Drsote Lantern

Drsote Lantern
Originally uploaded by trickstertao

Posting on Flickr again. My first attempt at a droste effect.

E-Reading, or Nooky

With the terrible move and everything it would be safe to say that life's been rough this past couple of months. So to cheer me up my parents bought me an e-reader. It's a black and white Nook which is just the reader I wanted. Natively handles more (and more common) formats than the Kindle, has the long life and daylight reading screen that I so desired and the page turns are quite fast with the most recent OS update. I'd say I've been enjoying it thoroughly for the past week or so.

And then I plugged it into Calibre. And now I'm in love. And now I shall count the ways.

First of all, there are the Calibre plugins. Floating out there are a set of plugins for Calibre that will remove the DRM from the following formats: epub, pdb, pdf, kindle. That means with Calibre I can buy books from damn near any book vendor and free it. I have finished a book that I originally bought from Amazon on my Nook and that is a beautiful thing. It means my e-books are as versatile as my paper ones. But I knew about that going in.

My pleasant surprise is that Calibre is damn good at converting a standard digital comic book (cbr/cbz) to a perfectly formatted epub. I can transfer my comics from my computer to my Nook in just a few clicks and the pages are sized down and converted to black and white. The pages are a bit small but the display is so sharp I can read the text fine on the comics I've tried so far.

And then there's just the simplicity of it all. It's like what iTunes should be doing for music (but doesn't); it easily takes my books and lets me do two way transfers between my laptop, desktop, phone and Nook.

This isn't a post pushing the Nook over other e-readers. Like all tech, each device has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. The Kindle is better for certain things, the iPad for others and an Android phone for other things. What is amazing is how some free software can make the e-book environment as convenient and open as it should be, despite the best attempts by book sellers at locking libraries to branded tools. Now, rather than lending a Barnes and Noble book to someone once for a week I can lend anyone an ebook until they finish it. That moves my ebooks from being a crippled digital gimmick into the realm of being a real alternative to a paper and glue edition. And it's great.

I've been a bit absent

Usually I try to keep my blog posts more like essays and less like diary entries but I just wanted to check in online and give an excuse for my absence. It turns out that my place has bugs. Right now we're arguing with the building manager over what kind but they are hard to get rid of and are bitey. That said, it means I really haven't been able to live in my own home for about three weeks now. Huge pain in the ass. Things are progressing but oh so slowly. So I haven't had A) time and B) my computer. It's strange not being so wired. Sure I still have my Android phone (my main device these days) and a slow (slow) laptop but I don't have a dedicated, convenient box set up.

So that's where I'm at right now. I hope to have everything cleaned up and settled soon and then I can go back to my digital habits. For now I've been seeking out more analog forms of recreation. Do I mean hardcore drugs? I just might (I don't). Tonight, for example, I'm going to a friend's school production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. That's rights, my digital cutbacks have driven me completely mad. I have the arrow through my head, the Napoleon coat and everything. I'm a traditionalist at heart.

So I'm off to try to assemble some sort of shelter out of bamboo and then explore into the trees in search of berries. After all, it's only been three weeks. That means I'm still in hunter/gatherer mode. If I'm offline long enough to develop simple agriculture then I'm really in trouble.

Reclaiming Slurs: The Rules of Rude Language

With the news that a version of Huckleberry Finn is being published with the redaction of the word "injun" and the replacement of "nigger" with "slave" there has been a lot of discussion regarding the contextual use of slurs and offensive language. Though not so much in the media, I have seen a number of conversations dealing with when or even if it's acceptable to use slurs in context. And one of the big topics is of groups "reclaiming" slurs; whether this is OK, when other people can use them and when other people can change the meaning of these words.

It took me a while to figure out exactly how to break down the subject. It's a sensitive topic with complicated and nuanced rules and layers. Luckily I was talking to a friend and had an "ah-ha" moment.

Slurs are like a kick me sign. This probably seems like a odd statement but I think it applies. Imagine a situation in high school. Someone is an outcast. A bully places a kick me sign on their back as an attack. That kick me sign is the slur. In this situation I'll use the term "heeb" as I feel comfortable with it but feel free to substitute fag or nigger. The thesis should remain the same. So this victim now technically owns the kick me sign. Many people would question whether this is a desirable item to own but it was given to them. They now own it.

The first step in reclaiming this word, this slur, this kick me sign, is to take away the power it gave the bully. So they use this sign among their friends. They put it on and some of their close friends, who have also had this sign or similar signs stuck to them, joke around and give light taps on the person's rear. At this point this group using the word within themselves takes meaning power away. They're no longer being victimized by it. They are using it to make fun of the bully.

So far in this example we have a group of Jews reclaiming the term heeb. They make fun of anti-Semites by using the word internally, perhaps even creating a magazine. So what are the implications at this point? That it's OK to use this among friends if you are part of the group. If that bully comes back and actually kicks the person in the ass (an anti-Semite calls a Jew a heeb) then that kick would be assault. Looking at it that way one would be hard pressed to misinterpret a bully hitting someone else. Let's find a greyer area. Let's say that someone the victim knows casually sees the kick me sign. They believe that they are close enough friends to give a light tap but the person with the sign doesn't feel that way. After getting kicked it's up to the kicker to explain his or herself and for the kicked to then choose whether that was really an assault or a misunderstanding.

I think this analogy holds pretty well and can serve as a general guide. Is it fair that certain groups will be able to claim more rights to words under this system? Not really but if things were fair in the first place then they wouldn't have been called those slurs at all. This unequal system is a result of unequal treatment. The bullies, racists, anti-Semites and homophobes introduce this uneven balance of power. Reclaiming words is simply a redistribution of the imbalance.

But this is only one step. It takes power away from the bully. What if the person with the kick me sign wants to gain power through this term. Essentially that would be like them getting a jacket that has "kick me" embroidered or silk screened onto the back. At this point it's part of their fashion, their outward identification. This is how they want to be seen. And it's not actually telling anyone to hit them. This is the step where "black" became the term of choice to identify African Americans rather than "negro". This is where "queer" became a movement rather than a slur. It doesn't happen with every term and it's up to the victimized group to take this step.

I recently saw an episode of South Park where the town ends up re-purposing the word "fag" to mean "a biker that makes a nuisance of theirself". I understand that the point South Park was trying to make is that words change meaning and that they are not permanent. That's true but their mistake is taking an active slur and having an outside group redefine it. That's not really acceptable. The term fag is still in use as a pejorative for homosexual. In continuing to use it as an insulting term but for another group that new definition incorporates the original meaning. It's an insult built on the foundation that "fag is bad", and since fag is still used for gay then it also means "gay is bad". It would be exactly the same for white people to suddenly claim the term "towel head" means bad driver. Since it's currently an insult any time it's used it still contains the implication that you're insulting Arabic people. It would be up to Arabs to first reclaim and then repurpose this term. In the kick me analogy this would be like the bully demanding that a nerd hand the sign back so they can put it on a gay person. The bully has already giving the sign to the nerd. It is now the nerd's property.


I hope that the above clears up a bit of the mystery that some people perceive around the complicated and sometimes controversial process of groups reclaiming or "owning" words that have been used against them. As with anything this complicated and has the possibility of cutting to the quick every case to to be looked at individually. It's worth noting that "taking back" a word or "owning" it does not mean actual ownership. After all, this whole thing was sparked by how stupid and wrong it is to remove the word nigger from a book written by a white man.

In The Gay Marriage Debate, Stop Playing The Bigot

Many of the news blogs and podcasts I take in have been addressing the topic of gay marriage as the next step in the “gay agenda” now that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been repealed. Beside the rather ominous use of “gay agenda” rather than “desegregation” I have seen a troubling trend: the complete lack of understanding of what marriage is. So let’s look at that.

Many of the people that argue against gay marriage make the same points. They say marriage is a religious contract and so the state should go no further than making civil unions, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that marriage is about procreation, that it’s not a civil rights issue. Some of these can be simply addressed with a look at basic facts. Others require a little bit of context and history.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post Matthew Franck tries to make a case that using the term “hate” (as in hate speech) against those who argue against gay marriage as w right. This isn’t inherently correct but it can be. Not everyone who stands against gay marriage is spouting hate speech. Not everyone who fights for a definition of marriage as “one man, one woman” is doing so out of hate. However, that is the kindest thing I can say because if they are not fueled by hate then they are fueled by ignorance, and in either case it is still bigotry.

Marriage is a religious institution

It is not. At least, it is not exclusively. In fact, the United States won’t recognize a religious marriage. In most religious marriage the couple is actually getting two ceremonies performed at the same time. The clergy member who performs the marriage is creating the religious and civil marriage. If a clergy member is not registered as a state officiant with the United States then any marriage they perform will not be legally binding. Similarly, if a couple has a Jewish wedding and then a purely civil divorce they are still married under Jewish law. I had a purely civil marriage and that means I don’t need a Jewish divorce if my marriage ever fails since I don’t have a Jewish marriage.

So anyone who claims that the government should stop at civil unions for gay couples is in the wrong on this point. Heterosexuals can have state sanctioned marriages and so should homosexual couples. No clergy will have to perform them so keep your church out of my state.

Traditional marriage is between a man and a woman

Let’s talk about traditional marriage according to the bible. Because that’s the traditional marriage they are talking about.

A traditional marriage is an ownership contract that a man enters into regarding a woman. The class of property that the woman is is called “chattel”. It is a complicated status but can be boiled down to “property with rights”. In a traditional marriage a man signs documents that contractually obligate him to all of, but not limited to, the following:

• provide food, shelter and other necessities
• sexually pleasure her a on a schedule that is dictated according to his occupation
• It is work noting that he is obligated to her. She is not obligated to have sex with him. It is strictly the wife’s right.
• Another fun sex fact: sex was part of the engagement process in biblical times. There was no separate “engaged but not married” status for couples back then.
• Christmas tie-in: That means that Joseph and Mary were having sex before Jesus was born since they are referred to as already married in the bible
• A settled upon amount to be paid to the woman in the case of divorce. This was usually in the range of an amount that could be lived on for 5 years I believe
• According to a biblical marriage there is no such thing as a valid prenuptial

This was all in exchange for obtaining land and estate rights from the wife’s keeper. This was usually her father, sometimes a brother.

It is worth noting that this was not looked at as an exclusive contract. A woman could only be owned by one man but as long as the man could fulfill the contractual obligations he could take as many wives as he wanted. That does mean sexually pleasuring them according to biblical law.

Marriage is about procreation 

Go back to the section above. It was about tribal property. This could only be passed down through a male offspring. Really, this point only applies if you look at women as chattel, marriage as a property contract regarding the wife and her father’s lands. This hasn’t applied for a long time.

Also you would have to argue that infertile couples could not wed and that a married heterosexual couple that remained childless for a certain number of years would have to annul their union.

The bible is against gay marriage as well as homosexuality 

Wrong wrong wrong. While the bible certainly doesn’t condone either the people that wrote it don’t think about sexuality in the same way you do. So this one needs to be put into historical context.

A lot of the bible laws regarding sexuality were written in response to contemporary Greek practices. You know how the Greeks are know for homosexuality? Well, they weren’t. Back then there was no concept of homosexuality. A man having sex with another man was, while obviously sexual to some degree, more about status. The sexual taking of a man back then was akin to calling him chattel, proving that he was in a class below you. It was strictly a gay thing.

To separate themselves from the heathen Greeks all status shifting sex between men was banned. This kept the levels of status set at men over women and elder over younger. One could not prove they were of a higher status than what the existing Jewish culture dictated by screwing your way up the ladder.

The same way that same sex intercourse was a status issue, so was marriage. How could a man own another man when men aren’t chattel? A similar idea would be to ban whites from owning white slaves but still allowing black slaves. Well, biblical Jews could own women but were banned from owning men. It wasn’t that the marriage would have been sick or wrong from a societal standpoint. It’s that a same sex marriage wasn’t legally conceivable from an ownership perspective. And women marrying women? Women weren’t at the status level where they could hold contractual obligations like that over someone else.

Biblical slaves were another story. Slaves in the bible are a level above objects but below women. In fact, biblical slaves hover around the same level as important farm animals. Women could own animals but certainly not other women and absolutely not men.

All of this may seem like a lot of information to take in. Their way of life in bible times were so different from ours. It’s almost like they were an entirely different civilization, right? Weird.

It’s not a civil right 

Then what is it? Taking away biblical precedent (which are constitutionally invalid arguments) there’s really not a lot to point at as far as reasons to stop gay marriage. Both people entering into a same sex marriage have to be of a certain age and legally able to enter into a contract. Actually, that’s a lot like the method for entering into a “traditional” marriage. The biggest difference is now we don’t have a tribal antipathy for ancient Greek culture and accept that women are legally equal in status to men. With those issues already revised it seems that a traditional marriage is possible between two people of the same sex.

So what’s stopping it? Bigotry. It’s a (now we see baseless) hostility towards people with a different set of preferences than someone else. And since there’s no logical reason to ban same sex marriage (we’ve taken care of the bible, procreation and sacred institution arguments) it comes down to bigotry. Whether this bigotry is built on fear of change or “the other”, hatred or religion it is still bigotry. Even arguing up to, and stopping at, civil unions is a form of “Separate But Equal” legislation.

Feel free to leave an argument that I missed. I can’t conceive of a logical reason to stop same sex marriages. The best I’ve heard is to abolish all state marriages and establish hetero and homosexual civil unions as the only state sanctioned unions. I would vote for it but it’s an unfeasible goal. First of all, there is no way the government and citizens would agree to a social shift that huge. In addition, it would have to dissolve all existing marriages and I can’t see that happening either. So it’s really a pipe dream option.

Oh, and try to keep it to something that can be brought up in constitutionally abiding law. Say “God doesn’t like that” isn’t something that fits the criteria.

My Day. Every Day.

This is my day. Every day. by bulletproofheeb

Writing about not writing. Because I'm writing.

Just wanted to announce that October was busy and November is National Novel Writing Month. I am doing a lot of writing but none of it is blogging. I apologize for my silence and hope to be back in December.