The Seventh Sense

The Worldwide Sexual Relationship Database -- Creepy? Hoax, Perhaps?

I don't think I like this, and I'm not sure I want it to catch on: a website where you can enter a person's name and find everyone that person has ever slept with.

Of course, the database is virtually empty now.  Here's the blurb from the website:

In an effort to better understand society's interconnected nature, this database was created to serve as a repository for information regarding the sexual histories of individuals, across the world and throughout time.

Simply enter a name, and all known sexual partners of this person will appear to the right. However, most individuals have yet to be entered into our database. If you have valid information regarding the sexual past of anyone, at any period of time, please enter it now. Your assistance is vital to the success of this project.

Sounds like a sexual "Seven Degress of Kevin Bacon" thing.

Personally, I would be concerned about someone entering in false data.  But don't wory, they've thought of that....

To insure accuracy, anyone may edit sexual histories, provided he or she logs in with a valid email address.

Ah yes.  Having a valid email address will help "ensure accuracy".  WTF?!?

We reserve the right to ban users who knowingly provide false information, as this is not meant to be a forum for emotional retaliation or gamesmanship.

And how will they know whether or not someone is providing false information, pray tell?

I smell "lawsuit".

I also found this amusing:

For the purposes of this study, a sexual partner shall be defined as a human with whom a person has had oral, anal or vaginal sexual contact.

Thanks for the definition, guys.  I wasn't sure what "Sex" means.

The venture is listed as "a project of the World Health Optimization Management", a group so obscure that there are no Google hits for them.

By the way, according to the database, I have never had a sexual partner.  While that is disconcerting, it is also fundamentally untrue.  However, I humbly request that nobody correct the database.

The New Iraq Policy

Reboot.

Fuzzy Math

Everyone's talking about this graph, created by this guy, drawing data from Pentagon reports.

The blue line tracks the level of Iraq violence as indicated in the Pentagon's August 2006 report.  The pink line tracks the level of Iraq violence as indicated in the Pentagon's November 2006 and March 2007 reports.  The yellow line tracks the level of Iraq violence as indicated in the Pentagon's June 2007 report.

As you can see, each time the Pentagon reports on the levl of violence in Iraq, the numbers change (as indicated by the A, B, and C, on the graph.

And we're not just seeing random fluctuations -- they're mainly changing downward, in order to reflect lower sectarian violence. But why would the January 2006 be lower in the June report than in the March report? Were the dead resurrected?

You might notice though, that in the June report, killings were revised upward.  That's true. But the timing matters. As Goldberg explains, "The impact here is that it makes the “pre surge” situation look extraordinarily dire and therefore signals progress thereafter."

Lesson: you can't trust the Pentagon's numbers.  The shell game here has to do with the term "sectarian murders," which the Pentagon is apparently defining differently from month to month, albeit without telling anyone what's changed.

More On "Crazy Sexy Cancer"

I noticed I'm getting a spike in traffic here (for some reason, I'm ranked number five at Yahoo for searches on this subject), and it is largely due to people googling "Crazy Sexy Cancer", the TLC documentary I blogged about earlier in the week.

For what it is worth, I finally got around to viewing it on my TIVO last night.  What a wonderful moving film.  Uplifting in its own way -- not what you would expect from a documentary about incurable cancer.

I don't want to give away too much, but Kris Carr was a New York actress.  She got a few small movie and off-Broadway roles.  She also got a couple of Budeweiser commercials that aired during the Super Bowl.  A few days after those aired -- on Valentine's Day 2003 -- she found out that she has a rare form of cancer -- essentually cancer in her vascular system.  Her blood spreads the cancer, and doctors discovered tumors in her liver and lungs.  She has 24 tumors total.  It cannot be treated with the usual cancer protocol (like chemotherapy) 

The bad news: her form of Stage 4 cancer is incurable and fatal.  On the other hand, this is an incredibly SLOW cancer.  She was told that the tumors could remain static for years.  And as long as the cancer decides not to spread, she's fine.  But at some point, it would spread and kill her.

So what did Kris do?  As she says in the movie, she stopped her acting profession, and the cancer became her profession.  Basically, she immursed herself into two projects: (1) the project to cure herself (or at least cope), and (2) the project to create a video document of Project #1.  The "Crazy Sexy Cancer" film (and book) is the result.

Her story, she says, is less about a battle with cancer, than an adventure ride.  What started out as a video journal became this documentary. 

We watch as this cute young woman becomes knowledgeable about, and is able to wrap her mouth around, polysyllabic medical terms.   

We see her on the search for the right doctor, comparing it to being the CEO of a corporation and interviewing applicants for a job. “How could they revive my business strategy and keep my company alive and thriving,” she asks. 

We see her going to an alternative medicine convention, and laughing with (or at?) people encouraging her to get cured through "clown therapy" (which involves dressing up like a clown and laughing). 

We watch her down vegetable smoothies and barium to prepare for CT scans. 

But mostly, we enjoy her exuberance, humor and sass -- things that never leave her.

Not sure if TLC is running it again, but if they do, you should really really watch it.

DOJ Investigating Gonzalez For Lying To Congress

Good:

The Justice Department's inspector general indicated yesterday that he is investigating whether departing Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales gave false or misleading testimony to Congress, including whether he lied under oath about warrantless surveillance and the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

I guess it'll be easier for the DOJ to investigate the DOJ, now that Gonzalez no longer runs the DOJ.

The DOJ is also widening its internal probe into the U.S. Attorney firing scandal.

Moral Relativism

The "family values" people of the right are always fond of saying how important morality is, how strong they are on morality, etc.  Mostly, they extol the virtures (which they and apparently only they possess) of moral absolutism and castigate them libruls who exhibit moral relativism.

Fair enough.  Whatever.  So I was processing that, and processing the recent GOP sex scandals involving Republican Senators.  Here's the breakdown, as I see it:

"Pro-Family" Political Agenda

Sen. Craig:  Yes
Sen. Vitter:  Yes

Desired Sex Outside of Marriage?

Sen. Craig:  Yes
Sen. Vitter:  Yes

Actively Sought Sex Outside of Marriage?

Sen. Craig:  Yes
Sen. Vitter:  Yes

Type of Sex Sought Outside of Marriage?

Sen. Craig:  Gay
Sen. Vitter:  Straight

Willing to Pay Money for Sex Outside of Marriage?

Sen. Craig:  No
Sen. Vitter:  Yes

Strategy To Obtain Sex Outside of Marriage

Sen. Craig:  Tapped foot in public restroom hoping other person would respond
Sen. Vitter:  Used cell phone on the floor of the Senate to call "D.C. Madam" to arrange for liasons

Sexual Liason Accomplished?

Sen. Craig:  No (not, at least, this time)
Sen. Vitter:  Several times that we know of

Illegality Commited?

Sen. Craig:  Debateable
Sen. Vitter:  Without question

Charged with crime?

Sen. Craig:  Yes
Sen. Vitter:  No

Sexual Predilections

Sen. Craig:  Anonymous gay sex in public restrooms
Sen. Vitter:  Straight sex with hookers whose name he knows, while wearing diapers

AND HERE'S THE BIG ONE....

Reaction from GOP collegaues

Sen. Craig:  Repeated calls for his resignation
Sen. Vitter:  Praise and applause

Can any explain to me the moral roadmap that leads to a total pass for Vitter, yet a total moral condemnation for Craig?

UPDATE:  Ross Douthat of The Atlantic asks the same question.  He suspects the "gay" factpr of the Craig scandal is what tips the scales....

I understand that there's a difference, legally-speaking, between pleading guilty to a criminal offense and tacitly confessing to a crime you haven't - and probably won't - be charged with, but I still think it's unfortunate that Larry Craig might be forced to resign by his fellow Republicans, while David Vitter has apparently survived being outed as a client of a major D.C. prostitution ring. I agree with Megan that what Craig did was arguably a greater betrayal of his wife than what Vitter may have done, but from any social-conservative calculus (or at least my social-conservative calculus) prostitution has to be considered a greater social evil than cruising for gay sex in bathrooms. This relates to a point I fumbled through in my conversation with Mark yesterday - the unfortunate extent to which socially-conservative politicians have focused their fire on gays, because opposing gay rights was for a long time an 80-20 issue for the Right (though no longer), while studiously ignoring the various beams in heterosexuals' eyes. It's a hard pattern to break, but the GOP could find worse places to start than making sure that Vitter shares whatever political fate awaits Larry Craig.

Interestingly, Romesh Ponneru at The Corner, an uber-social conservative himself, all but admits that there is no morality map to speak of here.  It's mostly about politics, rather than principle.

I agree with Ross Douthat's larger point about social conservatives' double standards on sexual conduct, but I think he's missing the reasons that the senators are provoking different reactions from their colleagues. I can think of four considerations that have to be going through the minds of Republican senators. First, the fact that Craig is (currently) denying he did anything wrong creates more opportunities for continuing bad press than Vitter can get. Second, the two senators are in different political circumstances. Craig is up for re-election next year and has a Republican governor; Vitter has a Democratic governor and isn't up for re-election until 2010. Third, even if both states applied moral standards consistently, Idaho's would probably end up being tougher than Louisiana's. Fourth—and I think this may be the most important—Craig's colleagues probably think that his compulsion is so strong that he may well act up again. He was on notice, after all, when he went to the airport bathroom. I don't think they're as worried that Vitter will be frequenting prostitutes.

New Words

smexting pp. Sending text messages while standing outside on a smoking break. [Blend of smoking and texting.]

Potterhead n. A person who is a big fan of the Harry Potter series of books.

floordrobe n. A pile of discarded clothes on the floor of a person's room. [Blend of floor and wardrobe.]

carbage n. The garbage that accumulates in some cars, particularly in the back seat. [Blend of car and garbage.]

Source

Organ2/ASLSP

Want to hear LIVE modern classical music on the web?

You can, right now.

In 1987, John Cage composed a musical piece titled Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible), with instruction that it should be played as slow as possible.

But how slow? In a 1997 conference, a group of organists, musicians and philosophers came up with a project to play Cage’s piece over 639 years! They got started in 2001 (a view days before 9/11), and although that was quite a while ago, you haven’t missed much: they’ve only played 5 notes so far.  The note that is being played now is a triad -- it looks like A,C,F#.

The next note in the piece will come on May 7, 2008.

My thoughts:  It doesn't have a good beat, and you can't dance to it.

5-0 In The Bottom Of The 8th...

...as I write this.  Red Sox have gotten only two hits.

Sadly, No, predominately a political humor blog, just posted this:

My Undying Hatred

Posted at 21:12 by The Hon. Dr. St. Rev. Bradley S. Rocket, Esq, PhD, MD

All you had to do was not get swept by the Yankees this week. That’s all you had to do. And now you’re going to get swept. Jesus Christ, I hate you. I hate you all.

A little harsh perhaps, but I understand where it comes from.

RELATED:  But the local boy is making good at the U.S. Open.

Partial Face Transplants

Natalie Portman & Keira Knightley:

Queen Elizabeth and Sir Elton John:

Oprah Winfrey and Condi Rice:

Paris Hilton & Meryl Streep:

Hillbillary Clinton:

Lots more here.