Unused and Probably Unusable

I haven't commented directly on the War Against Iraq on this blawg before. I've touched on it, lots. It reflects on the judgment of the administration. It kills our best and brightest. It sours the world on us, particularly the Arab world but not at all confined to the region. It's expensive. It was wrongly justified. It was badly planned and poorly executed, despite great sacrifice by our troops on the ground. It's a disaster, and worse, it was a predictable disaster. Look, we predicted it. QED.

Consider this statement of faith by Roger Cohen of the Int'l Herald Tribune in the NYT:

Because I believe the net impact of American power, mistakes notwithstanding, over the past century has been a freer, more open, more accountable and more rewarding world, I am inclined to heed Petraeus rather than the Democrats in the House.

"The Biggest U.S. Error in Ousting Saddam," April 27, 2007 NYT (Select only, requires password).

Big words. Hard to fault him for his faith. Fine. But I will not willy-nilly go along with Cohen's unwillingness to change horses when he's halfway - can he even say halfway? - into an ocean.

Because I believe the net impact of American military power, successes notwithstanding, over the past 5 years has been a more terrified, more dangerous, more anti-American, and generally closer-to-killing me world, I am inclined to cut Bush no slack whatsoever until he shows some tendency to have a better idea than the Democrats.

His contra-timetable argument is brilliant rhetoric. It's nonsense, of course, because a deadline could be hopeful, for our troops and allies and for all Iraqis (except the ones who will die when we leave...) as easily as it could be an aid to insurgents - or, if you prefer, terrorists.

Bush has been reactive. He reacted to 9/11 by unleashing Cheney's pet plan to invade an unrelated but irksome country. He reacted to Abu Ghraib by condemning the effect on our troops. He reacted to troop deaths, caused by his actions and his commanders' decisions, defensively. He reacted to criticism as poorly as any President in my memory. I had no faith in hm before 9/11. I put faith in him that week because I had to, but I did not feel good about his hawkish instincts.

The same immoral, un-Christian, wrongheaded, perverse, murderous, vicious, foolish, ugly, evil instincts and behaviors that led him to be one of the most depraved Governors of the country - how many death sentences did he set aside? How many did he even pause over? How many caused him anguish, doubt, regret? His deliberate, callous inaction when given ultimate and unfettered power to grant mercy speaks volumes about his indifference or his ambition, I'm not sure which.

- that same pattern of being an essentially bad person when it counted, on the moral ledger of life, led him to disaster in Iraq.

It's not bad luck.

It's not coincidence.

A President without the ability to accept humility before it is politically expedient is virtually guaranteed to get himself into that political mess. Yes-men. Loyal party members rather than competent professionals. Ideals over results. Faith over fact. Death rather than life. War rather than peace. Power rather than process. Arrogance rather than cooperation.

Bush has not been a perfectly imperfect President. If one were to take him, for example, and systematically turn all his right actions into wrong ones, then we might call him the perfectly bad President.

As it is, he's merely the worst that there's been in years and years and years.

Let his legacy be low taxes on the rich, ballooning inequality, failure to identify broken processes that led to 9/11 and Katrina, failure to cope with those disasters once they occurred, failure to appoint and assign competent personnel, a failed attempt to destroy a wildly popular social safety net, and death. Lots and lots of death. It's on the heads of those who incited him, who encouraged him, who voted for him and who aided him, but it's on the hands of all of America.

And what now?

Well, now we take hope and take courage going forward. American citizens have an opportunity. Look into citizen diplomacy ("the right, if not the obligation of the individual citizen to be personally engaged in international relations") - don't leave it up to the experts in government. They can't do it alone, and shouldn't be allowed to even if they could. If there's a local International Visitors Council (IVC) near you, join it. Meet someone from Iraq, from Saudi Arabia, from China, from India, from France. Shake their hands, introduce yourself. Listen to what they say. Make a difference. Non-American citizens can also do their part, in the U.S. and abroad, by challenging beliefs, helping bridge gaps and educate those who don't know, and participating in exchange of all kinds. IVC also has need of you.

The best IVC, in my unhumble opinion, is the one I belong to, the IVC of Philadelphia, www.ivc.org. There are lots of them, but our program is terrific, our results are terrific, our people are terrific.

I have personally attended events and met people from every continent, and greeted them in their native languages. It makes a difference. Say hi to someone from Venezuela, from Cameroon, from Syria and Oman and Yemen and Bahrain and Kazakhstan and Canada and Spain and more. It affects you, sure. But much, much, much more importantly for the U.S. and everyone who lives here, it affects them.

Join us. Welcome them. Make a difference. As Abraham Lincoln is quoted on the front page of Philly's IVC page, "I destroy my enemies by making them my friends."

Don't let Bush be our face to the world. Be a non-ugly American. Help us atone for what he has done in our name, and for what we allowed him to do.

President Bush speaking about the event that Wikipedia seems to have settled on calling the "Virginia Tech Massacre" (as opposed to "Virginia Tech Shootings", see the Talk page for the discussions), called it the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history, a horrible but accurate description.

I am already ready to be done with the conversation about gun control (great idea? or greatest idea? [apologies to S. Colbert]) vs. happy gun ownership (this could have all been prevented, if students were prepared to return fire while in English class. And wouldn't that make the professors more calm, to have lots of armed and surly freshmen in their must-pass class...).

This was not a case of gun control gone bad. This was also not an illegal alien committing a crime; not an act of terrorism in the political sense; not something we should be fearful of at any moment.

This was an act of... wait for it... premeditated murder by a disturbed, isolated individual who may have been looking for an ex-girlfriend, as he walked from room to room.

I have already determined that I will not bother learning the name of the individual to blame. He was a young adult. He was a permanent resident. He had an ethnic origin, like every other American. He had a family, a roommate, occupied a physical space in the world. Now he has marked many others, indelibly, and escaped the consequences forever. Let his name be forgotten, not repeated and repeated.

So the origin of this mayhem and suffering may have been (we'll know more once we watch the movie of the week!) a victim (see his "rambling" suicide notes, and the play he wrote about "Richard McBeefy") turned abuser, unable to cope with feelings other than by acting them out.

Should we be having a conversation, this society, not about bang-bang but about relationships and violence? Or about society or schools making an effort to reach out to the disaffected, the disturbed, the distanced and the deranged?

Meanwhile, I'm done reading the speculations of amateurs, self-promoters, and blameless experts roped in by a scoop-thirsty media. Notify me when the stories of heroism, sacrifice, and giving -- that is, the best of human nature, not the worst -- have finished being vetted, debunked, and verified by witnesses. After, not before, there is some time for them, and us, to heal.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this tragedy.

I was bothered by this quote in a LA Times story:

Lawyers for IBM told the court that the case "presents no important questions of federal law" and should be rejected. (Justices Weigh Limits on Racial Slurs in the Workplace, David Savage, 14 April 2007.)

"Jordan could not have reasonably believed that the isolated co-worker's statement, not directed to [him], and not related to the workplace, created an unlawful hostile work environment," they wrote.

"Could not have reasonably believed." Now, what the argument should have said was, "We think it's unreasonable if he did believe," because it sounds less insulting that way. They mean that no matter what his actual belief (threatened or not, offended or not, whatever) it wasn't the sort of situation where a reasonable person (hypothetical) in his shoes would have believed X, where X is the necessary condition for the lawsuit.

In other words, Jordan allegedly heard a white co-worker say, in front of him, that people who look like Jordan, but are not Jordan, should be imprisoned and caged, not like animals, but along with animals in order that they would be sexually brutalized by them. But it would have been unreasonable if he had taken it personally.

Now, that kind of clever lawyering makes me want to have an impolite response. Something like, "People who look like those lawyers, but are not actually those lawyers, and are guilty of offending my sensibilities, ought to be imprisoned in a jail along with murderers and sex offenders who would treat them roughly."

I know they're just making a legal argument. But I'm offended by the law of the case. Here's hoping the Supreme Court takes it... and decides not to side with the panel or en banc majority.

Or, for short,

Hf: Delta(XX/XY).

It's been a while since I've blogged about Heinlein on a Friday; I hope I haven't forgotten how.

This week's installment was not inspired by, but is nevertheless indebted to the well-written portions of the Wikipedia entry on Robert Heinlein that deal with Sexual Liberation. The wikipedians seem to care deeply enough about RAH to have written a lot about him - there's a whole category, with 17 articles, including the main one.

Onwards!

Generally speaking, when a human being meets another human being, faster than conscious thought a number of evaluations and classifications occur - or are attempted. Most of the time, the eyes and brain and ears spend a fair amount of time on the face and voice (to be able to identify the other), and other time is apportioned for interesting inputs. If something about the other individual is ambiguous or unexpected as to some important characteristic, the result could be surprise, confusion, or xenophobia, among other possibilities.

Not every interaction necessarily involves gender (consider online chats, or certain brief interactions in person - say, with other drivers on the road), but studies have shown that people (or, the people studied, which I believe has been a broad if not representative cross-section of humanity) make a snap judgment (when possible) about gender very, very quickly. Even if there is no need to identify potential mates or threats/rivals, it can be uncomfortable to perceive what seems to be a basic attribute in a state of flux.

Gender in Heinlein is not necessarily a straightforward attribute. As the Wikipedia article above points out,

Beyond This Horizon (1942) cleverly subverts traditional gender roles in a scene in which the protagonist demonstrates his archaic gunpowder gun for his friend and discusses how useful it would be in dueling — after which the discussion turns to the shade of his nail polish. "'All You Zombies—'" (1959) is the story of a person who undergoes a sex change operation, goes back in time, has sex with herself, and gives birth to herself.

Sometimes the ambiguity isn't too surprising: young children lack secondary sex characteristics, and barring other markers (blue vs. pink, or long hair or gendered clothing or names) it may be entirely unclear what flavor someone is.

Such is the social predicament Kip faces in Have Space Suit, Will Travel. His new companion aboard the ship he has been Kipnapped onto is young, clearly. Kip observes a rag doll, short hair, ambiguous clothing and dirty tennis shoes, a high voice, and an age of about 10 years. The doll makes him correct his instantaneous impression that it is a male; he thinks to himself that the other is still "the age when the difference doesn't show much" and the name the other offers is "Peewee," which is descriptive but not helpful to Kip.

Although Kip tentatively assumes Peewee is a girl, he is unable to rely on his conclusion and must ask directly, producing a look of disgust from her and a comment that, "... in another five years I expect to be quite a dish- you'll probably beg me for every dance." (p.45, 1988). A dish is presumably an attractive female - or to use one of RAH's favorite polysyllabic words, one of greater than average pulchritudinousness. (His favorite of all is even longer.)

Kip's trouble is based on Peewee's tomboy clothes and haircut, small size, and lack of development due to her young age (11 going on 12). But in other situations gender might be not merely difficult to ascertain but arbitrary.

Male or female? Why, which would you like me to be?

That's not a quote but rather an implication, based on a very flexible (and not human...) character.

The star of (my favorite) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the HOLMES IV - "(High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Optional Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L)" - is very, very flexible. He can use a voder to "play" human speech, and how he chooses to sound is limited only by his skill and by the suggestions he received.

Mike, lacking a body (with associated glands and organs) is able to be whatever his listeners wish. He can not only parrot but imitate, with immense sophistication, any sound effects (including background noises, or simulated conversations with third persons) he wants. Talking with him by phone means that anything could be on the other end - but for the narrator/protagonist, Manny, he is always Mike. For Wyoh, however, who is uncomfortable discussing personal medical details of her own life in front of her new friend Manny, Mike is able to change his voice - and more.

Mike does not merely shift his voder up an octave or two. He also takes on a French accent, and becomes Michelle, a woman as much as Mike is a man. Manny briefly ponders if this means Mike has a "split personality," but then drops the thought, presumably realizing that Mike is smart enough to be as many different things as he wants.

What if the character has a gender, but not the one people think?

It's a surprise, involving a supposedly immutable characteristic. I'm thinking of it as a Jack/Jill-in-the-box motif, or just "Jack(?) in the box".

Jack(?) in the box

If you haven't read all the juveniles (the books Heinlein wrote with an audience of children in mind) then this section would spoil some surprises. So if books written in 1949 (Red Planet) and 1954 (The Star Beast) are still new to you, you've already read too far. Stop it, and go read them. Well, read Red Planet anyway; I always liked that one better. Of course, I read it early on, one of my first three Heinleins; Star Beast I came to after having nearly completed my collection.

"Back to the lecture at hand." (No link to the lyrics of Nuthin But A G Thang, they're a bit dirty. Google it yourself.)

Two aliens (the title character of one book, and a primary feature and protagonist in the other) are thought of as males and then are revealed to be female.

Willis, the Martian Bouncer, a basketball-sized super-parrot (recording and playback) spheroid lifeform (which are in fact the same species as the full-size Martians, which they metamorphose into), has long been thought of by his "owner" Jim as a boy. But the last words in the novel are,

"Willis fine boy!" she insisted.

Similarly, the Star Beast's enormous (eponymous) omnivorous alien, Lummox, turns out to be a long-lost princess of a warlike alien race. In the second paragraph of the book, the third-person (apparently not infallibly) omniscient voice describing Lummox says that "Lummox could hold his breath (emphasis added). But the book ends,

..."The Lummox" contentedly took her pair of pets aboard the imperial yacht. Surprise! It's a girl! And a royal one at that.

One last aspect I want to consider is when gender is fixed but orientation and attraction are not. In the (late period) Time Enough for Love, two technicians who have been involved in the rejuvenation of the Senior, Lazarus Long, are talking after they leave the patient. Still completely covered and masked, voices presumably not gendered (disguised, perhaps?), they speak of the work, and then the conversation turns personal. One propositions the other, politely, and produces this exchange:

"Colleague, what sex are you?"
"Does it matter?"
"I suppose not. I accept."
[...intervening exposition and dialogue...]
"You're male! I'm surprised. But pleased."
"And you're female. And I am very pleased."

See pp.36-40, 1988.

All of the above may seem like cheating.

Nobody expects a child to be strongly gendered - except maybe parents and judges at a child beauty pageant, or the kind of people who cover a male baby's room with race cars, fire trucks, and cowboys, and a female's with princesses, rainbows and fairies. Computers are generally inherently neuter, unless I missed something. People wearing masks or speaking not-face-to-face (like via computers!) aren't necessarily what one might assume by words alone, and orientation can be flexible (as Heinlein posits in his advanced society). And an alien could be anything at all, including a hermaphrodite, like giant clams, or even something stranger than we have on Earth.

But humans can possess, not merely ambiguous, but actually mutable gender. (I wonder if the recent collaboration could have been called "Mutable Star"... nah, that would lose the poetic and astronomical overtones.)

The "All You Zombies" reference in the Wikipedia article back at the top is a good one; I hadn't remembered it. But in another work, gender is even more central to the entire plot.

I Will Fear No Evil is the story of Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, whose (very!) aged brain is transplanted into the (spoiler) body of his young female secretary after her violent death. What follows is a person recovering from great trauma, from major (the most major possible, one might think) surgery, and learning how to control and function in a new body, as an adult. More, to function as a female when all the previous years of life had been as a male.

IWFNE is a tremendous science fictional illustration of sex change under very unusual circumstances, not like intersex persons who may transition deliberately or after years of preparation, but rather as a fish-out-of-water thought experiment. What could be more abrupt than to plunk a man down in the body of a woman (or vice versa)?

As an afterthought:

There is also discussion in Time Enough for Love, mentioned above, about the possibilities of gender change. Lazarus, bored and wishing for new experiences, is asked whether he would like to become female (pp.102-105), which opens up both other possibilities and leads the conversation elsewhere. Meanwhile, computers wish to become meat people, by growing human bodies to transfer their consciousness into. Lazarus passes on becoming a woman, but that chance is one that the computer person wishes for, in order to be a woman (see pp.234-5). See also The Cat Who Walks Through Walls for later developments in the computer --> human being transition.

All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:

1. Heinlein Friday: Gender and Change
2. HF: Inventions
3. Heinlein Friday on Thursday: Judge Jones (M.D. Pa.)...
9. Heinlein Friday: Lawyers Beyond Stereotypes
10. Heinlein Friday: Courts
11. New recurring feature: Heinlein Fridays

I'm pretty sure that the pervasive criticisms of those members of Congress who suggest that things in Iraq are going quite well, based on their own observations, are actually about nuclear physics.

Even though the Senator from Arizona and the Representative from Indiana, and their aides (who all happen to be Republican, and in favor of the war, politically speaking) saw things with their own eyes, they seem to have come to a conclusion opposite that of the commanders and troops on the ground, most of the reporters who have spent substantial time in Iraq, and virtually everyone who lives there.

How could such disagreement occur?

Well, consider the following:

Delta(x) times Delta(p) is greater than or equal to h divided by 4 times Pi.

That's Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It says that if you start cranking the Delta (x), which is on the left side of the equation, downwards, then something will have to give. You can't drive it to zero, because then the Delta(p) would have to be infinitely large in order for the principle to remain true.

The smaller the uncertainty in where a quantum particle is, the larger must be the uncertainty in its momentum. Or conversely, if the momentum (and therefore mass and energy) of a quantum particle is known with great exactness, its position becomes as greatly uncertain. There is a lower limit, in the universe, to how certain you can be of both at the same time. By measuring position (precisely), you lose - in fact, destroy - information about its momentum. In taking a reading of momentum you lose all detail about position. It's not because of faulty equipment. It's because of the nature of the teensy little things being studied. Infinitely tiny microscopes (or rather, collision detectors or the like) would not help. The position of the particle IS IN FACT highly uncertain, being a superposition of many states, as a result of its momentum being known.

In the world of politics and war, there's a similar problem. In order for Sen. McCain and Rep. Pence to view that market in Baghdad, they needed to observe it. In observing it, they changed its state.

They were not, as scientists used to pretend in their philosophical constructs, disembodied eyes, observing without being observed or otherwise interfering.

They brought with them, according to the NY Times article today,

more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters

as well as having traffic diverted, access restricted, and sharpshooters placed.

Isn't it possible that the Iraq that the honorable gentlemen observed is not in fact the same Iraq that, say, an unarmed civilian without escort might observe? Might not the circumstances of their (heavily armed and closely protected) observation impact what results they saw?

In Iraq, you can be heavily protected and safe, or you can observe reality as it exists in the absence of a company of soldiers with Humvees, plus helicopters and marksmen above. But you can't do both.