Eccentric Flower:200910/Two From Sullivan

Ursula:

I'm not sure how I would've read the faces, had I not read your description first. They both look pretty femme to me, but it's true that people tend to read "pale and smoothed out" as girly. When I first put on all my foundation to bland everything out before I do my makeup, it always amazes me how much difference it makes. Drawing girls, you learn to leave out a lot of the wrinkles and shading, or they read like guys.

The second one, about the Asian eyes looking closer together than the white girl eyes, seems nuts to me. The Asian lady seems to have much more wide-set eyes.

-- 01:30, 11 October 2009 (BST)

Joy:

WIth all due respect, Col, self-reports of what you think was going on in your brain aren't the most reliable scientific evidence. I've seen the work on this (it is a demo I do in my Intro class too) and there are ways to check to see if the low-level, initial perception of the right side of the face is dominating your gender judgment. Doesn't mean there aren't additional cognitive processes that can add to that, resulting in your particular experience (and I doubt the researchers would claim otherwise).

-- 02:47, 11 October 2009 (BST)

Joy:

And my apologies, since I thought I knew exactly which version of the gender hybrid face was going to come up. I didn't realize it was the contrast one, not the split-face one where whichever gender's face is on the right (on the left from the viewer's perspective) dominates the initial impression (researchers argue that is because the right-hemisphere, which gets information from the left visual field first, is more specialized for things like detecting emotion, sex differences, etc.)

That said, I do bristle at wholesale dismissing a study in a very condescending way based on your own impression.

-- 02:58, 11 October 2009 (BST)

Columbina:

And I bristle at presentation of absolutes when they are needless and/or untrue. I grant you it's possible the fault was Scientific American's, not the scientist's - in fact I hope it is, because surely you can understand the dangers here. If you wrote a paper and said "EVERYONE does/has behavior X" as an absolute, I think you would deserve the brickbats you'd get - except you wouldn't do that, because you're smarter than that.

I admit that I got my back up immediately because it was a visual illusion which had to do with perception of gender, and I am perhaps a tad touchy there. Too many years of being hit by flying stereotypes.

I also have another set of prejudices which surely came into play as well, but this is not the time to discuss them, especially when I'm ill and tired and in danger of biting heads off.

It would have cost Scientific American nothing to have inserted "usually" or "generally" into the sentence, and then I probably would not have reacted at all.

-- 05:24, 11 October 2009 (BST)

Joy:

Frankly, their data would never (no one's ever does) show that EVERYONE does anything. And I have never read a single scientific article that says that. My bets are on sloppy reporting, or the authors trying to make a sexy splash, which I admit does happen (I have had very frustrating conversations with someone who tries to get away with absolutes in papers but gets called on it, and who is much more reasonable in person, which makes it hard to explain to people why he is so frustrating, since the review process is confidential).

-- 14:44, 11 October 2009 (BST)

Columbina:

To return this conversation to the first link, which I intended as the important one: The anger from Sullivan and others is because they are coming to realize what I could have told them (did, in fact, although not in a place where they could hear me) months ago: Obama is not interested in gay rights.

In fact, using a broader brush, I do not believe Obama is gay-friendly at all. He's a decent human being, unlike his predecessors, so he's not going to be actively anti-gay, but I think (and I'll be the first to admit this is a wholly fact-free opinion) that if one of his daughters grew up and announced she was a lesbian he would be horrified (even if he would never, never show it).

Sullivan after Obama's speech:

(Emphasis Sullivan's.)

My problem is that Obama is showing a lack of balls on the domestic side. He's showing them in foreign affairs so I know he has them.

(The problem with that sexist phrase is that it has come to take on a meaning for which we do not have an exact substitute in English. If I say something more polite, like "chutzpah," it is not an equivalent. If I use the phrase above, which is ugly and somewhat insulting, at least you know what I mean.)

Some of the things the gay-rights folks were hoping and expecting Obama to do are fiats - imposed unilaterally by the executive branch and could be taken apart just as easily. Some of them really are a matter of him just saying "Make it so." He will not do this because he is still trying to be a friend to everybody. I don't disapprove of trying to be a friend to everybody ... except when that means countenancing principles which are anti-humane. And the sooner a politician learns that he's going to piss off somebody and it's better to actively and preemptively choose who that is himself, the better. This is the one case where Obama seems to me to be slow on the uptake, and it's not pleasant to watch.

-- 17:15, 11 October 2009 (BST)

Bunny42:

How true. Something as easily doable as "don't ask don't tell" and he still doesn't stand up and just do it. The courage of his convictions should be enough, since he's never going to please everybody. He apparently isn't afraid to cross his military advisors. Witness how he's dissing McCristol. So what's the problem?

I love that phrase, highfalutin bullshit.

-- 08:04, 12 October 2009 (BST)

Spc476:

I thought that face looked familiar (http://boston.conman.org/2007/08/28.1 --- third one down). It's a composite (or "average") of 206 faces, 50% male/female.

-- 08:38, 12 October 2009 (BST)

ProfRobert:

The problem is that "don't ask, don't tell" is part of the U.S. Code (10 U.S.C. sec. 654) and requires an act of Congress to repeal. The president can't simply refuse to enforce a law he doesn't like (well, unless he's a Republican, of course).

-- 15:57, 12 October 2009 (BST)

Bunny42:

Ooops. My bad. So I guess there's just nothing he can do on his own, to actually fulfill some of his vast and far-reaching campaign promises, yes? He just says yeah, well, I wanted to do that, but Congress wouldn't let me? Except he's got a Democratic Congress...

This should be very helpful in future campaigns. Promise whatever you want. You won't have to actually, ya know, do it. And you'll win the Nobel Prize!

-- 18:55, 12 October 2009 (BST)

Peebles:

Well, I mean, there's "can" and there's "can." The President could push push a repeal of DADT through congress. He's got the political capital to do it. But it would be, politically, a bad move.

For context, you should read about the debate over the Matthew Shepard bill, which makes the much more modest change of making gay bashing a hate crime at the federal level. When the law was approved by the Senate, it was done with only five Republican votes. And the Republican leadership is pulling out all the stops to fight it -- it's a violation of the 14th amendment, it's Orwellian thought policing, it's offensive to Americans. The rhetoric is revolting, but they say this shit on the floor of the US Congress, right there when Judy Shepard is sitting in the audience listening, because the political mood in America is robustly anti-gay.

If Obama were to push through the gay rights agenda that I think we all agree we want right now, he would do it at the cost of significant political capital. Now, I think there's a good debate to be had about whether the expenditure of this capital would be worth it, but I think the HRC, Barney Frank, Obama, and others would argue that no matter what else, there /must/ be a second term for Obama. There /must not/ be a first Palin term.

I would also like a little more motion on the gay rights agenda and some leadership from the President. But given the fact that Palin remains wildly popular with the Republican base, I am willing to wait until a second term and a stronger economy to get it.

-- 22:47, 12 October 2009 (BST)

Bunny42:

I didn't realize Palin was such a threat. I kind of thought all her baggage would hold her back from serious consideration. In fact, I really don't know who else is even being considered for 2012. Pawlenty, perhaps. It makes me chuckle that everyone's so afraid of her. Apparently, even Tina Fay couldn't squelch her popularity. This is gonna be interesting.

-- 23:45, 12 October 2009 (BST)

Columbina:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/dissent-of-the-day-4.html

-- 00:59, 13 October 2009 (BST)

Bunny42:

Yup. Exactly. Sure, he's got a lot of balls in the air, but does that make DADT any less important? The courage of his convictions should be the only thing that matters. If he really believes what he's saying, then he should walk the walk, is all I'm saying. Delegate it, if necessary, but see that it gets done. As somebody once said, talk is cheap...

-- 01:56, 13 October 2009 (BST)

Peebles:

I respectfully disagree with the whole sentiment of your post, Bunny. There is a whole lot more that matters than personal conviction, and I am thrilled to bits that we have a President that equivocates and weighs the consequences of his decisions. Our last President, on the other hand, had great strength of personal conviction with no discernible concern for consequences, and the damage he has done to American influence on all fronts -- political, economic, military -- has been catastrophic.

I think that the consequences of Obama pushing an unpopular liberal agenda early in his first term would also be bad. As a thought experiment, consider the analogy to Clinton. He was also a charismatic Democratic President who began his first term with a Democrat-controlled Congress. He also tried to repeal the ban on gays in the military in his first year in office, and he also tried to advance a comprehensive health care reform bill during the same period. In underestimating the opposition from the Christian conservative Republican base, he lost the political traction that had swept him into office against an incumbent Republican President, he enabled the Republican party to take over the House leadership for the first time in forty years, and he was forced to adopt as a "compromise" a discriminatory DADT policy, control over which he as Commander-in-Chief had to cede to Congress.

Also, on the off chance that it isn't clear, I am not arguing that the repeal of DOMA and DADT are unimportant. As an unrepentant and enthusiastic cocksucker myself, I absolutely understand Sullivan's frustration. But he's making the unacceptably puerile, intellectually irresponsible decision to reduce a complex political problem into "Obama's a liar."

-- 03:09, 13 October 2009 (BST)

Columbina:

As an unrepentant and enthusiastic cocksucker myself, I absolutely understand Sullivan's frustration.

This is the best sentence I have read all weekend.

-- 03:19, 13 October 2009 (BST)

ProfRobert:

I agree with Peebles, and would add the example of Jimmy Carter, who came into office with a bunch of legislative items and tried to get them all done at once, with the result that none of them happened (and that was with a Democratic Congress and a non-lunatic Republican opposition). Indeed, my big worry for Obama, and why I voted for Clinton in the NY primary, is that as a relative neophyte in DC, he wouldn't be able to get his legislation passed. Picking Emmanuel as his chief of staff was a brilliant stroke, though. I keep hoping Obama is biding his time till the basic bills get passed by both houses and then send Rahm in to kick ass and take names to get the public option in the final bill. The Baucus bill is a bad joke -- it mostly lines the pockets of insurance companies by forcing people to buy from them.

-- 17:11, 13 October 2009 (BST)

Mel:

I'm almost afraid to say it, Robert, but it seems possible the last couple of weeks that the public option might actually make it into the final bill. I took the fact that the insurance companies came out against Baucus' bill as a good sign, really - it means they're worried that something they don't like is going to get passed. Which is more than I have been hoping for, right there. The Baucus bill is so pro-insurance the insurance companies might have written it themselves. (And I'm not sure but what that might actually be true, at least for parts of it.)

-- 00:32, 14 October 2009 (BST)