Nite Mite

I was going to bed a couple nights ago when I spied this beauty suspended in my house’s foyer. An hour-long photo session ensued. Here are the best four. Photos copyright Gus Wezerek:

A Personal Case for Gay Blood Donation

Blood. It courses through 60,000 miles of my ventricles in less than a minute. It supplies vital oxygen from the tip of my big toe to the swirl of hair on my head. It saves lives.

Well, at least yours does.

Last month, as a three-day series of campus blood drives came to a close, a small group of Northwestern students protested the Food and Drug Administration’s policy that prevents sexually-active gay men from giving blood.

The students were not protesting the blood drives. Rather, they actively encouraged people to donate. But they were also raising awareness about an issue that has bothered me since I came out in high school and first confronted that check box, biding it’s time one-third of the way down on the right hand side of the self-deferral questionnaire, asking if I was a man who had ever had sex with a man (MSM) since 1977.

Letter to the Liberal Arts Drifter

Consider: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/opinion/26brooks.html

Supposing Brooks is right, and I think there is something to be said for his conceit (not hypothesis, for op-edding is an art, not a science), let his conclusion bear consequence on your choice between economics and psychology, anthropology and sociology, American studies and what-have-you. The burden of these science/theory, liberal arts humanities is to explain human behavior. Psychology seems to be moving toward the science (away from psychoanalysis and toward CAT-scan diagnoses), political science toward psychology (the rise of constructivism and identity politics), and economics toward political science and psychology. If you can parse that sentence, models are under assault and a focus on the individual case studies — real, academic anecdotes in a world of prepackaged, advertorial narratives — advances into the void.

Journalism is the realest of the real. It starts with the people and their stories every time. Honest journalism avoids the temptation to apply theory — some crude, overarching narrative, perhaps even relegated to the kicker sentence — to conflictual accounts. Honest journalism describes reality, identifying trends where they exist but letting the players speak for themselves where they don’t. Journalism is not beholden to the same absurd quest for clarity and definition that the other “sciences” demand. But liberal arts colleges are playgrounds, inherently selfish, focused on developing and enlightening you. For another day are the stories of others if they don’t fit into some hypothesis of yours that will get published (or at the very least merit an A-).

Let's not get too serious. Us journalists have a tendency to self-inflate. But even Anderson Cooper's buffoonery is undeniably visible, accessible and donation-inspiring. Photo licensed under Creative Commons.

If you’re looking for answers, maybe you should consider whatever law and society bullshit major your school offers. At least then you can masturbate in a world where the rules are written down, even if their interpretation is subjective. That, or business.

The Last of the Aspies

Brian King says he is blessed with Asperger’s syndrome. His wife and three sons are also on the autistic spectrum. He titled his first book “I’m an Aspie.” A licensed clinical social worker, King is an ambassador, educator and agent of goodwill between the Aspie and neurotypical communities. He embraces the label.

That label may no longer exist come May 2013, when the American Psychiatric Association is set to publish the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In February, the APA released the first draft of proposed changes to the manual. Among the recommendations the DSM-5 Task Force made was to create a broad “autistic spectrum disorders” diagnosis that would subsume Asperger’s syndrome, autistic disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and the nebulous PDD-NOS, pervasive developmental disorder (not otherwise specified).

“Scientifically, there really is no indication that [Asperger’s syndrome] is a separate disorder,” said Susan Mayes, a psychiatry professor at the Penn State College of Medicine.

Both Asperger’s syndrome and autism are developmental disorders, typically manifesting in early childhood, characterized by deficiencies in social interaction and restricted, repetitive behavior patterns or interests. Autism spectrum disorders affect about 1 in 110 children in some areas of the U.S., according to a 2006 survey conducted by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network.

In the DSM-IV, Asperger’s syndrome differs from autistic disorder in that it does not require a “clinically significant” delay in language development. Because a delay in language development is not necessary for an autistic disorder diagnosis, however, and little else distinguishes the two in theory, Mayes said clinicians have applied the terms loosely and with confusion.

“If they eliminate Asperger’s, all they’ve done is reshuffled the deck,” said Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University who edited the DSM-IV.

Obama Rallies for Final Health Care Push

Photo by Gus Wezerek

“I’m not with the Party of ‘No,’” said homemaker Kathy Smith, “I’m with the Party of ‘Hell No.” Outside the Patriot Center at George Mason University, Smith stood tawny under a Virginia sun and her yellow protest sign that said “Oba-Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward.’”

“Are you against Obama’s health care plan?” one woman asked Smith.

“I’m against the government takeover of health care,” Smith said.

“You are wrong,” the woman said, “It’s about life. It’s about beauty.”

“I’m not here to argue,” said Smith, and the woman turned on her high heels, clicking down the sidewalk into the stream of students leaving President Obama’s Friday rally to pass the health care reform bills the House will bring to a vote on Sunday.

Smith had stayed outside for the event. “You couldn’t pay me to see him speak,” she said.

The president delivered what basically amounted to a stump speech for the legislation, casting it as a moral and economic imperative. “Not only can we afford to do this, we can’t afford not to do this,” Obama said.

The $940 billion measure will provide coverage to 32 million people now uninsured, as well as barring insurance companies from discriminating against those with preexisting conditions. It will also establish a marketplace for small-business and self-employed individuals to pool together and buy coverage.

For the most part, the crowd was riveted to an unjacketed Obama, pointing and swaying at the lectern. “And by the way, all the young people here today, starting this year, if you don’t have insurance you will be able to stay on your parent’s plan,” the president said, bringing the crowd to its feet.

REDIVIVUS!

I’ve been busy this quarter. Blogger’s lament. But things are winding down so Better than Sex is gearing up for Spring Break.

Here are some of the articles I’ve written in the past few months. In between each is a teaser image I’ve worked on for NorthbyNorthwestern.com, where I am now the Graphics and Design Editor.

Basia Bulat comes to Chicago

http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2010/02/69977/basia-bulat-comes-to-chicago/

I had the opportunity to interview Basia a a week or two ago. She was very sweet. The way she sang… all I could think of was how lucky her children would be to have a mom so cool.

First Five Hours: BioShock 2

http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2010/02/68800/first-five-hours-bioshock-2/

This is the new blog I started for NBN. I reviewed BioShock 2. Hopefully I’ll have time over break to review FFXIII or Mass Effect 2, although the latter is certainly no longer newsworthy.

Profile: The Drawing Room at Le Passage

http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2010/02/67963/the-drawing-room-at-le-passage/

This…I’m not super proud of this piece. I’m putting it up because it’s good, and I spent time on it. But in the end, it felt to puffy. And what’s up with the weird commenter at the end?

Worst Campaign Ads

http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2010/02/67396/who-says-politics-cant-be-funny/

Quick, funny project. Worth watching.

Obama gets “Lost”

http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2010/01/64898/what-happens-if-the-president-and-the-makers-of-lost-hold-a-meeting/

Remember “Lost” fans feared Obama would schedule his State of the Union Address for Feb. 2? In a perfect world, the two wouldn’t have been mutually exclusive.

So that’s it, folks. I’ve been delinquent, but in the best way possible. I’ll keep posting for the next few weeks until the next quarter begins. Then, who knows? But for now, expect a piece within the day on the move to let gays donate blood.

Fall ’09 Northwestern Essays

The quarter's palimpsest.

Sorry about not posting in so long. I just finished finals.
To make up for my negligence, like an absent father come Christmastime, I’m going to shower Better than Sex with presents.
My first series will be to post some select papers, with previews and full document downloads, from my previous quarter at Northwestern. Maybe you’ll find them interesting. I’m certainly proud of them. More importantly, maybe you’re writing on a similar topic (there are only so many questions professors know how to ask) and you’ll find them useful.

1. Letter from Gui de Chauliac to Pope Clement VI, 1348, advising him on the Black Death - GBL_HLTH 390

Yet a bounty of food does not mean that all will eat. Roads lined with bodies are guarded, closed to trade.[1] Despair pits husband against wife, brother against brother.[2] Vagrants break into houses and drink themselves away from this mortal plane.[3] The same moral turpitude has set in among the serfs, who demand exorbitant rates for their labor and pay no heed to the King’s law.[4]

Download: Plague Letter to the Pope, 4pp. with citations

2. The Case Against Smoking Bans in Bars, written from bar owner’s perspective – GBL_HLTH 390

It’s our right to kill ourselves, and the government shouldn’t limit where we do it. On a more, uh, legalistic level, I own the air inside my pub. Private property – there’s no “tragedy of the Commons” here. If demand existed for non-smoking bars, the market would have supplied some. As for my employees, first, they could work somewhere else if they didn’t like it here, and second, I pay them good money to make up for any negative ecologic externalities. Econ 101, you know?

Download: The Case Against Smoking Bans in Bars, 9pp. with citations

3. Comparison of Urban Climate Action Plans – ENVR_POL 394

The authors plan for a 641,000 MtCO₂e reduction from an increase in the use of Clean Air Vehicles. For this action item, they assume an increase in CAFE standards of 5 mpg for automobiles and light trucks combined.[1] To date, this increase has not occurred, though the standards did receive an overhaul in 2007. The item also assumes a 2% increase in the 2004 19.82 average mpg for light duty automobiles, which would equate to 20.22 mpg. No timeframe is given. The EPA puts the 2008 value at 20.8,[2] so depending on the assumed timeframe for the 2% reduction, the authors may have lowballed with a 2% coefficient.

Download: Comparison of Urban Climate Action Plans, 12pp. with citations, sidebars, appendix

4. The Possibility and Physiognomy of a World Revolution – SOC 203

The Russian Revolution showed the possibility of extra-European working class empowerment. Like dandelion seeds on the winds of change, the revolutionary germ landed in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Suffrage sprouted decolonization, welfare sprouted economic development and citizenship sprouted equality and dignity for all.

Download: The Possibility and Physiognomy of a World Revolution, 6pp. with internal citations (References by authors: Hobsbawm – The Age of Revolutions, Sanderson – Revolutions: A Worldwide Introduction to Political and Social Change, Wallerstein – Utopistics (READ THIS BOOK), Collins – as of yet unpublished essay, Derluguian – Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus)

“Scozzafava…GRYFFINDOR!” says the RNC’s Proposed Sorting Hat

To receive funding from the Republican National Committee, IN National Committeeman Jim Bopp and nine other sponsors propose candidates must adhere to at least eight out of 10 Republican platform points , according to the National Journal’s Hotline On Call blog. The article quotes Bopp saying he wants to prevent funding another back-double-backstabber such as then-Assemb. Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd District.

Scozzafava, a Republican, backed out of this year’s special congressional race at the last moment under pressure from party leaders who believed she was stealing votes from the other, more right-wing Conservative Party Candidate, Doug Hoffman. Slighted, Scozzafava threw her support behind the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, who ended up winning the election.

In it’s current wording, the resolution reads as follows:

Resurget Cineribus

By Gus Wezerek and Andy Hobaugh

It’s a Saturday night in Detroit. Outside, a single car rolls down one of Woodward Avenue’s six lanes.

“Where are you from? Chicago?” asks Patrick Beal, a young entrepreneur attending Roosevelt’s Fall 2009 Midwest Policy Conference. “This is our Michigan Avenue.”

Here, along the city’s backbone, about fifty students from across the Great Plains came to discuss the “brain drain” and chronic unemployment imperiling Midwest cities such as Detroit, Gary and Cleveland.

Follow the gang-riddled road. Woodward Avenue in better days.

Woodward Avenue unravels northwest, a spectrum manifest of the city’s best and worst. Beginning at the docks located on the Detroit River connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie, Woodward terminates more than 21 miles later in Oakland County, one of the nation’s wealthiest provinces.

Along the way, a series of shuttered shops abut a smattering of skyscrapers. Further on, Woodward Avenue forms the western border of the North End, a neighborhood once home to Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross. Now, more than one out of three addresses there are unoccupied, a vacancy rate comparable to Detroit’s unemployment. The few inhabited houses have holes, and bullets punctuate young lives.

Shut in and buttoned up in business casual blazers, we barely grasped the unemployment, illiteracy and blight afflicting a city in which not one national chain operates a grocery store (a few liquor stores recently began selling fresh vegetables). Even so, the emptiness and neglect unnerved like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

Detroit sprawls out over 138 sq. miles, more than the footprint of Boston, San Francisco and New York combined. Yet the city’s population has shrunk by more than half since the 1950s. Newly elected Mayor Dave Bing has the unenviable task of reining commerce in, concentrating and growing the few businesses left.

Jonah Goldberg, a.k.a. Climate Criminal

Jonah Goldberg wants you to keep your dog. And your cat. And your Hummer.

In an op-ed for The National Review Wednesday, Goldberg doesn’t deny climate change or its effects outright. Instead, he whimpers (like Fido) it’s too difficult to curb our global emissions, so we shouldn’t even bother trying:

The push in Congress for a huge new carbon tax is a dangerous farce. Yes, CO₂ levels and global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution, and that’s something to take seriously. But the political reality is that truly meaningful global restrictions on CO₂ emissions in the near future simply will not happen, and pretending otherwise is a waste of time, money, and political capital.

Goldberg reminds me of the Senators who argued against a public option not on fiscal or ideological grounds, but because it might prevent passage of a health care bill. Teleological and dumb.

A meeting is in order between Goldberg and the president of the Maldives, much of whose 300,000 residents’ homes will be underwater by the end of the century if emissions continue to rise unchecked. The people on this tiny Asian island, with a per capita GDP more than 8 times less than the United States’, have committed to becoming carbon neutral by within a decade. Jonah Goldberg, Jewish, I assume, is no doubt familiar with the phrase “existential threat.”

Later, Goldberg again confuses “can’t” with “don’t want to.”

We cannot afford to end the use of carbon-based energy, so a better strategy is to develop remedies for the bad side effects of carbon use.

In an April speech at a UN-backed conference, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said his country could build 6 foot high walls around the island, but such a measure would cost $6 billion, money the nation doesn’t have. It seems the Maldives can’t afford not to end the use of carbon-based energy.

Goldberg’s also takes a quick trip across the Atlantic in a tricky attempt to diminish the average temperature increase by 2100 if we continue on a “business as usual” path.

This is after more than a decade of near-relentless fearmongering — er, sorry, “education” — from Al Gore, academia, and Hollywood. They can’t persuade the American people to spend trillions for less than a degree Celsius of cooling a century from now.

“Less than a degree Celsius”? Quick, raise your hand if you can tell me how many degrees Fahrenheit fit into one degree Celsius?

The answer is 1.8, but to niggle would miss the forest for the trees. M.I.T. released a report earlier this year predicting a 10-12 degree Fahrenheit BAU mean rise in temperature from 1990-2100. Goldberg is either cherry picking the facts (who is “we”? Some areas will experience cooling, while others will see a rises much higher than 10-12 degrees) or he’s found a climate model I have never encountered.

So what’s the answer to climate change, according to Goldberg?

Is the atmosphere getting too hot? Cool it down by reflecting away more sunlight. The ocean’s getting too acidic? Give it some antacid.

Antacid, hmm? Goldberg – America’s preeminent Gaia theorist.

Relying on geoengineering to save our children, not to mention the tens of millions in Bangladesh who will become environmental refugees if sea levels rise just one meter, is a fool’s gambit. Goldberg admits measures such as injecting aerosol particles into the the stratosphere aren’t ready yet.

Geoengineering could deplete ozone levels, create droughts, decrease available sun and thus solar energy, and cause unpredictable temperature spikes in unintended areas, according to a 2008 report by Rutgers University meteorologist Adam Robock. Silver bullets are rare. We would be wise to fire our available ammunition before we drop our weapons and resort to what may be a wild goose chase.

May I suggest we reserve one of those bullets for Goldberg’s carbon munching, secondary GHG emitting bow-wowser?

Burn Sanderson of "Old Yeller," NOT speaking about Jonah Goldberg: "You can't hardly tell at first, not till they get to the point of slobbering and staggering around....You know they'll run if you give 'em the chance. But when one don't run, or maybe makes fight at you, why, you shoot him and shoot him quick. After he's bitten you, it's too late."

What? Rush Limbaugh wants NYT environment writer Andy Revkin dead!