One thing that all the news coverage seems to remark on is the intentional narrowness of the ruling:

the appeals panel took pains to note that its decision applies only to California, even though the court has jurisdiction in nine western states. California is the only one of those states where the ability for gays to marry was granted then rescinded, the court noted in its narrowly crafted opinion.

The idea is that, because California had gay marriage, and then used a ballot referendum to take it away, the latter was impermissible. It doesn’t matter that it was a state constitutional amendment. From the 9th Circuit’s opinion:

All the Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of ‘marriage,’ which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committed relationships. Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for “laws of this sort.” Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 633 (1996).

I’m sure all the commentary is correct in observing that the 9th Circuit judges limited the scope of their own ruling to increase its chances at being upheld by the Supreme Court. But the reasoning on which this is narrow seems flawed.

Let me try and explain what seems short-sighted about this. The opinion notes that same-sex couples already had the right to marry, which guts Proposition 8 of any purpose that is not discriminatory. But same-sex couples only had that right because the California Supreme Court interpreted the state constitution to grant the right to everyone, irrespective of sexual orientation. Now, I think there are problems with saying that same-sex couples had the right before it was recognized and enforced by CA’s highest court (in fact, it was explicitly denied by statute) – but saying that they lacked the right also raises some awkward questions about where the right came from. After all, courts aren’t supposed to be creating rights, whole cloth. The 2008 decision in In re Marriage Cases overturned CA’s statutory definition of marriage for denying same-sex couples a right granted to them by the CA constitution. And the idea behind today’s ruling is that the 14th Amendment doesn’t allow states to just go and strip those rights away, even if a majority votes for it.

To bring things back to narrowness, why is CA different from any other state with a constitution that guarantees equal rights that has recently passed a gay marriage ban? Here the CA Marriage Cases ruling does make a difference, because under U.S. law a state’s supreme court is the authority on that state’s laws (including the constitution). This principle does create a barrier to a federal court interpreting a state’s constitution to grant rights that conflict with statutory or constitutional same-sex marriage bans. So narrowness wins after all! But can the court really invoke Romer without this eventually expanding to a broader application? If nothing else, it seems like activists might try to have this applied in Maine, where the Governor signed marriage equality into law before a voter referendum repealed it. In any case, the narrowness may have the (presumably desired) short-term effect of getting a majority of the Supreme Court (specifically, Justice Kennedy) to back it.

You may well be thinking exactly what I thought then: why would someone who is college age today know what was popular in, say, the early 1990s? They might have heard some of the popular songs of 15 years ago that still get radio play here and there, but there are plenty of groups, albums, and so forth that at one point you couldn’t avoid hearing but now are just a memory. As I pointed out to my father, this stuff is as much history to them as the music from the 70s and 80s was to people my age. You have to have lived it to know what was popular.

That’s why I had the idea of putting it out to the internets. What are the songs someone must hear to understand popular music from the late-1980s to the present? Single tracks that could be played in-class are great, but feel free to identify what movement this typifies and give other representative examples. Also, be as specific in terms of sub-genre as you want – for example, the course currently covers “the birth of rap” but I don’t think it covers later developments in the genre in any detail. Please pass this on to all your music-snob friends!

When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

Everyone in the world, ever:

Duh.

Part of Raphael’s post dealt with this quote:

When we complain about men raping, abusing, harassing, and refusing us our human rights, and you come back angrily with ‘But some men aren’t like that! How dare you imply that I might be like that,’ do you not think that the problem might come from the very fact that you are angry at …us for complaining, rather than angry at your fellow boys and men for this enduring misogyny?

Raphael thought this was a bit much:

I get this. I think I get this. Maybe I’m about to prove that I don’t get this. But it also strikes me as a little facile. I don’t like being defined by my gender any more than anyone else does, and telling me not to get all butt-hurt about it seems equivalent to telling me I’d better finish what’s on my plate because there are children starving in Ethiopia. Yes, there are bigger problems out there, but that doesn’t mean my complaint lacks merit.

My instinct was that the original quote deserves more credit than Raphael gives it, because I didn’t think anyone would ever say it in the way he seemed to interpret it. Surely no one is genuinely dense enough to need to be reminded that “some men aren’t like that,” so any attempt to do so must be misguided.

Then I read this old Ms. article. The post itself is solid, as are most of the sixty-four comments. But the remaining few were enough to convince me that there’s probably more to Raphael’s complaint than I thought.

Helpful:

But our language for men who buy sex from girls is totally inadequate. We call them “johns” or “tricks,” but these are relatively innocuous terms we also use for men who buy sex from adult women. We need a distinct term. We could call them “pedophiles” or “child molesters,” but these terms don’t incorporate the commercial nature of what’s going on, and they indicate social pathology. The shocking reality is just how “normal” these guys are [...].

So, let’s give these guys a name. A name that captures the ugly reality of an older man taking advantage of the youth and poverty of young girls—the predatory, pathetic shamefulness of it.

Not helpful:

We need to also use the phrase, “The World Suffers ‘From Testosterone Poisoning” in order to point out the exact cause of all the world’s woes. If it weren’t for men and their predatory impulses in everything, the world would not look like it does and would not be the dangerous place it is, especially for women and girls.

I think that one is just a troll doing a parody. I’m still not convinced anyone is that goofy.

Not helpful:

How about Normal Heterosexual American Male = Nham

Good thing this person qualified their response! I’d hate to think anyone would impugn the civility of the gay and/or the Canadian.

Not helpful:

We “exited women” don’t call it prostitution, we call it “commercialized rape.” Porn is commercialized rape on camera.

Clients of commercial rape are just “men.”

Oh yeah, good call. You have definitely aided in our attempt to create a more specific term with precisely the desired connotations.

Scott, in case you don’t know the name, is my friend from the internet and the Twilight Zone. I don’t know if his ancestors were really into defiling ancient burial grounds or what, but he leads a kind of charmed life. Every time he turns around things are happening which are disconcerting, terrible, terribler, harrowing, or amusingly Kafkaesque.

Yesterday Scott was complaining on Facebook about a sudden onslaught of malware that had rendered his computer mostly useless. When I saw his name on my cell phone I figured he had become desperate, and was just reaching out to people with “computer” in their job titles. I was confused, but still holding onto this belief, after he began the conversation with, “I need to ask you for a big, but very bizarre, favor.”

“There’s this guy,” Scott began. “We met at a Halloween party and talked about Watchmen.”

“… OK?”

“He was supposed to host a department party last Saturday, but he never showed up.” I don’t remember the details, but Scott gave me the impression that the guy — a graduate student who I guess we can call Robert — had failed to show up for a few more obligations, and hadn’t answered his phone for the better part of a week. People were starting to worry about the his safety.

“The thing is,” Scott continued, “his friends think I’m the person he’s most likely to talk to.” I guess the guy had been raving about that Watchmen conversation to friends and faculty, and the consensus was that he really respects Scott.

I was still mystified as to how I was supposed to help here. “But I’m at home,” Scott explained, “eighty miles away. I just got back from the hospital. I have pneumonia. I spent all day getting IV fluids. I can barely sit up, much less rush down there.”

“So you … want me to knock on his door and tell him to call you?”

“I want you to knock on his door and pretend to be me.”

Naturally. Scott and I discussed techniques for fooling someone into thinking I was him — I would wear a baseball cap, which Scott often does, and turn my back to the peephole. Hopefully Robert wouldn’t notice that Scott — a Mets fan — wouldn’t own a Red Sox cap.

A little later — by now, it was 5:15, and getting dark — I was standing on the ground outside of Robert’s building. I could see his porch. His living room was lit by a dim red light, which I thought was slightly creepy. I started toward his door, which was on the second floor. The light in the stairwell flickered lazily on and off, in a way that would have seemed cheesy in a horror film. Next to his apartment door was a mannequin dressed in black robes and a mask, positioned so that its hand pointed at the door bell.

I rang the bell and yelled, “Hey! Robert! It’s Scott!” No response. I knocked, and yelled again. Nothing. When I knocked, I noticed that the door moved in the frame quite a bit. I tried the handle, and it was unlocked. I hung out a bit longer, and when Robert didn’t come to the door, I retreated to ground level and called Scott.

After reporting what had happened, I mentioned that the door was unlocked. “I’m not that into breaking and entering, but if you want to consult with his friends, if they’re at a point where they’re worried enough that I need to go in there, I will.”

Scott didn’t hesitate. “We’re at that point. People are worried.”

When I opened the door, I realized that Robert had hosted the Halloween party where he had met Scott. His living room was full of fake cobwebs and tombstones. It was dark, as that red light was better at creating eerie shadows than at illuminating. I flipped the switch by the door, and an equally useless green light came on.

The place was a mess. I could see two bedroom doors: one open, and one closed. The closed one had a fake wooden sign with something appropriate for a Halloween party written on it: “BLACK WOODS” or something.

The bathroom door was also open, and there was a rope trailing out into the hallway. After a second, I realized that one end of the rope was tied in a noose.

I stepped into the apartment, and yelled, “RoBEEEERRT?” Nothing. I inched down the hall. I could see a little into the one bedroom now, and it looked like there was something spilled or splashed on the wall. Some kind of dark stain.

I yelled Robert’s name a few more times, slowly creeping further in, until I was standing in front of the closed door trying to find the will to look in the other room.

Once more, “RobEEEEEERT,” probably sounding desperate now.

From behind the closed door, “Yeah? Can I help you? Don’t come in, I’m not wearing any clothes.”

“HEY! But you’re alive?”

“Yeah?”

“Your friends are worried that you aren’t. Can you call Scott Kaufman?”

“Yeah.”

Then I got out of there as fast as I could. Later, the image of me walking through a haunted house, terrified by a noose and some mystery stains on a wall, would start a laughing/coughing fit in the pneumonic Scott that would nearly kill him. “I can’t believe you didn’t just turn and run out.”

Man, what a good idea. Somehow it didn’t occur to me at the time.

I took a cake baking class at Blackmarket Bakery a couple of weeks ago. We love Blackmarket, and the class was as good as their cakes and scones. I had a bunch of fun and learned a lot. Thanks to Ruth for signing me up, and to owner/chef/teacher Rachel Klemek for a great class.

Complete Flickr set here.

From the so-headed article:

The study’s authors aren’t suggesting that “hyper-texting” leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but say it’s startling to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and that kind of risky behavior.

[...]

“If parents are monitoring their kids’ texting and social networking, they’re probably monitoring other activities as well,” said Frank, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

So a better headline would be, “Permissive Parents are Permissive.” But that would be transparently uninteresting.

On the one hand, I agree with Adam that Maher, “delivers his little snarks with the same smug, ‘How could you be so stupid as to disagree with me?’ tone as Olbermann, Maddow and yes, Glenn Beck.” Here’s something I don’t like: when I see or read an us/them argument that makes me feel good, but when I can’t distinguish the way in which it makes me feel good from the way that Glenn Beck makes his fans feel good.

Except, there is this: for the most part, the pundits on “our side” are right. As Maher points out, “there’s a difference between a mad man and a madman.” By way of analogy, say you were out to eat at a restaurant and the kitchen caught on fire, and two waiters ran out of the kitchen screaming. One was shouting, “Everyone out! There’s a fire!” and the other was shouting, “Stay calm! Finish your meal! There’s no fire!” When you saw smoke rolling out from under the kitchen door, you wouldn’t say, “Man, those two guys are both crazy. Why don’t they calm down?” The one guy has a reason to be flipping out, and the other is just batty.

I watch Olbermann and Beck think, “Well, sure they’re both loud, but our guy is right. There really is a fire.”

Where this falls apart is that everyone thinks their guy is right. Which means there are people who watch Beck and feel the same way I do when I watch Maddow. This makes me ill. Which is why I enjoyed the rally more than most of the people with whom I watched it, and why I thought it was relatively successful. I really enjoyed Jon’s keynote.

Nonetheless, I think most of what Maher says is simply accurate. I mean, this sounds nice:

[S]peaking truthfully matters more than making the other guy look stupid; that how we treat each other as humans is more important than our fucking party affiliation.

But come to me with a scorecard for Maddow and Beck, let’s find out who speaks truthfully more often. How many sleazy gold coin scams has Olbermann endorsed? Are they both loud? Sure. Are they the same? No.

And how far does it get us to pretend that tea partiers on Medicare-provided scooters denouncing ObamaCare and protesting that gays in the military will make America less secure aren’t a little demented? How good will we feel about ourselves if we were nice to them but we failed to get Dan Choi back in uniform?

I agree that the conversation in the country seems to be pretty much fucked. Everyone seems to listen to “their guys” to have their beliefs reaffirmed in a masturbatory way. But I don’t think the problem is that our guys are too much like theirs.

Top three most common conversations with strangers on trails in the Grand Canyon:

1. Where you headed?
2. Go Sox!
3. Any idea how far to the next bathroom?

More photos, most of which are better than this one, on Flickr. My favorites are these shots of the canyon, this bird, this lizard, and Ruth here and here.

We spent the last two weekends sleeping on the ground. Most recently, we hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. However, we’re still processing the photos from that trip. Here, then, are photos from the previous weekend’s car-camping trip to Cleveland National Forest, with its annual accompaniment of breakfast and apple picking in Julian. Like Matt, we’ve got stars, but we’ve also got Matt. To say nothing of Drew and several people wearing headlamps.