So the other day (last week, actually) I was doing some elliptical at the gym. The only machines available were in the “big plasma TV” corner. Fox news was on. I tried not to watch it, but there it was. Now, I’m no fan of the mainstream media in general, though usually I can chalk their journalistic failures up to maxims like “if it bleeds, it leads” and “don’t scare the demographic.” But Fox? We need new pithy sayings to describe just how thin the veil has become between their protestations of journalistic integrity and the reality clearly visible beneath.

The newscasters talked a bit about the bailout, and the Republicans in the House refusing to vote for it. Now, I’m no fan of the current plan either, but I think most people would agree that phrases like “They held the line,” and “They stood strong” indicate a lapse of objectivity. When discussing Rush Limbaugh’s apparent power with the GOP leadership, as well as Obama’s criticism of Republican leaders who seem to model their rhetoric on Rush’s, the talking heads were saying things like, “doesn’t the President have more important things to do than discuss radio talk show hosts? Isn’t there an economic crisis going on?” and accusing him of wasting the nation’s time.

There was more of this. It made me shake my head in wonder. Okay, maybe there’s never true objectivity or neutrality in journalism, but since Fox keeps claiming (loudly) that it has no agenda and no political leanings, can’t they at least try to look like something other than self-esteem coaches for the conservative base? Sheesh.

I’ve heard Fox compared to CNN or ABC News, as if it’s just across the political spectrum from those networks; but it’s something else, entirely. It’s more like the conservative answer to the Huffington Post. No wonder I surf news online instead of watching TV. The TV news experiences are pretty punishing, and at least most of the news blogs admit their biases up front.

This made me crack up. Turns out, all I got was a coupon for a free bottle of coke, mailed two weeks later. I think I need a new religion.

Online things that are bugging me or I find interesting this week:

• Yard Signs and Websites – Not that I’m surprised, but this report suggests that Megan’s Law (community notification for sex offenders) probably has no real impact on sex offending.
• Autism and Fraud – Apparently in a key study cited by folks who firmly believe (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary) that MMR vaccines cause autism… the researcher faked the data.
• Education <> University – I have great respect for Professor Dennis Rancourt, who dared to think critically about the education system, and got fired for it. The article brings up all kinds of interesting ideas, including the deep intertwining of money and learning in our education institutions, and also the University of Ottawa sounds like a scary place to work.
• Bailulous? Stimout? - This article suggests that the abomination stimulus has a chance (if done properly) of creating job growth. Another recent article demolished claims that FDR’s “New Deal” did not work. Okay, that’s pretty cool, if true. But it’s only part of the problem. The other part is whether we should do this, even if it might create jobs and economic growth. My feeling is still generally “no.”
• Horrifying – This is horrendous. An Iraqi woman admitting that she orchestrated the rapes of dozens of women, so they would feel — within the strictures of Arabic social structures — that they were better off dead, and therefore be willing to become suicide bombers. It reminds me of reports last year that a high percentage of male suicide bombers were recruited because they were suffering from terminal medical conditions. Evil still exists, apparently.
• Inconceivable! - This questionably newsworthy item is all about the demise of a breed of dog. A non-useful, just-for-show, fully-artifically-human-genetically-engineered pointless breed of ridiculous fluffy dog. The tagline of the article actually says “danger” and (more egregiously) “extinction.” I do not think that word means what you think it means. It’s a breed of dog. It’s not a species. Is there some lonely, mateless Sealyham Terrier living out his or her final, dejected days on an ice floe, drifting farther and farther from his or her traditional hunting grounds, family and friends slowly killed by industrialization and destruction of their natural habitat? Is the decline of this little anti-mutt robbing the world of even one teensy shred of naturally-occurring genetic diversity? NO. More likely, there are many very happy Sealyham Terriers having lots of enjoyable puppydog sex with non-Sealyham breeds of dogs, and raising gaggles and herds of genetically impure, totally adorable little fluffballs who are just as useless and genetically modified as their parents and grandparents, but less racially pure (and less profitable). In the process, they have unknowingly dealt a tiny but meaningful symbolic blow to the whole insane “show dog” culture. Man, this article was stupid. But ranting about it was fun.

First off, Alex loves muppets, as can be seen from this pic:

Secondly: Okay okay okay okay okay I totally want to make one of these! But, unlike the guy in the video, I will not be doing any experiments at borders near where I live. I can only imagine the body-cavity searches I’d have to endure before finally convincing them that this is not, in fact, any kind of weapon.

In other news, I am (as usual) extremely disapppointed in the willingness of the American public (including myself) to be  manipulated by our leaders. Here are some highlights:

• Obama capitulated on the FISA bill — which he previously promised to fight tooth and nail –  and thereby actively participated in solidifying and legalizing the expansion of presidential powers, reduction of domestic freedoms, and criminal activities of this administration. I know I already blogged this, but I only have 3 readers anyway, and I hope they’ll forgive me for continuing to be pissed about this. I’m wondering if Obama-as-president would be an executive version of the disapointment that is Nancy Pelosi. You know, failing to do much of anything he said he’d do.
• Not to be out-caputulated, the Supreme Court refused to hear environmental lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security about their little multi-billion-dollar border project down there. But there is still hope: Homeland Security isn’t just giving itself unconstitutional authority to ignore environmental law; it’s insisting it gets to ignore all the laws, precedents and human rights it feels are standing in the way of its effort to get the Border Fence constructed before someone figures out what a bad idea this is.
• Despite Certoff’s claims (don’t get me started on that guy…) to the contrary, global terrorism is much, much worse since we began our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

aaaaaand back to work.

Pic: A.J. Haygarth pondering the absurdity of The Constant K

The Constant K is an absurdist play. I gots no issues with that. It understands its own absurdity. Current U.S. politics, however, are a different matter. At times, it seems we’re supposed to pretend we don’t notice the absurdity of certain things happening around us¹. Here are some insane bits:

•  An interesting graph of false statements made by the Bush administration, month by month, 2001 – 20003. Increasingly, as journalists wake from the daze they’ve been in for the last 7 years, they’re discovering that many of these false statements were probably made with a full understanding of their falsehood. And, of course, they were integral in shoring up public support for a war against a nation that had not seriously threatened the U.S.
• Kucinich introduces articles of impeachment, the mainstream media doesn’t seem to think this newsworthy.
• The major media outlets also don’t seem to think it’s very interesting that the Pentagon clearly colluded with the Bush Administration  to manipulate analysis and coverage of the war effort, creating a machine that presented the administration’s talking points as if they were independent opinions by nonbiased individuals.
• My lovely government, pushed by huge wads of cash from failing media dinosaurs, apparently shoved a DMCA-style copyright law down Canada’s throat a few days ago, by threatening to make the border harder to cross if my adoptive nation didn’t appease the big labels.
• Finally–insanely–This document from 2001 suggests that the people who work to keep us safe have been taking Neurolinguistic Programming seriously! GAH! We might as well base our criminal justice policy on phrenology, with judges and juries using tarot cards in tie-breaker situations.

Sheesh. I’m done for today.

1. kind of like in 1984 [↩]

Another year has come and gone, and here I am writing another online Christmas letter to everyone instead of sending cards like considerate people do. Oh well. I married Alex so she could compensate for such deficits in my personality. (Note: Since writing this, I have migrated my photos to Flickr, so the photo links are all broken. Maybe I’ll fix them, someday).

Here’s how this newsletter works (feel free to skip sections that do not interest you):

1. Christmas Message
2. Things that have happened this year.

Note that you can click the text links or the pictures for extra information. Clicking names of places usually takes you to a map. Clicking pictures will take you to the large version of the picture. Pictures will open in a separate browser window.

Confused? Just click some stuff and see what happens.

Christmas Message

As most of you know, Alex and I are Christian, so Merry Christmas! But if you’re celebrating Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Pagan Winter Feast, or just Many Days Off Work, we wish you fondest and warmest times, as well.

Although we recognize that Christ was probably not born in December, and we are skeptical of the reality of elves, we are happy for the opportunity to join with others in celebrating Jesus’ life and acts. And we’re glad, in general, for the chance to just pause with the rest of the world, Christian or not, and enjoy a few days with friends and family.

So, Happy Holidays. If you’re reading this, we love you. Lots.

Year In Review

The year has been busy, and full of bad news, good news, and just news. Some of the bad news is that Alex and I still do not live together. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario (just north of Buffalo, NY), and I live in Edinburg, TX (just south of everything). We are working very hard to get in the same place this year, but jobs, education and citizenship issues make this a sticky business. We’ll try to keep you informed. For updates (inconsistent, sometimes incoherent, but often with pictures), just check this website from time to time: www.bobbyfiend.com. It’s my personal blog and I try to give some sort of account of what’s happening in my life, on a semi-regular basis. Of course, if that’s not the kind of thing you want to read about, I recommend staying away from this website.

Winter and Spring

January is always a little depressing, as Alex and I have to separate after a month together. We got to see each other a couple of times before May, and I was even in Quebec City for a conference, but that was without Alex (it’s surprising how far apart some of these cities are). I was as sick as a dog the whole time, so it’s just as well. Alex got to go to St. Johns, Newfoundland (which is a million miles from anything) for a different conference, and brought back enough pictures and stories to make me want to go back with her, someday. During the summer. Not the winter.

The semester kept me busy. I seemed to be traveling every other weekend. I made about half a dozen trips, what with visiting Alex and academic responsibilities. In between, I tried to keep my classes and research moving, which is not as easy as I had always imagined it would be. My sweetie, during this time period, was working on her dissertation, (a process I can sympathize with) and also c0-starring in two plays: The Night of the Iguana and Oedipus Rex. Later, in the summer, she and I both helped out (she as an actor and I as a stagehand) in a community production of Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet.

At the end of Spring, I flew up to Canada (as is my wont), breathed a huge sigh of relief, and settled in for a summer of teaching and hanging out with my wife–something I’m not taking for granted, quite yet (give me another year or two…).

Summer

Summers for the last two years have been my relief periods. Not because of the work load, although it’s reduced somewhat, but because I get to spend three months with my wife. This year, like last, we hung out in her un-air-conditioned third-floor apartment while the temperature inside climbed to about 100 degrees sometimes. Odd that I’m hotter in Ontario during the summer than I would be in my fully-air-conditioned apartment in Texas.

We both enjoyed our academic work (I was teaching an online class and doing research; Alex was still slaving away on the dissertation), and enjoyed just being around each other. We even played some hockey, which was a definite first for me. Good times.

The last half of the summer was a crazy round of travel. We spent a week at Alex’s parents’ lovely cottage, about 3 hours north of Toronto, with our friends Amanda, Scott and Brad, as well as Alex’s brothers, sister, their significant others, her in-laws, niece and nephews, and parents. It was a wonderful time, and it’s hard not to fill this entire page with photos from that experience. While we were there, we played disc golf (hooray!) at a course in South River, and spent a day paddling a canoe in Algonquin Park. I’d go back in a second.

After Northern Ontario, we drove quickly back to Southern Ontario, then flew to the wedding of my friend Scott and his bride, Lisha, in the mountains near Pike’s Peak, Colorado. It was gorgeous up there! Alex and I are keeping an eye out for academic jobs in the area ;).Directly on the heels of this trip–meaning we didn’t even go home first–we flew to Washington and visited my delightful cousin Sharon and her family, then headed to Idaho for the Rogers Family Reunion. We were, honestly, a little concerned at the somewhat low attendance, but within an hour we were enjoying ourselves immensely. Especially fun was playing with our nieces and nephews, most of whom Alex had never met, and all of whom had grown up tons since the last time I saw them. I love them all dearly, and hope to get to hang out with them more, in the future. So, my siblings need to visit me in Texas more often. And bring your kids.

As you might have guessed, after the Colorado-Washington-Idaho trip, it was back to Ontario, whirlwind unpacking-then-packing, and down to Texas to start the school year once again, and lose my wife for another semester.

Fall

Fall is exciting and depressing at the same time. Academics like Alex and I tend to have a hopeful, happy feeling at the beginning of every school year, but we also have to leave each other after three months spent getting used to living together (almost like real married people!). So, to ease the pain, Alex goes down with me to Texas and hangs out for a couple of weeks or more, and we get to be a normal husband and wife for a little longer. This time, we got adventurous (her idea) and camped on the beach at South Padre Island. It was a wonderful experience, although I’ve heard since that it may not be entirely safe, despite the fact that it’s a state park. So, deep sigh, we probably won’t be doing that again any time soon, at least just the two of us. But we enjoyed the experience immensely, and we love the beach. We found great peace in putting our folding chairs in the shallow breakers and zoning out for hours while the waves tickled our feet.

It seems that right after Alex left I got a new cat. Sigh. Not that I needed one. His name is Moses (because he came out of the reeds), and I found him near a reservoir outside Edinburg. The whole story is explained if you click here. Anyway, now I have two cats. And they both live with my sweetie in Canada, because it’s impractical to get care for them when I leave for a week or a month or a summer. Despite his unplanned appearance, I still like Moses. Good cat. And I miss both my feline monsters when I’m in Texas.

Work is work. I’m finally collecting data on a project that should have been done half a year ago, and I’ve applied for two more grants–one small and the other very large (10 universities, about 100 investigators, and tens of millions of dollars from the Department of Homeland Security). I keep busy with our little Psychology Department’s hopes for a PhD program, advising students, teaching classes, and working on my research. It’s a little more than your average full-time job, but I don’t mind. I’m trying to build up some momentum that will carry me a while when Alex and I finally live together and I feel like having true 40-hour work weeks for a bit.

In October, I was invited to be part of a university expedition to Monterrey, Nuevo Le�n, M�xico. About 20 of us met with some officials of a couple of universities down there, and that is turning into an interesting collaborative experience. I hope I get to do some cross-border research, cause Monterrey is a very cool place. I’m looking forward to going back.

Alex and I are on the job market, and it’s an unpleasant experience. Academic politics are active, sometimes irritating, and often confusing. I’m reminded of my father, quoting Napoleon, telling me not to assume malice when incompetence is the more likely answer… We don’t know if Alex will get the job she has applied for at UTPA (where I work), or if we will both be offered jobs at one of the half-dozen places we both applied to, together. I love my work, but I’ll give it up if I can be with my wife. If none of our plans pan out, we’ll be thinking fast. Plan C might be a bit creative. We’ll have to wait and see.

Alex has stayed busy, trying to regulate her very disobedient sleeping schedule, working tirelessly on her dissertation, playing hockey, and even rehearsing for another play (she’s Lady MacBeth). I think she’s at her best when she’s got a few irons in the fire. We have kept in touch as much as possible, visited once or twice this semester, and are now together for nearly a month, which is lovely. Phone calls and seeing each other once a month don’t really cut it, sometimes.

It’s the winter holiday season, now, and that has always been a time to try to reconnect with family and friends I don’t talk to very much. I’ve always been terrible at keeping lines of communication open, so I hope you’ll forgive me for the generic flavor of this message, and know that I still care about you. Happy Holidays.

So, Michael Bloomberg might run for president in 2008. Interesting. Sure, he’s a ridiculously rich politician who probably has little in common with mere mortals, but that just makes him the same as the others in the field. Here is what little I know about him at this moment:

• He’s fiscally conservative (good)
• He’s socially fairly liberal (good)
• He has little patience for annoying journalists (good)
• He likes John McCain and possibly Barack Obama (good)
• He seems to be annoyed by most of the other major candidates (good)
• He has done pretty well running NYC (good)

Hm… I could vote for this guy, even if the pollsters are saying he doesn’t have a chance.

In other news, I’m a sissy. I biked to the store (like 3 blocks) and shopped, then biked home. That just plum tuckered me out. It must be the illness, because it’s certainly not the altitude.

In other other news, Mi Topita is finally (FINE-uh-LEEE!) reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I read it a year ago. Now, at last, I can discuss its plotty details! If only I could remember what they were…

The Virgina Tech shooter did something horrible. That’s his fault. But he existed in an environment in which he knew with a certainty that he would become famous for it. That’s the news media’s fault. That’s our fault. All of us.

The news media’s predictable vulture-like picking at the corpses of the victims is sickening. The most revolting thing about this, however, is the fact that the media are giving the killer everything he ever wanted. And, of course, this is because they’re giving us what we want. So, in the end, we are the problem. Continue reading →

On my way to work today, I passed a Lotus in the visitors’ parking area. Yes, a Lotus. At least it was in the visitors’ area, not in the administrators’ parking spots. I think the car was one of the models here (the Exige or the Elise). What’s this car doing in our parking lot? We’re a university. Actually, now that I thik about it, perhaps it belongs to some wealthy person giving a donation to the school. That would be acceptable. If there must be huge income inequalities in the world, some of the filthy lucre should trickle down to the educational system. You know, for the students’ increased learning outcomes. And my paycheck.

On the other hand, I looked up the prices on these things, and it looks like the Elise only (heh) costs between about $40,000 and $50,000, while the Exige goes for approximately $50,000 to $60,000. If I’m not mistaken, you can buy an SUV for the same price. OK, so that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement; it’s still luxury car pricing (a la Acura or Lexus), but despite the extremely sexy looks of this Lotus, it’s not in the price range of a quarter-million-dollar Lamborghini or Ferrari, or the million-plus McLaren F1. So I guess conspicuous consumption has fine gradations of magnitude.

Discussion of British cars (like Lotus) Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw on an MG once: “The parts observed falling from this car are made with the finest British craftsmanship.”

Diane Arbus would be proud.

I don’t know why I suddenly started to like this little snapshot. maybe because it looks so surreal, with the contrast of the three different qualities of light. I find interesting incongruities in the subject matter, too. Actually, it’s just Alex and me having dinner at a cabin in Tennessee, and I didn’t intend any of the interesting aspects of the photo; accidentally interesting.

In other news, this morning on my ride to work, I understood how I will eventually die. I will be lying in a hospital bed, and the doctor will have a grave look on his face (he will look like the doctor from BSG), and Alex and the children will be shaking their heads, sadly, as if they knew it all along. The medical chart will show that I have multiple cancers, respiratory problems, and probably some kind of brain damage, all due to biking to work while sucking down the exhaust of a hundred pickups and SUVs per day. In the next hospital room over, there will be a soccer mom and her yuppie husband, in for a checkup, and in perfect health. In fact, they’re so healthy, they’re scrapping their plans to start cycling, or taking walks. The doctor tells them they’ll live to be a hundred, as long as they avoid breathing any of the air outside. Cause that stuff’ll kill ya.

Roof puppies in Oaxaca also like the sun

It was sunny outside! For only a few hours, true, and now it’s back to an overcast thingy, but at least it’s a bright overcast thingy. I got up late (7:45), fooled around with stuff, then finally left the apartment at 9:00, got to work at 9:30 (I took the extremely long way; my commute is actually about 7 minutes if traffic cooperates), and didn’t even mind all the mud on my bike. And on me. It’s been lead-dark and cloudy for 2 weeks, now. And ridiculously cold for this part of the world. maybe we’re starting to have a normal winter again (i.e., sunny and warm).

In other amazing and excellent news, I went into the locker room in the gym, where I have a locker in the non-faculty area (menos cool). I shower, however, in the faculty lockers, because it’s a much better shower experience. So, I browsed around the locker area (as is my wont, from time to time) and saw what I was looking for: a free locker! I’ve waited for a year and a half. So, I snatched it. With the requisite paperwork, of course. I now have a faculty locker. No more wandering the length and breadth of the undergrad locker room in nothing but the way-too-small university towel, on my way to and from the shower. Yay! Plus, if your gym shorts are really stinky, you can hang them on the outside of your locker without worrying that the staff or the other students will trash them.