tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8244792255471150002024-03-08T17:25:49.440-05:00Barry's JukeboxSometimes I pull up a playlist, sometimes I rant. My navel is thoroughly-examined.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-10769068547786046842009-12-28T17:35:00.003-05:002009-12-28T17:38:07.274-05:00Meme - Wikipedia RaceLowest Score wins!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/28/fun-with-wikipedia-c.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">How fast can you get to Jesus?</a><br /><br />I got it in 3 clicks: <br /><br />Professional Wrestler Sarah Stock<br />Mexico<br />Catholicism<br />Jesus<br /><br />And from comments on the boingboing page, it seems that going to a country and then using its religious demographic info is a common tactic. <br /><br />Enjoy! More on nuance soon.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-51226910528313180002009-12-17T11:59:00.007-05:002009-12-17T14:04:05.674-05:00Nuance in ModernityThis is just the start of a series of thoughts I've had percolating for a few months, that I hope will grow into something articulable in a concise criticism of the dynamics of political and legal ramifications to both social and economic policy and how they are affected by contemporary ideological movements. It grows, however, out of observations governing art and treatment of individual choices, especially as affected by the mental health industry.<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />My meditation on this started over the summer when I was listening to the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. Phantom is one of those shows that people from the midwest love to see when they go to Las Vegas-- it's been pretty much the only successful traditional theatrical production in Las Vegas (fn1). This is for a few reasons: a broadway/rock mixture in the music, a musical that every girl who ever sang a solo in church can imagine would have been about her a century and a half ago, a musical you can take the kids to where the parents won't get bored, a musical where the men watching it won't feel gay because it has action elements, and the kinds of big sets and pyrotechnics that you expect from a large-theater experience in Las Vegas.<br /><br />But when you really listen to Phantom, it has a complex and fiercely mature story arc: it makes you fear and sympathize with, essentially, a rapist. And reflecting on this I realized that we don't give people that opportunity anymore, to give sympathy at the same time as reprobation. In effect, modernity compels us to align our sympathies with our actions. This acts as an obstacle to introducing nuance into our understanding of political, social and moral scenarios because it removes tensions that are inherent to any system that integrates multiple ideologies.<br /><br />There are some problems with what I've just written. What is "modernity"? How are we "compelled"? Is it necessary for a system to reflect multiple ideologies? Must such ideologies be in tension?<br /><br />In this series of posts, I will attempt to provide an answer to those questions to support a thesis that I am still developing. My thesis, currently, is that American political trends undermine American democracy by promoting fundamentalism at all levels. Such fundamentalisms may not be successful in deconstructing hybrid systems, but they promote discontent with the inevitable results of mass decisionmaking, and therefore decrease investment in common goals. Such decreased investment has the result of entrenching mercenary interests at the cost of improvement of results.<br /><br />Because the ideology which most occupies my thinking is feminism, I use feminism as an example of the different elements of the thesis. However, I will also endeavor to show how race, class, and economic systems are part of the evolving tension between a moral imperative to improve the status quo and political incentives to polarize messages and goals. <br /><br />Watch, I bet I won't enter another post on this for a month and a half. <br />________________________________<br /><br />fn1: with the possible exception of Jersey Boys, although a) I don't know the numbers on Jersey Boys and b) Jersey Boys is only barely theatrical and its success lies in the fact that its music is not theatrical music, but is classic pop music that tourists are familiar with in teh vein of the Celine Dion and Elton John vegas shows.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-23072132959025441582009-12-17T11:29:00.003-05:002009-12-17T11:59:34.060-05:00Emotionally Compelling Playlist for AdultsAdult contemporary music tends to be boring and lacks emotionally compelling lines. It's more cerebral, more designed around easy emotions and communication than evocation. But music that's not for adults tends to be a kind of simplistic that borders on ignorance, to express emotions that adults have already worked through and understand. One of the problems with modernity and self-awareness is that it leaves little room for nuance and tragedy: it's too transparent. These songs fulfill the Frostian prdiction that nothing gold can stay: any band or performer capable of this kind of tension in their music can't keep it up, and either the band breaks up, the singer stops recording, or they slip back into something simpler and less impressive. Billy Joel may be the exception to this-- he managed to sustain it for three or four albums.<br /><br />1. Blink-182 - Always (especially if you watch the video)<br />2. New Found Glory - It's Not Your Fault (except ignore the video)<br />3. Fountains of Wayne - Valley Winter Song<br />4. Billy Joel - Summer, Highland Falls<br />5. Billy Joel - Captain Jack<br />6. Annie Lennox - Why<br />7. Bonnie Rait - I Can't Make You Love Me<br />8. Ginblossoms - Hey Jealousy<br />9. Poison - Here I Go Again<br />10. Natalie Merchant - Carnival<br />11. Mandy Moore - I Wanna Be With You<br />12. Something Corporate - 21 and Invincible<br />13. Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime<br />14. Colin Hay - Waiting for My Real Life to Begin<br /><br />At first glance, this is a playlist about midlife crisis-- feeling that things have fallen apart in a way, or that you've become profoundly alienated from a world you both constructed and were forced into. But at the same time, there are some pieces in there that embody the potential that adults can still see in their lives, that adults can still want things rather than mourn the collapse of things they've built: I Wanna Be With You, Once in a Lifetime, Here I Go Again. And then recognizing the blessings of every day: Valley Winter Song.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-78415320530177268062009-11-03T13:16:00.001-05:002009-11-03T13:18:43.250-05:00My Trip to ScientologyI took a trip to L.A. a few months ago, and, taking a cue from <a href="http://www.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1844490_1844431_1844272,00.html">this article </a> I decided to go check out the Scientology Celebrity Center. <a name='more'></a><br /><br />I went alone and didn’t tell anyone, and I have to say, given the press Scientology gets, and, frankly, given the bigoted things I’ve said/believed about Scientology, it felt a little like an Indiana Jones move: going to the temple of the crazy cult, all alone, the unsuited professional with his days of beard growth separating him from his home life. <br /><br />Let’s start with the building, which is gorgeous: brilliant art-deco details imposed on neo-romantic architecture, carefully sculpted gardens and hand-painted frescoes everywhere. I had intended to grab lunch at the café, as proposed in the Time article, but as I walked up a woman approached me and, after asking me one or two preliminary questions, informed me that the café is reserved for parishioners, but I was welcome to have a tour of the building if I wanted. I waited in the bookstore and the clerk there nervously asked me a few questions, had me fill out an information card (on which I lied about everything), and had a totally normal, friendly conversation with me while we waited for a tour guide to come. After about fifteen or twenty minutes, the clerk just locked up the bookstore and gave me the quickie tour.<br /><br />So, the building started as a hotel during the Errol Flynn era of Hollywood (I think the clerk-turned-tour-guide mentioned that Errol Flynn had stayed there at least three times). Scientology bought it in, if I recall correctly, the 70s, and renovated it back to its former glory. The building is maintained as a place for Scientology’s artist-parishioners to retreat to when needed. It isn’t presented as a celebrity center, once you’re inside… the public areas of the building are decorated with reference to all of the arts. There’s a quote from L. Ron Hubbard up in the hallway about great societies being defined by their artists, and the paintings in the hallways echo the emphasis on the arts. The restaurant (different from the café) had the walls hand-painted with panels representing dance, music, writing, poetry, playwriting (as separate from other writing), and music composition (I may be missing some, and my recollection of playwriting may be erroneous). <br /><br />They also have up a resolution from some governmental body—I don’t recall if it was the government of California, or a congressional resolution—recognizing the Church of Scientology for its efforts in advancing the cause of human rights. <br /><br />So here’s what I’ll say: they offered me an auditing session, the dude taking me around asked a couple of times if I was familiar with different aspects of Scientology’s beliefs, and I gave him a semi-understanding brick wall at those points: yes, I’m loosely familiar, no I’m not interested, but thank you. And that was it—no proselytizing other than that. Admittedly, he’s not a pro at this—he wasn’t supposed to be the one giving the tour, and it's possible the normal tour guide would have been more forceful. But I respect the respectful distance.<br /><br />And here’s what got me thinking about this: I’ve seen, on a couple of blogs, a review of the Scientology holiday catalogue, and it reminded me of the gulf between the Scientology I see in the news, and the Scientology I saw that day. It’s easy for me to say that I feel bad for being such a bigot against Scientology, but this underlines the difference between Scientology and Scientologists. The people I met and saw there were nothing but gracious. The building was obviously lovingly cared for and represented a deep commitment to art, or at least thorough patronage of the arts. <br /><br />But I also noted that they’re still a cult. At one point on the tour, we passed by an office that’s cordoned off by a velvet rope. My guide showed me the office from the doorway, and indicated that it’s reserved for L. Ron Hubbard, even though, he noted, Mr. Hubbard passed away some years ago (the guide did not suggest there was any expected “return,” which either means this is hollow and showy or he just wasn’t letting me in on the secrets). I was instantly reminded of how some Chabad houses save a chair, or a place at the table, or a desk, or something like that for the Lubavitcher Rebbe, for when he supposedly returns to the world in a more clearly messianic form. I guess if you’re a cult of the modern world, you borrow from the best (yeah, yeah, Scientology was probably doing this before the Rebbe died). And the proselytizing aspect is there; when I was approaching the building, the woman who came up to me first asked if I was an artist, and then asked if I work with artists, and I caught on after a moment that this is an outreach center for artists—she was seeing if I was an appropriate target for their solicitations. <br /><br />So how does this change the way I look at Scientology? <br /><br />There’s a South Park episode where they spend a lot of time trashing Mormonism, until, at the end, the Mormon kid on the show points out that even if his religion is kind of loony, he and his family are just good people who were trying to live life as solid members of the South Park community, but they had to leave because nobody could look past their religion, while ignoring the weirdnesses of mainstream religions. <br /><br />The Scientology organization, if the former Scientologists and the people investigating Scientology, like Operation Calm Bake or that Rolling Stone reporter who did a big article on them a few years ago, are to be believed, is malevolent and expansionist. But individual Scientologists may just be people who needed guidance and found it there. And, as Scientology ages and generations are born into it, the balancing act of raising a family within a religious community will necessitate some moderation and bring the Scientologists into the mainstream, MAYBE. There was a hint of that in the Rolling Stone article, certainly. <br /><br />This also reflects what I’ve seen among Jewish missionaries; people born into a religious community are much more sane. They can speak with people more directly, are less agenda-focused in their interactions. In short, when you’re born religious, you’re less alienated from people outside your community. People who leave the mainstream world to become religious have intentionally placed distance between themselves and their targets. As a result, time pushes religious groups in one of two directions: moderation, or radicalization by the institution’s leaders in order to prevent moderation. However, this will often lead to a David Koresh type of situation, and that’s why radical cults don’t’ survive if they stay radical.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-13069730954207591712009-10-22T18:37:00.008-04:002009-10-23T14:06:22.812-04:00Academic vs. Activist, How to End Rape CultureAnother one of my posts playing off a blog post I read elsewhere... Feministing linked me to <a href="http://www.wakingvixen.com/blog/2009/10/13/thoughtful-masculinities-theory-and-practice/#comments">here</a>, promising a post about how men need to be involved in ending rape culture. The post, by Audacia Ray, ended up having almost nothing to do with that. In a (self-admitted) ramble, the post started at noting that men need to be involved in ending rape culture, but in asking what that would look like, went off on a very sophomore year B/B- tangent about the author's personal history dating manly men, womanly men, and women. Then the commenters made a big deal about how we talk about trans people, and I was left with next-to-no-interest in anything anyone was saying, except to the extent that I felt deprived of what I'd hoped was a conversation about an important issue: how do you get men interested in issues of modern feminism?<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />Let's start by saying that this post and its comments were a great example of how you DON'T get men interested in issues of modern feminism. I cheered a little when one commenter wrote: "I think it would be really useful to have this conversation in plain ordinary English, instead of obscure and obtuse gender studies academic jargon." <br /><br />Which gets at a frustration I have that I haven't been able to articulate before: the way that feminist "activists" are really in a gray area that's mostly colored academic. They're more interested in being completely correct and describing their holistic revolution than than they are in introducing change within the next decade. <br /><br />Nobody outside of Northampton, MA or the area west of Broadway between 116th St. and 120th St. knows what "cis" means. (it means presenting a gender which matches the genitals and chromosomes with which you were born) Are you trying to develop an intellectual movement that will, someday, result in a meaningful change? Or are you trying to effect change directly? There's a zero-sum between communicability and sensitivity, and as long as you tiptoe around alienating people who are actually alienated anyway, you're only preaching to the choir of people who already care. While trans issues have become a big part of most feminist discourse, this relentless language policing ends up as a perpetual distraction from the other substantive issues at hand, which go beyond transgendered people. <br /><br />Anyway, Audacia's post also has some problems that are illustrative of why rape culture keeps going. It starts as identifying that, yeah, men DO need to be involved in ending rape culture. But then it veers off into analysis of how aggression and safety know no gender. On the one hand, it's important to express that ending rape culture isn't an attack on men/masculinity... and if I'm reading her post wrong, and it IS an attack on masculinity, then she's defeated before she's even tried to start. She asks who the dudes are who are working to end rape culture, and that tangent seems to lead her to discussing guys who are more feminine. Those guys... tend not to have a whole lot of traction with the people who are supporting rape culture. <br /><br />If she wants the partnership of men who assume, if not embrace, a conventional masculinity of one stripe or another, then she needs to be comfortable with playing to their decision not to confront the broader problems with their masculinity. Defining rape culture to include frat/football team hazings and institutional racism is a call for revolution, not for establishing partnerships with powerful people. As long as the end of rape culture is the end of Power and Privilege, rape culture will live on. It's up to the people who have identified rape culture to find a way to decouple critical analysis (in the academic sense) from ending rape culture. <br /><br />I love it when someone puts up a post about the ways to stay safe from rape or to end rape and someone else posts "hey, the best way to end rape is for men to learn that they shouldn't rape." Well, that was great. Hope you had fun writing that. It was brilliant. Hey! Look. Nobody learned to stop raping because you said that. <br /><br />The end of rape culture is going to come when feminist activists-- who are different from academic feminists, because supposedly they're trying to put things into action-- learn to get over their reasonable discomfort at saying "Women are not objects. No homo." And the point there, obviously, is that if ending rape culture means ending masculinity as we know it, instead of just trying to introduce evolution and incremental improvement, then you've already killed the interest of anyone influential who isn't already on your side. Because insisting upon the full range of social-gender-economic revolutions taking place simultaneously is the same as supporting the status quo. If you can learn to work with people who may have insecurities about their masculinity but aren't particularly interested in resolving them, you can do real work in adapting masculinity so that it doesn't support rape culture. Otherwise, rape culture will just keep going.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-25176837425669921492009-09-24T13:03:00.008-04:002009-09-24T13:15:20.718-04:00More on HealthcareSorry for the blitz of postings-- I have a lot of thoughts to catch up on.<br /><br />The posting I did on healthcare leaped off <a href="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/09/23/health-insurance-unemployment-and-bankruptcy/">a post at feministe </a>about healthcare, and the conversation ensued in the comments. I don't want to lose the points from that conversation, so here goes:<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />The author said that what I proposed-- a tiered system that can grant basic access to all and good care to people with good jobs-- was what they have in France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan. I replied:<br /><br />But these other countries don’t exactly have it figured out, for a variety of reasons. In Germany, doctors’ salaries have the purchasing power of about 20% of what they have in the U.S. On top of that, everyone’s salary is taxed at an additional 10-15%. EVERYONE. You can’t opt out, but you can buy supplemental coverage at high cost if you want… which means that, to get anything above the level of healthcare offered to the general public, you need to pay about two months’ salary every year on healthcare. And then, of course, the doctors aren’t as good (see: salary differential). Finally, in Germany, the tax rate for healthcare is set, and the ’sickness funds’ have to be self-supporting; if you join a sickness fund and there’s a nuclear meltdown on the other side of the country and the town next to the plant was populated by people in your sickness fund, there’s no money left for your knee replacement.<br /><br />In France, there’s this: More than 92% of French residents have complementary private insurance. This insurance pays for additional fees in order to access higher quality providers. Private health insurances makes up 12.7% of French health care spending. These complementary private insurance funds are very loosely regulated (less than in the U.S.) and the only stringent requirement is guaranteed renewability. Private insurance benefits are not equally distributed so there is, in essence, a two-tier system… Which is what I was proposing. But can you sell a universal healthcare package that’s, you know, crap? If we make it cheap enough, you’ll be able to just keep everyone on life support, I guess, sort of. We’re bigger than France and have twice as large a portion of the population (France’s 6% to our 12-17%) living below the poverty line and therefore not paying in.<br /><br />Also, in France, billing and recordkeeping are organized by the government. We don’t have this because of, among other things, privacy concerns; in the 90s, non-centralized and highly-private record keeping became a big deal in the U.S. because people didn’t want their employers to know they had AIDS. Also, people applying for all sorts of insurance policies– not only health, but also life– want these records to be kept secret. So, things are different in France because the costs are spread out among more people and there are systemic differences that make healthcare cheaper. These might be some of what the President is referring to when he talks about limiting inefficiencies in the current system, but he needs to make that clearer. Also, French doctors earn about 40,000 Euros/year, which, even if you turn that into dollars at roughly $80,000, is a lot less than what U.S. doctors make. This is partly okay because French medical school is free, while U.S. medical school is not, so French doctors don’t have 100,000 Euros of debt to pay off. All the same, you lose the support of the U.S. medical community the second you start talking about changing compensation or practices.<br /><br />Switzerland has, essentially, no poor people. Only 3% of the country relies on government assistance. when everyone works and pays in, it’s easy to have good healthcare, because there’s plenty of money around to provide the right incentives. It’s great to be a doctor in Switzerland. If you can motivate more brilliant people in the U.S. to become doctors by increasing compensation, you can have broader medical coverage. Also, in Switzerland, healthcare is all private; the companies are just prevented by law from making a profit on basic coverage, but still have to compete against each other to get basic coverage customers, so they can convince some of their basic coverage customers to buy the profit-permitted add-on coverages, for things like, uh, dentistry. you can picture how this would play out in the U.S.; the profitable coverages, and the basic coverages, would all put their focus on getting the people who have health insurance now anyway (i.e. people who can buy the add-ons), while people in communities without coverage now would be getting, you know, half-hearted motions in the direction of coverage. this is partly because of how dramatically economically segregated we are in this country.<br /><br />And then, in Japan, the hospitals are all going bankrupt.<br /><br />So there’s the reasons why European plans wouldn’t work here the way they do over there. Part of it is BS cultural posturing (why NOT have centralized recordkeeping and take that item off hospitals’ budgets? Privacy seems to be in the same category as those accusations of haughty individualism the Europeans like to throw at us), part of it is economic (i.e. we all know the U.S. is lousy with economic disparity, so there would be a higher percentage of the population not paying in, and a lower percentage paying in), and part of it has to do with the medical profession as it exists in the United States (insurance companies pay for doctors’ education, sort of. Also, we respect our doctors more.).<br /><br />But what if you expand the ranks of medical schools by 20%, and then create a two-tiered system where the bottom 50% get put into the public insurance system, and the top 50% go into the private insurance system, which would address the issue of doctor quality for people getting private insurance, would expand the resources of the system to accomodate more participants (over time; this would take a decade to really hit), and would keep compensation and quality of care options for medical professionals available to enough of them to make it a real possibility.<br /><br />The original author asked where I got the information that doctors are worse in Germany, since she'd been under the impressions that outcomes are just as good and infant mortality is better, there. I replied:<br /><br />While you’re right that outcomes in those countries have good statistics, that’s partly because statistics in this country include people who are getting crummy care because they’re not covered by insurance. So if you limited your statistics in the U.s. to people who have decent insurance, you’d probably get a very different comparison.<br /><br />And, even setting that aside, doctor quality isn’t the only factor influencing outcomes or infant mortality– those are driven by access to care, resources available in the course of care, genetic diversity in the population (we’re much, much more diverse than any of the countries discussed. And if you want to see how genetics drives those statistics, consider the case of Utah, with about the highest life expectancy in the U.S.– it’s not just because Mormons abstain from alcohol. It’s environmental and genetic. Utah is 95% white.), etc. Doctor quality isn’t really an issue until you get to tricky stuff– like how, in that story you linked to about the woman with leukemia, her doctor told her she should, no-way, no-how, go to a local or regional hospital, but had to go to a research hospital. So, a) she had a very good doctor at that moment, and b) he knew the other doctors in his area weren’t good enough. <br /><br />So the factor that often indicates “quality” when you’re dealing with fields that depend on research and development is frequency of citation. The U.S. leads that in spades, even if you account for population size. You can see total citations for all scientific papers here: http://sciencewatch.com/dr/cou/2009/09janALLPAPRS/<br /><br />And see what the most-cited papers in medicine have been, lately, here: http://sciencewatch.com/ana/hot/med/09sepoct-med/<br />http://sciencewatch.com/ana/hot/med/09julaug-med/<br /><br />I did my homework on those papers that are indicated as being international, and almost all of them are dominated by U.S. authors.<br /><br />I should add that, of course, there are phenomenal research centers internationally, but in terms of creating a system that encourages multiple fountains from which may spring the continued improvements in life expectancy and quality of life that we see among the insured in the U.S., the U.S. does a much, much better job of encouraging smart, enterprising people to become doctors and deal with our toughest cases. That’s not to say that there aren’t countries that have excelled at specific fields– like opthamology in Cuba– but for systemic medical excellence, you can’t beat the U.S.<br /><br />Fun background note from a professor of mine in law school who had been a doctor before he became a lawyer: the U.S. *does* take the lead when it comes to looking at care for the well-cared-for. The U.S. is #1 for life expectancy… at age 85. so if you’ve been well-taken-care-of such that you made it to age 85, you obviously have the resources to keep going, beyond what other countries can offer. *that’s* what people don’t want to give up.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-13697587225935705432009-09-24T12:32:00.005-04:002009-09-24T12:55:05.447-04:00Quick Hit: AIDS VaccineQuick hit for me, anyway. There's some stuff circulating now about a new AIDS vaccine that was tested in Thailand and reduced AIDS transmission by 31%. Some thoughts:<br /><br />- This study was totally and completely immoral, which is why it was done in a third world country. It's like using human subjects to test whether a new bullet-proof helmet will work, by shooting people in the head with bullets. It's only a small step above intentionally having these people have sex with someone who has AIDS. Working with an at-risk population and standing mutely by while you know some of them are going to get infected is obscene.<br /><br />- A population that's adjudged to be at-risk for HIV tends not to be a population that medical researchers can rely on for clinical honesty; there are cultural barriers, issues of mistrust between researcher and patient, and, with regard to the particular communities at risk for HIV, issues of mental illness (not all hookers or heroin addicts are crazy, but lots and lots are) and understanding of veracity and consent. <br /><br />- There are different strains of HIV, and I haven't seen any discussion of whether that accounts for the weird statistics here: why 31%? Maybe this just works on certain strains, in which case those strains should be deduced and some level of statistical analysis done on which strains are prevalent in which geographic and demographic populations.<br /><br />- Going back to the morality issues and cultural issues: why do you think this was done in Thailand? I'm going to go read the research and update this if necessary, but it seems like Thailand's a good place to do this kind of study because of the huge sex trade, which means we're using a tragedy of humanity as the forum for medical research, and while it makes sense, it's discomforting. Why not do this in South Africa, where 10% of the population has AIDS/HIV? My point is that the forum selection in this case is not irrelevant to the clinical findings-- sex-work-driven epidemiology is a factor in interpreting these results, just as rape-driven epidemiology would be a factor in interpreting results in an African population. AIDS is a highly-demographically sensitive epidemic, and these differences are more salient factors in understanding the usefulness of any vaccines than they would be for many other diseases-- even STD/Is. <br /><br />- Every year we have to update the flu vaccine, because the flu is a virus, and viruses mutate rapidly. If we do find a vaccine for AIDS, we're going to need to update it constantly to accommodate different strains, UNLESS the AIDS vaccine represents a leap forward in Basic Science understandings, which it sounds like it might, and the lessons will be applicable to all virus vaccines, not just AIDS. <br /><br />- Asshole-blunt: you can't trust studies conducted in third world countries.<br /><br />- There's moral hazard left, right and center on this. Post coming.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-38602741088274585332009-09-23T15:27:00.003-04:002009-09-24T13:15:50.122-04:00Race PoliticsThere was a recent post up at Feministe discussing the fallacies inherent in any reference to "The Black Community", and how toothless it is to suggest that The Black Community should be policing its own youth and cracking down on its problems, because there are no institutions that unify The Black Community that would facilitate this, or that even define these problems in the context of a coherent whole body.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />I only buy into this to a certain point: a lot of the division into ideas of “the black community” comes from arguments about policies that are ostensibly worthy of advocating for because they get at ameliorating the history of racism in this country; i.e. they’re there to help, principally, blacks, which turns blacks into a community of beneficiaries– a black community. So when there’s discussion about government action to limit ‘redlining’, or when policy concerning public school funding or public health care or welfare or the criminal justice system are raised as issues of race by EITHER side of such debates, they construct artifical communities around whomever is supposed to be affected by the supposed racism of the topic at hand. From that perspective, you could say that people like Bill Cosby have pulled themselves out of the black community by not grouping themselves in as the beneficiaries of those debates as they exist today. However, in the sense that a black kid whose parents are business-owning West Indian immigrants in Queens (New York) both gets the advantages of affirmative action based largely in economic disparities (setting aside systemic racism, which is also part of AA) that are not part of this kid’s life, and also has to suffer from police racial profiling that springs from crime rates driven by teens living below the poverty level in single- or no-parent welfare- or crime-supported households in the South Bronx… well, that kid in Queens and one of those kids in the Bronx are both part of a constructed community, and we– both the non-black population that has these conversations, and the participants from the black population who are involved– can either learn to de-couple race from these conversations, or we can deal with the effects of defining these conversations by race. However, we butt our heads against the wall fruitlessly if we pretend there isn’t some kind of forced community created by defining policy discussions along racial lines, even when the criteria feeding those discussions are casually driven by other forces. <br /><br />There’s also a certain amount of shorthand inherent in conversations about race. How many of the West Indian immigrants heard President Obama inveigh against absentee black fathers and nodded in agreement about how awful it is that the poor, unemployed, unmarried, American-born men over in the South Bronx aren’t marrying the mothers of their children or taking a role in improving their children’s lives (I’M NOT SAYING THAT’S WHO’S IN THE SOUTH BRONX, I’M INVENTING AN INTERNAL MONOLOGUE FOR THE PEOPLE IN THIS EXAMPLE)? Sometimes when we talk about race, we’re invoking a stereotype that excludes most of the people who are intended to be excluded, even if the strict terms used don’t make that clear. Think of the weirdness of the term “people of color”, and how frequently policies advocated ostensibly in favor of people in “communities of color” leave certain Asia-originating communities feeling attacked or left out.<br /><br />At the same time, there’s no reason not to at least recognize that we need some more nuance in how we understand these terms, and that the public discourse is capable of becoming sophisticated if there’s a large enough body of people who are committed to introducing that nuance. For example, much of the United States is capable of differentiating “Feminism” and “Radical Feminism”, even if the two concepts are fuzzy in most people’s minds. To that end, there’s a value in identifying that there are multiple black communities and cultures, and it’s worth specifying “low-income northeastern urban black communities” or “suburban middle class black communities”, even if that still encompasses a wide range of variety.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-27569722321949489452009-09-23T13:59:00.002-04:002009-09-24T13:16:09.996-04:00Health CareThere’s a calculus that’s going on in the minds of most insured Americans (the ones I talk to in my white urban professional upper middle class bubble, and the ones represented in plenty of coverage, whether or not reflective of real pluralities) that President Obama tried to speak to in his address to the nation, and it goes something like this (also, most doctors are doing this math from a more educated, and differently interested, position):<br /><br />There’s X number of doctors in the U.S., and most of them work way beyond 9-5, five days/week. They already currently don’t give enough time to patients as it is. There’s Y number of people who currently have access to medical care. That number Y could as much as double (since most insurance is crummy anyway and people don’t have unlimited access now), but number X is staying right where it is. So the access of people who currently have insurance either has to be reduced, or the quality of the care they receive has to be reduced by longer waits between visits and less time with the doctor. This math doesn’t just have to be applied to doctors; it applies to MRI machines, operating rooms… these are limited resources. Currently, we ration these resources out by giving them to people with better jobs, better healthcare, some combination of the two, or people who have lived past 65, while people who aren’t in those categories die.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />The proposal, as far as it’s been explained, is to ration out care on a basis that is blind to all but need. To people who are relatively healthy, with moderate complaints, this sounds like condemning them to discomfort with all but life-threatening illness, as doctors devote all their time to making sure no one dies.<br /><br />President Obama’s answer to this concern was to imply that people who think they’re in the lucky insured category now will find themselves out of that category within the next couple of decades. But is there another way to suggest to people who work hard at good jobs that they can get a little bit of an edge over mythical welfare queens in getting their healthcare? Is there a way to convince doctors that they will be treating anything beyond life-threatening illness, that they’ll be able to pay attention to quality-of-life issues without bankrupting their offices or working themselves into an early grave? That they’ll have time for research, that their opinions as professionals will still be respected (as they are for patients who have private, non-HMO insurance)? That they’ll be able to pay off their college and medical school and internship/residency debt without having to live on a sofabed in a studio apartment like the drummer in a bad Chicago-area band?<br /><br />Forget about the tax issues; people who have medical care want to keep getting their medical care. Unless the President’s proposal is to increase the number of nurses/nurse practitioners out there to fill the primary care role, which would have some of the same effects as increasing the numbers of doctors, people who have health care stand to lose quality of treatment if access is democratized… or good health care will be even more expensive than it is now, as all well-regarded medical providers move to a cash-only system and there’s no insurance for less-than-emergency/life-threatening conditions. <br /><br />And that’s still what’s going to happen if you increase the number of doctors out there, because if you make it easier to be a doctor, you’ll end up with a lot of doctors who are, you know, stupider than the people who are currently doctors. This is also true if you reduce doctor compensation. A lot of people go into medicine for the salary, not the passion– and a lot of those people make great doctors right now, but will go into biotech research, or banking, or law, or something else lucrative instead. <br /><br />So: Can you create a parallel system that provides basic care to currently uninsured individuals without putting them into the same system as the currently-insured, or without decreasing quality of care for those currently covered? Maybe. And that’s the program that will overcome a lot of the current opposition.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-54179856301274866482009-08-28T12:23:00.001-04:002009-08-28T12:25:01.986-04:00Continuing on from a snarky comment I a little bit regret leaving <a href="http://www.feministing.com/archives/017468.html#comments">here</a>:<br /><br />Well HPV, there's a vaccine for, and men should be getting that, too.<br /><br />Herpes... I mean, most of the world has herpes. It doesn't cause infertility, it doesn't cause cancer, it's annoying, but, you know, everyone has oral herpes anyway, and those countries with a high prevalence of genital herpes, like brazil, don't seem to have much of a problem with it. I don't *want* herpes, but if I got it, it wouldn't be a big deal. Talk to your partner about herpes before you have unprotected sex, but don't imagine it's a life-or-death conversation.<br /><br />Syphilis, Gonnorhea, Chlamydia... curable, curable and curable. <br /><br />Look, yes, this is a little bit sort of intended as flame, but there's a strong current of thought that *isn't* wrong that says that you can play the numbers on this stuff. In college (seven years ago) I went to campus health services to get a full blood workup because my girlfriend and I wanted to have the kind of sex where I can actually feel something and stand a chance of climaxing (you know, the sex without condoms) and they didn't bother to test me for AIDS even though I asked for it. The nurse practitioner said "you're obviously white. are you from outside the U.S.? are you gay? do you use intravenous needles? have you patronized a prostitute? no to all? okay, you don't have AIDS."<br /><br />And that wasn't wrong. I mean, my very-good-feminist girlfriend was upset, but she was also a sciences major, so she couldn't argue with it, exactly, at the personal level. A lot of the reason for condom use by certain groups is to prevent collective risk, not individual risk... to keep the statistics where they are, people need to use condoms, but there isn't an immediate and individual reason for a U.S. heterosexual white couple, even one that isn't very well acquainted, that doesn't invite sex workers to bed and doesn't use IV drugs to worry about AIDS. At that point, your bullshit meter is better protection than any condom, because the likelihood of anything serious getting passed on is so low, your date is more likely to commit an act of sexual violence than to give you a disease.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-58664260378694995342009-08-27T19:55:00.003-04:002009-08-27T20:07:20.889-04:00More on the Left and TribalismRe-reading some old Feministe posts exemplifying what I'm talking about (<a href="http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/81260/">http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/81260/</a> and <a href="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/04/05/on-prisons-borders-safety-and-privilege-an-open-letter-to-white-feminists/">http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/04/05/on-prisons-borders-safety-and-privilege-an-open-letter-to-white-feminists/</a> or anything that Renee at Womanist Musings/Feministe writes about the Whiteness boogeyman) I haven't reconsidered my position exactly, but been reminded why it's so incredibly important to cure the left of this structuralist obsession that undermines the real ideological battles that are out there and worth fighting. In the first of these two links, the connection between a law-and-order edifice that both polices for rape and participates in immigrant deportations is a conflation of two different issues for the sake of "intersectionality" that is more condescending than any attempt by people of "privilege" (fuck it, I'm just going to start referring to limosine liberals) to help marginalized communities. <br /><br />Immigrant deportation is 100% deifferent from policing for rape. Illegal immigrants have broken the law. It might be an unjust law (I don't think it is; nations have borders. That's how it works.) but the police are doing their job, and not terrorizing these people wantonly. The advantage of the law-and-order system is that it's pretty much predictable. There are structural problems, and there are individual racists, but the structural problems don't run as deep as the Left often accuses... the structural problems are principally a failure to do internal policing for individual racists. But trying to extend concern for all disadvantaged people to the point where you want to stop policing because the police might enforce unjust laws is tryign to take peoples' entire lives into your hands as you try to make the world a better place.<br /><br />And maybe that's where part of this disjuncture is... I don't want to make peoples' lives better. I want to make the world a better place. I have enough respect for the disadvantaged people of the world (let's set aside people with invisible disabilities for a moment, it's a big, separate issue) to expect them to know the rough outlines of the system in which they operate, and maneuver accordingly. The solution is not to do excruciating twists to try and protect every individual; the solution is to create a predictable system and administer it fairly. Wanting to reduce police involvement in potential sex crimes because you're worried that they'll deport the neighbors is, you know, retarded. We don't want the entire country to be like the chassidim in boro park and rely on vigilante groups for protection. They have a name for that-- the mafia. The same groups that murder and extort in the course of getting illegal immigrants to the U.S. in the first place.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-13404681409865125972009-08-27T18:59:00.006-04:002009-08-28T10:39:03.306-04:00The Left and the New TribalismI used to really enjoy being on the left. I waved my 'no blood for oil' flag in college, talked about the imperative of a socialist state that acknowledges the tradeoff of a social safety net as the exchange for compliance by workers with the inequalities of industrial labor structures, I'm pro-choice, I've done ally training three times (what can I say, a lifetime as a heterosexual male saddles you with a lot of heterosexism), I work hard to identify those assumptions of mine that are built on having grown up privileged (no capital letter on that word-- it means having a little bit of extra cash on hand, not the nexus we're going to be jumping into here) versus value systems that transcend having money, or versus decisions that poor people aren't taught to make but that actually are prudent fiscal decisions regardless of income (like buying in bulk, which is worth it even if you have to ask your buddy to lend you a little extra cash and pay them back next week). <br /><br />But as I drifted off point in that run-on sentence about my sensitivities, I was getting at the point, which is that I was a lefty/progressive/liberal because I understood that we're all coming from different places, and if people have a rational basis for what they do, you should respect it, but at the same time, demand that people endeavor to seek the best behaviors for themselves within the confines of their particular burdens. I took, and take, my peers to task strenuously for their unexamined advantage and disregard for the nuances of the differences between us, as a human race.<br /><br />I grew up during the Clinton years, those halcyon days when white people with money and guilt could try to make the world a better place and sort of, maybe, succeed. And while there have always been grass roots organizers who inveighed against any nexus of money and power, it seemed like people were pretty impressed with Clinton's Third Way of using business as a lever for improving peoples' lives. It was pragmatic instead of aggressive.<br /><br />Now, I read left-wing blogs, and particularly feminist blogs, and try to connect with people who I thought of as intellectual fellow-travelers, but I can't. And frankly, I can't because the discussion around left wing causes and ideologies has become focused on a kind of thought-patrolling purity that demands self-immolating guilt and suspension of psychological independence by white heterosexual males. The focus on transforming all liberal causes into facets of a single lens that paints the world as Privileged versus Disempowered misses the point of ideology. Ideology transcends demography. The new progressivism... it's non-ideological-- it's a kind of new tribalism, where you have to find a disadvantaged tribe to join or be left as the Jews of the left (i.e. the group everyone beats up on in uncontrollable rage whenever they can't deal with their own failures). You have to be gay, or a person of color, or abjectly poor AND disabled (either one alone doesn't count), or come from a former colony (and be descended from the indigenous people of that colony). <br /><br />And this attitude surrenders so many of the values I used to prize. In conversation with friends, I always hit on this again and again, but the patriarchy of a major core of the Muslim world (i.e. the Arab league plus Iran and Indonesia) could, like, really benefit from some colonialism, because they're mostly massive racists who hate women. When did we give up on the importance of spreading values? And not values like "democracy", which isn't really a value so much as a method, but values like "human rights".<br /><br />So the left abandoned ideology in favor of a semi-coherent vision of prioritizing the destruction of the privileged people at the top instead of acknowledging the advantages of the western society in which the left has its roots planted, and trying to tend its own garden while responding to the far, far worse situations abroad. And when people in the "privileged" tribe bring up any of these issues, they're shouted down as needing to check their privilege at the door, which basically amounts to an ad-hominem attack. It doesn't confront the issues.<br /><br />So I was once a feminist. And I still believe what I believed back then, but I specifically don't want to be associated with a modern feminist movement that says that increased policing with a specific emphasis on patrolling to prevent gender-based violence is wrong because it fails to acknowledge the burden on communities of color that is caused by racial profiling and police brutality and high incarceration rates of black males. Who cares? We're trying to stop sexual assault within minority communities-- this isn't a 'to kill a mockingbird' situation where we're using rape laws as a cudgel to protect "our" white women from black men; sexual assault is real and law enforcement exists to prevent it. Is sexual assault less serious than racial profiling?<br /><br />And that underscores the problem-- any attempt by people of "Privilege" to contribute to solving the problems of minority communities by doing more than throwing all their money in the air and sitting on a street corner offering to be beaten is somehow a reinforcement of existing power structures and therefore "wrong" to the modern left; no matter how you slice it, trying to help is treated as condescending if you're in the "privileged" tribe-- this is tribal warfare, not discourse or broad, whole-community improvement. <br /><br />And there's a partial answer to what I'm saying, which is that "checking your privilege at the door" is about listening and understanding what minority communities feel is best for them. The problem with that is it encourages some mixture of tokenism, where you have to treat the people you talk to as somehow representing their whole community, and it also destroys your ability to be a discriminating, intelligent adult with a value system that is important to you and is equally valid with those value systems of underprivileged communities, if not more valid because it adheres, hopefully, to a set of progressive ideologies that are worth believing in and that are genuinely important.<br /><br />I really loved being a progressive, but I'm not ready to stick nails through my hands and stop evaluating whether people are being responsible and complying with a set of imperative values that I genuinely believe in and want to fight for. It doesn't matter how colonized you were, how poor you are, or what kind of family you come from. Rape is never okay, and it's worth stopping, even if there's collateral damage. I'm not going to place myself in a tribe called "Privileged" and assume that my only place at the table where people are designing a better world is the seat for the guy who writes the checks and keeps his mouth shut except for when he's apologizing.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-1453927370862902872009-08-27T11:34:00.002-04:002009-08-27T12:57:00.006-04:00The Best Songs Ever Written, Volume 1Let's keep it simple here:<br /><br />1) I Think We're Alone Now - Tommy James and the Shondells<br />Let's introduce the mix, let the listener know that it's just them and the music. Give it a little punch to get the shoulders moving, but this isn't about dancing, and it isn't about a party-- this is about great music. Enjoy.<br /><br />2) Follow you Down - The Gin Blossoms<br />Again, we're in this together. Let's not waste the punch from the last song, but let's not go too big too fast.<br /><br />3) Don't Stop Believin' - Journey<br />Obvious, but still worth it. You knew it was coming, we're putting it in early, it carries the flow, and let's you sit back and think about the rest of the mix instead of just waiting to see if it's on there.<br /><br />4) Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler<br />So we're into the power ballads section of the mix, and this isn't the last Jim Steinman song that's going to find its way onto the list. But the slow start to the song gives you a breather, and the song's orchestrations turn on your brain so you're paying attention, now.<br /><br />5) November Rain - Guns 'N Roses<br />They have songs that are more divergent (Welcome to the Jungle, say) but that don't have the technical execution on this song. Keeps your attention for longer than you'd expect Axl Rose to be able to pay attention to his own song.<br /><br />6) All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You - Heart<br />Don't think about the content of this song too seriously. Or actually, go ahead and think the hell out of it, since it is totally fucking awesome that Ann Wilson can rip the hell out of this soul-achingly great song despite the fact that it's about how her husband was impotent so she got pregnant from an anonymous bum on the side of the road.<br /><br />7) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow - Carol King<br />We're getting a little weepy here, but better to get these songs out of the way all together, set an emotion, let it bloom, and move on. This song communicates a universal, simple emotion without being cheap. A democracy that respects its citizens intelligence. Where have we gone since the 70s?<br /><br />8) I Would do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) - Meat Loaf<br />Yet another Jim Steinman pick, and it brings us back to big sound and some faster music, and some more positive, if complicated emotions. I prefer the long version-- 13 minutes is a lot to ask, but there's a lot packed in there to experience.<br /><br />9) Basket Case - Greenday<br />Defined an era of music, created a new genre, and, separately, and more importantly, an awesome song. Even has little hooks to obsess over-- what's with the genders on the shrink and the whore? <br /><br />10) Land of Confusion - Genesis<br />Oh look! Phil Collins wants to play political! How the hell did he accidentally stumble on an anthem that's all at once vague and mushy and effective? The marvel of this song is that it works as well as it does despite being some asshole's idea of trying to connect to the previous decade's ethic. Bonus points for not being afraid to put a little testosterone into their political action music. And, to their credit, they bring something that U.S. protest music never could bring, which is a deeper understanding of facism, since over in the U.K. they have *real* facists (for real, in the middle of WWII there were actual political figures who were Nazi sympathizers. Not stay-out-of-the-war types like we had here, but real, honest-to-god 'hey! will to power! woohoo!' types), while we just have the Republican Party and its malcontents.<br /><br />11) Rockin' in the Free World - Neil Young<br />Oh, is this the real version of that last song? oh, my mistake.<br /><br />12) Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen<br />You might criticize this list for being single-heavy, but artists are mostly smart enough to put their best work out there for maximum review. Especially the most creative artists, whose work is frequently inaccessible on a massive scale; Springsteen's body of work is all over the place, but this song stirs the blood and, again, holds your attention way past when it should.<br /><br />13) Take Me Home Tonight - Eddie Money<br />It's not that Eddie Money is so great or anything, but this song combines old and new in a totally natural way. Points for respecting history.<br /><br />You may, at this point, notice that I hate the British. <br /><br />14) Here Comes The Sun - George Harrison<br />Enough minor key, huh? Also, this is as close as I get to complimenting the Beatles, who I have not willingly listened to since I got bored with them at age 16. Not that I'm a Rolling Stones fan, either, because they don't really write songs, just noise, except for, I guess, "Angie."<br /><br />15) (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher - Jackie Wilson<br />Holy Cow, is this the first black guy on this list? That's weird. Rock is really their music anyway.<br /><br />16) My Girl - The Temptations<br />See? It's really theirs.<br /><br />17) Isn't She Lovely - Stevie Wonder<br />Maybe I'm getting old and I've lived through too many weddings and baby births now, but I'm starting to get this. Not that I'm a dad or anything, but, you know, I've got so many freakin' long songs on here, and I had to put on something from Songs in the Key of Life, and As is like seven minutes long, so (insert additional lame excuses. it's a great song).<br /><br />18) A Little Less Conversation - Elvis Presley<br />So sue me, I'm a member of that very brief slice of humanity that was in college at the adolescence of the internet, when there was a viral video of a remix of this song going around, and I think it's Elvis' best song.<br /><br />19) Kodachrome - Paul Simon<br />I was wrestling with how to work some Bob Dylan in here, do some acknowledgment of 60s protest songs and how they reshaped America and the world, and I was thinking about his peers and contemporaries, but the fact is, Dylan's oeuvre is what's important, and not any one song, and none of the songs are all that great, just as songs. I think you had to be there. And much of the same goes for Simon & Garfunkel (although bridge over troubled water blah blah isn't there enough orchestral music on here?) but this solo song by Paul Simon is brilliant.<br /><br />20) So Long Frank Lloyd Wright - Simon & Garfunkel<br />Okay, so I lied. This is also maybe the least melodic song on the list, but it's a great way to close. To be continued.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-824479225547115000.post-83605854560828831682009-08-19T10:46:00.003-04:002009-08-27T11:33:50.948-04:00Welcome to Barry's JukeboxHello!<br /><br />I'm an erstwhile blogger, jumping in to try this thing again. I'm a New York lawyer and right-wing democrat with a specific interest in economics, feminism, and politics. I see capitalism as sitting at the nexus of all of these issues, by describing a libertarian system while surreptitiously changing the intrinsic values of such a system. This blog will examine the underlying assumptions of capitalism and their implications for issues like human rights, feminism, economics, colonialism, Zionism, religion, politics, and historiography.<br /><br />Also, I really like a well-constructed playlist. And "observations on life," which nobody wants to read. <br /><br />I think people who talk about capitalism, from the right or from the left, tend to be assholes... but that's because, at least in the U.S., they tend to be fundamentalists of one stripe or another. This blog will be proudly moderate, with few sacred cows, and hopefully irreverent. <br /><br />I'll also maintain a liberal comments policy, but I have every intention of using every tool in the toolbox to track down and humiliate trolls. Also, while I'll probably do a post on Israel for all my future readers to exhaust their need to argue over the fundamental right of Israel to exist, all arguments over fundamental rights of Israel to exist in subsequent posts will be deleted, because we're just too old for that shit, yo. Same goes for idiotic statements about women belonging in the kitchen, all industrialists being faceless oppressors, and poor people being automatically right because they're disempowered. <br /><br />It goes without saying that blatant racism will be shot down. If you can't be smart about it, you'll be excluded from the conversation. That said, I like heterogeneity, so please disagree, if you can do it coherently.The Flashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17270468046246995619noreply@blogger.com0