepest sense to the integrity of the American system of government ­ the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, the concept of checks and balances on executive power, the notion that the president is subject to the law like everyone else, and the general respect for the “rule of law” on which our democratic system depends.

Flouting a long history The tensions between the need for intelligence agencies to protect the nation and the danger that they would become a domestic spy agency have been explicitly and repeatedly fought out in American history. The National Security Act of 1947 contained a specific ban on intelligence operatives from operating domestically. In the 1970s, America learned about the extensive domestic political spying carried out by the FBI, the military, the CIA, and the NSA, and Congress passed new laws to prevent a repeat of those abuses. Surveillance laws were debated and modified under presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton.

But, President Bush would sweep aside this entire body of democratically debated and painstakingly crafted restrictions on domestic surveillance by the executive branch with his extraordinary assertion that he can simply ignore this law because he is the Commander-in-Chief. In a December 17 radio address, for example, Bush asserted that the spying was “fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities.” But his constitutional duty is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3); the law here clearly establishes well-defined procedures for eavesdropping on U.S. persons, and the fact is, Bush ordered that those procedures not be followed.

Government eavesdropping on Americans is an extremely serious matter; the ability to intrude on the private realm is a tremendous power that can be used to monitor, embarrass, control, disgrace, or ruin an individual.-[and supporters of the President’s assertions forget that what might be good for protection of our national security can also be misused in the ways just described(no threat posed by the “surveilled” at al) once the precedent has been established-and our entire legal system does depend on the importance of precedent-ph]

Because it is so invasive, the technology of wiretapping has been subject to carefully crafted statutory controls almost since it was invented. Ignoring those controls and wiretapping without a court order is a crime that carries a significant prison sentence (in fact, criminal violations of the wiretap statute were among the articles of impeachment that were drafted against President Nixon shortly before his resignation).

Clearly Illegal Unfortunately, although the law in this matter is crystal clear, many Americans, faced with President Bush’s bold assertions of “inherent” authority for these actions, will not know what to believe. There are only 5 points they need to understand:

Point #1: Electronic surveillance by the Government is strictly limited by the Constitution and Federal Law

The law on surveillance begins with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which states clearly that Americans’ privacy may not be invaded without a warrant based on probable cause.

United States Constitution Fourth Amendment The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (emphasis added)

The US Supreme Court (US v. Katz 389 US 347) has made it clear that this core privacy protection does cover government eavesdropping. As a result, all electronic surveillance by the government in the United States is illegal, unless it falls under one of a small number of precise exceptions specifically carved out in the law.

United States Code Title 50, Chapter 36, Subchapter 1 Section 1809. Criminal sanctions (a) Prohibited activities A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally— (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute

In other words, the NSA can only spy where it is explicitly granted permission to do so by statute. Citizens concerned about surveillance do not have to answer the question, “what law restricts the NSA’s spying?” Rather, the government is required to supply an answer to the question “what law permits the NSA to spy?”

Point #2: There are only three laws that permit the government to spy There are only three laws that authorize any exceptions to the ban on electronic eavesdropping by the government. Congress has explicitly stated that these three laws are the exclusive means by which domestic electronic surveillance can be carried out (18 USC, Section 2511(2)(f)). They are: · Title III and ECPA. Title III and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act make up the statutes that govern criminal wiretaps in the United States. · FISA. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the law that governs eavesdropping on agents of “foreign powers” within the United States, including suspected foreign terrorists.

Point #3: The Bush-NSA spying was not authorized by any of these laws Title III and ECPA govern domestic criminal wiretaps and are not relevant to the NSA’s spying. FISA is the law under which the NSA should have operated. It authorizes the government to conduct surveillance in certain situations without meeting all of the requirements of the Fourth Amendment that apply under criminal law, but requires that an independent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court oversee that surveillance to make sure that Americans who have no ties to foreign terrorist organizations or other “foreign powers” are not spied upon.

FISA was significantly loosened by the Patriot Act (which, for example, allowed it to be used for some criminal investigations), and parts of it now stand in clear violation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment in the view of the ACLU and many others. However, even the post-Patriot Act version of FISA does not authorize the president to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents in the U.S. without an order from the FISA Court. Yet it is that very court order requirement ­ imposed to protect innocent Americans ­ that the President has ignored.

In fact, one member of the FISA Court, Judge James Roberston, has apparently resigned from the court in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of this program. And the New York Times reported that the court’s chief judge complained about the program when she was (belatedly) notified of it, and refused to allow information gathered under the program to be used as the basis for FISA wiretap orders.-[and also required,, after she became concerned with the President’s use of FISA, that some representative of the govt seeking authority swear, under oath, that the source of the material being used to support a warrant has been legally obtain itself.-ph]

Point #4: Congress’s post-9/11 use-of-force resolution does not legitimize the Bush-NSA spying

Congress after 9/11 approved an Authorization to Use Military Force against those responsible for the attacks in order to authorize the president to conduct foreign military operations such as the invasion of Afghanistan.

But that resolution contains no language changing, overriding or repealing any laws passed by Congress. Congress does not repeal legislation through hints and innuendos, and the Authorization to Use Military Force does not authorize the president to violate the law against surveillance without a warrant any more than it authorizes him to carry out an armed robbery or seize control of Citibank in order to pay for operations against terrorists.[to me, this is the crux of the argument against the President’s assertion of virtually unlimited in the service of national security-ph]

In fact, when President Truman tried to seize control of steel mills that were gripped by strikes in 1952, the Supreme Court decisively rejected his authority to make such a seizure, even in the face of arguments that the strike would interfere with the supply of weapons and ammunition to American troops then under fire on the battlefields of the Korean War. The Supreme Court also rejected similar assertions of inherent executive power by Richard Nixon.

U.S. Supreme Court

YOUNGSTOWN CO. v. SAWYER, 343 U.S. 579 (1952)

“The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. . . . “Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. . . . The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. . . . “The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times.”

In fact, FISA contains explicit language describing the president’s powers “during time of war” and provides that “the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this title to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen days following a declaration of war by the Congress.” 50 U.S.C. § 1811 (emphasis added). So even if we accept the argument that the use-of-force resolution places us on a war footing, warrantless surveillance would have been legal for only 15 days after the resolution was passed on September 18, 2001.

Point #5: The need for quick action does not justify an end-run around the courts

The FISA law takes account of the need for emergency surveillance, and the need for quick action cannot be used as a rationale for going outside the law. FISA allows wiretapping without a court order in an emergency; the court must simply be notified within 72 hours. The government is aware of this emergency power and has used it repeatedly. In addition, the Foreign Intelligence court is physically located in the Justice Department building, and the FISA law requires that at least two of the FISA judges reside in the Washington, DC area, for precisely the reason that rapid action is sometimes needed.

If President Bush still for some reason finds these provisions to be inadequate, he must take his case to Congress and ask for the law to be changed, not simply ignore it.

The president is bound by the rule of law President Bush’s claim that he has “inherent authority” as Commander-in-Chief to use our spy agencies to eavesdrop on Americans is astonishing, and such spying is clearly illegal. It must be halted immediately, and its origins must be thoroughly investigated by Congress and by a special counsel. (See letter from the ACLU to Attorney General Gonzales calling for a special counsel

Given the extensive (indeed, excessive) surveillance powers that the government already possesses, the Administration’s blatantly illegal use of warrantless surveillance raises an important question: why? One possibility, raised by the New York Times in a Dec. 24, 2005 story (“Spy Agency Minded Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

This, as security expert Bruce Schneier has noted, suggests the Bush Administration has developed a “a whole new surveillance paradigm” ­ exploiting the NSA’s well known capabilities to spy on individuals not one at a time, as FISA permits, but to run communications en masse through computers in the search for suspicious individuals or patterns. [the President and his representatives have asserted that this surveillance has only encompassed members of Al Qaeda, associates of members of Al Qaeda, and organizations associated with Al Qaeda-this "vacumm approach" is clearly much more than they argued in their defense, and is, IMHO, illegal under CURRENT law-ph]

This “new paradigm” may well be connected to the NSA program sometimes known as “Echelon,” which carries out just that kind of mass collection of communications (see www.nsawatch.org

According to the Times, several telecommunications companies provided the NSA with direct access to streams of communications over their networks. In other words, the NSA appears to have direct access to a large volume of Americans’ communications ­ with not simply the assent, but the cooperation of the companies handling those communications.

We do not know from the report which companies are involved or precisely how or what the NSA can access. But this revelation raises questions about both the legal authority of the NSA to request and receive this data, and whether these companies may have violated either the Federal laws protecting these communications or their own stated privacy polices (which may, for example, provide that they will only turn over their customers’ data with their consent or in response to a proper order). [so, even if you grant the President this kind of mass surveillance authority (NOT), what right, and under what law do these private companies have to give up this kind of quite "private information" to the government-ph]

Regardless of the scale of this spying, we are facing a historic moment: the President of the United states has claimed a sweeping wartime power to brush aside the clear limits on his power set by our Constitution and laws ­ a chilling assertion of presidential power that has not been seen since Richard Nixon.

Bill Scannell responds to my favorite tool, Hiawatha Bray.

From: Bill Scannell
Date: December 30, 2005 2:46:41 PM EST

Dave,

Lest we forget what this is about: George W. Bush illegally ordered NSA to spy on US citizens. This is a felony, for which I (and many other former and current NSA employees) hope to see him impeached and jailed.

As as former SIGINT analyst, I -and anyone else ever associated with NSA-know that USSID 18 prohibits the spying on United States Persons. This is NSA’s Prime Directive, Ten Commandments, and Bill of Rights, all rolled into one. It is an unlawful order to direct NSA to eavesdrop on US citizens. It is impossible for me to stress strongly enough that from day one, every human associated with NSA has USSID 18 drilled into him.

With USSID 18, NSA is able to protect and defend our country. Without USSID 18, NSA can be used to oppress the American populace. It comes as no surprise to me that, in the face of an unlawful order, someone went to the papers with the story.

The exception to the rule of course, is the FISA courts. President Bush declined to use these courts despite the ability to get a FISA warrant three days after the fact.

It is a shame that with such a massive crime freely admitted by President Bush, a smart guy like Hiawatha continues to carry water for this Administration.

-Bill

PS: A public version of USSID 18 can be read at:
http://cryptome.org/nsa-ussid18.htm

—-

OK. Great. But don’t you gotta admit that the NSA did and does some pretty squirelly stuff?

—-

And in from Meeks:

From: Brock Meeks
Date: December 30, 2005 2:37:08 PM EST

President Bush has surrounded himself with “yes” men and women. Those that don’t tell him what he wants to hear, such as former Treasury Secy. Paul O’Neil and former top White House economic advisor Larry “the Iraq War will cost at least $200 billion” Lindsey, are unceremoniously dumped from power positions.

In order to smooth his conscious about these spying operations (and the use of torture for that matter) Bush has cobbled together a small group of lawyers willing to scratch and sniff at the margins of accepted legal doctrine in order to gin up legally defensible positions.

We’ve already heard Bush tell the American public several times that these actions have been looked at by lawyers and even more, they are “constantly reviewed by lawyers.”

BAH.

No offense to the legal types reading this list but having covered more than my share of court cases and talked to enough lawyers over the years, I and others here know full well that just because “a lawyer says
it’s ‘ok’” doesn’t make it so! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to have a supreme court and Microsoft would still believe it wasn’t a monopoly and that the Palm OS was a threat to Windows…ahem, sorry, I got carried
away…

The nut here is this: the real danger in all this is that the full warp and woof of the legal system isn’t being allowed to come to bear on this issue. I don’t give a rat’s ass if the Justice Department ‘approved’ this instance; that’s like saying spying on Americans by the FBI was “OK” because Hoover and his lawyers approved it.

I don’t think these people would be able to argue that dog shit is not peanut butter if they had a jar of each and a box of crackers.

I babble, therefore, you are not a feminist. Because I said so. Oh, did I already make a “therefore” claim? Ooopth. Thorry.

Where do people get off claiming that their opponents stand for this or that without ever, not ever, once providing a lick of evidence? Hmmmm? First I read it in Dim’s post. Then, I read the same in comments. Now, I read this fabulous example of pesuasive argument wherein, yet again, claims are made, over and over, on behalf of a group, presuming to speak _for_ that group. Not once, not ever, is a quote from a member of that group trotted forward as evidence.

What. The. Fuck?

This is just frightening. I remember this album cover and I remember trying to figure out WTF the women’s faces were supposed to mean?

In case you need it, it’s The Idiot’s Guide to Styx.

I like this blog, I really do. But, if I have to read, one more time, about a survey result that is or is not “statistically significant,” I will poke my eyes out with my grandpappy’s rusty jackknife, mount them on two cocktail picks (the pink sword kind), photograph them, make a blog with the image for the masthead, and dedicate it to compiling all the times someone uses the phrase incorrectly.

It will be called, Bitch’s Eyes Are On You, Suckahs! http://blog.BEAOYS.com. It would be sort of like Jeremy Bentham’s Auto-Icon. Is it not fitting that the inventor of the Panopticon would want to keep on watching, pardner?

Meanwhile, you can read the PEW report on the behavior of men and women online to which Eichidne refers.

I realize that the author keeps using “significant” throughout the report, but the use of the word doesn’t necessarily mean they are using it to indicate statistical significance. For that, you have to look at the footer to the tables where they indicate that percentage point differences with an asterisk are statistically significant. The percentage point spread in the survey isn’t an indicator of statistical significance, as you can see with the table on p. 37. In it, 80% of men look for info about a hobby, whereas 75% of women do. That’s 5% difference. It’s not asterisked as statistically significant.

However, the maps/driving question also reveals a 5% difference. This time, the date is asterisked and that means it is statistically significant. So, you have the same percentage difference with two different questions. However, you have statistical significance with one but not the other.

Why? This will help explain it, probably better than the ridiculously boring Wikipedia entry on the topic.

It is true that researchers writing the report used the word significant quite a bit in their narrative remarks. However, it is misleading to the lay public. A good book to read on the topic, and which should be a required text in all stats cours is _How to lie with Statistics_. It’s not that they are lying in this instance, just lazy.

As M.D. Gall writes:

“It is an unfortunate circumstance that statistical methods used to test the null hypothesis are commonly called tests of statistical significance. Equally unfortunate is the tendency to make statements of the type, “The difference between the experimental and control group was significant at the .05 level,” or the correlation between the two variables was significant at the .05 level.” The word “significant” misleads professional practitioners and the lay public into thinking that the research results are important for this reason. In fact, even researchers and research journal editors might be swayed into thinking that a research result is important because it is statistically significant, or the converse: that a research result is not important because it is not statistically significant.

In fact, a statistically significant result only tells us that the null hypothesis can be rejected at some level of certainty&emdash;assuming that certain conditions (most importantly, random sampling from a defined population) have been satisfied. Rejecting the null hypothesis means that we accept the alternative, namely, that the difference between the experimental and control groups is not a consequence of sampling error, but rather that it is a real difference&emdash;in other words, the samples come from different populations having different mean scores.

The finding of a real group difference is not important in and of itself. If one compares any two groups (e.g., high school freshmen and sophomores, or males and females), they are likely to differ on a great many variables. By itself, then, a significant p value is of relatively little importance. The importance of significant p values is further diminished by the fact that they are easily influenced by sample size, the value of p used as the criterion for rejecting the null hypothesis, and whether the test of statistical significance is one-tailed or two-tailed.”

The annual roundup is a fait accompli at the St. Pete Times:

For the past 12 months, we scoured newspapers, magazines and the Internet for all the futile, inane and moronic news stories in Florida. And as usual, we came away overloaded.

Here’s the best of the best. Keep in mind that it’s people like these who make Florida what it is.

Scary thought, isn’t it?

I know I’ve linked to Joel’s blog, “Because Everybody Else Has One,” at least once, if not twice. So, I happen to be reading his blog and notice some new blogdress in the right hand column. Naturally, I click on his status in the TTLBEcosystem to see who else was linking. It’s a great way to find other blogs like the one you already like, right? Coz they’ve been playing tag with Joel. (see his post of 12/28, Snark, Sass, and Destruction — now with more snark).

Someone at TTLB needs to explain why there are no links to blog from Bitch | Lab. I know I shouldn’t sound so demanding. It’s a labor of love an’ all — I guess. Volunteer work, etc. etc. I’m just wondering, ‘k?

Bitch | Lab is registered in the ec0-system. Obviously. I’m having a grand time with the stats for reasons I cannot divulge or else I’d have to kill you — all of you! If you rilly, rilly want to know, write me offlist. You may even be motivated to assist Bitch in this delicious fun!

I wonder what is up with TTLB? Shouldn’t Joel be getting credit for this silly ass game of mutual mastu…. I mean tagging? We need good blogs to make it to the top of the heap, damn it. All those conservatives who’ve been linking to one another like mad have huge ratings in the ecosystem because they are not as closed off and cliquish (sp?) — as Scarlet Statist Scion described Liberal blogoliciousville the other day. (Sorry for forgetting and using “Red” instead of “Scarlet” the other day. Which reminds me: why “”In love on a pin”? Poem? Novel? Essay? Curious.)

And, Joel, hope you feel better. Maybe some honey stirred up with the knock off brand of Thera-flu?

Dim? No one gives a boiled rat’s behind about your BDSM street cred. Honest. It doesn’t matter whether you participated or not. What matters is your argument. Guess what? You have none. I have no time to go through everything you’ve written, and people who are in “the scene” would be better respondents than I, so I’m going to be a pickytwit. Here are two items:

1. This part was so absurdum my bum broke in half:

Furthermore, all acts, regardless of which gender takes which role, simply mimic the extreme end of male-female relationships in our society; the acts and mindset might seem pretty “out there”, but the fact is that BDSM is a reducto ad absurdum of the approved continuum of gender interactions. Someone dominates, someone else gets beat. If a woman dominates, she dominates in a specific way as to be a caricature of herself and other women who are “uppity”. (emphasis added — ed.)

Reductio ad absurdum? Seriously, when I got to that line, I had been alternating between practicing my deep breathing technique, something I picked up from Thagmano (”breath, just breath”), and picking myself up from the floor, wiping Diego off me before he started humping me but having a hard time because I was gasping for air, laughing as hard as I was.

When I got to that gem? Oh. My.

It’s common to think that reductio ad absurdum means a silly argument. But, Dim, you’re not even making the typical mistake. It is not the equivalent of “BDSM is really a reduction of (a concretion of, a crystallization of, a distillation of) the approved continuum of gender interactions.” Or, perhaps you mean, “BDSM is really just a simplified reduction of the approved continuum of gender interactions”? Ok. Fine. But, it’s not a “reductio ad absurdum.” (But, hey, Kevin Smant will now be able to move up a step, no longer the sole instantiation of “Inverse Renaissance Man.” Nosiree! Movin’ on up for Kevilicious! Kevin is actually an OK guy, particularly when he lets his sense of humor escape after he pulls the stick out of his arse for roasting the occasional marshmallow. The problem is, Kevin has a tendency to step in it without doing his homework first. Plus, he’s a good teacher, loved by some of his students. But, I digress, I thought it’d be fun to poke a little fun at Kev if he happens to be reading — with his sense of humor and good fun intact and smiley emoticon at the ready!)

2. What is it with the male superiority trip here, eh? I mean, I swear, aside from having to cut off your balls, as they do in Berkely (according to Paddy, at any rate), do you have to sit around sweating in a teepee, smoking the MythoPoetic Men’s Movement Pipe, gripping a talking stick (it would figure that the only way you can get het men to talk while naked is if they’re holding a stick!) and vowing to, forever more, spend at least 1 hour a day talking about all the Other men out there wearing wife beater tee-shirts and swilling Genny Screamers in front of James Bond flicks I mean waxing their carrots while looking at “44DDD Buns for Your Coney Pony” for which they’ll obviously need this inadvertantly pr0nish Internets ™ pr0n addiction help site (from Boing Boing).

For one thing, the act generally revolves around his orgasm; if he has one, it’s all over. Oftentimes, the act is entirely about his orgasm, and prolonging the amount of time he has to go before he can have one.

(Note, here, that given the studies, most women in “vanilla” relationships are doing this every single night, without ever getting to orgasm at all – but when men have to go through it, it’s only because they’re being aggressively dominated. Hmm.)

I’m sorry? Most women? Is there a survey out there that you can cite? Because, the ones I’m thinking of suggest something else: about 3/4 of women surveyed report they always or usually have an orgasm when they are in a relationship. Whether it’s vanilla or not, I don’t know.

Why, why why is your liberation hinged on putting other men down by making claims that probably do NOT represent most men reading. Hell, even even most men sitting in a Lazy Boy right now, belching out the vowels in the alphabet in front of SPIKE TV.

As for the rest? Reporting your experience, that’s fine. It’s not an argument. You make no reference to a literature. You make no reference to research — surveys, ethnographic interviews, participant observation, nothing. You simply say that you’ve participated and then you claim that X goes on and Y goes on and, well, take your word for it. And the whole time, you dismiss everything that other participants have to say about it. Why? You don’t even have the decency to find quotable material to analyze and ask pertinent questions of.

Feh.

Like I said, I’m not into the BDSM scene as far as I know, but it’s not clear to me that the good and decent people I know who are in the scene, progressives every single one, have been given a fair shake by this abomination that you foist off as legitimate argument.

BTW, Sheldon, I promisemeanit, I will get to responses. As for Stan Goff’s, Dim’s and BB’s ridiculous arguments about Hetlez pr0n, they don’t seem to be worth my time. I’ll have a looksee again but there’s not much you can say to boiler plate arguments like that. If they can’t see how they inadvertantly stereotype Lesbian sex, in the act of rescuing het women from the evil that is hetLez pr0n, what can I do? Force them to watch Lesbian rimming or something? As you can see, even when Dim observes something from his own experience, he doesn’t even see. How he can be involved in “the scene” and have never come across a butch who is a sub? Does the guy even know what Google is? Or is the thing on Super Strickt Ugh, Ick, Eeuuww Filtering so that the most he ever gets is a gander at Breck Girls — for which, no doubt, he flogs himself and then stops in horror, uncertain as to whether or not he has just engaged in a reductio ad absurdum of hegemonic gender roles.

This just in, in the comments section. Something I NEVER knew. Wow? Honest? My dog? I’ll have to get out R’s box of pr0n — the one that his friend gave him — and watch again. How could I have missed this? Men masturbate to pr0n? Rilly?

Pornography objectifies women. In heterosexual pornography and in almost all porn, women are seen as the means to end. I think that most men consume pornography so that they can masturbate to the objects on their screens. For Catherine MacKinnon, pornography “constructs women as things for sexual use and constructs its consumers to desperately want women to desperately want possession and cruelty and dehumanization. Inequality itself, subjection itself, hierarchy itself, objectification itself…is the apparent content of women’s sexual desire and desirability.”
See my recent paper on why radical libertarian feminists are not really part of the feminist movement - http://oregonstate.edu/~stolleer/blog/index.php/
radical-libertarian-feminism-paper/ . I have even better examples of the violence and objectificatio that takes place in porn.

Bottom line: Porn constructs women as objects so that men can masturbate to something. Women are turned into objects whereas men remain subjects.