Fitful Murmurs

I went to the San Francisco Zoo a couple weeks ago.  One of the nice things about going to the zoo on a weekday in January is that there aren’t too many people about, and the animals engage in behavior that they might otherwise be too riled up or embarrassed to exhibit.  Case in point:  I wandered up to the lion-tailed macaque exhibit just in time to see the little monkey masturbate furiously, ejaculate (with a disconcertingly human-like expression on his face), scoop the evidence up from the wooden plank on which he was lounging, and consume it.

This may have been regular behavior for the macaque, but as a frequent visitor to the zoo, I can confirm it is a rather unique thing to witness and the experience has affected me accordingly.  Specifically, it has led to a sort of furtive, bemused interest in animal sexuality, and the ways in which it differs from our own.  (Not that the above behavior is entirely out of the question for human beings.)

All of which is a roundabout way of explaining how, last night, I found myself quietly absorbed in “Sperm Competition And The Function Of Masturbation in Japanese Macaques”, a dissertation by a researcher for the University of Munich named Ruth Thomsen.

Thomsen spent the better part of two years hiding in the forests of Yakushima Island, stealing ejaculatory fluid from macaques before they had a chance to eat it.  (This behavior is apparently pretty universal – among macaques, not researchers.)  The thesis undoubtedly had a long and embarrassing road to publication, but Thomsen’s findings are interesting – and have, dare I say, important implications on the subject of human masturbation.

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I can’t get over what a great photo of William Howard Taft this is.  First of all, the man’s sense of style is unimpeachable.  The three-piece suit, the mustache, the pocket watch – it all bespeaks a man who takes his clothing seriously, and the impact is accordingly impressive.

I also like it because, let’s be honest, it’s easy for  stereotypically attractive people to look good in nice clothing.  But most people aren’t like that.  Most people have bodies that – reasonably or not – they’re somewhat uncomfortable with, bodies that bulge in places we’d rather them not, and most people make clothing choices aimed toward hiding those areas of our bodies that fail to meet the unattainable ideal.

Taft’s not doing that.  Here you have a man whose girth is practically his defining feature – a man of such corpulence that he once got stuck in the White House bathtub – and his outfit not only accentuates his size but actually makes it imposing.  A century-old dead President may seem a strange person to turn to for this sort of thing, but this photo is a little bit inspirational – everything about it, from the outfit to the glint of pride in his eye, speaks to Taft’s self-confidence.

This is timely because Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently released a plan to offer increased employee discounts to those employees with lower BMIs.  Considering that a) the BMI is a notoriously unreliable way to measure someone’s health and b) making health food more expensive for people is unlikely to make them healthier, what this amounts to is a punitive measure against the company’s overweight employees – who have just been told by their own company that their bodies are unacceptable.  There’s an incredible amount of bigotry, in every aspect of American life, toward the overweight; pictures like this are a reminder that, in minor ways, it can be subverted.

(Hat tip: Put This On)

Occasionally I write critical things on this site, and because of Google Alerts or a similar system my criticism occasionally makes its way to the organization in question.  On a few occasions, I’ve even gotten emails or comments from PR people.  So, to the people of the Alaskan Brewing Company: I’m sure you’re all nice, competent men and women, and I bear you no ill will.  Honestly.

That being said, your Amber Ale is terrible.  The flavor mix is all wrong: the beer comes on too sweet, sours as it sits in your mouth, and has a weirdly artificial aftertaste, like plastic or rubber.  It’s reasonably light, and normally I’d say that you could down four or five of these without too much trouble, but the flavor is so cloying that I had trouble making it through even a single bottle.  And with food?  Forget it.

The trouble here may be that this is actually an altbier, an old German brewing style that that uses longer, colder brewing cycles to get a beer that’s somewhere between a lager and an ale.  A good altbier is smooth and complex, with the stronger hop flavor of an ale but the sourness of a wheatier lager.  It’s clear that’s what the folks in Alaska are shooting for, but here the flavors clash badly, and the result is a beer that isn’t as appealing as its components – given the chance, I’d absolutely take both a hoppier beer (like an IPA) or a sweeter beer (like a Weizenbock) over a mess like this.

I haven’t written much about politics here recently – both because I felt I wasn’t adding much to the conversation, and because I never blog quite fast enough to keep up with the story.  It’s possible that by the time a lot of you read this, the situation will have resolved itself one way or the other; at this point, it’s tough to make predictions.

The election of Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat wasn’t, in and of itself, a great setback.  But what was utterly demoralizing was the craven, cowardly, and chaotic way that Democrats on the Hill responded.  Suddenly, the entire fate of health-care reform seemed doomed.  Barney Frank and a number of liberal Congressmen announced they couldn’t support passing the Senate’s version of the bill.  And health-care reform – which is, at this very moment, one single fucking roll-call vote away from passage - seemed more and more to be DOA.

It was a disgusting performance.  I’ve been following politics closely for nearly a decade, and this is the most despondent – the most furious – the most ashamed I have ever felt.  I voted for these people.  I worked to put them there.  And they have done worse than fail – they’ve run away before having the chance to fail.

So: I’m asking all of you, if you support the cause of health-care reform at all, then call your Congressman.  Use a phone, not email, if you want them to actually listen.  Call during business hours – it’s 3:30 on the West Coast, but I only got an answering machine in Mike Thompson’s office.  The House switchboard number is (202) 224-3121, but you can also just go to your Congressman’s website and find the number for their DC office.

Call them and tell them: pass the Senate’s version of the bill.  Tell them: this is your change to save millions of lives, to elevate tens of millions of people from suffering.

Tell them: this is the single greatest liberal cause of the last century, and to not pass it is to commit mass political suicide.  Tell them: you already voted for the thing! And you will get attacked for the vote, regardless of whether it passes.

Tell them: If you walk away from this, I won’t give a single vote or dollar or hour of my time to help any Democratic candidate in 2010 or 2012.  I won’t vote for people who won’t fight for me.  I won’t vote for cowards.

Tell them: pass the damn bill.

Everyone knew it was coming: the New York Times is going to start charging customers to read online content.

Starting in early 2011, visitors toNYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

First, I think this is a smart way to handle the subscription model.  It ensures that people can still link to Times articles without the fear that everybody will get stuck on the wrong side of the pay wall.  And if the Times can hit that number right, and set the cut-off such that it forces only truly regular readers to pay, it just might work.

Beyond that, this is probably a good move for the Times and a bad move for the newspaper world in the long-term.  I like the New York Times.  Their reporting is excellent.  They have correspondents all over the world and run stories on subjects other newspapers don’t.  Their opinion writers are (for the most part) reasonably intelligent.  I understand the Times is having financial trouble, and as a regular consumer of their product, I would absolutely pay for content.

However: what I would not pay for is the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Or, the NYT, the WP, and the Boston Globe.  Nor would I pay for the Cincinnati Enquirer or the New Orleans Times-Picayune, as much as I love how the latter rolls off the tongue.  Why would I?  On national and international issues, their reporting is identical.  The truth is, most news is redundant, and when it comes to larger issues, newspapers can no longer depend on their communities for subscriptions.  They certainly can’t compete with the NYT.

What I think we’ll see, then, is that local papers – even in big cities – will focus more and more on reporting truly local news.  A few large papers – I’d guess the Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times – will more and more become the go-to sources for nationwide and international news.  This isn’t entirely a bad thing – in many ways, it’s more logical – but it does consolidate a lot of power into a few hands, and that, frankly, makes me nervous.