This is the one which originally made me angry and precipitated the post below this one. John McCain, I said previously you were trying to piss on a house fire to try and put it out but NOW you really ARE trying to piss on a house fire to try and put it out. You want to what?? You want to:
Stop Filling The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) To Reduce Demand
Excuse me, to reduce WHAT? Demand? Oh I thought you said "to Reduce My Political Opponents". Because here is why this plan will never reduce demand: I checked in with my pals over at the DOE and they said that they were required to store the maximum legally authorized amount for the SPR - 1 billion barrels of oil. Incidently, the reserve already contains 700 million barrels of oil. So John McCain has sworn NOT to buy 300 MILLION barrels of oil! OPEC would be trembling, except that the world drinks 300 million barrels of oil every three and a half days. Shit.
The DOE even told me the cost per barrel of storage! What a bunch of sweethearts (it's 3.50 a barrel). They also were happy to give me the (current) price of 87 bucks ber barrel of crude for domestic oil 110 for imported. Since we eat 60% imported, that's about 101 bucks per barrel weighted average. So 300 million additional barrels costs 304 billion dollars. Wow, the McCain Save-O-Meter is way back in the positive:
304 billion less
6 billion
=298 billion
Oh yeah, almost forgot: The two biggest single drawdowns in the last 20 years from the so-called "Strategic Petroleum Reserve" were:
Desert Storm
Hurricane Katrina
These were ~20 million barrels for Desert Strom ~10 million barrels for Katrina. We have GWBush to thank for doubling the SPF's target to 1 billion.
John, how about you stop filling the SPF to reduce your favorite: unnecessary government spending? Goddammit, politians confuse the living fuck out of me.
cites:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/4dbd2cc7-890e-47f1-882f-b8fc4cfecc78.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_dfp1_k_m.htm
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wco_k_w.htm
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/spr/spr-facts.html
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Summer Gas Tax Holiday
I really can't fucking stand the Republican Party. Why won't America stop voting for them! What completely confounds me, especially in this election, is that people have no problem criticizing Bush and endorsing McCain in the same breath. It doesn't make any goddamn sense, guys! Politically, philosophically, they are alike; they are both Republicans. Jesus that's such a goddamn simple argument it leaves me looking around for more.
This is just sad. I'm starting right at the top of "Issues" on John McCain's website. This is beginning with "McCain's Economic Plan":
"John McCain Believes We Should Institute A Summer Gas Tax Holiday. Hard-working American families are suffering from higher gasoline prices. John McCain calls on Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day."
What I don't understand is how exactly this will help ANYTHING. First: assume that the gas tax was repealed forever and we STILL have problems - problems like knocking 18 cents off the price of gas is roughly a 5% discount (in today's prices). Have you seen my post two posts down about gas prices? Second: decreasing price leads to increasing demand, leads to increasing price. Third: U.S. consumes 9.3 million barrels of motor gasoline (July 2007). Motor gasoline per what? Per day. Thats roughly 400 million gallons. Per day. The "pissing on a house fire" analogy immidiately comes to mind.
Curious: how exactly will we move towards a balanced budget while this plan cuts revenues by 74 million dollars? Per day? That's only 6 billion dollars lost when you think it through, but it's still twice the amount McCain claims Clinton and Obama ever earmarked. Ever. John, my friend, you have no clue do you? You just don't know much at all. A loss is the same a cost. Read a book.
I'm going to do all of these parts of his various "plans" - just in different posts.
cites:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/4dbd2cc7-890e-47f1-882f-b8fc4cfecc78.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
This is just sad. I'm starting right at the top of "Issues" on John McCain's website. This is beginning with "McCain's Economic Plan":
"John McCain Believes We Should Institute A Summer Gas Tax Holiday. Hard-working American families are suffering from higher gasoline prices. John McCain calls on Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day."
What I don't understand is how exactly this will help ANYTHING. First: assume that the gas tax was repealed forever and we STILL have problems - problems like knocking 18 cents off the price of gas is roughly a 5% discount (in today's prices). Have you seen my post two posts down about gas prices? Second: decreasing price leads to increasing demand, leads to increasing price. Third: U.S. consumes 9.3 million barrels of motor gasoline (July 2007). Motor gasoline per what? Per day. Thats roughly 400 million gallons. Per day. The "pissing on a house fire" analogy immidiately comes to mind.
Curious: how exactly will we move towards a balanced budget while this plan cuts revenues by 74 million dollars? Per day? That's only 6 billion dollars lost when you think it through, but it's still twice the amount McCain claims Clinton and Obama ever earmarked. Ever. John, my friend, you have no clue do you? You just don't know much at all. A loss is the same a cost. Read a book.
I'm going to do all of these parts of his various "plans" - just in different posts.
cites:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/4dbd2cc7-890e-47f1-882f-b8fc4cfecc78.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
Monday, April 28, 2008
Things I would like to have
I would love to have a way of storing little pop up alerts on my computer; when I opened a certain program it would give me little reminders about mistakes I might make in the future, etc. Like when I open MSExcel a warning would appear and say, helpfully, "Remember to manually format the precision of the numeric cells if you are going to save this file as a .dbf!"
I would also love to have a way of storing little pop up alerts on contact lenses; the alerts would appear when I did certain things. Like when I reached for the knob on the front door a warning would appear and say, helpfully, "Don't forget your keys again, dammit!".
I would also love to have a way of storing little pop up alerts on contact lenses; the alerts would appear when I did certain things. Like when I reached for the knob on the front door a warning would appear and say, helpfully, "Don't forget your keys again, dammit!".
Cars vs. Gas Prices
So, I was over at http://www.fool.com/ trolling for stock pitches by people with terrible CAPS scores; macheting through the dense message-board undergrowth in the internet forest I came upon a clearing within which stood a little sapling of knowledge, happily growing next to a stream of burbling factoids. My curiousity piqued, I knelt next to the flow. I scooped out a handful of water, and with it came a little creature. A reply! It said:
"You're being unfair saying that Hybrids have been in this market nearly 10 years. The introduction of the Honda Insight hardly qualified. A car that never sold more then 500 units.With all the excuses you have for Ford, you still don't address that Hybrid or not, they have the least effecient fleet in the industry, and gas prices are going to hit $4 this Spring. Ford's average vehicle returns 18 mpg. Compare that to Toyota at 23.5 mpg's."
To which I responded (Bearing in mind that I'm not the person, nor will I ever be, defending Ford in the conversation):
"Gas Prices, April of each year: (YoY % Change)
2004: 1.77
2005: 2.25 (27%)
2006: 2.76 (23%)
2007: 2.82 (2%)
2008: 3.47 (23%)
Let's predict Apr 2009 gas prices. Simple model: assume YoY prices increase linearly throughout the year (this is perhaps a slightly implausible scenario since from glancing at the data it looks like the curve is steep at the beginning of year and flattens over the summer months, though it look like does steepen again over autumn months). Jan 08 gas price starts at: 3.08. Thus over first four months of the year: .38 increase.
Predicted 2009: 3.96
40% YoY increase.
Difference between average MPG of Ford and Toyota:
(23.5 - 18) / 18 = 31%
'Nuff Said."
(cite: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_history.html)
"You're being unfair saying that Hybrids have been in this market nearly 10 years. The introduction of the Honda Insight hardly qualified. A car that never sold more then 500 units.With all the excuses you have for Ford, you still don't address that Hybrid or not, they have the least effecient fleet in the industry, and gas prices are going to hit $4 this Spring. Ford's average vehicle returns 18 mpg. Compare that to Toyota at 23.5 mpg's."
To which I responded (Bearing in mind that I'm not the person, nor will I ever be, defending Ford in the conversation):
"Gas Prices, April of each year: (YoY % Change)
2004: 1.77
2005: 2.25 (27%)
2006: 2.76 (23%)
2007: 2.82 (2%)
2008: 3.47 (23%)
Let's predict Apr 2009 gas prices. Simple model: assume YoY prices increase linearly throughout the year (this is perhaps a slightly implausible scenario since from glancing at the data it looks like the curve is steep at the beginning of year and flattens over the summer months, though it look like does steepen again over autumn months). Jan 08 gas price starts at: 3.08. Thus over first four months of the year: .38 increase.
Predicted 2009: 3.96
40% YoY increase.
Difference between average MPG of Ford and Toyota:
(23.5 - 18) / 18 = 31%
'Nuff Said."
(cite: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_history.html)
Monday, April 21, 2008
Lessons
Today I was reminded that hedging against a market downturn does not protect you from your own bad stock picks.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Give me your petitions, because I WILL sign them
...especially if they are conveniently delivered to my gmail inbox. If you've got my personal information already, even better, because I hate having to type it in over and over again. MoveOn.org sends me petitions all the time - I sign them without even looking! Select, Ctrl-C those "suggested comments", Ctrl-V in the right box and crank it up a notch with that big red "Sign the Petition" button. Bam!
Sometimes I include a little extra "something" to send to the people who are going to be receiving the petition; a little morsel to remind the hapless petitionees that MoveOn.org is composed of pyschotic leftists. Here is my tidbit for ABC and co. about the terrible job they did hosting a recent democratic debate:
"You people are bad for America; you use your wealth and ill-earned prestige to turn the first amendment into a joke. One day soon I hope youTube and blogging makes your entire industry obsolete."
One could argue that I'm just trying to live up to whats already been said about MoveOn.org. After all it was Mr. McCain who said "MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country". But, MoveOn.org is people (members even voted to determine which candidate MoveOn.org should endorse). I'm going to ignore the obviously idiotic (and irony-laden) notion that McCain has outlined - free speech should result in your U.S. citizenship being revoked. More interesting: how COMPLETELY integrated into our national rhetoric the concept is that an institution (especially political) speaks for itself instead of for the people who compose it. And that makes less sense the more I think about it.
Wow back to back posts on MoveOn.org. What was I thinking?
Sometimes I include a little extra "something" to send to the people who are going to be receiving the petition; a little morsel to remind the hapless petitionees that MoveOn.org is composed of pyschotic leftists. Here is my tidbit for ABC and co. about the terrible job they did hosting a recent democratic debate:
"You people are bad for America; you use your wealth and ill-earned prestige to turn the first amendment into a joke. One day soon I hope youTube and blogging makes your entire industry obsolete."
One could argue that I'm just trying to live up to whats already been said about MoveOn.org. After all it was Mr. McCain who said "MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country". But, MoveOn.org is people (members even voted to determine which candidate MoveOn.org should endorse). I'm going to ignore the obviously idiotic (and irony-laden) notion that McCain has outlined - free speech should result in your U.S. citizenship being revoked. More interesting: how COMPLETELY integrated into our national rhetoric the concept is that an institution (especially political) speaks for itself instead of for the people who compose it. And that makes less sense the more I think about it.
Wow back to back posts on MoveOn.org. What was I thinking?
Monday, April 14, 2008
They got more than they asked for
So MoveOn.org asked me, late one night:
"How do you think we should use social-networking sites to make sure everyone is registered, and everyone gets out to vote?"
And my answer was:
"To be honest, I kind of wish Facebook had stayed out of political networking/work networking/all those 'networking's which preclude the fundamental nature of Facebook, that is: "largely a waste of time for a lot of people". If I had to say - an I'm not actually joking here - make a silly flash plugin/minigame for Facebook in which players expose right-wing lies and hypocrisy in some non-heavy handed way. Actually that's a great idea - maybe you could even have a more intense version of that where people take quizzes to see how well they score on things like "Republican lie detection". How bout a flash game that's a set of "Fox News" scales (balanced from fair and balanced, get it?). Then the player has to do various humorous things to try and keep the "liberal media bias" from unbalancing the scales like slander democratic candidates/politicians, cut people off mid-interview, make up facts, ceaselessly flatter a Republican politician/candidate, etc. Each round of the game, that is each round trying to keep the scales balanced, could be an election from a different year; this way you could include real facts about what Fox did. So, for instance, one round might be the 2004 election, and one thing the player can do to balance the scales is use "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". Or whatever."
I guess it goes without saying that I've got too many words; I thought starting a blog was bad enough, but typing essays into 1-character x 15-character text boxes seems worse.
"How do you think we should use social-networking sites to make sure everyone is registered, and everyone gets out to vote?"
And my answer was:
"To be honest, I kind of wish Facebook had stayed out of political networking/work networking/all those 'networking's which preclude the fundamental nature of Facebook, that is: "largely a waste of time for a lot of people". If I had to say - an I'm not actually joking here - make a silly flash plugin/minigame for Facebook in which players expose right-wing lies and hypocrisy in some non-heavy handed way. Actually that's a great idea - maybe you could even have a more intense version of that where people take quizzes to see how well they score on things like "Republican lie detection". How bout a flash game that's a set of "Fox News" scales (balanced from fair and balanced, get it?). Then the player has to do various humorous things to try and keep the "liberal media bias" from unbalancing the scales like slander democratic candidates/politicians, cut people off mid-interview, make up facts, ceaselessly flatter a Republican politician/candidate, etc. Each round of the game, that is each round trying to keep the scales balanced, could be an election from a different year; this way you could include real facts about what Fox did. So, for instance, one round might be the 2004 election, and one thing the player can do to balance the scales is use "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". Or whatever."
I guess it goes without saying that I've got too many words; I thought starting a blog was bad enough, but typing essays into 1-character x 15-character text boxes seems worse.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Fuck you, Patrick Schultz
Fuck you Patrick Schultz. Today (April 10) you said sovereign funds are good for us. Do you hate America? When sovereign funds give us money, its in exchange for pieces of America you fucking idiot; we're not taking about selling American products anymore. I want the United States to be owned by the people who compose the United States. Don't misunderstand me; I'm lenient about who composes the United States. I'm not violently against illegal immigrants, and I'm down with foreign direct investment, but god fucking dammit if your selling your assets for cash you're hooking.
Patrick Schultz, if you want to live like that you can spend the rest of your life giving twirls on the corner for all I care. Just don't try to pretend that, because you have an M.B.A from Harvard or some shit, somehow the meaning of your words change. You're a fucking hustler. Fuck you.
Patrick Schultz, if you want to live like that you can spend the rest of your life giving twirls on the corner for all I care. Just don't try to pretend that, because you have an M.B.A from Harvard or some shit, somehow the meaning of your words change. You're a fucking hustler. Fuck you.
"Synthetic CDOs do not own cash assets like bonds or loans. Instead, synthetic CDOs gain credit exposure to a portfolio of fixed income assets without owning those assets through the use of credit default swaps, a derivatives instrument. (Under such a swap, the credit protection seller, the CDO, receives periodic cash payments, called premiums, in exchange for agreeing to assume the risk of loss on a specific asset in the event that asset experiences a default or other credit event.) Like a cash CDO, the risk of loss on the CDO's portfolio is divided into tranches. Losses will first affect the equity tranche, next the mezzanine tranches, and finally the senior tranche. Each tranche receives a periodic payment (the swap premium), with the junior tranches offering higher premiums."
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation)
Fixed maximum gain, potentially unlimited loss, and they don't even own anything. Who ever thought of this needs to be slapped back to 1929.
Just read this, from Bloomberg, today (excerpt, thanks Yves Smith):
"Recent CLO deals have been ``eating into the massive overhang of leveraged bank loans and alleviating some of the stress in the capital markets,'' said Peter Plaut, an analyst at hedge fund Sanno Point Capital Management in New York.They're also ``an easy way for banks to reduce balance sheet risk, which indirectly helps reduce capital requirements, by funding the AAA through the Fed and selling the equity, which provides high yield to investors,'' Plaut said." (my bold)
High yield because they're high risk. So lets see: Banks/etc can't sell their sketchy loans, so they transfer said loans to what essentially amounts to a shell company (a CLO), buy the sketchy loans off themselves using money from bonds sold to the Fed, and sell stock in their new shell company to investors for a quick profit.
*Head in hands*
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation)
Fixed maximum gain, potentially unlimited loss, and they don't even own anything. Who ever thought of this needs to be slapped back to 1929.
Just read this, from Bloomberg, today (excerpt, thanks Yves Smith):
"Recent CLO deals have been ``eating into the massive overhang of leveraged bank loans and alleviating some of the stress in the capital markets,'' said Peter Plaut, an analyst at hedge fund Sanno Point Capital Management in New York.They're also ``an easy way for banks to reduce balance sheet risk, which indirectly helps reduce capital requirements, by funding the AAA through the Fed and selling the equity, which provides high yield to investors,'' Plaut said." (my bold)
High yield because they're high risk. So lets see: Banks/etc can't sell their sketchy loans, so they transfer said loans to what essentially amounts to a shell company (a CLO), buy the sketchy loans off themselves using money from bonds sold to the Fed, and sell stock in their new shell company to investors for a quick profit.
*Head in hands*
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Thoughts
I had three distinct thoughts in, the shower, a single state of mind:
1) All events are infinitely improbable if you compare them with what could have happened.
2) History is cyclical in the process of fullfilling human needs and wants.
3) You can only account for what you did with each second of your life after after you know what happens in every second of your life.
1) All events are infinitely improbable if you compare them with what could have happened.
2) History is cyclical in the process of fullfilling human needs and wants.
3) You can only account for what you did with each second of your life after after you know what happens in every second of your life.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Too Long
I'm reading this article called "Students of Virginity" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/magazine/30Chastity-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=127b604e2236107e&ex=1207627200&emc=eta1) and I couldn't help myself - the running commentary in my head was too loud to ignore. My opinions might be objectionable, my facts might be wrong, but oh fucking well. P.S. - thanks R for sending this to me, I'm not sure this post was in your plan; I apologise in advance.
Quotes are from the article... [Q]
Thoughts are from me... [T]
Q: "It seemed to Fredell that almost no one had sex in Colorado Springs."
T: Did Fredell ever google "sex colorado springs"? Because I just did and I found (in ten seconds):
An escort service
A swingers night club
A list of the 610 registered sex offenders in Colorado Springs
Q: '“The hookup culture is so absolutely all-encompassing,” she said. “It’s shocking! It’s everywhere!”'
T: Self note: remember that this quote is from somebody who went to a high school where '“literally everyone,” wore chastity rings'...
Q: "...calling themselves True Love Revolution. They were pushing, for reasons entirely secular, the cause of premarital sexual abstinence..."
T: Quick: what secular reasons? Not any of these: Promote scientific accuracy, prevent the spread of disease, increasing the proportion of sex acts which are "safe", actually reducing the number of sex acts [all these things were gleaned from page 2 of the online version of the article]. Perhaps Jesus could ride a cloud down to earth and whisper the answer in my ear?
[Breakdown of Q/T convention...]
Ahhh god and by the third page of the article the whole fish is cooked. Now we are into the crux of things! Apparently these groups (at least at the Ivys) have a mascot! Elizabeth Anscombe! No jesus freaks here, just some good old philosophy of ethics; Anscombe even hob-nobbed with Wittgenstein! But in other Anscombe-related news, read this:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.shtml
That article is straight from the horses mouth, as they say, and if you finished it, and thought it was reasonable, then congratulations: you are a fucking idiot! The woman uses a nasty combination of personal attacks, guilt by association, assumption of facts, the "snowball" effect (for lack of a desire to look up the proper term) to blow her implications way out of proportion, and many many appeals to the sanctity of the Catholic church when the logical ice she's skating on gets too thin.
Obviously the person who did this report believed all this bullshit, given the degree of respect she afford's these abstinence clubs. Look, just because you go to Princeton or Yale or Harvard, doesn't mean your off the hook when it comes to endorsing ass-crazy cultist wackos. Like Will Smith said in "I, Robot": "Does believing you're the last sane man on the planet make you crazy? 'Cause if it does, maybe I am."
What follow are some choice quotes. I'd love to take them out of context to make them worse, since I'm really here to slander those who disagree with me, but frankly trying to make these quotes sounds worse than they do in context would be more work than it would be worth:
"There always used to be a colossal strain in ancient times; between heathen morality and Christian morality, and one of the things pagan converts had to be told about the way they were entering on was that they must abstain from fornication... ...Christian life meant a separation from the standards of that world: you couldn't be a Baal-worshipper, you couldn't sacrifice to idols, be a sodomite, practice infanticide, compatibly with the Christian allegiance."
"People quite alienated from this tradition are likely to see that my argument holds: that if contraceptive intercourse is all right then so are all forms of sexual activity. To them that is no argument against contraception, to their minds anything is permitted, so long as that's what people want to do. Well, Catholics, I think, are likely to know, or feel, that these other things are bad."
"For we don't invent marriage, as we may invent the terms of an association or club, any more than we invent human language. It is part of the creation of humanity and if we're lucky we find it available to us and can enter into it. If we are very unlucky we may live in a society that has wrecked or deformed this human thing. "
[Return of Q/T convention]
Q: "early sexual activity is strongly associated with all manner of terrible outcomes, from increased risk of depression to greater likelihood of marital infidelity, divorce and maternal poverty"
T: Justin Murray, when I think about the mistakes you made when you used these numbers to support your cause, I actually get stupider. Here are two great reasons why your reasoning makes no fucking sense (they work together and seperately for [nearly] twice the destructive power!):
1) correlation does not imply causation!
2) causation is bidirectional!
Q: 'Since True Love Revolution did not condemn gay marriage, Murray hoped no one would feel “personally attacked.” “We just wanted it to be kind of humorous and lighthearted,” he said.'
T: Look, more sychophantic bullshit to cover up wanton suppression! Now I'm actually getting pissed off. Seriously, True Love Revolution: go fuck yourself. Not that I care, but is sychophantic even the right word? Anyway when I read sentences like the one above, I get a sudden blindingly clear image of an overflowing portapotty with one of those little scented pine trees hanging from the ceiling.
In the end I'm just confused - why can't abstinence and contraceptives groups work hand in hand? The abstinence groups draw the line in the sand. They protest education about sex. In a strange way, while I was reading Anscombe, I recieved the same impression. It's a feeling these people emit which is hard to pin down, but it definitely is nostalgic for the times when we were more ignorant about our bodies. Anscombe finds all contraception indefensible except the rythm method - citing numerous times the purity of the "laws of nature", and the impurities of human inovation (especially as it applies to forcing rewrites of Church doctrine). When True Love Revolution mailed those Valentine's Day cards just to woman, it could be thought of as merely a tactical error; when Fredell commented repeatedly that men only want sex, and that woman only acquiesce, the comments could have intepreted in light of her own limited sexual experiences. But, again the actions and comments of the people in the True Love Revolution could be said to be, slightly, willfully ignorant of the way the world is now, and thus, regretful that things are not now like they used to be.
Oh, and fuck spellcheck.
Quotes are from the article... [Q]
Thoughts are from me... [T]
Q: "It seemed to Fredell that almost no one had sex in Colorado Springs."
T: Did Fredell ever google "sex colorado springs"? Because I just did and I found (in ten seconds):
An escort service
A swingers night club
A list of the 610 registered sex offenders in Colorado Springs
Q: '“The hookup culture is so absolutely all-encompassing,” she said. “It’s shocking! It’s everywhere!”'
T: Self note: remember that this quote is from somebody who went to a high school where '“literally everyone,” wore chastity rings'...
Q: "...calling themselves True Love Revolution. They were pushing, for reasons entirely secular, the cause of premarital sexual abstinence..."
T: Quick: what secular reasons? Not any of these: Promote scientific accuracy, prevent the spread of disease, increasing the proportion of sex acts which are "safe", actually reducing the number of sex acts [all these things were gleaned from page 2 of the online version of the article]. Perhaps Jesus could ride a cloud down to earth and whisper the answer in my ear?
[Breakdown of Q/T convention...]
Ahhh god and by the third page of the article the whole fish is cooked. Now we are into the crux of things! Apparently these groups (at least at the Ivys) have a mascot! Elizabeth Anscombe! No jesus freaks here, just some good old philosophy of ethics; Anscombe even hob-nobbed with Wittgenstein! But in other Anscombe-related news, read this:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.shtml
That article is straight from the horses mouth, as they say, and if you finished it, and thought it was reasonable, then congratulations: you are a fucking idiot! The woman uses a nasty combination of personal attacks, guilt by association, assumption of facts, the "snowball" effect (for lack of a desire to look up the proper term) to blow her implications way out of proportion, and many many appeals to the sanctity of the Catholic church when the logical ice she's skating on gets too thin.
Obviously the person who did this report believed all this bullshit, given the degree of respect she afford's these abstinence clubs. Look, just because you go to Princeton or Yale or Harvard, doesn't mean your off the hook when it comes to endorsing ass-crazy cultist wackos. Like Will Smith said in "I, Robot": "Does believing you're the last sane man on the planet make you crazy? 'Cause if it does, maybe I am."
What follow are some choice quotes. I'd love to take them out of context to make them worse, since I'm really here to slander those who disagree with me, but frankly trying to make these quotes sounds worse than they do in context would be more work than it would be worth:
"There always used to be a colossal strain in ancient times; between heathen morality and Christian morality, and one of the things pagan converts had to be told about the way they were entering on was that they must abstain from fornication... ...Christian life meant a separation from the standards of that world: you couldn't be a Baal-worshipper, you couldn't sacrifice to idols, be a sodomite, practice infanticide, compatibly with the Christian allegiance."
"People quite alienated from this tradition are likely to see that my argument holds: that if contraceptive intercourse is all right then so are all forms of sexual activity. To them that is no argument against contraception, to their minds anything is permitted, so long as that's what people want to do. Well, Catholics, I think, are likely to know, or feel, that these other things are bad."
"For we don't invent marriage, as we may invent the terms of an association or club, any more than we invent human language. It is part of the creation of humanity and if we're lucky we find it available to us and can enter into it. If we are very unlucky we may live in a society that has wrecked or deformed this human thing. "
[Return of Q/T convention]
Q: "early sexual activity is strongly associated with all manner of terrible outcomes, from increased risk of depression to greater likelihood of marital infidelity, divorce and maternal poverty"
T: Justin Murray, when I think about the mistakes you made when you used these numbers to support your cause, I actually get stupider. Here are two great reasons why your reasoning makes no fucking sense (they work together and seperately for [nearly] twice the destructive power!):
1) correlation does not imply causation!
2) causation is bidirectional!
Q: 'Since True Love Revolution did not condemn gay marriage, Murray hoped no one would feel “personally attacked.” “We just wanted it to be kind of humorous and lighthearted,” he said.'
T: Look, more sychophantic bullshit to cover up wanton suppression! Now I'm actually getting pissed off. Seriously, True Love Revolution: go fuck yourself. Not that I care, but is sychophantic even the right word? Anyway when I read sentences like the one above, I get a sudden blindingly clear image of an overflowing portapotty with one of those little scented pine trees hanging from the ceiling.
In the end I'm just confused - why can't abstinence and contraceptives groups work hand in hand? The abstinence groups draw the line in the sand. They protest education about sex. In a strange way, while I was reading Anscombe, I recieved the same impression. It's a feeling these people emit which is hard to pin down, but it definitely is nostalgic for the times when we were more ignorant about our bodies. Anscombe finds all contraception indefensible except the rythm method - citing numerous times the purity of the "laws of nature", and the impurities of human inovation (especially as it applies to forcing rewrites of Church doctrine). When True Love Revolution mailed those Valentine's Day cards just to woman, it could be thought of as merely a tactical error; when Fredell commented repeatedly that men only want sex, and that woman only acquiesce, the comments could have intepreted in light of her own limited sexual experiences. But, again the actions and comments of the people in the True Love Revolution could be said to be, slightly, willfully ignorant of the way the world is now, and thus, regretful that things are not now like they used to be.
Oh, and fuck spellcheck.
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