"Emily Dickinson" House in Amsterdam

Emily Dickinson House Originally uploaded by abostick59.

In Amsterdam, on Marnixstraat where it crosses the Leidsegracht canal, is a house which is decorated with verse by Emily Dickinson. It isn't noted in the tourguides. Debbie had heard about it from a friend at her work who had seen it.

It has no significance except that someone once thought it would be a neat thing to do to adorn the side of their house with this verse:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee.
One clover and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Blegdamsvej 17

Blegdamsvej 17 Originally uploaded by abostick59.

I am a fanboy at heart, and my first education was in physics. So it was natural that the one place in Copenhagen that I most wanted to see was Blegdamsvej 17, the site of the Niels Bohr Institutet and the Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Fysik, funded by the Carlsberg brewery. From its founding in 1920 through the beginning of the Second World War, Blegdamsvej 17 was the epicenter of the quantum revolution that reshaped physics. Everyone who was anyone in theoretical physics made their way there at one time or another. I learned the history of that remarkable time in George Gamow's book Thirty Years that Shook Physics, which I read as a teenager.

So I have made my own pilgrimage to Blegdamsvej 17. They are not particularly adapted to receiving tourists, but I did take pictures from the outside.

Vacation in Sweden

Färsk Fisk Originally uploaded by abostick59.

I haven't been posting as assiduously as some people might like in recent days, because I am on vacation in Lund, in southern Sweden. Debbie's brother, David Notkin, has been on sabbatical for a year at the university there. We wanted to visit at midsummer, when the days are longest.

We went on a day trip today to Foteviken and Skanör, on the Öresund, the straight that separates Denmark from Sweden and that joins the North and Baltic seas. Tomorrow afternoon we're going to Copenhagen for two nights, and after that we'll be spending a week in Amsterdam.

The Blog Echo Chamber in Action

It is interesting to follow the chain of referrals when a hot story goes through the blogosphere.

The original article is from Ken Fisher at Ars Technica. Read the money quote:

NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing when it should be doing something about piracy instead.

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," Cotton said. "If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year." Cotton's comments come in Paul Sweeting's report on Hollywood's latest shenanigans on Capitol Hill.

Susie Madrak at Suburban Guerilla cited Ars Technica. Lance Mannion cited Susie Madrak. And Avedon Carol at The Sideshow cited Lance Mannion. Neither Lance Mannion nor Avedon Carol appeared to follow the chain of links to the source.

Why not do a modicum of checking, at the very least to get a sense of the context in which the original quote appears?

This sort of linking at a distance makes sense to me only if what one is trying to do is not directly link to an objectionable source, e.g., if you don't people to be able to get from your blog to a hate site or a porn site or whatever sort of site it is that sinks your boat. Otherwise, you are adding to a chain of interpretation that becomes less and less about what was originally said.

Last week I got my moment in the sun and 8,000 extra visitors when Avedon, late-night guest-blogging at Eschaton, pointed to what I wrote about Sidney Blumenthal's Salon piece on character references for Scooter Libby. But there's something a tad incestuous about this: It was Avedon who pointed me to the Blumenthal piece. Her hook was the Manchurian Candidate reference Blumenthal used as his lede. My hook was how Paul Wolfowitz can't seem to do anything right -- to which Blumenthal gave more column-inches and seemed to me to be the point of the article.

My sense of how blogging should work is that we should all be linking to the Blumenthal piece, and maybe commenting why. Perhaps the explanation should say why and whether a net-surfer with arbitrary interests would want to follow the link. Not everyone is a Digby, but I rather think that adding something -- a new angle, a different point of view, a connection to some other idea -- makes a better post than just picking up someone else's link.

And I continue to think it is a good idea to get off the beaten track to find content to inject into the blog conversation.

But who knows? Maybe these chains of referrals and multiply recursive links are the firing of the synapses of the blogospheric group mind. If so, it's interesting to consider that we're watching in a way, the thought process of something greater than ourselves.

Why Has Sonoma County Water Agency Imposed Water Rationing?

Michael Cabanatuan of the San Francisco Chronicle reported last Friday that the Sonoma County Water Agency was imposing a 15% mandatory reduction of water usage by its clients. Other Bay Area water agencies have expressed concern about the reduced snowfall this past winter in the Sierras, but so far have been expressing confidence about not needing to impose rationing this year. (If this coming winter's Sierra snowpack isn't adequate, however, things willl change next year.)

Why is the Sonoma County Water Agency imposing rationing when other water agencies and districts are more confident? Cabanatuan had this to say:

The Sonoma County Water Agency was directed by the State Water Resources Control Board on Wednesday to reduce its water diversions from the Russian River by 15 percent to protect the fall spawning of salmon. That order spurred Thursday's restrictions, which will be implemented by individual water districts and other entities that get water from the agency.

While flows in the Russian River are down because of the dry winter, Sonoma's situation is complicated by reduced flows into one of its reservoirs, Lake Mendocino, because of changed federal licensing requirements for a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. hydroelectric power plant upstream.

Notice the tortured syntax of the sentence that makes up the second paragraph of that quote. Cabanatuan doesn't answer the basic questions of who, when, and why. Every journalist should have these drilled into their head early and often in their education and professional life.

Inflow into Lake Mendocino is down? Why? Because "federal licensing requirements" for a PG&E hydroelectric plant have "changed." What are these licensing requirements, how have they changed, and why do they result in less water being available for Lake Mendocino and the SCWA? Who changed them? Why?

In the context of the most corrupt federal administration since the death of Warren G. Harding, journalists should be naturally skeptical of blandly turgid description of federal rules changes that affect people's lives and livelihoods like this. It appears that the sickness in American journalism isn't just evident in the chumminess of the Washington press corps, but at all levels of the news media.

Michael Cabanatuan should drop what he is doing and read Ron Fournier's memo to Associated Press staffers and stringers about the imperative for journalists to hold government spinmeisters accountable, dig deeper, ask the next question, and not settle for predigested talking points. Then he should go back and dig deeper into the story of this PG&E hydroelecric plant and its impact on water availability in Sonoma County.

With a Friend Like Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby Needs No Enemies

Can't Paul Wolfowitz do anything right?

Sidney Blumenthal in Salon describes the letter Wolfowitz wrote to US Distict Judge Reggie Walton as a character reference for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Walton was about to sentence Libby after the vice-presidential aide's conviction for perjury and obstruction of the investigation of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Wolfowitz's letter is a prosecutor's dream, providing evidence that Libby knew that Plame would be in danger if her cover was blown, and that blowing her cover would in fact be a crime, notwithstanding Libby's protestations of ignorance in the trial.

Quoth Blumenthal:

According to Wolfowitz's account, Libby was an indispensable man in ending the Cold War, winning the Gulf War and waging the "global war on terror." But he was also, Wolfowitz writes, of "service to individuals."

The leading example he offers is a stunning revelation, which does not reflect on Libby's charity, compassion and sympathy as Wolfowitz might imagine. The story about Libby "involves his effort to persuade a newspaper not to publish information that would have endangered the life of a covert CIA agent working overseas. Late into the evening, long after most others had left the matter to be dealt with the next day, Mr. Libby worked to collect the information that was needed to persuade the editor not to run the story."

Unintentionally and foolishly, Wolfowitz has hanged the guilty man again. Wolfowitz's defense of Libby is composed with the same care and skill that Wolfowitz brought to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, creating the opposite effects of what he desired. In this bizarre disclosure, rather than exculpating Libby, Wolfowitz incriminates him; for this story is damning evidence of Libby's state of mind — that he knew he was engaged in wrongdoing in leaking the identity of a CIA covert operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, to two reporters, Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine, and in vouchsafing it to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer for the purpose of his leaking it to the press, which he promptly did. ...

If Wolfowitz remembers the story, and it's credible, so Libby must recall it too. Therefore, he must also have known that his defense was based on false premises contrary to what he understood to be right and how he had acted in the past. He sent his attorneys to court to make a case he consciously knew was wrong from his own prior experience of having protected a national security asset from exposure. One can only wonder if Libby ever told his lawyers the story that Wolfowitz has recounted or whether he misled them, too.

In science fiction fandom, we call this sort of thing "Gerberization," after Les Gerber, a fan active in the 1950s and 60s:

In his early teens, in the pages of CRY OF THE NAMELESS, Les defended someone so ineptly and to such excess that "to Gerberize" became the fannish verb defining this practice while "to be Gerberized" meant having the practice performed on you.

Poor Scooter Libby: Paul Wolfowitz thoroughly Gerberized him. With a friend like that, who needs enemies?

(via Avedon Carol)

Back Online

The Spicejar server is now back online, after a planned seven-hour outage. This was the day that our contractor upgraded our electrical wiring as part of our kitchen remodel.

Poker Journalism, Fashion, and the Male Gaze

CarmenSinCity's coverage for PokerWorks of the Ladies No-Limit Hold'em Championship earlier this week at the World Series of Poker at first glance has little to do with that Aaron Hendrix's live reporting of the same event. But both writeups pissed me off, and when I think about it, they piss me off for similar reasons.

CarmenSinCity's piece is a fashion critique of the players. It's all about how women are supposed to look good. Her choices of who looks best are this anonymous woman with her tits resting on the rail, and Evelyn Ng, showing off her bare belly. Looking good, it turns out, means looking good for the Male Gaze.

Here she goes after bracelet-holding tournament pro Kathy Liebert;

PokerWorks

Okay Kathy, we get it (above). Everyone knows that you are a serious poker player and you don't need to flash any cleavage to get respect. Yes, we understand that respect is earned and looking good is definitely not a necessity at the poker table. However, would it hurt to slap on a little mascara, some blush and maybe an outfit that matched? Come on, lift that hat up a little and show us that pretty smile. You know you wanna! I'm pretty sure Change100's (link) offer for a makeover is still open. It'll be fun!! We can have a pajama party afterwards. Hey - that could be a whole new article for me!! Give it some thought and get back to us Kathy.

Note that Liebert is wearing what is pretty much the tournament poker pro's uniform: T-shirt and baseball cap, with music player, headphones, and sunglasses in front of her on the table.

It isn't respect that women earn flashing cleavage, either at the poker table or away from it. How much respect would it earn in a "Ladies'" tournament? Why bother with mascara? Most of the time her eyes are going to be hidden behind those wraparound sunglasses. Carmen has no idea at all how Liebert presents herself away from the table. Her recommendation of a makeover is simply out of line.

CarmenSinCity is using her journalistic powers of approval, disapproval, and humiliation to dragoon women who play poker into compliance with her standards of beauty, attractiveness, and presentation. The goal of fashion, apparently, is to enhance and facilitate male desire.

A person who would look at Carmen's pictures of Liebert or of Patti Beadles and think, "I'd do her...." would be eccentric; but it wouldn't be at all surprising to find a commenter on a popular blog or on the 2+2 forums saying such a thing about Evelyn Ng. or Ms. Tits-on-the-Rail.

Carmen's fashion coverage is not "I'd do her" journalism, but the two are different facets of the same thing.

(via Patti Beadles)

NBC Video Shows Bush Removing Own Watch

A video on YouTube from NBC shows Bush's disappearing watch "disappearing" into his own pocket.

This Reuters page has the original video plus some stills at the end showing Bush putting the watch in his shirt pocket. The accompanying text story, though, says, Photographs showed Bush, surrounded by five bodyguards, putting his hands behind his back so one of the bodyguards could remove his watch.

They still can't get their story straight.

Bush's Watch Stolen in Albanian Crowd?

George W. Bush, flanked by Secret Service agents, worked the crowd at a public appearance in Albania. Fifty seconds into this video from Albanian broadcast news, we can see the watch on Bush's left wrist. A few moments later, surrounded by a forest of hands, he glances downward. Moments after that, his left wrist is bare.

Here, on a Dutch-language page, is a version of the video that is crisper than the crappy one from YouTube, and it also draws helpful circles showing the watch on Bush's wrist before and the bare wrist after.

(YouTube video via Kieran Healy; Dutch video via Mark Frauenfelder)

Update: Bruce Schneier writes about both the apparent theft and the various denials that the Bush camp is making: Bush put his arm behind him so a bodyguard could remove it. The watch fell to the ground and was recovered by a bodyguard. Bush took it off himself.

Nothing is proven — it isn't even clear that the watch was stolen — but the experience of various members of the Bush Administration not being able to get its story straight is a familiar one.

Update #2: Another video has emerged showing Bush taking the watch off himself.

"I'd Do Her" Journalism in Poker

Patti Beadles has been a Net citizen for at least a decade and a half, so she is much more practiced at dealing with this sort of thing than, say, Alison Stokke.

But the fact that she has the right stuff to handle it is still no excuse for the sort of coverage Aaron Hendrix is providing at PokerPages.com of the Ladies' World Champion No-Limit Hold'em Event at the World Series of Poker:

My future wife #2

Sunday, 10th of June 2007 01:45 PM

(Aaron Hendrix reporting)

I'm sorry Shannon (who is playing by the way), but I have to break up with you. I've always wanted a woman with neon pink hair. If I got a strobe light it would be like psychedelic man.

That's a little less tacky than saying, "I'd hit that," but not by much.

Poker still has a Boy's Club atmosphere — check out the user icons on the 2+2 forums — but when you're representing poker to the world, you really shouldn't put that face forward, especially when covering the women's tournament.[1] Aaron Hendrix loses extra style points for threatening in public to dump his girlfriend for someone hotter (as Lynn Kendall just pointed out to me while I was talking this post out with her).

[1] Of course, the very concept of a segregated "Ladies" tournament is deeply problematic, but it's been a tradition of the WSOP almost from the beginning.

(via Keith Fichtmaier posting in Patti's LiveJournal)

Boing Boing Jumps the Shark

image credit: Wikipedia

It's official: Boing Boing, the blog that delivers 100% of the Recommended Daily Allowance of narcissism, has jumped the shark, with Mark Frauendfelder's blogging of what he calls the "world's cutest goatse picture." [Can anything that evokes the original goatse picture be truly considered SFW?]

This comes just two days after David Pescowitz said Friday of Skytyping, a familiar form of skywriting that's been around for years, "It may not be new, but I've never seen it before...." It's only a matter of time before him or one of his co-bloggers write excitedly something like "Botts' Dots warn drivers when they stray from their highway lane!" Or perhaps an enthusiastic pointer to models of a Steampunk submarine.

Soon after that, Boing Boing will collapse under the weight of its own hipness into a gravitational singularity from whose event horizon no intelligible signal will escape.

Why — and How — Blogging Matters

The Huffington Post published a speech on blogging given by Jay Rosen to the International Communication Association last month. Here is the money quote:

The most famous words ever written about freedom of the press are in the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law..." But the second most famous words come from the critic A.J. Liebling: "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one." Well, freedom of the press still belongs to those who own one, and blogging means practically anyone can own one. That is the Number One reason why blogs — and this discussion — matter.

With blogging, an awkward term, we designate a fairly beautiful thing: the extension to many more people of a free press franchise, the right to publish your thoughts to the world.

Wherever blogging spreads the dramas of free expression follow. A blog, you see, is a little First Amendment machine.

I've been thinking along these lines for years. I think it is worth adding that if the server that hosts your blog is owned by Google, News Corporation, Six Apart, or any other third party coming between you and your audience, the freedom of the press is theirs, not yours, and they extend it to you only by courtesy. That courtesy can be withdrawn at any time, as we have seen so often.

Harrah's (Partially) Un-Bars Richard Brodie

Harrah's management has relaxed its ban of Richard "Quiet Lion" Brodie from Harrah's properties, and Brodie can play in the World Series of Poker:

Thanks to the quiet diplomacy of WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and to many of my fellow poker players vouching for my character, Harrah’s has decided to allow me to play in the remainder of the WSOP and lifted the ban on my entering their properties. I’m still learning the details of why this was handled this way but it’s looking more and more like a big mistake. As usual everyone at Harrah’s was friendly and professional. I will post more details as they become available but I can now eat at the buffet without fear of arrest.

(via Spencer Sun)

Kitchen Remodel Provokes Memories

We're having our kitchen redone. And before the new floor, cabinets, counters, and appliances go in, the old ones have to be torn out.

I got a look at our kitchen after the first day the work crew got started in earnest. This is what I saw:

Kitchen Wreckage
Originally uploaded by abostick59.

Seeing this was intense; it gave me a powerful flashback:

Windows and Blinds
Originally uploaded by abostick59.

Still in Saigon Biloxi.

SF's Marina Safeway *Is* a Meet Market

The Safeway supermarket in San Francisco's Marina district has had a reputation as a cruising ground for heterosexual singles at least since the days when Armistead Maupin was writing Tales of the City.

Violet Blue decided to check it out. She and a companion trolled three different Safeways, in the Castro, Marina, and "South Beach" (the beach-less area south of Market Street, by China Basin and TPC Park, that was industrial grunge before developers turned it into a yuppie trap).

They struck out in the Castro and in "South Beach." But the Marina Safeway lived up to its reputation:

While not as packed as the Market Street store, this Safeway had the goods and the groceries. The candy looked sweeter. The produce (allegedly the place to meet and be met) all looked so … young and ripe. The bananas looked eager. People were dressed up. And they were eyeing my (ahem) basket. It was eerie how sexually charged the atmosphere was.

Suddenly, we weren't dorks with striped socks and way too many condoms and bananas and tubs of cupcake frosting in our shopping baskets — we were the hunted. When a sexy Asian boy found himself flirting with both Michelle and me, trapped between us in a hot moment of blushing and smiling, I knew the legends were true. People don't go there just to shop for dish soap. Score one for scoring (and Michelle) at the Marina Safeway.

The Marina Safeway is indeed the place to go if you're shopping for a hookup.

World Series of Poker Registration FUBAR

ADB Fold'em wanted to play in the first event at the World Series of Poker, the $500 Casino Employees tournament on Friday, June .. He did everything right: registered in advance on the WSOP Web site, sent in a cashier's check for entry fee payment, and got a confirmation. It ought to have been straightforward for him to get his seat assignment, sit down, and play. It wasn't:

Now I get in line. The line does not move. Many folks are just walking up to their buds and joining the line in that manner. After an hour, the line has moved maybe 20 feet. We are assured by a Harrah's employee that "We'll come get you if it gets close", sort of like the airlines do to get folks through security in time to make their flights. OK.

Another hour passes. The line has moved maybe another 40 feet. Several of us in line point out to a Harrah's employee that we have preregistered and we ask if there isn't some other place we should go, rather than in the main line. The employee then says "Let me go find out, I'll be right back." This from 3 or 4 different employees. None ever return. I am becoming concerned about the speed of things. I can see that the line, which is 3-4 abreast in the hallway becomes about 10-12 abreast as it makes the turn toward the tourney area. A co-worker from CSP comes by. Apparently he stood in line for 4 hours that morning and has his seat. He offers to go into the tourney area and try to find out if there are alternatives. He returns and says I should get in a line inside the tourney area. OK.

I get in the new line inside the area, jumping maybe 500 others. Now I can see the cashiers' windows as folks register. The lines into the windows are not single file, but about 2-3 abreast, so it's difficult to detect any line movement in this new line either. It appears to take about 5 minutes for each person at the cashier. It's announced that the event is being put back an hour to 6PM. OK.

My line doesn't move at all. There are at least 40 people in front of me headed for the the one cashier at the end of our line. Hundreds of others are also waiting in line. The loudspeaker announces that players should take their seats, the event is starting. A massive chorus of boos erupts from all of us still trying to get to the cashier. Despite help from a friend who works for Harrah's, who tried to get me on a faster line, I could see I was more than an hour away from getting a seat. At 6:45, having stood on line for 4 1/2 hours, I finally gave up and left. NOT OK.

The WSOP has begun. Are we having fun yet?

500 Years of the Same Nose in Western Art

With the sound turned down, this video could conceivably be taken as an indictment of artists through the ages for drawing and painting stereotypes of women's faces rather than what artists actually see. But the sonorous cello solo he chose for the soundtrack makes it pre-eminently clear that video artist eggman913 wants us to accept this as a demonstration of the Timeless Verities of Great Art.

Debbie Notkin and Laurie Toby Edison, writing together at Body Impolitic, have pulled some counter-examples off the Web after just a few minutes of googling. Not only do not all women, or even all beautiful women, look like this, but there are and always have been artists who represented a wider variety than eggman913 does.

The film-maker did a great job at two things: his (presumably “his,” the nickname is “eggman”) morphing from face to face is brilliantly done, and his ability to pick similar faces and similar sizes and positions to make the morphing work is superb.

But there’s one catch. By picking the faces that work most seamlessly together, he has neatly excised a huge variety of women painted by the same painters or schools that he selected, and left us with the impression that for the first three hundred and fifty years every woman in Western art was not only white, thin, and young, but had a long nose, dark eyes, and a demure downward gaze. In his last hundred and fifty years, only three-quarters of women fit that description.

In the comments, Lori S. writes, Yes, I think it’s fair to call the video “500 years of the same nose in Western Art.”

Repression and the Roots of Rape

Samuel R. Delany writes, in his essay "Pornography and Censorship" [1] of two sexual encounters: the first between on Harold Norse and W.H. Auden and the second between Delany and a musician friend:

In the early eighties, some years after Auden's death in 1973, in the gay press Harold Norse published a journal account of an afternoon's sex with Auden. I do not have the article to hand. But memory tells me that the encounter involved a pounce by the older poet; the coupling was brief, desperate, and — while, by Norse's description, the encounter was consensual in that he had known certainly that the pick-up was sexual — nevertheless the physical exchange between them verged on rape. The word that remains with me from the writer is that he found the experience "appalling."

My autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water (Plume/New American Library, 1988), gives an account of a similar sexual encounter that happened to me about 1960, which, to my mind, has many things in common with Norse's encounter with Auden. When i was eighteen, while we were at the piano bench together, a musician friend in his late thirties, with whom I was collaborating on an opera, suddenly, and clearly in a state of great distress, pounced on me and physically dragged me to his bed. So I know first-hand the sort of thing Norse was recounting.

Delany goes on to write:

In a population that basically feels that Sex is Bad — or at best a necessary evil — often sex will occur, whether within the bounds of marriage or outside it, only at those moments of extreme need, and then in a paroxysm of guilt, so that the sexual incident itself is likely to be infrequent, desperate, brutal, and brief — and satisfactory, if such a word can even be used for an act which, in their different ways, both "perpetrator" and "victim" probably come to dread — for only the most basal needs of the more aggressive partner.

Within such a populace, where this is the basic sexual model and where this is the sort of act arousal leads to, it's small wonder that situations of arousal in general — which include the pornographic — are thought by all concerned to be basically Bad Things.

The fear of pornography is summed up in the anti-sex-feminist's canard, "Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice." And Delany's anecdotal evidence certainly calls into question another feminist slogan, that "rape is violence, not sex." Some rape is sex as an instrument of violence; but by no means all.

Sex in this pouncing mode is certainly violent, or coercive at the very least. This approach to sex is, ultimately, that of many sexually motivated serial killers. [2]

But this mode of sexual behavior exists apart from pornography; and it flourishes and spreads itself wide under conditions of sexual repression. What's more, this mode of sexual behavior is itself a motivation for sexual repression. If all, or even most, sex is rape-like, then it is obviously something to be repressed!

And without anyone explicitly wanting or desiring a society where rape serves, among other things, as a tool of social control of women, the social control nevertheless is exerted. The individual rapist is not aiming to keep all women in a state of permanent terror; but every individual woman must always fear that every individual man is a potential rapist, and so the terror persists. And, as we have seen in the program of anti-sex-feminists, the omnipresent terror of rape is a motivation for campaigns of sexual repression.

(This mode of sexuality is rape, but it is certainly not the only sort of rape there is. Some rape explicitly is an overt tool of terror and social control, for example the systematic and widespread rape campaigns by soldiers in the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia or the ongoing civil wars in West Africa.)

When sex is shameful and rape victims are shamed, those victims are silenced -- and rape, by its taboo nature, becomes a problem we cannot address because we cannot talk about it sensibly. Contrariwise, in an atmosphere of sexual openness, we can talk openly of rape, and in doing so work more effectively against it. True sexual freedom includes the freedom to comfortably decline to participate in sexual activity every bit as much as it includes the freedom to participate. And as such, true sexual freedom is itself freedom from rape.

If the practice is rape, the theory that underlies the practice is sexual repression.

This is why irredentist sex-phobes like the Warriors for Innocence pose such a clear and present threat: despite their stated intent of protecting children from rape, their stated method is the wholesale suppression of information, including information in support of survivors of childhood rape. By imposing fearful silence, they mandate that victims' cries must go unheard. And this is one reason why the thoughtles capitulation of Six Apart's Barak Berkowitz to WFI is so deeply disturbing, and why his equally thoughtless backpedaling is ultimately unsatisfying.

Avedon Carol writes about the ways in which imagined or invented sex crime against children is used to punish society's identified villains when real crimes are unprovable or never occurred in the first place. Greg Costikyan warns of a law making its way through the New York state legislature that would brand as child molesters people who sell to minors video games with violent or sexual content. Garance Franke-Ruta is pushing an intolerable extension of the definition of children. And now WFI is using child sex hysteria as a cover to attack same-sex erotica.

I am terribly afraid of the re-emergence of a full-scale moral panic over child sexuality, with witch-hunts, show trials, and ruined lives. The anti-sex creeps are pulling hard on the Overton Window of sexuality. Those of us who live on the opposite fringe are in grave danger, and the people now in the middle may soon find themselves on the uncomfortable fringe.

Make no mistake: the world the anti-sex creeps are working for is a world of misery in which sexual trauma would be compounded and redoubled, with its victims smothered by a blanket of silence.

[1] Delany, Samuel R.: "Pornography and Censorship," in Shorter views: Queer Thoughts & the Politics of the Paraliterary, Wesleyan University Press, 1999.

[2] Ressler, Robert K., and Tom Shachtman: Whoever Fights Monsters, St. Martin's Press, 1992.

Harrah's Bars Richard 'Quiet Lion' Brodie from Its Properties

Harrah's Entertainment has barred high-stakes poker and video poker player Richard "Quiet Lion" Brodie from all its properties in California, Nevada, and Arizona. This effectively 86es Brodie from the World Series of Poker as well.

On May 10, Harrah’s sent certified letters to several high rollers informing them that their business was no longer wanted at Caesars Palace or any of the other Harrah’s properties in Nevada, California, and Arizona. I was one of them. I called the office of Tom Jenkins, regional vice president, and got a call back from Terry Byrnes, the VP of customer service. He told me I was being 86ed because they couldn't figure out how to make a profit off me.

What happened is that Brodie got lucky: He hit two royal flushes on a $300-per-pull full-pay Deuces Wild video poker machine at Caesar's Palace last April. He also hit quad deuces twice on the same machine.

If you play video poker, you know that these things happen from time to time. You also know that you can go on long dry spells between hot streaks like this. Brodie adds:

I hit four huge royal flushes in the last year at three of the Las Vegas Harrah’s properties. Not surprisingly, I’m ahead, although I’ve put 80% of it back. This seems to rub them the wrong way. But I have trouble imagining the thought process that would cause someone to decide that kicking out one of your most loyal customers is an appropriate solution to the problem of him having extremely good luck. If they think the machines are too loose, make them tighter. If they think they are giving me too much in comps, give less. They control every aspect of the game. Except luck. And kicking out players who have been lucky makes about as much sense as banning people from playing the lottery because they win it.

Reactions to lucky streaks in video poker are not unique to Harrah's, but the usual response is to cut down on the promotional offers to players who aren't losing as much as they hoped. Even that is potentially unsound business: lucky players get unlucky and you want them to be at your place when that happens.

If it weren’t for the WSOP, I’d laugh about this rather than cry. I don’t think they’re trying to punish me, I just think they don’t understand their business and are compounding one costly mistake – offering way too much in comps and incentives to video-poker players – with another.

Yes, that's right: Brodie is barred from all Harrah's properties, not just the casino floors; and Harrah's hosts the World Series of Poker. Brodie is being unjustly punished for honest play in the face of bad judgment by Harrah's casino hosts. It doesn't even compare to counting cards in blackjack!.

When I named Brodie the most hated player in poker, I was joking. He simply doesn't deserve this. Harrah's management is being idiotic. They certainly don't need bad publicity from dumb moves like this when the WSOP is off to such a rocky start.

(via Spencer Sun)

Jim Geary's Monopoly Game for Poker Players

Jim Geary recasts the Monopoly game board for poker players:

Go	= Day Job Paycheck, skim $200 for poker
Mediterranean Avenue	= Paul Phillips
Community Chest	= Get Layne another Jack and Coke, receive $25 toke for services
Baltic Avenue	= Barbara Enright
Income Tax	= Neteller takes 10% of your bankroll
Reading Railroad	= Puggy
Oriental Avenue	= Phil Hellmuth, Jr
Chance	= Pay Poor Tax: Toke Floorman $15
Vermont Avenue	= Amir Vehidi
Connecticut Avenue	= Mensky
Jail (just visiting)	= visiting Matusow

Etc. ...

Read the whole thing.

Cards at WSOP Provoke Players' Revolt

photo credit: PokerWorks

Poker Players at the World Series of Poker are extremely dissatisfied with the decks of cards that were especially commissioned for the tournament series.

The United States Playing Card Co. produced the special decks for Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., which hosts the WSOP at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The decks feature large rank indices without suit pips in the opposite corners to traditional card designs, and "Poker Peek" indices in the traditional corners. Suit pips on the face of the card are reduced in size, making it difficult for players to distinguish between suits of the same color.

PokerWorks quoted 2005 World Champion Greg Raymer as saying "There is no way any poker player has played with these cards before today." Players during the first event of the weeks-long tournament series chanted, "New cards! New cards!" An unnamed Harrah's executive claimed that players in the high-stakes cash games refused to play with the new card designs.

photo credit: PokerWorks

Harrah's and U.S. Playing Card executives are scrambling to replace the unsatisfactory decks. A truck with 300 replacement decks is on its way to the Rio. Supposedly, USPC was to produce a total of 18,000 decks of cards for delivery to Harrah's over the course of the WSOP. Aborting production of the newly designed cards cannot be coming cheap.

The WSOP was already opening under a cloud due to the sudden departure of tournament director Robert Daily two weeks ago. It remains to be seen whether Harrah's staffers remaining can overcome the challenges they are facing and run a successful tournament series. The success of the WSOP is the success of poker, and so poker enthusiasts are hoping the WSOP is a success.

(via Spencer Sun)

Hate Group that Triggered LiveJournal's Moral Panic Has Ties to Terrorist Organizations

Warriors for Innocence, the group that goaded Six Apart managment into a moral panic over LiveJournal, indiscriminately canceling user accounts, turns out to be a Dominionist hate group with ties to Joel's Army and other Christian Patriot terrorists such as Eric Rudolph.

Dear Barak Berkowitz: Hate groups like Warriors for Innocence are explicitly barred by LiveJournal terms of service. Why are you letting them dictate LiveJournal policy to Six Apart? Apology aside, what action are you taking to prevent something like this from happening again?

(via Zillah975)