Pterodactyl has a really thoughtful post on Sweet Valley High, her decision to choose male priorities over female ones, and male status-hunting:

Although I’m far ahead of my peer group in what may be termed “worldly resource competition” matters (professional/business etc), I’m far behind in the social realm – particularly the girly stuff, dating and so on. You may have picked up on some of that, what with my (partly tongue-in-cheek) references to My Little Pony, 80s cartoons etc. It’s nostalgic escapism from a high-pressure present, into a time of wonder and possibility (relatively speaking).
A Study of Male Hypergamy amongst the Manosphere, e.g. Vox Day

At some point in my life (around late elementary school/early junior-high age), I decided to be a man. No, this isn’t about the true confessions of a K.D. Lang fan (I’m straight), nor tranniness, nor some sort of gender confusion – to use a favorite feminii (lefty feminist) buzzword, I’m “cis gender”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What I mean is, I decided to pursue what has traditionally, or stereotypically, been viewed as a male path: admitting to oneself that one is dissatisfied with one’s economic position in life (rather than trying to delude oneself otherwise, and girlishly preening in one’s current place), and being aggressive in going for self-improvement through a single-minded pursuit of worldly resource competition endeavors. In practice, such a single-minded and aggressive pursuit involves what some may view as a male mentality (relatively unconcerned with popularity, relationships etc) and male lifestyle (femininity is time-consuming, and after some brief late-elementary school forays at The Limited and Claire’s, around the early junior-high timeframe, I transitioned to full-on tomboy mode –I still don’t have any real knowledge or experience in fashion, or applying makeup).

There are a lot of separate points that she makes and each one of them could be the subject of a different post. But there were two aspects that I found most interesting. Choosing masculinity, in a sense, and the making of a choice at all (not between masculinity or femininity, but of choosing paths in general).

I suspect that the author and my wife would get along quite well if they ever met, because a lot of what I read echos some of the early things I learned about Clancy. There were a number of reasons that Clancy and her two very independent sisters chose a different path. And to some extent, the sisters’ stories are different from one another. But for Clancy and her younger sister Ellie, it seems that there was a cycle of antipathy between them and their surroundings. It’s difficult to know whether Clancy and Ellie spurned feminine society first and society responded accordingly or whether it was the other way around. But that, combined with an uneven relationship with their father and their father’s uneven relationship with their mother (all since rectified), created a doctor and a lawyer who were not going to rely on any man and were not going to buy into a culture that demanded that they do.

Leaving aside feminine culture specifically for a moment, to some extent there are choices that we all make. Or that we fail to make. It’s something that I have thought about regarding myself as I look back at K-12 and (to a lesser extent) beyond. My decision to reject my high school’s culture, for example. It can be made to sound high-minded and “independent”, but it can also be made to sound petty and counterproductive. And whichever it was, it was also incomplete. I look back and wish that I had actually participated in extra-curriculars and the like, but even at the time there was some resentment for what it cost me and the knowledge that it was a reactive, rather than proactive, choice. For which I am largely grateful. A proactive rejection would have been very different, and given the circumstances, more destructive.

My fourth novel deals with these sorts of subjects. A narrator who wanted to choose a “different path” than the vapidity he saw around him, but who didn’t really have a roadmap to where he wanted to go. Said character, CB, is not really based on myself other than through some basic biographical detail. A couple other characters, one in the novel and one I am going to insert at the next revision, hit closer to home as far as that goes and as far as the Sweet Valley post goes.

One of them, BC, grew up in what can be described as a “high prole” family. His father was a master machinist. But due to some health problems with his mother, they were always financially struggling, so achieving financial independence became his primary objective. Extremely smart, he was able to get a full-ride to college. But coming from a family where college is not the norm, he didn’t have any solid idea of what do to when he got there except study hard (but not making a particularly good choice in what to study, choosing physics over something more vocational). Lacking Ptero’s sense of direction, even moderately good luck career-wise, and the social training of the “middle class”, he found himself largely out of his element when it came to trying to find someone to settle down with.

The other, RK, grew up in an environment much more similar to my own but made completely different choices than I did. He made the decision to really try to buy in at the high school level and then beyond. Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter because whatever he had, someone else had more. He could do the exact same things and jump through the exact same hoops as others, but he never really measured up with those to whom such superficial and conformist behavior came naturally. He had to read in books what others knew immediately. And his response to every failure was simply to try harder. And there’s nothing the hierarchy scorns as much as someone who reeks of effort.

On the other hand, neither character is particularly upset with the decisions that they made (even if both, twenty years down the line, wonder about the ferocity with which they made them). In a sense, it goes down to who they are. One who believes that the world owes you nothing and that there’s no point in asking. The other who believes that the world is out there for it if you can just figure out how to navigate the harsh terrain. Neither are exactly right and the stories of both involve them coming to terms with this.

Then there’s me, who really chose neither path. Or rather, who couldn’t stick with a choice. I remember a while back reading about a study that those who have a guiding principle, with which they make choices consistently, tend to do better than those who approach each subject as it comes. Professionally, I’m a systems guy and this sort of thing always appealed to me. But like with RK and BC, it seems that every path I deliberately chose failed me one way or another. Since neither path is exactly right or wrong for everybody, I find myself walking some other path. I find myself uncertain of where it will go, sometimes dissatisfied with it, and yet also feeling that it is the only path I can walk. At least for the time being.

This post is not a review and contains no spoilers. It does touch on the abortion issue, for which I ask that commenters tread lightly with respect towards people with differing views.

Last week I listened to the audiobook for Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. Clancy read and highly recommended the book and the plot actually tied into a hypothetical I was thinking may put into a creative project some day. So I took a break from Tom Clancy and detoured to Picoult. Though there’s something about Picoult’s writing I find a little offputting – I can’t put my finger on exactly what – the book itself was excellent, with the plot outstripping any of Picoult’s expressive peculiarities.

The story revolves primarily around the Fitzgerald family and two sisters within it. Older sister Kate was diagnosed with leukemia when she was three or so. Her parents, Brian and Sara, then had another daughter, Anna, by way of science so that they would have a donor to save Kate’s life. It was initially successful, but over time more and more became required of Anna to keep her sister alive. The novel starts with her at age 13 (Kate is 16) with her parents gearing up to volunteer her kidney for a transplant to Kate. For Anna, who has given blood, bone marrow, and more for her entire life, this is the last straw. She hires a lawyer so that she can be medically emancipated and make her own medical decisions.

The novel is more of a problematic than anything. By and large, none of the characters are completely good and none are evil. Most, with the exception of the sisters’ brother Jessy, are decent people. But the story involves complicated decisions. I came to my conclusion as to what should happen pretty early on. As the story progressed, though, my mind moved on to a more fundamental question: how do you determine the tradeoff between the quality of life of the many versus protecting the life of someone that has been dying almost since they were born. Is it better for there to be four satisfying lives or five dissatisfying ones?

The Fitzgeralds, including Anna, love Kate. There are bouts of resentment from her siblings from time to time, but it’s not like Kate chose her fate nor are the actions of her parents anything less than completely understandable and by and large Jessy and Anna realize this. Brian and Sara, the parents, love their daughter immensely, but there’s no denying the toll that a daughter always one relapse away from death has taken from their lives. Brian comments to one of his fellow firefighters that he stays at work late because, if he didn’t, he would have to go home. The lack of attention that Jessy got helps lead him down a wayward path where misbehavior is the only way he gets attention. And Anna is not allowed so much as to attend hockey camp. Not because of financial reasons, but because something could go wrong with Kate and she would need to stand by with parts to donate to the cause.

It’s hard to look at this situation and not wonder, at least a little bit, how much happier this family might be if Kate had simply rejected the initial transplant and died when she was three. Jessy might have gotten the attention he needed. Anna would have been able to live her own life. Brian and Sara would have been more husband and wife and less disaster management partners, which is what they became. Of course, it would be a raw deal for Kate. She would be dead. It’s tempting to dismiss this as a question of whether her life, lived in constant acceptance of the inevitability of coming death, is worth living. But when it’s your life, it’s different than merely speculating from afar. Studies have demonstrated that being crippled, for example, ultimately does not have much bearing on levels of happiness.

My friend Rick is staunchly pro-life when it comes to abortion and euthanasia. That I even ask these questions would render me, in his view, a card-carrying member of the Culture of Death. On the other hand, during the Terri Schiavo debate there really seemed to be a number of people that believe that the plug should be pulled not out of a sense of autonomy, but because they had simply decided that her life was not worth living. Even if there were a health care family and even if Terri and Michael Schiavo had been divorced, their view would have been the same. Though I came down on the side of the plug being pulled, it was on a somewhat different basis. If it weren’t for the fact that she was legally married to the man who legally decides what she wants, and if it weren’t for the fact that such care costs an already expensive health care system even more money, I would be perfectly content for her to live her life as a vegetable. But given the givens, and given her state at the time, I believe that the right conclusion was reached.

Easy for me to say, I know. And I had to remind myself of this over and over again when it came to Kate Fitzgerald. I had to fight off the belief that “Look, she had 13 more years of life than anyone ever expected. It’s time for everyone to move on.” Easy for me because I am not Kate and I do not love Kate. The fighting off of that belief was not, however, fully successful. While the Kate/Anna situation may be uniquely derived for the sake of an engaging novel, it’s something that we’re confronted with on an institutional level every day. How much do we spend to extend an old person’s life for a few months? Every dime spent there is a dime that could be spent on someone whose death is not imminent. Even for those of us opposed to abortion, what kind of exceptions (if any) should be made with conditions either incompatible with life or, if not that, incompatible with what we would consider a worthwhile life? While the Fitzgeralds’ oldest daughter’s condition lead to an additional family member, most of the time it’s going to be the other way. A family bankrupted by the health complications of a first child can’t afford to have another (and even if they aren’t bankrupted, the time and devotion required alone could preclude it).

As someone of (relatively) sound mind and body, these remain easy thoughts for me to think. And on a personal level, this is particularly true since I owe my life to a miscarriage my mother had. Yet knowing my innate biases does not seem to prevent me from forming my beliefs based on them. It is enough, though, for me to see this as an immeasurably complicated issue. And one that, when some procedure can extend my life by a “mere” six months, is definitely subject to change.

Mark Gimein writes about The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox. It’s essentially the female equivalent to The Woman Shortage. Both of which are often nooks and crannies that our psyches hide behind in explaining Why I Can’t Find Someone That Seems To Meet My Entirely Reasonable Standards. Gimein attempts to explain this using Game Theory (as in the real kind, not the Neil Straussian version we more typically talk about):

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.

But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by “weak” bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the “strong” bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here. (Be warned: “Bidding Behavior in Asymmetric Auctions” is not for everyone, and I certainly won’t claim to have a handle on all the math.) But you can also see how this works intuitively if you just consider that with a lot at stake in getting it right in one shot, it’s the women who are confident that they are holding a strong hand who are likely to hold out and wait for the perfect prospect.

Susan Walsh interprets it through the prism of what she calls The Carol Syndrome:

The Eligible Bachelor Paradox dovetails nicely with another game theory concept that’s been applied to dating – dubbed The Carol Syndrome, named for the author’s beautiful friend Carol. Carol doesn’t get asked out much, and she believes that she frightens men away, but she doesn’t understand why. Surely some men are willing to approach her! It turns out that game theory can explain, at least theoretically why no men do.

Let’s say that Carol is sitting in Starbucks. Cute Guy sees her and feels attraction – he would love to get her number. He figures there are three potential outcomes, listed in order of preference:

1. Approach Carol and get her number. Win!

2. Forget it and go back to texting. Meh.

3. Approach Carol and get rejected. Loser!

While Cute Guy is deciding what to do, he notices other guys in Starbucks, several of whom also have noticed Carol and are also stealing glances at her. He is a STEM guy, so he calculates his odds of success with each approach. Obviously, his chance of success with option 2 is zero. Option 1 is much more likely if he’s the only guy who approaches Carol, and Option 3 is probable if several guys approach Carol. He’d really rather not deal with the rejection. But she is gorgeous! How to know what other guys will do?

Game theory says that the better looking Carol is, the more guys will want to approach her, and the more likely that any one of them will be rejected. Since all the guys act independently, the odds are highest that each of them will conclude that it is not a good idea to approach Carol. The more admiring men there are in Starbucks, the lower Carol’s chances of getting approached at all.

Phi relates thusly:

If this analysis is true, it supports my favorite hypothesis about why pleasantness of personality is overrepresented among both the low and high ends of the attractiveness spectrum: that neither group is much bothered by excessive male pestering, in the latter case because the cost of failure times its probability is prohibitive for the majority of men.

My college tech classes were, unsurprisingly, dominated by men. Those women that were somewhat disproportionately likely to be second-career types or foreign. Out of nowhere in one class was a gorgeous blond bombshell* of appropriate age. One of the amazing things was that nobody – and I mean nobody – talked to her. At all. Women who were foreign, fat, or wore shorts with unshaved legs, got more attention. Maybe not of the romantic kind (I really don’t know), but none were so avoided and (if only for their novelty) tended to attract more attention. But you would have thought that this girl had a stink-bomb in her pocket by the way that she was treated. By (young, available, attracted-as-hell) me, included. By the end of the class, her only friend was an Asian guy who barely spoke English.

I’ve heard some attractive women say that they actually get more attention when they dress down than when they dress up. I have a friend that made an absolute science out of finding flaws with women (“If you look at her closely, her eyes are slightly too close together and the eyebrow waxing is slightly asymmetrical.”) because such things were necessary for him to believe that he had any sort of chance. The term we used was “attainably attractive,” which was something of a joke because they were not remotely attainable by the likes of us. But it gave us just enough wiggle room to think it might be so. Not enough to ever really follow up. It also brings to mind some of the complaints of Sheila. Less so for any physical shortcoming on her part, but rather a vulnerability due to class and social standing that gave guys that had no shot the illusion that they did. All of this is to say that guys very frequently look for a reason for their to be an opening. Even if it’s illusory, some will go for it. But if they can’t even get that, cause they’re looking at all the other guys eyeing her at Starbucks, they may well be more likely to move on.

So what about the weak/strong bidder distinction? Do some women succeed by putting themselves out there? Some guys argue that this is the case, that women should be more forward. Others (guys and girls) say the opposite. If they do the legwork, the guy will just use her for sex and toss her aside. I know that in the past I have said that the guy should at least be willing to meet you half way. If there is any truth to this article, that may not be the case. And I can think of a few anecdotes to where someone that ordinarily would not have been on my radar getting there through some rather aggressive bidding.

I remember Maya, my friend Kyle’s former roommate. They’d recently moved in together (platonically) and I was in town visiting him. She was kind of chubby and not remarkably impressive. But boy, she could talk. And she talked to me all night long. In a way, I was grateful because we went to a party and it saved me from having to meet anyone knew. But she told me nearly everything about herself and asked question after question after question about me. At one point (I think I was in a sour mood more generally, that night) I wanted to ask “What’s wrong with you?!” do to all of the attention she was giving me. Whether she was actually interested in me I do not know, but trickle-trickle it came out that what she was looking for in a guy (tall, thickly built, young**, intelligent) were attributes I had. Anyway, though part of me found it obnoxious at the time (in part because I think I was in a sour mood, in part because I just didn’t know what to do with this person that would not leave my side), by the next day I was really wanting to talk to her some more. A week later, I was kind of in to her. The next time I saw her, there was no “kind of” about it. Long and uninteresting story about what followed, but nothing ever came of it.

Then there was the Story of Libby. That one did not have a happy ending. At all. But her force of will made it so that if there was any chance of it working out, it probably would have. She didn’t get the marriage that she perhaps wanted, but she made something out of what – for lack of that will – would never have been anything. She’s not alone in this regard. I’ve largely attributed it to an attraction to strong-minded (or, absent that, outgoing) women, but maybe there is something more to it. Not that aggressive bidding will get them what they want, but that maybe I’ve historically been to skeptical of the possibility that it can get them something that they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten?

Some of this rests, though, on the notion of a Quality Man Shortage. Which I do think exists in some contexts (such as the third quartile of functionality), but I really think is more often fueled by the same thing that fuels men to carp about The Woman Shortage. But the strong/weak bidder concept is interesting. It also makes me wonder to what extent there is a strong-weak bidder in the other direction. The general view is that persistence isn’t worth much of anything, as a guy. My experience backs this up 100%. So if there is a difference, why? Is it because men are not socialized/trained to tell women to buzz off when they are not interested, thus providing women more leeway? Are men less put off by the sense of desperation?

* – I mentioned her to a friend of mine. He, like all good friends, said “Go for it!” He asked to see a picture, which I could provide because the class involved making a website. Upon seeing the picture, he suggested that perhaps I ought to move to California and try to land an actress, instead, as that was more likely to happen.

** – Younger than her, to be precise. I was older than her, but she was shocked to find that out. So during the night in question, she thought I was younger.

eHarmony has a list, The NYT Well has the rundown:

When eHarmony members begin to communicate with a prospective date, both sides are required to exchange a list of “must haves” and “can’t stands.” These are the positive and negative qualities that are nonnegotiable and help the couple decide if they want to pursue a dating relationship.

Now eHarmony has analyzed the “must have” and “can’t stand” responses of nearly 720,000 members, identifying the top 10 relationship deal breakers for men and women.

Men and women agree on many of the “must haves.” They want a sense of humor, someone who is affectionate and kind, chemistry, good communication and loyalty. Not surprisingly, both sexes want someone who is emotionally healthy, and who is honest and has strong character.

Yeah. Shocker.

Since this prospective list goes out to people they are interested in dating, its utility is somewhat limited. In a sense, you’re saying what you want someone that you might be interested to hear. If it turns out that the other person is a whale or something, you can figure that out in due course. But if you put down that being overweight is a big factor, you might chase off someone that looks fine to you but is concerned about her weight or just thinks that you are superficial. So you stick to the unobjectionable stuff.

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that “can’t stand a conservative” were pulled off the list by equal numbers saying “can’t stand a liberal.” whereas “can’t stand infidelity” is pretty universal. It really is interesting that, out of 50 traits, men and women agreed on 8 or 9 in each category. It makes me wonder what the other 38 and 39 in each category were. I am less surprised that more guys than girls put weight concerns on the list, both because it is likely true but also because it’s culturally easier for guys to admit it. The fact that guys put “patience” on the list (women did not) doesn’t surprise me much at all. Maybe it’s just me, but I read that as “does not expect me to be a mindreader” which is a common complaint among guys. The description for “Emotionally healthy” and “Family Life” make me wonder if the genders were looking at the same thing just a little differently. I’m a little more surprised that guys put “hygiene” as a bigger deal than the ladies. Not because I think we care less, but because I generally consider it one of those things that we don’t think about caring about all that much. I would have expected “lazy” to be higher up there.

Provided by Jaybird from The League:

Well, once upon a time, marriage was, in theory, a bargain.

The man would trade some amount of food and shelter in exchange for sex and reasonable assumptions of paternity of any children born. Love wasn’t really that much of an issue to the point where marriages were as likely as not to be arranged by parents (see, for example, Fiddler on the Roof for the dynamic that existed between Tzeitel, Motel, and Lazar Wolf… we, being modern folks post 60?s know that Tzeitel and Motel ought to get married!!! *dUh*). Divorce was damn near unheard of… only the French got divorced. There was a *HUGE* stigma to divorce. Huge. Like, you got divorced? You have to move because you’d be otherwise shunned. If you were lucky, you could move somewhere and claim to be a widow and MAYBE accepted by the new community. Maybe. The stigma was just that great.

Well, the personhood of women happened and that screwed everything up. Well, as society evolved and absorbed the lessons of feminism, marriage stopped being *PURELY* an economic bargain made by parents pimping out daughters to the best available John (will she be fed? housed? rarely beaten? Listen to the matchmaker song!) but an economic bargain made by the women themselves in response to the most skilled suitors. Divorce still carried a *HUGE* stigma… but folks got married, had children, and discovered that, for better or worse, parents were somewhat more dispassionate when it came to making these economic decisions…

Which brings us to 99.44% effective birth control.

Once children were no longer certain to happen when a woman married a man, the economic bargain became exceptionally moot for *HUGE* swathes of the “respectable” community. Hell, even if you *HAD* kids, you no longer had seven. You had two if you were Protestant and three if you were Catholic. This changed the dynamic and potential costs of divorce enormously and once we reached a tipping point where everybody knew someone who got divorced (and was better off for doing so), the stigma pretty much evaporated entirely.

Which brings us to the 80?s when it seemed like everybody’s parents were getting divorced. (I was in Middle and High school… it felt like every freakin’ month someone would come in absolutely wrecked.)

Marriage stopped being an economic bargain and became something that two people who loved each other and wanted to have children did and that became something that two people who loved each other and if kids happened, great!, did and *THAT* became something that two people who loved each other did.

And seeing soooooo many marriages end in screaming fights taught a lot of kids a lot of lessons about being a lot wiser about making the devil’s bargain of marriage. Ubiquitous birth control (and abortion) gave an out for a huge number of folks when, in the past, they’d have had a hasty elopement followed by the first baby being born two or three months “premature” (but still full weight! It’s a miracle!) and people who once would have gotten married at 19 were allowed to be people who just broke up at 20. No kids, no foul. Hell, there are even “starter marriages” now. People get married, figure out that 20 year-olds aren’t very good at making long-term predictions, get divorced, no kids, no foul… and, from what I’ve seen, a lot less acrimony than we saw in the 70?s and 80?s. (Seriously, hearing the grown-ups talk about their exes was like listening to New Atheists talk about Christianity.)

And now that marriage is pretty much a “no kids, no foul” kind of relationship, it only makes sense to extend it to homosexuals and, having done so, it *STRENGTHENS* the idea of marriage as a “no kids, no foul” long-term commitment. Indeed, even as the kids of divorce from the 70?s and 80?s are getting married, many are making different mistakes than their parents… and, when it comes to marriage, they’re better at getting out before they wreck the lives of their kids.

Or something like that.

I visited with two sets of kids during my trip to Colosse. The first was my college roommate Hubert’s twins. The second was the three kids of my other college friend, Al Cavanaugh. Hugh (re-)introduced me to his daughters as “Will” while Al went with “Mr Truman.” I’m not at all offended with the former, but the traditionalist in me prefers the latter. It was how I was raised to refer to people my parent’s age. But these days, even if a parent wants to go that route it can be problematic because a lot of adults insist on being called by their first name with children. So it might not be a tide worth fighting.

I am getting older and more and more of my friends have kids. We were all raised with Mr and Mrs, but their kids haven’t been. So an age-peer will refer to my mother and father as Mr or Mrs Truman, but their toddler kids go with Bill or Susan.

I’m too lazy to look it up, but a couple of blog posts have been written on the subject. James Joyner (or one of his professorial co-bloggers at Outside The Beltway) spoke disapprovingly of the trend of college professors either wanting to or being encouraged to go by their first names with their students. The idea behind this trend being that you don’t want hierarchial relationships and it should be considered a relationship among equals. Joyner, a former professor, pushes back against this because teachers and students are not equals and it does nobody any justice to assume otherwise. Heebie-Geebie from Unfogged, a mathematics professor, expressed appreciation that a former student referred to her as doctor rather than shifting towards a first-name reference.

In the student-teacher relationship, I am more of the same mind of Joyner and Geebie. One of the irritating things about college was when students would challenge professors as presumptive equals. My friend Karl was – until the professor finally lost patience and put him in his place – so bad about this he almost ruined the class we took together. That’s not to say that what professors say should go completely unchallenged, and questions should definitely be asked (“Have you considered this?”), but by and large they are there to teach and you are there to learn. Any questions and challenges ought to be in an effort to better understand what they are trying to say. Not to prove that you, and undergraduate student, know more than they do. First-name bases – to the extent that they make a difference – seem to encourage the latter behavior.

Yesterday I went to orientation to be a substitute teacher. This was for the Redstone elementary schools. One of the things they kept harping on was dress code (which essentially boiled down to “no t-shirts or jeans”) and the insistence that, whether you prefer it or not, you are to be addressed as Mr or Mrs. The point being to establish authority. I’m not entirely sure how necessary this is with elementary school kids, though. Don’t get me wrong, I approve of both (preferring the Mr and Mrs and being a fan of non-casual dress codes generally), but it strikes me as the area where it makes the least amount of difference.

There is no orientation for the secondary schools, but it came up that (while presumably the Mr and Mrs honorifics are still required) they are much less worried about dress codes. That struck me as odd since that’s the place (in K-12 at any rate) where kids are most likely to challenge the adult-kid nature of the relationship. That strikes me as where it would be most important to draw every distinction you can.

{Editor’s warning: the topic of discussion here is in regard to the “third rail” and the popularity, and possible implications thereof, for Joel Osteen and other new-agey type preachers. Despite the particular rail in question being homosexuality, in keeping with Hit Coffee’s continuing guidelines, please do not feel this is an excuse to write anything that is heavily derogatory towards homosexuals, heterosexuals, or persons on either side of the argument concerning the moral or ethical status thereof.

Our friend Wesley occasionally sends in some tip stories; today’s brings up a nationally famous pastor whose congregation lives in his city, a televangelist-type by the name of Joel Osteen. The last time he made big national news, his wife was having a few issues regarding her enormous ego.

Part of the discussion of what makes Osteen so popular is that, until this point, he’s basically stayed well under the radar when it comes to anything controversial. Rather than being a hellfire-and-brimstone hardcore Baptist-type, a “follow the rules” Catholic type, Osteen is very much a new-agey, “do what feels good”, “peace love dope=god”, welcome to the Bible TV Hour type pastor, the kind of man who wouldn’t be out of place making a cameo on quite possibly the worst TV show that has ever been made.

That being said, apparently Osteen has had a change of heart, or else he’s decided he has a big enough flock to take the risk of going into some third-rail topics, and so he is openly switching away from his previous “I don’t talk about sin” stance into beginning to say, on the air, that certain things are in fact sinful. On the other hand, apparently this stems at least partially from a lower-profile altercation back in November in which Osteen got into it with Joy Behar; then again, Behar seems to have an ongoing need to generate “controversy” to keep View viewership up, and she definitely isn’t above engineering a segment where she’s trying to put words in someone’s mouth while not letting them get in a word of their own edgewise.

Popularity is a hard thing to follow. Someone can be very popular, and then do something incredibly stupid, and turn most of their fanbase against them in one fell swoop. Osteen’s carefully crafted public image is about avoiding that if at all possible; certainly, he tried to sweep his wife’s temper tantrum under the rug, and he’s been very circumspect about discussing other “third rail” issues – divorce (then again his own father had been divorced, politics, or many other controversial topics. Even in the Behar transcript, he seems to be trying to get to a “well we believe homosexuality is a sin but we don’t condemn people for it or kick them out of church for it” stance, while Behar’s very hung up on berating him for using “homosexuality” and “sin” in the same sentence.

At the end of the day, it’s going to be interesting to see where this one goes. Osteen may very well go quickly into the new-agey, self-help-book writing, “Stuart Smalley“-style preacher he’s been to this point, or maybe he’ll start getting a little more into “well this is what the book says, we would love to help you stop sinning” territory. Only time will tell.

Jerry Gomez works as an IT person at a corporate law firm, Weicker & Schmidt. A woman named Beth Toomey is murdered and Jerry quickly emerges as a suspect when some emails are found where Toomey and Gomez were supposed to meet (somewhere around the time she was murdered) about something that Gomez was very upset about. When the police confront Gomez, he has a lawyer on speed-dial and refuses to say a word (refusing to even answer the question of how he knows Toomey). This only increases suspicion.

After the police do a search of his office at W&S, his boss and a corporate VP call Gomez into a meeting. Gomez assures the firm that he did not commit any crime and says that he is perfectly willing to take a polygraph to that effect provided that is the only question asked (the concern being that the police could subpoena the results and find out more than he wants to tell them). Likewise, beyond assuring them of his innocence, he will not explain any of the circumstances surrounding his relationship with Toomey for fear that they will be subpoenaed. The firm finds this unacceptable and they issue Gomez an ultimatum: fully cooperate with the authorities or you’re fired. Gomez refuses to cooperate and is fired.

Gomez is ultimately cleared of the crime (before charges are ever filed). Gomez sues the employer for wrongful termination on the basis that they should not be able to fire him on the basis of his exerting his constitutional rights. He loses the case because he lives in an Employment-At-Will state with no bad faith exemptions. That means that the firm can fire him for whatever reason they deem fit as long as it is not one of the exceptions carved out in the law (attempting unionization, whistleblowing, race/gender/etc.) and no such exception is made.

Gomez’s lawyers go to federal court on the basis that the Constitution is irreparably harmed if people are required to forego their rights in order to keep their jobs. Especially when, as in this case, no hardship is being brought to the company beyond the initial search of his office. In fact, until this lawsuit his employer was never mentioned in any of the newspapers. If Weicker & Schmidt are allowed to fire Gomez on the basis of his exerting his 5th Amendment rights, they could similarly act on other rights. For instance, they could be “good corporate citizens” and require employees to allow the police to search their car on traffic stops. If these sorts of things catch on, the protections in the Constitution become meaningless for all but the self-employed. They employer responds that the law is the law and having freedoms granted to you in the constitution does not grant you freedom from the repercussions of utilizing those freedoms. Gomez can assert his rights or not, but W&S simply doesn’t have to employ him. High-profile people are fired or punished for utilizing their First Amendment rights all the time: Whoopi Goldberg, Don Imus, John Rocker, etc.).

So the question is… do you think that Gomez has a constitutional argument? Or, in the event that precedent suggests that he does not, that he should have one? If you think that W&S is in the right here on the basis that there is no right to continued employment simply because the Constitution does not allow the government to punish you, would you also support them if they wanted to institute the “good corporate citizen” policy of forcing employees to forego their Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure? If not, how do you draw the line? If you agree with Gomez, do you also believe that someone who publicly makes offensive (anti-American, racist, anti-Semitic, etc.) comments should also be allowed to keep their job? If not, how do you draw the line?

Note: I know that a number of you oppose Employment-at-Will doctrine on principle, but in this scenario it is the law of the land whether you agree with it or not. This question is more of how you think the constitution should be read rather than legislative preferences. So, feel free to rip on EAW, but only if you also comment on the main thrust of the post with the stipulation that the law in Gomez’s state is what it is.

Note II: If any lawyers know how the courts have responded to challenges like this, feel free to chime in. I suspect I know, but I also wanted to know what people’s thoughts on how the courts should rule are.

This actually isn’t hypothetical, because it happened to a classmate in my college phys-ed class. About a third of our grade was based on overall physical fitness (our ability to run the mile-and-a-half, life weights, and so on), a third based on participation (were you at least trying?) and a third based on classroom work. That second part was also based on physical fitness, to some extent, because you started getting docked whenever you stopped jogging or when you had to call it quits for lack of physical fitness. The classwork was dreadfully easy. Obviously, for someone not in good physical shape, the fitness tests were hard.

My friend-for-a-class Ned was in overall pretty good shape (well, much better shape than me – and I was not a smoker at the time). The thing is that he was a smoker. He could start and stop at will and so for the fitness tests (most specifically the running test which was the hardest) he would actually stop smoking for a few days before the run. So on the jogging test, he kicked my posterior and actually came in 7th (out of 30). He beat me by some margin on every physical test.

When we got our grades, though, I got a B- and he got a C. When he talked to the instructor about this (I was with him to verify that we showed the same effort in class), she said that she docked him because he was a smoker. She’d seen him smoking first thing after class or before class. He smelled of the stuff. In her mind, his smoking was indicative of a lack of commitment to physical health. Ned’s counterpoint was that it was none of her business. He ran the laps, lifted the weights, and did everything he was expected to do. On what basis could she dock him points? She said that his “participation” grade was low because he really wasn’t giving it his all (usually working at the same pace that I did). If it weren’t for the cigarettes, she said, he could have done more. And since smoking was his choice, he lost participation points. And yet I (Will) didn’t, Ned argued, despite showing the exact same effort.

The difference, she argued, was that what was a greater effort for me was less of an effort for him. It’s graded on a curve.

He argued that he was then being punished for being in shape (in terms of effort) more than I was being punished for being out of shape (in terms of fitness challenge performance).

She shrugged it off, saying that physical fitness was about appreciating your body and that there was no sign that somebody didn’t appreciate their body like smoking, and so ultimately he deserved a worse grade than he got. Did he want that? The conversation ended there.

So, the question is, should phys-ed be able to punish someone for being a smoker if it doesn’t show up in their ability to practice and perform? Even though I later became a smoker, I can actually somewhat appreciate her perspective on the matter. Smoking, as compared to excess weight (my problem at the time) is a more binary decision. And as difficult as it is to quit smoking, the quit-success is much higher for smoking than dieting is for overweight people.

On the other hand, it seemed pretty apparent to me that this declaration was pretty arbitrary. She was punishing him for a habit that he found disgusting. Nowhere was it written down that smokers are penalized (beyond the physical toll it takes). Presumably, if it had been written down, he would have at least taken more care not to show up smelling like smoke. Maybe he should have done that anyway to be considerate, but being considerate is not a factor in his grade.

Of course, all of this comes back to the difficulty when it comes to grading people in PE. In no other college course is “effort” graded directly, nor should it be. Or maybe it is, since that’s what attendance grades and a lot of homework assignments are. Ultimately, though, most of your grade is supposed to come from the degree to which you demonstrate mastery over the subject matter. That’s hard to do for PE because you can understand the subject matter of running very, very well and yet still not be able to do it. It’s difficult to make up for lack of ability (over the course of a single semester) with determination and discipline. Most classes, determination and discipline are going to be, if not sufficient to overcome all, at least sufficient to overcome some of it.

And, ultimately, being able to run the 1.5-mile over a period of time isn’t really what people go to college for. Even classes like Comparative Folk Dancing offer something in terms of learning how to communicate ideas (regardless of the frivolity of the subject-matter). I suppose the ability to take care of oneself physically does matter to future employers, but that has to be viewed as a lifetime project and not something you’re going to pick up in class. It’s easy to translate term papers into something useful in the business world, but more difficult to translate squats.

All of this is of course contingent on viewing college as vocational training. I suppose if you disagree with that on a fundamental level, you can view phys-ed as a more abstract good. Of course, those that view college as a sort of a self-improvement thing apart from vocational training are also the types who hate jocks for all of the wedgies they got when they were younger.

Every year or few, there is a push in football to emphasize calling a particularly penalty because of injuries occurring from a particular type of hit or penalty. This year, in college football, it’s “helmet-to-helmet contact,” though I think they’ve renamed the penalty to something else. With the ramifications of concussions becoming more clear, the concern is understandable.

Unfortunately, player behavior often follows the rules and we’re starting to see that later in the season. Ball-carriers seem to be intentionally lowering their head more frequently, making them harder to hit without getting them in the head. So on at least a couple of occasions, the announcers have mentioned what seemed obvious to me: without hitting the head, there’s simply no way to tackle to runner. They’re all but guaranteed a few extra yards or an extra 15 (plus an automatic first down) if they make the hit anyway. This is, perhaps, a small price to pay for player safety. And it seems to be effective. But I wonder if the end-result isn’t going to be runners retrained to get those extra few yards or even better draw a huge penalty. That would be a huge backfire.

A while back, Transplanted Lawyer complained about the NFL stepping up penalty-calling for injury-causing tackles:

Instead, it’s wimping out and threatening to penalize — including fining and suspending — players who hit each other hard and risk injuring their opponent. There is an inherent risk of injury in this sport, and all sports. People agree to do it anyway — they compete and dedicate their entire lives to giving themselves even an opportunity to do it, because there is a tremendous audience for it — and it’s fun. I don’t mean to suggest that the NFL should go back to the days of leather helmets, no pads, and adopt an eye-gouging rule. There should be reasonable ways to protect players from unnecessary and avoidable kinds of harm. I like that the players wear well-designed helmets, armor, and that there are particular kinds of maneuvers and stunts that are not permitted. It’s a fine line to draw as to what kinds of methods of forcing your opponent to the ground should be permitted and what should not be. The guys who run the show need to do what is reasonable and appropriate to prevent injuries — but they also need to bear in mind that we’re talking about tackle football. There are going to be injuries and I thought everyone knew that.

One of the ironies is that football would likely be safer if they did away with the pads and the helmets. The introduction of these safety measures resulted in players changing the way the hits are made. The illusion of invulnerability has caused players to become more and more reckless. Compare football to rugby, that other tackling sport that doesn’t have the pads, and it’s the former where injuries are far more common. Back when I was in junior high, in the offseason we would play a hybrid rugby-football game without pads and injuries never occurred because the hitter had no more protection than the hittee and so the result was that tackles were made with the aim of getting the player down rather than making sure that they don’t get that extra yard or two.

I’ve heard similar things about how seat belt and safer cars make things more dangerous for pedestrians, though I don’t know how true that is. There’s also a pretty strong argument to be made that the illusion of safety that condoms provide created a culture where people were less cautious about their sexual behavior and this is precisely why unwanted pregnancies and illegitimacy rates climbed ferociously as more and more ways to prevent same have become available.