INSTINCT FOR ORDEAL

The last transit of Venus occurred on the 6th of June—that’s when our charming sister planet last passed visibly across the face of the sun. The 6 hour and 40 minute trip went largely uncelebrated around the world, generating a fraction, I guess, of the hype surrounding a relatively mundane lunar eclipse. The downplay is understandable—though it has nearly the same mass as Earth, our oft-underestimated interplanetary distance renders Venus a little more than an ink dot in the sky. It may be hard to believe, then, that this puny astronomical curiosity once set the stage for one of my favorite stories in history of human achievement.

It has been called mankind’s first international, cooperative, scientific effort. In 1761 hundreds of star-searchers departed to exotic locales from ports all around the world, and all because of a paper written by the great Edmund Halley (a super-genius whose litany of brilliant accomplishments does not include discovering the comet that today bears his name) 45 years prior. This paper described how measurements of the transit could be used to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Unfortunately, transits of Venus occur less than frequently—there were none in Haley’s lifetime. But, when the occasion came, the world’s scientific community responded, including many future luminaries who would find greater fame in later pursuits, the likes of James Cook and the duo of Mason & Dixon.

What makes the story so fascinating is what happens next. This unprecedented, global scientific effort was also an unmitigated failure—at least partially due to foul weather, hostile natives, and the fact that while the scientific world was in a cooperative mood, their respective monarchies were decidedly not. The personal tales of these men, tales of optimism, calamity and woe, characterize the 1700s as an age of scientific adventure and ordeal the likes of which would go unrivaled until we started sending men into space.

The instinct for adventure and ordeal feels lost, sometimes, to my own age. Modern convenience is a luxury, but very much the sin of our fathers. I’m too lazy to google what “generation” I belong to.

For me, there will always be a romantic significance to the transit of 1761 as I picture the hundreds of scientists and staff setting sail, leaving behind their homes for years, fully culturally aware that they were pioneers in a bold age of discovery—that through their efforts and the efforts of their contemporaries, the human race changes the way that it sees itself and the universe.

I don’t know if we have that anymore. I have seen the best minds of my generation too pussified to risk destruction by madness, take jobs as waiters, and forget about the subjects that once captivated them in their youths until one night they comes up at a bar and we realize we have nothing left to say. I look around and see us frightening on the verge of a social-intellectual revolution, of discovery and innovation that could change forever the ways we see and treat one another and ourselves. I wonder if we have the same instinct for adventure and ordeal as those giants that risked their wealth, reputations and lives in 1761 to find our place in the solar system.

On the other hand, at least we’re building space-drones.

WHAT FAGS CAN LEARN FROM THE FRESH PRINCE

Did you hear the gay news? NBC has a new sitcom about homosexual men. Yes, grab hold of your head to keep it from exploding! Finally, Modern Family, but without all the geeky straight people. If you're a geeky straight person who loves homosexuals but frowns on homosexuality, this program (like all the rest) may just be for you!

The new show is about two blissfully monogamous gay men, Bryan and David. They are handsome, young, well-coiffed and professionally accomplished. Their near-perfect lives are missing only one thing: a bun in some lady's oven. The best part? The show is called The New Normal.


You would think, from the controversies surrounding the its launch, that The New Normal has done something meaningful to advance gays in America. You would be wrong. The first sex scene of the show is strictly hetero, 2:30 into the pilot. We get an eyeful of bouncing tits in a purple bra and a supposedly clever male fetish that is neither sexy nor interesting. Already, we see the subject treated with a sort-of post-modern, cynical detachment (see: Girls). I would give you the timestamp for the first gay sex scene, but it never happens.

This is the happy couple's first scene together: one comes home and describes a day spent shopping while the other, I shit you not, watches football on the couch with a beer and a large dog. Let's be perfectly clear about the message of the show: The New Normal is just the old normal... with dudes.

Like Modern Family before it, The New Normal's treatise on gay identity in american culture is "don't be afraid, they're just like you!"

And that message is bullshit.

 I had hoped that a 21st century civil rights movement would be more about accepting difference than fitting in. "Fitting in" is a 20th century compromise, and what has it gotten us: women who have to act like men to get past the glass ceiling, and blacks who have to "act white" to get in the door.

How well do you remember 90s television? My favorite show that I grew up with was the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It's a little campy in retrospect, but the young Will Smith still has a lot to teach us.

The Fresh Prince centers around a charismatic, street-smart teenager who, from the circumstances of urban poverty and violence, is moved in with his wealthy relatives in an upper-class, white, Los Angeles community. His new family does not always understand or appreciate the appearance, dialect, or behavior of its newest member--no one less than the his fully-assimilated cousin, Carlton. Faced with the pressures of privilege and the fear of exclusion, the Fresh Prince stays true to himself. Was not young Will's first move upon attending the stuffy Bel-Air Academy but to wear his uniform blue blazer inside-out, exposing the uniformly white student body to the cornucopia of color hidden in each of their inner linings.

What would he be if he just conformed? What would he be if he had said, "don't worry, white people, I am just like you?" He would be Carlton, and he would not have a show.


And we can blow this up a little and take a look at the the state of civil rights as a whole. This week I heard from a source in Dallas, TX that her city hall was hosting a national forum on saggy jeans. This is not a joke. Neither are club dress codes that explicitly ban "urban wear." You see, you can be black in America and be rich as God, but if you don't dress in a manner that bespeaks the wealthy class that preceded you (i.e. white-acceptable) you will encounter overt racism and told that you asked for it. If a white man speaks with a thick southern accent, he can call himself a gentleman, but if a black man speaks like a 2 Chainz song, they get to call him a thug. People in the media talk a lot about diversity, but when was the last time the smiling black family in the cell phone commercial wore jerseys, braided their hair, or looked like they vote Democrat?


It might be too late to save black people. This is what we get for winning acceptance by appealing to our similarities to the white, middle-class. I've had white women tell me that I didn't sound black on the phone like they were paying me a compliment. This is reality now.

But gays, come on, you don't have to go out like that! I know the struggle is hard and if progress were any slower, it may seem like time has stopped, but you will win the long game. Be patient, be fucking fabulous and win one for everybody. Win it for the gays who want to settle down with a family and do it for the gays who want to wear makeup and dresses or get their genitals transformed into someone else's, do it for the gays who want to fuck every man who lives and breathes or get ready to spend the rest of your "freedom" forced to look down on half of your population.

Then you can tell those children who "complete your lives" that they can be whoever they want to be.






 Alright, enough ranting. Listen to some music:

JL8: THE BEST NEW THING

All in all, it has been a very good week. I got a lot of things I really wanted, including my triumphant return from podunk-but-picturesque Kentucky to my beautiful urban hellscape, the first new episode of Dr. Who and a national convention speech that actually referred to facts and math (love you, Bubba!). But amidst all this awesome, JL8, the actual best new thing about this week, caught me completely by surprise.

JL8 is a webcomic by independent creator Yale Stewart. Stewart re-imagines popular DC comics superheroes and villians as elementary school students. A little Superman crushing on wee-Wonder Woman and speechifying on doing the right thing on the playground, bite-sized Batman sent to timeout and LOVING IT... sure, it's sweet enough in concept.

But where Stewart really breaks through is execution. Things like costume changes (Batman always has to be edgier) cleverly draw extra attention to Stewart's economic, effective and occasionally gorgeous artwork. And from a writing perspective, the dialogue, storylines, mood and characterization are pitch perfect. Let me repeat. Pitch. Perfect.

This is coming from a guy who has read every issue of the past year's Justice League reboot: the grown-ups could learn a lot from their cuddly counterparts.

Witty, adorable and sincere, JL8 is simply one of the best comics of the year, the best take on this classic team in a decade, as and it's you get it for FREE.

Best new thing. Don't sleep on it.

NEIL ARMSTRONG IS BEYOND BELIEF

Neil Armstrong died a today at the age of 82.When you grow up American, you can’t help but see Armstrong as this near-mythical figure like an apostle, a founding-father or some foreign king. Long before you have a clue what stains are placed on a man’s mind and body in the pursuit of space travel, you are already awed by the accomplishment and by the winner’s aura of the title “First.” As a young writer, I have come to admire him for a different reason: he was a man who chose his words well. Few writers will ever experience the pressure of a single sentence carrying with it the aspirations of his entire species.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

It’s so grossly grandiose that it would sound cheesy in any event other than stepping out of a lunar module you manually landed onto the surface of the moon. I would have said something different. I would have said, “holy fucking fuck!” and so would you.

One more, much less known, from the vault of reaaly cool Neil Armstrong quotes that is the internet:

"There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers," he once said. "There are places to go beyond belief."

AHTEISM AND AGNOSTICISM

There is an almost indistinguishable line between having no time to write and having no inclination. Take right now: I checked Facebook, Questionable Content, XKCD and Twitter in the space between these two sentences. As the writer I exist in a sort of hypertime, warped and completely unrelated to the time you experience while reading. None of the above, by the way, gave me any clues as to what I should write about this morning. Fuck it. Tweet again. Let's talk about God.

-----

The funny think about God is that despite possessing almost no knowledge, people generally have their minds made up. In the everyday world, arguments for or against are rarely marked with striking insights or structural sophistication. People simply are or are not fans; their reasons are rooted in impressions, not logic.

That said, we do see some movement, and it's headed away from the supernatural. The Washington Post reportsthat religion is waning in the United States. According to the “The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism,” the proportion of Americans who self-identified as religious is down from 73% in 2005 to just 60% today. The explanations for such a sharp statistical drop are as numerous as they are elementary--any freshman sociology student could guess just as well as so-called experts quoted in related articles all over the web. I won't be getting into them. Still, it is exciting isn't it, that we may be on our way to a religious minority?

I perused the comments sections of a few referring websites at 8:30 in the morning looking to battle some theists on the watchmakerargument or gays causing hurricanes before breakfast. Surprisingly, and I want to go as far as to call this a sign of the times, most of the arguments people were having over this story had neither to do with whether God exists nor with the cosmo-moral implications of pushing God out of society; all anyone cared about was the difference between "Atheism" and "Agnosticism."

4 points about atheism and agnosticism

•  It doesn't much matter. Neither are a religion, political perspective, or cohesive school of thought. If you care, it is only because you're intellectually curious, so stop screaming at strangers over the internet for it.
• Don't consult a dictionary. No dictionary is the canonical authority on the English language, and they are generally terrible when it comes to terms with definitions that vary with different analytical frameworks. Every philosopher and social scientist already knows this.
• If yous till care, I prefer the epistemic definition: The the claim is: "God exists." A theist believes "God exists." An atheist believes NOT-it, "God does not exist." An agnostic, on the other hand, withholds judgment: "I do not believe that God exists or does not exist." 
• Because agnostics don't believe in God, they are often lumped in with atheists, who technically believe something quite different.

 

In my lifetime, I have convinced maybe three individuals to give up their religion and only one of them became a full-fledged atheist. I am told that three is an exceptional number; the whole endeavor is generally considered impossible.

My lucky three had a few things in common. They were all young: ages ranged from 12 to 16. I was a teenager as well. They all loved to talk about religion but knew almost nothing about it. The youngest was a laser-focused Christian, all clean-hair and pre-sapient adolescence. She delirious took up any debate and any opportunity to remind us all of God’s love. Next, an angry, teenaged, gothic boy who, through natural rebellion, didn’t think much about his white, protestant parents and really wanted to be right about something. The eldest, Kaia, was a stunning, young, black and Asian woman with wit, and charm, pride and passion. She is the only one whose name I still remember.

Arguments swayed every one of them. There were no fresh tragedies to acutely shake their faiths. There was no depression or desperation. I did not have to “witness” or promise them anything. I spoke with them and changed their minds. Some people convert to atheism as they would to a religion, but most come to it like this—one good argument can do the impossible.

2012 TOP 10 RECORDS SO FAR

When I sat down to write this post yesterday, I was ready to straight blast on Frank Ocean's channel Orange. I was going to say how much less interesting it is than his 2011 mixtape, Nostalgia, that he sounds like Musiq with less soul, and that after the Weeknd's murderous 2011 mixtapes, everything else "new" in R&B just sounds like "old" R&B. I was going to say that, as if by a deliberate formula aimed at mediocrity, great beats were always paired with weak choruses, and vice versa. I was going to conclude with the admission that I have eaten crow on album review before (808s and Heartbreak; Watch the Throne), and that I would give this one a few more listens before I really made up my mind.

What can I say? I'm glad I didn't write that bullshit!

Just the same, even though channel Orange is more than OK in my book now, I'm going to continue with the plan of sharing my favorite new records of the year so far. If, for whatever reason, you want to hear anything other than channel Orange sometime soon, go with one of these.

Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far) (Yes, in order):

Chromatics - Kill for Love

Turned on this record at the beginning of the year. The streets have never looked the same.

Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

 channel Orange's P4k reviewer said that Frank Ocean is one of the best singer-songwriters working today. If you want to believe that, don't listen to a Fiona Apple album.

fun. - Some Nights

I hate saying that I liked this band before they were famous. But. I did.









Beach House - Bloom
Passion Pit - Gossamer
Theophilus London - Timez Are Weird These Days
Baroness - Green & Yellow (for when you want to hear the exact, constitutional opposite of Frank Ocean)
JJ - High Summer (EP)
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Mount Eerie - Clear Moon