Archive for June 25, 2011

Summer Fun (Some Are Not)

33
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

 

Pauly is a firm believer that lazy sum­mer week­end after­noons are made for fun. While Pauly’s idea of fun is swim­ming around in cir­cles and eat­ing worms, he real­izes some of you are harder to enter­tain, so for those of you teth­ered to your com­put­ers this after­noon,  he offers this inter­est­ing lit­tle diver­sion.

The quiz will dis­play, in sequence, a num­ber of art­works. In the words of the test cre­ator: “Some of the images dis­played below are True Mas­ter­pieces of Abstract Art, cre­ated by Immor­tal Artists. They carry pro­found mean­ings, which are, how­ever, beyond the appre­hen­sions of the vul­gar. The rest were pro­duced by the author of the quiz. They mean nothing.”

Your job is to decide which is which.

After sub­mit­ting your con­sid­ered opin­ions you will receive your score, an indi­ca­tion of how oth­ers have per­formed, and an anla­y­sis of your answers.

So come on, Log­a­rchism read­ers… let’s see how artsy and cul­ti­vated you are. (Pauly’s score was 67%. He’s still kind of bummed about that, and does not wish to dis­cuss it further.)

New York Legalizes Same-​​Sex Marriage

27
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

 

Pro­test­ers throw objects at police dur­ing the “Stonewall Riots” in Green­wich Vil­lage, June 1969.

Last night, on a 33–29 vote, the New York State Sen­ate approved a bill allow­ing same-​​sex mar­riage in New York State. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law late Fri­day evening in his office.

On a per­sonal note, it has been an amaz­ing jour­ney for me to see how pub­lic and pri­vate per­cep­tions of les­bian, gay, bisex­ual and trans­gen­dered (LGBT) peo­ple has changed, just in the time since I was a boy. My father was a huge fan of Kin­sey, Pomeroy and Martin’s clas­sic trea­tise, Sex­ual Behav­ior in the Human Male (and its com­pan­ion Sex­ual Behav­ior in the Human Female). The “Kin­sey Reports”, as they were called, marked a turn­ing point in what could be con­sid­ered “nor­mal” sexuality.

Still, neg­a­tive atti­tudes toward LGBT peo­ple per­sisted. On Fri­day night, June 27, 1969, New York City Police Depart­ment raided a seedy, Mafia-​​owned joint called the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christo­pher Street, as they had done reg­u­larly, dozens of times before. This time, how­ever, the bar’s reg­u­lars fought back, and the fight­ing spilled into the streets of Green­wich Vil­lage, last­ing four days in an inci­dent now known as the Stonewall Riots.

Mean­while, my best friends in junior high school were gay, but I did not know it at the time. We watched movies together in gym class where there was an open asso­ci­a­tion made between gay men and pedophilia. No one thought any­thing of it.

In the early 1970s, it was unusual to the point of stares and cat­calls for us to see same-​​sex cou­ples on the street express­ing even the most minor forms of affec­tion, such as hand-​​holding. In 1973, the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion (APA) finally removed homo­sex­u­al­ity as a men­tal dis­or­der from the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual. In 1974, the APA had done a com­plete flip, call­ing homo­sex­u­al­ity “a nor­mal form of sex­ual life”.

Now same-​​sex cou­ples can marry in New York State, start­ing July 24. There is no res­i­dency require­ment for New York mar­riages, so the state expects a new wave of “mar­riage tourism”. The Earth will keep turn­ing on its axis. Debt and spend­ing and a lousy econ­omy will still be the focus of our government’s atten­tion. Sol­diers, includ­ing LGBT sol­diers, will fight and die in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every­thing will go on as it has before, except that now, mil­lions of same-​​sex cou­ples will be allowed to express their undy­ing love for one another in the way peo­ple have for cen­turies: by get­ting married.

It remains to be seen how the exis­tence of same-​​sex mar­riage in so many U.S. states can be squared with Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 1 of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, the “full faith and credit clause”. Would Log­a­rchism read­ers care to spec­u­late on how this, or other related con­tro­ver­sies, might play out?

Related arti­cles

Better, But Not Good Enough

58
1 year ago
by Reed Davis in

Editor’s Note: Reed Davis joins Log­a­rchism as a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor with this arti­cle. Reed became inter­ested in U.S. bud­get and eco­nomic mat­ters back in 1992, the first time that he remem­bers the debt becom­ing a major issue in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. On that sub­ject, he main­tains a blog on the US bud­get, and a com­pan­ion web­site.

The Bat­tle of the Bud­get con­tin­ues to rage in Wash­ing­ton, DC. How bad are things, really? How hard would it be for us to bal­ance the budget?

The U.S. Bud­get for fis­cal year 2012 was released on Feb­ru­ary 14, 2011. As in prior years, it included the Ana­lyt­i­cal Per­spec­tives which con­tains a sec­tion on the long-​​run bud­get out­look. I’ve fol­lowed these long-​​run out­looks since at least the 2001 Bud­get and I’ve been impressed that all have openly pro­jected increas­ing pres­sures on the bud­get at the end of the long-​​run (typ­i­cally 75-​​year) win­dow. Still, there was a large improve­ment in the bud­get out­look in this year’s edi­tion. Let’s look at the rea­sons for that improve­ment, and what it means for the cur­rent long-​​run bud­get outlook.

(more…)

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