Charles Murray recently complained that the New York Times paid him only $75 for an op-ed piece. For most people, writing opinion pieces for the NYT is something that is its own reward. Even among people that that are good writers and knowledgeable in their field. The Southern Tech University’s student paper, the Daily Packer, paid me between $6-8 per opinion column. With a distribution of over 10k, being published and recognized across campus was really its own reward.

Others have pointed that out, but what is less discussed is the distinction between writing opinion pieces and writing other things. A case study are two attempts at content-monetizing. One by the Wall Street Journal and one by the New York Times. The Wall Street Journal kept its opinion section free as OpinionJournal.com while the Times put all of its opinioneers behind the paywall of Times Select. The former’s succeeded while the latter’s failed. It seems to me that the reason for this is pretty obvious. One was putting behind a paywall what people don’t want to do for free while the other was putting behind a paywall what people were paying webhosts for the privilege of doing.

I was never once tempted to sign up for Times Select, but I have been meaning to sign up for Wall Street Journal’s online offering for years. If I read the first paragraph of an opinion piece and then find out that the rest is behind a paywall, I kind of shrug “Oh, well, I am sure someone else will be offering as good an opinion for free.” Meanwhile, I have been frustrated time and time again by WSJ articles that I could only read the first couple paragraphs of.

Actual reporting is hard work. Or maybe just unpleasant work for anybody but a certain kind of person. You have to make sure to get the facts right. You have to go talk to people. You have to talk to people on both sides of whatever you’re talking about or at least seek multiple voices. You’re supposed to tell people things that they don’t already know. Opinioneering is less of a challenge. Though you need an arsenal of facts to make your case, it’s mostly about the arrangement of facts to serve particular ends. But even when it’s not easier, it’s often going to be more rewarding. Everybody wants their opinion heard from the nerd behind the keyboard to the drunk guy at the bar. Everybody wants to tell everybody else the what’s what.

What the Wall Street Journal has been banking on, though, is that their news articles offer something that a lot of people won’t do for free. A lot of people have been talking about the future death of newspapers and they’re rather passive about it because of “new media” and all that. The problem with all of this is that a lot of these “new media” outfits are relying on free or underpaid writers often picking at the lowest fruit. Doing the fun stuff. Maybe it is the case that there are enough people chomping at the bit to do actual journalism that something won’t be lost. I’m skeptical, though. I think we run the risk of losing the people doing the grunt work. Providing the basis for people to do the opinioneering on.

I think about this with a lot of artistic endeavors. I’m never all that worried about their being no more painters. Painting requires talent, skill, and practice, but it’s mostly a solo venture. Someone will always want to do it. I feel similarly about novels and music, though less strongly because there is gruntwork there in the form of editing or sound editing. But even then, there will be product. So while we might get poorer-sounding recording and novels with past-perfect tense errors, we will at least get something. Compare this with journalism where the “something” we may be left with is simply someone spouting off the latest thing they heard on Hannity or Olbermann or the short, glitzy “news items” on television news.

A while back, Megan McArdle explained why we can’t just keep raising taxes on the rich. While I disagree with her on particulars, one of the things that I have come to understand as we’ve jumped tax brackets is that regardless of what anybody thinks is “too much money” or “won’t be missed,” taxation takes a significant psychological toll. It’s one thing to say “I would be perfectly fine on $75k a year after taxes.” It’s another thing to see that you actually made $115k and the government has taken $40k of it. The progressive (and complicated) nature of the tax code means that you can’t easily factor it in when taking into account how much you’re going to make.

It’s not entirely logical. I mean, theoretically if you make $75k per year after taxes but pre-tax were only supposed to make $90k, it’s objectively no different than if you originally grossed $115. It sure feels different, though. And though the tax rates are marginal so that even if you’re in the “33% tax braket” it’s only part of your money that 33% comes out of, it’s the 33% that you remember. And even though you know and acknowledge that the government provides all kinds of services to you in return for that money, the benefits of government are dispersed and the tax bill laid out right there in front of you.

I am not an anti-tax sort of guy. I don’t think, in the abstract, that taxes are “too high” nor am I in favor of the flat tax which would be beneficial for us financially. If you disagree with me on those things, that’s fine and beside the point (and I don’t want to debate the matter). I’m merely stating where I am coming from. But despite these views, I find myself piqued at how much more is being taken out of our paycheck now than was a year ago. Even while I cannot point to a better way that things should be.

Now, a lot of people (including myself a half-decade ago) will say boo-freakin’-who and will tell me to look at how fortunate I am. And I am indeed fortunate and blessed. But the realization of how the fortunate and blessed can appraise their situation has provided me some insights.

If I get a job, the take-home from whatever my pay is will be little more than 60%. That makes me rather disinclined to work. Irrationally so since 60% is better than nothing and since I have always been willing to take jobs for less than I am worth. Part of me would rather give my time and energy for free to OpenOffice rather than get a low-level techie job making $9/hr of which I get to keep less than $6. Of course, in the current economy that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I don’t take the job and somebody else who actually needs the money takes the job instead. It’s a slightly bigger problem when it comes to my wife. She could probably get more money elsewhere working more hours. But is it worth that for less than 65 cents on the dollar?

Doctors’ hours have fallen in the last decade or so. This is likely due more than anything to lower job satisfaction. But I think that McArdle is right that as marginal tax rates approach and exceed 50%, a lot of folks including doctors will adjust their priorities accordingly. It wouldn’t be rational, but people are not rational creatures. This hurts not only because of the shortage of doctors (which can be remedied by other means) but also because by working less and earning less she would be paying less in taxes and we would be cutting corners which then puts less money in others’ pockets to pay taxes.

So I’m really at a loss as to what the right course of action is. Conservatives will say “cut government!” and liberals will say “raise taxes anyway!” but the sad truth is that with the deficit we’re probably going to have to do both of those things anyway. Or we won’t and we’ll suffer the consequences. Depressing.

Irin Carmon at Jezebel argues that shameless (sexual) objectification can be a good thing. She gives five reasons, but it ultimately comes down to the argument that “Well, it’s okay if women do it” as well as arguing that the sexual objectification she’s talking about (regarding World Cup soccer players) is not entirely sexual.

I am actually somewhat sympathetic to arguments that behavior is more tolerable or less so depending on who is doing it. Ultimately, though, I found Carmon’s reasoning unconvincing.

Her first argument is context. It’s okay for women to do it because women are at a social disadvantage and it’s therefore not damaging for them to behave in a way that would be damaging if it were those at a social advantage doing it. I think that this is sometimes true. For instance, Mormons refusing to hire non-Mormons in Delosa is far, far less damaging than Mormons refusing to hire non-Mormons in Deseret. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the former is okay, but I would definitely place it pretty far down the list of injustices worthy of our collective attention. So does that apply to men and women? Perhaps it makes it less damaging. However, I find the notion that the difference is so substantial that objectification by men can be completely unacceptable while objectification by women is not only acceptable but “a good thing.”

Her second argument for the gender distinction goes a little further in trying to explain why objectification by women is a good thing by arguing that it disrupts the narrative that women a not visually oriented. I actually agree with Carmon that the distinctions between men and women as far as visual-orientedness is vastly overstated and could even be convinced that it’s non-existent if only because I don’t care all that much. However, in point of behavior there is a distinction between the behavior as you see it. It could be because of social conditioning or it could be because genetics. If it’s the former, though, do we want to bring women down to the level of men? From my perspective, I think it would be better if men became less transparently visual in nature. Or, in fact, that we acknowledge that men are less visual than popular culture would have us believe. The best argument that Carmon could be using here is if there is a genetic component to it and we wish to disrupt that because if there is a genetic component then we don’t have to worry nearly as much about women becoming as flawed as the male stereotype.

In short, the last argument is that “it’s okay for women to look, too!” while then proceeding to argue away the “too” by maintaining that it’s not okay for men to.

As an interlude, I will take on the weakest of the five arguments. It doesn’t matter a wit that women are also oogling over foreigners. Believe me, men do it, too.

The remaining two arguments involve the context in which the men are being displayed. Female “objects” are “sexyface, no corpse-like poses” while the male objects are doing what they love. The thing is that men don’t need pornographic poses to objectify in an objectionable manner. Women can simply be crossing a construction site on the street! That doesn’t make it okay, does it? In fact, the counterargument could be true. The women who are taking on sexual poses volunteered for objectification. The men are just playing soccer and may just want to be left alone unless one is of the mindset that men are more sexual beings and thus are inherently more receptive to the attention of random women. I don’t think that’s the argument that Carmon wants to make.

Flawed, too, is the notion that it’s okay to objectify soccer players because they are in good physical condition. Anyone remember that UCLA track team girl that had an inappropriate website dedicated to her? She was in fantastic physical condition and those doing the oogling could easily make this argument. How likely would that fly with the Jezebel crew? Pretty poorly, I would imagine. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a beautiful body in a non-sexual context. Clancy has been known to look at physically fit individuals and comment that they would make an excellent medical school cadaver (it’s awesome that I married someone that makes observations like these). But that only really works if you’re looking at individuals that you internally consider to be sexually appropriate. If you’re not appreciating female athletes, too, or athletes that you would consider too young to otherwise unavailable, there is a strong sexual component to it. This is true even if you’re not actually aching to rip their clothes off and make mad love to them.

So what are my thoughts on objectification? I agree with Carmon that context matters. I would just argue that it’s not an “okay for one gender but not the other” sort of way. Any objectification that would make the other person uncomfortable is inappropriate. That means that while your thoughts are your own, a website you put up for a UCLA track star is not. Appreciating a woman walking down the street is one thing. Disrupting her thoughts by whistling at her is not. Appreciating the beauty of the opposite sex (assuming heterosexuality) is fine, though talking about it in the company of people of the opposite sex that it would make insecure is not. I think the big thing is to be unobtrusive about it.

I purchased an item on eBay a while back and the vendor has been really great. There was a problem with what they sent me and we’ve been going back and forth on it for a while now. They’ve been very receptive and most of the misunderstandings causing the delay have been on my end.

In another case, I ordered a product. It took longer than expected to get here, but I can’t say that they did anything wrong exactly. They just weren’t as upfront about everything as I might have liked. But they offer a product at a good price and I don’t want to hurt them.

The result: Both get the same feedback ratings.

eBay works on a 5-star systems. The problem is that if you give a seller anything less than five stars, it counts as negative feedback and makes things more difficult for them. So it makes me really reluctant to leave feedback saying “Oh, well they were not great but they were not bad either.” The only thing I can do is just not leave feedback at all. If this is going to be the case, they really should just have a Yes/No on whether or not I would do business with them in the future. There are probably cases where someone has tarred a seller that they generally liked.

But more than anything, I want to be able to actively endorse the first seller. I want to actively endorse another seller from whom I have bought a number of things. I want to give them a special gold star. I want other buyers to know that if there is any problem, they will take care of you. I could put something in the textbox, though they would probably not want everyone to know that they sold a defective product where further action was required. In my mind, that’s no big deal as long as it is made right in the end (if it’s something I am really concerned about, I’ll just get it from eBay or Amazon). But some people expect more from eBay than I do.

That brings me to another complaint, which is that if I leave feedback, I have to leave something in the text box. Sometimes I don’t have a whole lot to say. “They met expectations”? “They sent me the item within a reasonable time frame”? I wish I could just leave that blank because as with the stars anything that isn’t glowing is kinda negative. You should see the feedback they leave for me. All I did was buy the product and pay them, for goodness sake. I would prefer it if the feedback actually meant something. Like in the first case if they had said something like “Buyer very patient with product problem” or something. Instead, those folks left feedback before I even got the item saying “GREAT BUYER!! HOPE TO DO BUSINESS AGAIN!!” or somesuch.

It’s like the feedback system is designed to be as unhelpful as possible. Not even in the sense of covering for bad sellers because eBay is pretty anal about that from what I understand (hence, 4 of 5 stars hurting sellers). Just in the sense of not being able to tell if a buyer is really any good or not. Contrast this with Newegg, where people leave all kinds of reviews of products. There I can see what the negative reviews are (which no one is afraid to leave) and look for patterns and potential problems. For eBay this could mean that “Oh, well they’re not particularly fast on shipping. I can deal with that.” or deciding to move on without their rates being jacked up by eBay for someone leaving negative feedback.

Paul at Gone Hollywood has brings attention to a list of ten careers that are in need of a comeback. As far as I am concerned, if I never Cuba Gooding in another movie, I will be happier for it. I can’t exactly lament the passing of the career of Jean Claude Van Damme, either. Like Schwarzenegger, there are only so many roles for someone that has to speak through an accent. I agree it’s a shame about Wesley Snipes, but the dude is going to jail and I’m not itching enough to see him to really care all that much.

The big “Totally!” was with the last one, Michael Keaton. I happened to see him in an in-flight movie and was thinking that I hadn’t seen him in a while. Same goes for Bill Pullman, who used to be in something like two or three movies a year and who I also saw recently in-flight. I’d like to see both more often. Particularly Keaton.

I’m sure that there are others I would like to see again, but since I haven’t seen them lately I doubt I can remember who they are.

Any formerly big actors that y’all miss?