I was thinking about how the calendar we use is based on a large span of time in the history of humanity. We have all the old gods in there. We have the whole A.D. (Anno Domini) thing. The days and months are, in a way, a constant reminder of our pagan roots. I was thinking about the whole utility of the calendar and how, if we were going to redesign it from scratch, there isn’t actually that much to improve. The calendar is an abstraction that we all agree to in order to provide order. It doesn’t matter much that February has 28 days vs 31 for January. February is an abstraction. It is funny, though, that there are billions of lines of computer code to accommodate our weird calendar. The astronomical basis of our calendar is, unlike so many astronomical things, quite variable. The earth and the moon and the sun and all of the planets make for a wobbly little clockwork universe to write code for. To think there are satellites in orbit worried about whether today is the day named after the moon or the one named after Saturn and whether we are in Octavius’s month or Julius’s is a funny thing.

But if we were to do it again, we could abandon the moon but we couldn’t abandon the sun. The seasons are an annual cycle thanks to our orbit around the sun and no calendar makes sense that does not acknowledge the utility of that. The New Year actually starts at a fairly logical time, as our orbit reaches an extreme. Months are the only thing you could really argue about. A year divided into 10 or so parts makes sense, and the moon does orbit the earth roughly 12 times per solar year. So really, the system we have is not so bad. Those ancients knew what they were doing!

Whenever you say the word “Thursday” you are really in touch with our ancient forebearers.

I’ve been arguing with feminists lately. I am a feminist, so it is an odd position to be in. When I say I am a feminist I mean that I support, in thought and action, equality in every way, shape and form for women. Professionally, personally, with my friends, family, strangers, I completely acknowledge the equality of women and the patriarchy of our society that has stacked the deck against them for the last several millennia.

There is one way in which I am not a feminist — I am a man. By that specifically I mean that part of the problem that feminists have with men is based on the way we are wired, deep in some genetic code. We can all argue about the relative effects of nurture vs. nature but the nature of men has been evident across all cultures. In the context of sexual relations, men are, at least to some extent, animals. (Women are too but someone else can write that blog post.) The reason that the porn and prostitution industries exist is because of this particular nature of men. Both of these industries relate to men’s desire (and, believe me, I don’t mean all men nor all men all of the time) to have sex without attachment, negotiation or compromise. I would say virtually all men, even if they don’t use porn or prostitution, understand the desire to have sex on demand, without attachment, negotiation or compromise.

This is kind of an ugly reality, I admit. It is one of the baser drives in men. It absolutely treats women as sex objects. The only real defense I make for this is that men truly wish for consensual, willing female partners in this. Men like being objectified, too. The drive is not to degrade or demean women, it is to live out fantasies with them.

Now again, I admit, that the way the porn and prostitution industries operate, they are hellish and prey upon vulnerable and abused people. They are industries of despair and addiction, in many cases. It is not my aim to defend these industries whatsoever. Yet I believe they are indicative of a reality of the nature of men, one that men can try to control but they cannot change. I think feminists look at these qualities in men and assume they are the result of a brainwashing by society and/or an intense selfishness. In a way, they think these impulses in men to focus on women as sexual objects should be eliminated. They see it as a direct assault on the feminist movement.

I think they are correct to a large extent. Where I draw the line, and I hope they agree, is that consenting adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want. I can’t explain why some women freely engage in porn or prostitution. Men in similar desperate situations may not have those options and probably turn to equally degrading professions, such as crime. Is that so much better? Can there be any expectation that men will change and lose their desire to treat women as sexual objects? I think not, anymore that we can expect people will stop smoking, drinking or eating at McDonalds. Things that prey to the most base impulses of people are hard to change.

What is important in my opinion is that the treating of women as sexual objects, if it happens at all, is happening to women who want it to happen, whether personally or professionally, or better yet, in the privacy of our own homes where consenting adults have all sort of consensual fun in ways that is not our business. It should not happen in the work place, in school or in the other many areas where women have historically been treated as second class citizens. Women have no duty whatsoever to play to men’s baser desires. But they always have and they always will. This is not a double-standard, as men are pretty damn willing to play to any base desire of women whatsoever.

Because the bottom line on all of this is that porn and prostitution are simply the extremes of what happens in magazines, movies and TV all day every day — the general worship of female beauty and portrayal of women as sex objects. I’d guess that a majority of the time, this portrayal is by women for women. Porn and prostitution are the tail of the bell curve in the systematic exploitation of women. The center is big media that caters largely to women.

When you think about mining you think about there being this stuff of value in, generally, a hard to reach spot and it costs you money to go get it. These days, things of value are of a less tangible sort but their value is self-evident. What is the value of mobile phone technology? What is the value of thermonuclear warheads? Or a vaccine against AIDS? Or an iPod?

These things have value and we can go get it, all we want, by supporting research. These things are the fruits of research. While you do see T-Mobile or Medtronic leveraging the latest technology, you don’t see the thousands of labs on colleges and universities around the world where students and faculty invented it. This is where the rubber truly meets the road. iPods and AIDS drugs are built directly on the backs of graduate students and faculty at universities.

I point this out because there are major economic and public safety reasons why it is in our best interest to create an academic environment which promotes research. The US government has been very good about funding science but that support is faltering. I fear we will make the mistake of micromanaging research funding, where bureaucrats are overly concerned with the practicality of research. Researching the atom did not seem practical 100 years ago. It turns out to be pretty practical. We need to fund the higher education system, fund scientific research and allow these students and professors to literally invent our future.

(We also need young people to choose to be one of them, too!)

This is what we have learned — if we give the Republicans their way, we don’t get good policy, we get more politics. Even though they control every branch of government in this country, the Right is not concerned, apparently, about making good policy. They still use every possible opportunity to bolster their political power. I’ve always thought that if the Right was correct and I and the rest of us on the Left were wrong, then we would be seeing the proof of that right now. We gave them the keys and we said “OK, drive” and where have we ended up? NOWHERE.

A quick roll-call: Iraq is a mess. The debt and the deficit are at an all-time high. Oil prices are at an all-time high. People with health insurance are at an all-time low. The rich are much richer and the poor far worse off. Science is under attack in our schools by people who think that divine intervention is a more appropriate explanation than the results of rigorous scientific research. Many states have modified their constitutions to encode prejudice against same-sex couples. The globe is heating up, perhaps to an uncorrectable degree and the bulldozers are heading up to pave the last great wilderness in America so you can save $0.10/gallon when you fill your SUV.

The bottom line here, folks, is that if the Right is correct and the Left is wrong, it should be obvious by now. They’ve had all the power, they had their way on everything — where is the success? Where are the crowds of cheering people?

There are none. Even their own base is trying to keep down a gag reflex. The Republican agenda is not, apparently, about good policy, it’s about politics and power. What they do with the power is further a dogmatic agenda of class warfare and religious intolerance. Face it folks, they suck at this.

Over the next 3 years we need to show them the door and try to elect leaders who are results oriented instead of moronic ideologues. We can do better. We must do better. We will do better.