Publication Announcement

David Schraub, Sticky Slopes, 101 Cal. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2013).

Obviously, this is exceptionally exciting, and particularly so given this early stage of my career. And it represents the culmination of the roller-coaster ride that has characterized the start of my academic career.

I had submitted Sticky Slopes to law reviews last fall, and gotten no bites (though it did reach final review at a very good secondary journal). That was very disappointing, and really shook up my confidence. Following that strike-out, I presented the paper here at the University of Illinois, and the feedback I got sparked a pretty substantial reworking of the paper, both in terms of new content and a new organizational structure. Most of that was done towards the end of last calendar year, and after some final tweaking (and some last minute comments), I sent it out against on President's Day.

From there, it was amazing. I got a couple rejections right off the bat (which always happens), but Friday morning I received my first offer from a stellar journal ranked in the top 20. I was over the moon -- kind of zero-to-hero, all at once. It was a far better placement than I ever dreamed of for my very first article, and, as my people put it, dayenu. But I dutifully sent out expedites, not really expecting anything more to come of it. Instead, I received a slew of positive feedback from some of the very best journals in the business. That turned into two offers from top ten journals, and I accepted California this morning.

It is not the beginning of the end, as they say, but it may well be the end of the beginning. I'm publishing in a great journal which seems very excited about my work. I'm thinking very seriously about going on the academic job market, and of course a placement like this -- well, it doesn't exactly put my destiny in my own hands, but it means I've done all that I could. And just to have that sense of ratification after all this time where this has been the dream, and suddenly it feels real, like it could actually happen -- that feeling is irreplaceable.

See y'all in print!

One-Statism as Wedge Issue

Gal Beckerman has a post up on a Democratic ad demonstrating that "Democrats will not cede Israel to Republicans". Here's the ad.



Obviously, I'm glad that Democrats aren't ceding this terrain. And the points made -- about how the Obama administration has in fact been excellent in terms of funding Israel's security needs and keeping Iran in check -- are important ones. But that's a defensive posture, and there's plenty of room for Democrats to go on offense.

If I were cutting a Democratic campaign ad, I'd start by pairing up text and speeches from Republicans who are one-staters and radical left and Islamist speakers calling for the same thing. I'd quote Jewish groups condemning that position as intrinsically hostile to Israel, and probably include a map showing Israel fading away into one indistinguishable state. Then I'd use the "call so-and-so and demand that they support Israel and reject a one-state 'solution'".

One-statism is the Democratic Party's ultimate wedge for keeping Jewish pro-Israel voters out of Republican hands. Why don't they use the damn thing?

Forget This

The JTA has an interesting report on a trip taken by several American Congresswomen to Israel and Palestine, sponsored by J Street. The women met with a wide array of locals, ranging from Palestinian workers to Israeli peace activists to settlers.

But what might have been most striking was the statements made by the settlers. The Congresswomen drove out to Shiloh, a West Bank settlement that almost certainly will not be part of Israel in any peace deal.

“I’m holding the Bible; Shiloh was our first capital before Jerusalem and it has layers and layers of history,” Tzofiah Dorot, the director of Ancient Shiloh, told the women. “This is the heart of Israel and I don’t see a future for the state if you take the heart out.”

All of the women said they were sure that their settlements would remain part of Israel.

“This is our homeland, the homeland of the Jewish nation -- period,” Tamar Aslaf told the delegation. “A Palestinian who lives here is welcome to stay. It’s his home but it’s our homeland.”

Several of the settlers described a scenario in which Palestinians could stay in their homes but not receive national or voting rights. That drew a sharp reply from the congresswomen, five of whom are African Americans.

“Some people would call that apartheid,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the only white congresswomen on the trip.

“It’s easy to sit in your comfortable house and decide what is good for the Jews,” Dorot responded. “I’m begging you to see that we’re not pieces of Lego you can move around. This is life and death. We all need to think out of the box. I’m asking you to forget about the two-state solution.”

Now we shouldn't generalize. The type of person who lives in Shiloh is not a carbon copy of Israeli society has a whole. We of course know that there are Israelis who support a two-state solution and those who oppose it, and likewise for Palestinians.

But the statements are nonetheless revealing. Most obviously, of course, is the fact that some of the settlers explicitly forward as a "solution" the permanent political inferiority of Palestinians -- a complete non-starter for anyone who cares about human rights and human equality. With due respect to Dorot, the policy of the global community towards Israel is not solely about what is "good for the Jews" but rather about achieving justice and equality for all persons (though the interests and rights of Jews are of course important components of this). But the explicit call to abandon a two-state solution is, if anything, more striking. The vast majority of the Jewish community -- including important institutional actors like the ADL and AJC -- do not just oppose a one-state solution, they find it fundamentally outside the contours of what it means to be "pro-Israel". As David Harris of the AJC put it, "The one-state idea is a recipe for Israel's destruction. Those promoting this proposition ... are not remotely offering a peace option."

I entirely agree with this assessment. And here it helps us draw important lines. If we are to say, as I think we should, that "pro-Israel" cannot encompass one-staters, then the Shiloh settlers are as much a threat to Israel's democracy, security, legitimacy, and longevity as any other one-stater. And they shouldn't be treated any differently.

Need More Beaver!

I am not surprised there is a parody out there entitled "Joustin' Beaver". I am surprised that it is not pornography.

It's All Politics, Baby

The Daily Caller floats a Clarence Thomas presidential run. Obviously, this is "clever, outside-the-box!" punditry at its most ridiculous. But my favorite part is the little bait and switch they do over Thomas' political position.

On the one hand, they use his judicial record to demonstrate how he'd energize conservatives with his "opposition to environmental regulation and his free market philosophy.... [and] that he’s against abortion, gay rights, and limits on prayer in school." On the other hand, when faced with the inevitability that Democrats will, you know, cream him over the radical positions he's taken on these issues, they retort that "Thomas has a trump card. Those were not statements of his personal political positions, he can say, but merely interpretations of the law." What a fabulous little rope-a-dope that would be!

The real irony is that, at least for some of the above positions, the latter may well be right. I have it on good authority, for instance, that as a matter of policy Thomas is pro-choice, and his "uncommonly silly" dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas indicates similar views about gay rights. Somehow, I think the right would be less excited about that.

Project Runway Random Recap

We were down to the final six designers last night on Project Runway: All-Stars, and for some reason I want to share my thoughts. Don't know why -- it's not like this episode was particularly wild or outrageous or something (that prize goes to Rami being sent home while Austin slid through with a look that would have been dated in 1967). But whatever -- it's my blog, I do what I want.

The theme of this challenge was that designers had to be inspired by the culture and colors of a foreign country: Chile (Kenley), India (Jerrell), Seychelles (Austin), Papua New Guinea (Mila), Greece (Michael), and Jamaica (Mondo). I really liked the concept in theory, but boy oh boy was it not the designer's best work.

Mondo: Mondo sent out a long but very tight black dress. From a judging perspective, it presented an interesting conundrum: 95% of the dress was great, but didn't read "Jamaica" at all. The 5% that did (green and gold chevrons down the otherwise open back) had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and was hideous to boot. Mondo also came in for criticism for his styling and accessorizing, which I agree with -- I can see how the headband was meant to say "island" but to me it said "ninja". All these problems would have more serious had the competition been less dreadful, but that was not the situation.

Kenley: Kenley put out a short polka-dotted (surprise!) party dress with an asymmetrical flamingo trim. The good news is that I definitely saw "Chile" in it. The bad news is that I specifically saw "Chilean hooker" in it. For whatever reason, it just read skanky to me -- which is odd, because Kenley's problem is normally that her dresses seem too babyish to me, not too slutty. Still, it had some interesting elements and fit her country without being literal, which was much appreciated.

Austin: Eh. It was fine. It wasn't stellar. Austin made the mistake of picking the Seychelles because he knew nothing about it (always a bad call), and the Seychelles in particular has a flag that looks like a rainbow vomiting. That's tough to design around, and Austin really just played it safe -- a simple gown which only featured a few colors, which didn't offend the eye or anything, but hardly wowed.

Michael: "Greece frightening". "Ms. Greece 2012". This number had problems front to back (literally). The concept was decent enough if a bit obvious: a draped white gown with blue embellishments over the shoulder. The problem was that the blue embellishments look for all the world like a sash, which, coupled with the gown cut, really made it look like pageant entry. Meanwhile, the model turns to reveal a plunging back line -- so plunging, it reaches all the way down to her ass. Oops.

Jerrell: As you may be able to tell, I was hardly enamored with most of the offerings last night. But only one, er, "design" feels like it should have set off a civil rights march, and that's Jerell's. It was worse than a costume -- it was a stereotyped costume. It was a green fabric bunch over a highly embellished gold bustier dress, with a ton of accessorizing to complete that ever-stylish "Hindu barbie" look. Jerrell's problem is always editing, and this was not edited at all. Moreover, the shades of green and gold he used clashed horribly with each other, providing another layer of distraction to an already-overcomplicated look. And he kept talking about how "ethnic" India is. As opposed to? Ugh.

Mila: I actually really liked this dress. It was an asymmetrical black and red dress with gold trim (following Papua New Guinea's flag). The geometry was really cool, and the silhouette was interesting and unique. Isaac said the colors reminded him of communism. I say this is why I hate Isaac -- yes, red, black, and gold have a Communist vibe, but that's not all they say. If anything, the dress looks like a sexy play on communism (a Soviet analogue to the recent "sexy Haradi" photo-shoot in Israel). But the point is that Isaac is always completely absorbed in his own little world, and as a judge seems utterly unable to step outside of his personal aesthetic preferences. This show's enjoyability is directly proportional to the amount of time Joanna Coles spends talking and Isaac Mizrahi spends shutting up. Mila was sent home, and honestly, I would have had her win -- hers was the most unique, the most interesting profile, and did the best job of being fashionable while still representing her country.

My top: Mila (winner), Mondo, Austin.

My bottom: Michael, Kenley, Jerrell (goes home).

Woohoo Maryland!

Maryland just passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage, the eighth state to legalize it. Kudos to all the legislators who voted in favor, but particularly Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), who really put himself out there as a key leader in this campaign and shepherded this bill to passage.

As is becoming custom, the law will soon hit the referendum process, as opponents seek to overturn the law and restore the prior state of inequality. Maryland is an interesting context because it is so Democratic, but also features a substantial African-American population which is skittish about marriage equality. It will be interesting to see if conservatives can draw enough cross-over votes to take this law down. But my instinct is that they won't be able to, and Maryland will see gay marriage approved not just be the legislature, but directly by the people as well.

The Baby Rick Santorum Would Have Killed

GOP Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum made waves recently when he came out against requiring insurers to cover prenatal testing. He singled out amniocentesis as a procedure which, in his view, was being used as a precursor to abortion and which insurance companies should not be required (as they are under the ACA) to cover.

Rick Santorum's policy would have killed Sarah Fister Gale's daughter.

Gale was six months into an otherwise normal pregnancy when two successive blood tests turned up abnormal. "Rather than turning to my local politician for prenatal advice, I followed the guidance of my obstetrician, who sent me to a perinatologist, who recommended I have an amniocentesis."

And it's a good thing she did. Gale's daughter was diagnosed via amniocentesis with Rh negative disease, a disorder which occurs when the fetus' blood is positive type but the mother's is negative. The mothers' immune system attacks the baby's blood cells, preventing them from developing. Absent treatment, the baby is normally carried to term but then dies shortly after birth.

Amniocentesis is very expensive. If it wasn't covered by insurance, Gale probably couldn't have gotten the test. And her baby would probably be dead. That, in turn, would be a direct result of Santorum deciding that his moral code takes precedence over doctor's practicing medicine.

If Rick Santorum had his way, I wouldn’t have been able to get that test, and she most likely would have died. Because according to him, tests that give parents vital information about the health of their unborn children are morally wrong. Though he has no medical training, and no business commenting on the medical decisions that women and their doctors make, he argues that such tests shouldn’t be provided, or that employers at least should be allowed to opt out of paying for them on “moral grounds.”
[...]
In the Catholic church where I was raised, pride, arrogance and an overinflated sense of oneself were considered sins. But in Rick Santorum’s world they are virtues, and they make up the foundation from which he proclaims how other people should live their lives.

In 2008, the Archbishop of Denver said that for a Catholic to justify a vote for a pro-choice politician, they must have a reason of the sort "we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life - which we most certainly will." One wonders if Mr. Santorum has a similar reason compelling enough for him to justify a campaign which would see children like Ms. Gale's dead.

HUD

Technology often does cool things. But it is particularly exciting when technology makes real a classic sci-fi trope. And while we're still waiting on flying cars, Google may be bringing us glasses fit with a heads-up display, able to stream information about one's surroundings in real-time.

Yes, it'd actually probably be really weird, and yes, there are serious privacy implications if people are wandering around with hidden, constantly-recording cameras built into to their eyeware. But come on! A heads-up display! Just like everyone has dreamed of since they played Halo (or Goldeneye, or Doom ... age yourself appropriately)! If it doesn't give me the option to have a red box bracket my conversation partner with "target acquired", I'll be sad.

7 Days for 7 Journals

I submitted Sticky Slopes yesterday to about 60 of the nation's finest law journals (I'll push that number up closer to 75 as several late bloomers complete their turnover). I've already achieved the first critical milestone of any submission season -- the first rejection (here within less than 24 hours) -- so that's out of the way (and I must admire the speed at which the journal in question completed their review of my 29,000 word article. No, I won't mention who it was -- wouldn't want to embarrass them).

But I was thinking about the emergent trend we're seeing in some journals to abide by a 7-day expedite window, where they commit to giving authors at least 7 days to make a decision. The effect is to give authors a reasonable amount of time to gain expedited review from more prestigious journals. It's something authors have been clamoring for for some time as expedite windows have been shrinking to absurdly small time-frames (I've heard of 2 hour windows, and even rumors of demands to accept or reject on the phone), but one understands why the journals have been reticent.

1) It's basically giving authors greater opportunity leave them for greener pastures, and there is no clear benefit to the journals for playing nice. One could argue that it helps their reputation, but there is no real evidence that authors actually are putting their money where their mouth is and preferring journals which provide generous expedite windows.

2) Even if journals were inclined to be altruistic, there is a race to the bottom -- journals are afraid of being outcompeted by peers which play hardball.

For these reasons, most of the journals which have agreed to the 7-day window are relatively top-tier reviews that, frankly, don't see a lot of their pieces stolen by reviews higher up the chain.

One proposal I have for fixing this -- or at least partially solving the collective action portion of it, anyway -- is for journals to agree to a 7-day window, but only for expedites to journals which have themselves adopted the 7-day expedite window policy. So if the #50 ranked journal adopts this policy, it would say authors have 7 days to accept an offer from any higher ranked journal which itself provides 7 days to make a decision, so long as it agrees to withdraw from all journals which do not have that policy (or withdraw from those journals after, say, 2 days). This would encourage the journals higher up the ladder to sign on to 7-day policies, as they would be reaping concrete benefits.

Of course, these sorts of withdrawal demands may seem difficult to enforce. But it seems like deals like this happen with some regularity -- schools agree to extensions on offer windows on the condition that the author withdraw their submission from all but a few agreed-upon law reviews.

Anyway, all of this is getting ahead of myself with Sticky Slopes -- dealing with expedite chains is a problem I at the moment only dream of facing. But the policy idea seems sound to me. Thoughts?

State Rape

Trigger warning.

After a great deal of public outcry, Virginia legislators are delaying consideration of a bill that would mandate raping women who want an abortion. The bill specifically would require women seeking an abortion to obtain a medically unnecessary trans-vaginal ultrasound, thus revealing to them that what's growing in their uterus is a fetus and not, say, a basketball.

Since most definitions of rape run something along the lines of "oral, vaginal, or anal penetration of a foreign object without the party's consent", and since here "consent" is manufactured by force of statute (cf., the old spousal rape exemption, where by statute a married women automatically consented to sexual intercourse), Virginia's law is perfectly accurately characterized as a law requiring the rape of women.

But you know what? Everyone's so focused on the negative; but I think that this is really an effort by Virginia legislators to be more pro-choice than they were before. Recall that even most anti-choice lawmakers purport to except from this principle cases where the woman was raped. Virginia is just trying to make that exception cover every woman seeking an abortion, by requiring that they all be raped first! This way, abortions can still be done, and the "consciences" of the men who generally can't tolerate abortion are assuaged. Sure, some women probably object to being subjected to a state-sponsored rape campaign, but hey, omelets, eggs, and all that.

You see? It all works out in the end.

Nuh-Uh! Who Reads Comments?

Normally I think xkcd hits it out of the park, but today's contribution I think is way off target. The premise of the comic is that it costs far more money to run ads on every major political news site than it would to "pay five college students $20/hour to camp the site 24/7 and post the first few comments the moment a story goes up, giving you the last word on the subject and creating the illusion of consensus."

The alt-text proceeds to mock comment structures based on "voting" up good comments and down bad ones. But the real answer is "most commenters on major news sites are morons, and most readers of those sites have to be aware of that fact." If persistent internet trolling was enough to seriously change views, Ron Paul would be President-for-life.

The Rematch

A bill legalizing same-sex marriage has narrowly passed in Maryland's House of Delegates. It moves to the State Senate, and if it passes there, Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) (who's really come out swinging for gay marriage -- and good for him!) will sign. This, as you may recall, is a rematch of last year, where a gay marriage bill narrowly failed in the House of Delegates after passing the Senate -- so getting through the former body is a very, very good sign.

Opponents may still muster signatures to force the issue to the ballot box come 2012.

A Dramatic Change

A leading Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, Avi Shafran, was given space recently in The Forward to explain his organization's take on homosexuality. The second paragraph made the following eyebrow raising claim:

Whether homosexuality is fixed or changeable remains an open question. There are well-informed people on either side of the issue, but as of yet no incontrovertible proof of a “gay gene.” Whether the Jewish religious tradition is fixed or changeable, however, is not arguable — at least not for Torah-loyal Jews.

Skate past the first part. It's the last sentence which caused my head to tilt a little. Because I would also agree that "whether the Jewish religious tradition is fixed or changeable" is rather inarguable -- I just think the obvious answer is "changeable."

Unlike many Christian sects, Judaism has classically not engaged in Biblical fundamentalism. Rather, the Tanakh is only part of the official religious doctrine governing the Jewish community. Alongside it and carrying equal weight is the Talmud, which, in brief, is a corpus of interpretations and expansions upon Biblical doctrine extending for thousands of years.* The Talmud is basically comprised of countless Rabbis giving their own interpretations on what the Torah, the Tanakh, and other Talmudic stories mean, how they should be interpreted, extended, circumscribed, or modified. It is a vast menagerie of differing opinions, and together it paints a dramatically heterodox and pluralistic picture of what Jewish tradition "says". In essence, Jewish theology was the original common law method.

Through this, it is beyond obvious that Jewish law and tradition has changed, often dramatically, over the years, and is the furthest thing from "fixed". The Talmud is chock full of disagreements, with dissenting and concurring threads diverging into a host of different "schools". Indeed, for much of Jewish history there were two separate Talmuds (Jerusalem and Babylonian). The claim that Rabbi Shafran is making here is internally contradictory -- it itself is attempting to enact a dramatic change in how we think of Jewish traditions, replacing historic fluidity with modern (and dare I say, Christian-influenced) stasis.

* This also caused me to raise an eyebrow to the phrase "Torah-loyal Jews". That, to me, sounds like it should be the motto for Karaite Judaism, but of course, most Jews aren't and have never been Karaites. The dominant thread of Judaism is not "Torah-loyal", or at least, not exclusively so. What it is loyal to is the process of an evolving understanding and uncovering of divine principles as they instantiate themselves in an infinite number of social, historical, and political contexts.

Magic Pills of Darkness

New Hampshire State Rep. Jeanine Notter (R) has a novel argument for why health insurance shouldn't cover birth control: It causes prostate cancer.

In case we're unclear: Birth control? Almost exclusively taken by women (e.g., the pill, IUDs, Nuvaring, etc.). Prostate cancer? Only occur in men, because men, unlike women, have prostates. So unless those be some magic pills women be popping, the odds that birth control causes prostate cancer is very, very slim.

Return Slip

One interesting, albeit rarely discussed, permutation in the Israel/Palestine debate is the question of Jewish refugees. The history of Jews from the Arab world, both generally and immediately proximate to the creation of Israel, is poorly understood among the people of the world, and generally their interests are shunted aside (if not forgotten entirely) in the conversation.

The bare bones version is quite simple: There were approximately 800,000 Jews residing in various Arab countries in 1948, a figure that has crashed to less than 7,000 today. The majority were forced out in the years following Israel's independence, as anti-Semitic pogroms wracked the region and Jews fled to Israel (and other countries) for their own safety. This population displacement parallels the Palestinian refugee problem, where Palestinian residents of what became Israel also were forced to flee in the face of violence and war.

Then we have the population of Jews who lived in parts of what is now the West Bank (e.g., Hebron). The story itself isn't much different (although most of Hebron's Jewish population fled in 1929 after a particularly violent pogrom), but the basics are the same -- Jewish residents who had resided on a given plot of land forced to abandon their property and flee elsewhere. The trick comes, of course, from the fact that much of this territory now is under Israeli jurisdiction. And so this raises the question of whether they should have a "right of return".

My stance has been "no", for the same reasons I oppose return-rights for the descendents of Palestinian refugees, to wit: "I care more about protecting Jewish and Palestinian national self-determination rights and democracy than I do about letting every person live on the precise acre they wish." Insofar as "right of return" conflicts with the projects of creating and maintaining independent Jewish and Palestinian states, it's not worth it. We can query the hypocrisy of "pro-Palestinian" activists who simultaneously call for a Palestinian right of return while protesting in front of Sheikh Jarrah, but the basic principle isn't complicated.

All this is by way of introduction to this letter from the descendent of a Jewish family expelled from Hebron (via). The author is writing to formally disavow any claims to her ancestral property. Noting that her position is in principle no different from Arab families which have deeds to property in Jerusalem or Haifa, she reminds us that it is far too late to turn the clock back to 1948. The project can't be that anymore. The modern project is reaching a territorial compromise so that both a Jewish and Palestinian state can be created and flourish, and that's not going to include letting every person live on the precise parcel of land they might like. It means some Jews' whose families lived in Hebron but were violently forced out won't get to return, and it means some Arabs whose families lived in Jaffa but were violently forced out won't get to return either. It may be tragic, but it is a necessary component of a just peace. Kudos to the writer for a stark demonstration that many people are willing to make that sacrifice.

Google Strikes One For Team America

At an Iranian demonstration, a banner which reads in Farsi as "America can not do a damn thing" is rendered in English as "America can do no wrong."



It looks like the problem was with Google translator (that's how it renders the Farsi phrase into English).

Whoops!

Let Them Eat Cake

Via @AmandaMarcotte, Pat Archibald in the National Catholic Register enters a plea for a return to "pretty" in women, defined "as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence." This stands in contrast to "hot", which is not clearly defined but which he indicates is some sort of raw, sexualized energy. Back in the good old days (the 50s, natch. It's always the 50s), even our stars were more "pretty" than "hot" -- or at least many of them were. They might have still "sinned", but at least they projected "innocence".

But today, alas, women aspire to be "hot". The difference is in how men treat the two sorts of women:

[P]retty inspires men's nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable.

Hmmm.

We might first note that it is hardly universally accepted that the desire for projected innocence is tied into a desire to "protect". Alexander King certainly had a different spin on things -- he wrote "That gentlemen prefer blondes is due to the fact that, apparently, pale hair, delicate skin and an infantile expression represent the very apex of frailty which every man longs to violate." And alas, King wrote in the first half of the 20th century, well before women's liberation ruined everything. Archibald concedes that the prettiness of yore was often a facade, not a true "innocence"; so long as we're explicitly valuing the hypocrisy of it all, we might as well remind ourselves it extends in both directions.

But more to the point, let's talk about commoditization, shall we? If it rings odd to hear it said that the former half of the 20th century was more respectful of women's agency, autonomy, and human dignity, well, it should. Archibald says hotness is a commodity, but what he doesn't say is that prettiness (as he defines it) is too. Being hot makes men want to consume you. Being pretty makes men want to protect you. What makes men want to treat you like an independent agent with her own talents, ambitions, and desires? Apparently nothing: The choice before women is to be the cake that one has versus the cake that one eats. Regardless of whether one prefers the former or the latter, we can hardly say that either option transcends the status of a commodity.

Now, as a man I sort of resent that -- to borrow from the immortal post by Belle Waring -- I am viewed as so much like a retarded kitten in my ability to appraise people that my capacity to determine how to treat women is exhausted by their physical appearance. I have aesthetic preferences in women, same as any heterosexual guy, but I maintain enough of a trickle of blood-flow to my brain to recognize that these preferences do not, in fact, translate onto character traits, much less into "women to consume" versus "women to stockpile" (and what a choice that is!). So in this sense Archibald's prejudice extends to men nearly as much as women.

Ultimately, though, it is bad to commoditize women. It's bad to view them as perishable goods to be gobbled up, and it's bad to view them as precious gemstones to be hoarded away -- put on a pedestal that doubles as a cage. Women are humans -- they have an infinite variety of desires, talents, and ambitions that they should feel to pursue. That includes pursuit of sexual pleasure, and it includes the decision to stay "innocent" of it. It's their call, not yours. That's the difference between a person, and a cake.

Borderlands

This is one of those fascinating stories that you just don't think could happen in the 21st century: South and North Carolina still aren't quite sure where, exactly, lies the border between the two states.

They've got a bunch of surveyors out who are trying to actually retrace the steps of the original 18th century surveyors. It's tough work since the surveyors marked their progress via burn marks on trees, and those trees are no longer present some 200 years later.

Obviously, there's a humorous element to this, but unfortunately it also has the possibility to disrupt lives, given that there are some people who think they live in one state but "really" live in the other. Aside from whatever psychic damage they might receive from losing their identity as a North or South Carolinian, there are more tangible problems -- new laws, new drivers licenses, new phone numbers, new utilities -- just massive headaches all around.

NJ Senate Votes To Legalize Gay Marriage

The New Jersey State Senate has passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage by a 24-16 margin. Governor Chris Christie (R) is promising a veto, and right now the votes aren't there to override it. But nonetheless, this is yet more evidence of growing democratic momentum on the subject. New Jersey, of course, won't have a Republican governor forever. The tide has turned, and sooner or later, these laws will pass into the dustbin of history.