Movies that are just many years too late to be relevant (and look awful):

• Rent
• Aeon Flux

Artists whom I wish would release new albums soon, please:

• Ben Kweller (I know, I know…)
• The Gadgits (I think they probably broke up)
• The Old 97′s (A live album is no substitute for a real one, guys. And it’s cool that Rhett Miller’s got a solo album coming out in February, but that’s not the same.)
• Dan the Automator (any of your various projects would be satisfactory, thanks)
• The Streets
• The Shins
• The Breeders (I’m pretty sure they are definitely defunct, but I can dream)
• Ambulance LTD
• Ratatat (do you know these guys? THEY ARE AWESOME.)
• DJ Shadow
• Phantom Planet (I’m almost ready to take them seriously now)

Ideas I had to complete the “rule of three” for the final list:

• Books I have recently read that you should read
• Reasons why the bagel/coffee place near school sucks
• Close personal friends of mine who blog, all of whom started after me, not that I’m saying I inspired them or anything
• Some meta bullshit joke about making lists

And on the other side of the homeland security front:

I wrote back in August about how the Transportation Security Agency was considering lifting the ban on things like scissors and razor blades on airplanes. It looks like that plan, or at least a version of it, is poised to actually put it through, as part of a larger emphasis on preventing explosive materials rather than sharp objects. Some interesting info in that article, especially the revelation that screeners right now spend half of their time looking for cigarette lighters. I’ll repeat that for you. Half of their time looking for cigarette lighters. THANK HEAVENS THEY’RE PROTECTING US FROM THOSE DANGEROUS CIGARETTE LIGHTERS! WHAT A GOOD USE OF THEIR TIME!

Obviously, I support this. Security right now is utterly absurd, focusing on visibility rather than effectivity. Any step toward treating travellers like citizens rather than suspects is a step in the right direction. An Australian minister pointed out earlier this month the pointlessness of current security measures (article and Bruce Schnier’s blog post about it):

In a wide-ranging speech to Adelaide Rotarians, Senator Vanstone dismissed many commonwealth security measures as essentially ineffective. “To be tactful about these things, a lot of what we do is to make people feel better as opposed to actually achieve an outcome,” Senator Vanstone said.

She actually goes on to make some very graphic and accurate observations, ones that very few people have been willing to publicly voice in recent years, so you should definitely check those links out.

Anyway, the opposition to this as quoted in the article comes off as pretty ridiculous:

Charles Slepian, an aviation security consultant based in New York, said the TSA’s proposed changes fail to take into account the safety of passengers and cabin crew. “Whenever you are serving alcohol, you have a double duty to those who are present to protect them from someone who goes off the deep end,” Slepian said.

And that, folks, is why we ban scissors in bars and restaurants.

“TSA needs to take a moment to reflect on why they were created in the first place — after the world had seen how ordinary household items could create such devastation,” said Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, which has more than 46,000 members. “When weapons are allowed back on board an aircraft, the pilots will be able to land the plane safety but the aisles will be running with blood.”

Clearly the reasonable reaction to this is to ban “ordinary household items” from travel. After all, “ordinary” is just a step away from… “lethal.” And if you missed it, she used the phrase “aisles will be running with blood.” You know, like they did every day prior to the hyperbolic overreaction that followed 9/11.

Man, that kind of fear-mongering is my least favorite rhetorical tactic. We’ve seen more than our share of it in this century, and it’s just dispicable. It’s the last desperate talking point for every advocate of draconian security measures that do more to terrify regular people than they do to protect them. Emotion has its place in public policy debate, but it shouldn’t be the only consideration. Things like effectivity, practicality, and logic ought to have their day, too. This proposal’s enactment would be a good start.

Sidenote: I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to be allowed to leave my cellphone on and use my mp3 player on takeoff and landing. These and other in-flight prohibitions are baseless and irritating and making flight attendants enforce them is a complete waste of time.

Calamity Jon wrote a little something about our nation’s courageous stance against terrorism, and man, do I ever agree with him.

The more stories like this I read, the more I wonder: what the fuck is going on? Do decision makers even remember that the whole purpose of this ridiculous war is to preserve liberty, at home as well as abroad? We’ve done a pretty good job of making everyone afraid of some indistinct but Very Serious Threat while subjecting Americans to a remarkably thorough invasion of their privacy, not to mention a constant irritation caused by security measures aimed at putting forward the image of safety without the substance of effectivity or justice. What’s the point of turning America into a police state just so we’re saved from the sinister influence of those who would turn it into a police state? Look, I’m not saying America would be better off in the hands of those from whom we’re trying to protect ourselves–it would be much worse, in fact–but since when is “less awful” synonymous with “good”?

I know this has become a cliché, but I’m just going to go ahead and repeat it anyway: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Ben Franklin was right, my friends.

Anyway, Jon makes a point that I think is fundamental to this issue: the more we do both here and in Iraq to scrutinize and surveille the behavior of common citizens, the more we create an enviroment that fosters terrorism. If you think criticizing our government gives solace to our enemies, imagine how gratified they are to see us weaken and abandon the very freedoms that they seek to destroy.

My alma mater is thinking about setting aside some gender-neutral bathrooms in its student center building. The argument put forward is that the traditional, heteronormative, bifurcation of men’s and women’s bathrooms leaves out those who don’t see themselves as fitting into those categories–those who see themselves as transgendered, gay, lesbian, etc.–and puts them in danger.

(Edit: it all started with this op-ed by the paper’s editorial board.)

An opinion column argues that this proposal is politically-correctness taken too far and (awesomely) warns that Pomona is perilously close to going overboard, as have institutions like Wesleyan and Oberlin.

Another opinion column responds to the suggestion that this is just “too P.C.,” noting that this is a serious matter for trandgendered and people who identify as otherwise outside the traditional view of gender–a personal safety issue.

There’s a lot of overblown invective on both sides here–keep an eye out for references to nazis and accessories to murder–but I do think this is an interesting issue and there’s merit to each perspective.

What’s my opinion? Well, there’s good moral reason behind trying to accommodate every member of the community, including those who don’t fit into the simple categories that serve the majority. Finally, bathrooms are gendered for very practical, anatomical reasons, and though that isn’t the whole story it is certainly relevant. It makes more sense to install urinals in a bathroom used by people with male anatomy, and to install more stalls in a bathroom used by people with female anatomy. Those with ambiguous anatomy might be left out, to a degree, but I don’t think that gender-neutral bathrooms will solve the problems raised in this discussion. The proposal asks for multi-stalled handicap-accessible bathrooms in extant facilities, which is as a purely practical matter pretty unreasonable. If the goal is to accommodate a clear minority, why set aside the bathrooms best equipped to serve large numbers of people? As a statement, it’s great, but if I were running the student center I’d be concerned with making sure resources weren’t being wasted in one place when they are needed in another. And as at least one of those pieces mentions, there are gender-neutral restrooms in most, if not all, dorms, so it’s not like the variant-gendered community is being disregarded. Pomona is certainly one of the most open-minded and tolerant colleges in the country, so I understand the concern that this may be political correctness for its own sake. I don’t really think its proponents see it that way, but I do think that at a certain point practicality has to trump principle.

And as for the safety issue, there’s an argument that “gender-variant” people feel uncomfortable or unsafe in gendered restrooms, and there’s a retort that “normatively gendered” people would feel uncomfortable or unsafe in gender-neutral restrooms. And there’s the retort to THAT that if the straight kids would feel uncomfortable sharing a restroom the campus has bigger problems that bathroom gender politics. And I think this last point if crucial, because it leads directly to my general opinion: if your biggest problem were gendered bathrooms in the student center, I’d say you’d be pretty far ahead of the curve in terms of gender awareness on campus. And, more importantly, if your biggest problem in fact IS gendered bathrooms in the student center, maybe the way to deal with it is to concern yourself with the intolerance or ignorance of heteronormative people on campus, rather than the mostly-symbolic gesture of gender-neutral bathrooms. The problem, after all, is in perception and attitude, and improving that would have a much greater effect in the long run than segregating the “normatively gendered” people from the “gender-variant” people.

Incidentally, here are the words I found in these various pieces that go a long way toward explaining why most people who read or hear about this see it as a liberal-arts joke (which, fundamentally, it’s not):

• gender-neutral
• normatively gendered
• transgender
• heteronormative
• gender-segregated
• gender-variant
• genderqueer
• transexual

I mean, good lord. What a morass. Is it any wonder that the whole discussion comes across to most people as politically-correct academic bullshit? Can we just speak seriously and honestly and skip the gender studies lesson?

midendian notes, briefly, the new AT&T logo, as well as the fact that from now on I’ll have to call it “at&t” instead. This reminds me of something I wrote a month ago, when it looked like the classic logo was to be put to pasture. As it is, they’ve adulterated it with more white space and lessened the impact of the original, but better to have this second-class version than to lose it entirely.

This article about “Cyber Monday,” what is supposed to be the biggest online shopping day of the year, is mostly about how more and more people are doing their online shopping at work. Apparently, companies are growing more tolerant of such behavior:

Where many companies once blocked access to high-volume shopping sites, for example, they now use threshold software that simply limits an employee’s time on such sites, said Susan Larson, vice president of global threat analysis and research for SurfControl, which makes filtering software for workplaces. Today, she said, companies are more worried about employees bringing viruses into an office network by shopping online than they are about reduced productivity.

I love this quote, because it indicates how utterly clueless most people are about how computer viruses are contracted and spread. There’s no chance of getting a computer virus by buying anything online–the danger there is in giving your credit card number out, but that’s the employee’s problem, not the employer’s. The only way anyone can get a virus by “shopping online” is by clicking on an email whose subject is “fr33 v14gr4 4 ><-m45″ and whose sender is named something like “Dalmation Poinsettia.” And I think at that point we’re really stretching the definition of online shopping.

I did learn something from the article, though, which is that “Black Friday” is not named that because people routinely get trampled in Walmarts and department stores all over the country; it’s called “Black Friday” because it is the day when retailers have traditionally first shown a profit for the year (putting then in the black, get it?). And now you know, too.

I’m no “sexpert,” but I am pretty sure that Montgomery County, Maryland’s understanding of the meaning of “abstinence” isn’t entirely accurate.

Karen Sees and Cindy Richards said the ‘‘contraception comparison chart” used in eighth-grade health class at Herbert Hoover Middle School describes three types of abstinence: No intercourse, withdrawal (ejaculation outside of the body) and rhythm (no intercourse during ovulation).

‘‘Since when did the term abstinence change to include the two most ineffective forms of birth control possible?” said Cindy Richards of Potomac. ‘‘Here we have been teaching our kids that abstinence means not having sex, period. What kind of message is this [chart] sending?”

Sees, also of Potomac, first became aware of the chart while helping her son study for health class in late October. She said she immediately e-mailed her son’s health education teacher about her concerns.

‘‘I’m all for teaching sex education, but I want it to be accurate information,” she said. ‘‘I was told by my son’s health teacher that withdrawal and rhythm are considered abstinence because [sexual partners] are refraining from what they want to do.”

I guess, semantically, they are correct–they are teaching various methods of abstaining from things one might like to do. But they should add some other items to the list:

• dieting
• boycotting Target
• reading books without pictures
• eating all of your vegetables

They should consider introducing this theory into drug education as well: Don’t smoke crack–stick with regular cocaine!

This gives me an opportunity to write about one of my college roommates, who believed that “the pull out method” was an effective means of birth control. A few of us sat him down and explained the shortcomings (ha ha ha) of withdrawal, and ultimately convinced him to change his ways. For the record, boys and girls, withdrawal is highly ineffective and does nothing to prevent other negative consequences of intercourse, including sexually transmitted diseases and low self-esteem.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been making fun of “My Humps” since June.

Has anyone noticed that Fergie can’t, to use technical jargon, sing a lick? I mean, at least the woman who sang with C&C Music Factory had pipes. Fergie can barely carry a tune. Also, she pisses herself at shows and subjects herself to extensive cosmetic surgery just so she can resemble a glob of silly putty with lipstick.

I remember listening to the Peas in college, before they decided to provide the soundtrack to the NBA Playoffs and got cast in Best Buy commercials. Those were the days.