Breederonormativity
The LGBT community has coined the word “heteronormative” to describe the attitude that falls short of outright prejudice, but just blithely assumes that everybody’s straight. I think that those of us who don’t want children need a similar word. I’m tossing out “breederonormative”, but I’m sure there’s a better term out there. Regardless of the word used, it would help if people were more aware of the concept, so as to check their language.
This is something that I’ve been noticing more since the breakup with Wilder over the children issue. There is definitely a strong cultural assumption in our society that everybody is going to have kids sooner or later (and nowadays, that assumption can hold true even for gay couples). A few examples:
- If you say that you don’t want kids, people pester you with questions about why you don’t want kids. If you say you do want kids, nobody would dream of asking you why.
- Similarly, if you’re young, and say you don’t want kids, people say, “oh, you’ll change your mind.” If you’re young and say you do want kids, nobody would ever say that.
- Parents justify a lot of their actions and feelings with, “well, when you have kids, you’ll understand.”
- Recently-married couples are commonly asked, “so, when are you having kids?” (I haven’t experienced this one myself, but I’ve talked to people who have.)
And so on. I’m not implying any malice here, just a deeply-ingrained cultural assumption that people like me don’t exist.
Rant | Comment (0)Game Show Correction
Question on a game show I’m watching right now: “Which Amendment gives us freedom of religion?”
No Amendment gives us freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right; we have it simply by virtue of being human beings. The First Amendment protects our freedom of religion from government interference.
This sounds like a nitpick, but it goes to the basic philosophy behind the Constitution, and people should know it.
Rant, TV | Comment (0)Poland Spring ads
And speaking of advertising, the new ads for Poland Spring bottled water are laughable. They talk about how the Poland Spring “Eco-shape” (or some such nonsense) bottle uses 30% less plastic than other bottled waters, so by buying it, you’re doing something good for the environment.
Want to actually do something good for the environment? Refill a water bottle you already have, and use 100% less plastic.
I hope nobody falls for that crap.
Rant, Work | Comment (0)Tired Jokes
Attention comic strip writers: Please stop using the following jokes:
- “It’s snowing outside, what ever happened to global warming?”
- “(Strip main character) is such a loser, identity thieves don’t want to steal his identity!”
- “Those crazy kids these days, they talk on their cell phones/text message each other even when they’re in the same room!”
- “Man, they sure have Starbucks everywhere!”
WTC Plans
Apparently people are all up in arms because someone found a copy of the blueprints for the “Freedom Tower” that’s replacing the WTC. The big deal is that if terrorists got their hands on the blueprints, they could plan an attack.
Look, this is ridiculous. Too many people are involved in designing and building a project of this scale for you to be able to keep details like “thickness of concrete” secret. If all the terrorists need in order to take down the building is a copy of the blueprints, then they’ve already won, it’s just a matter of time.
This is the worst kind of “security through obscurity”, and the Port Authority needs to hire some better security experts.
NYC, News, Rant | Comment (0)Outdated Plot Device
Stories from the Thailand trip are coming, I promise. But meanwhile, a little rant inspired by the in-flight movie I saw on the flight over, “Rush Hour 3″. (As a side note, it’s sad to see Jackie Chan getting old. He still wants to do all of his own stunts, clearly, but since he’s getting old, they have to be really toned-down, and it’s really not a Jackie Chan-style movie anymore.)
There’s a frequent premise in movies and TV shows that has been rendered completely outdated by modern technology, but you still see it a lot, and it’s getting on my nerves. I’m referring to the plot where the heroes have gotten a crucial piece of information that could bring down the evil organization, and they’re on the run, trying to protect this piece of information, while the bad guys are trying to find them and destroy the information before it can be made public or brought to the authorities or whatever.
Back in the day, this plot made perfect sense. But now, it’s absurd for one copy of a piece of information to be that important. The solution isn’t to protect your one copy of the information, it’s to make a thousand copies, spread them to servers throughout the world, and make it so that the bad guys can never find and delete all of them. If I have a crucial document, and I want to make sure it doesn’t get destroyed, just give me a digital camera, an Internet connection, and 15 minutes, and I can probably put so many copies on so many different computers in so many different countries that there’s no way the information can ever be destroyed. E-mail it to everyone you know. Post it on a bunch of free web servers, and free image hosting services. Create e-mail throwaway accounts in different countries and send it to all of them. Put it on Wikileaks. Send it to some online printing services, to create paper copies all over the world. That’s a much better way of protecting the info than just grabbing your one copy and running.
The frustrating thing is that the heroes never think of this, even when (like in Rush Hour 3) they have plenty of time to do it. But even if the bad guys were actively on my tail, and I didn’t have plenty of time, I could pull out my Treo, snap a picture, e-mail it to a few trusted friends and have them do that whole procedure.
The reason the heroes never think of this, of course, is that it would completely destroy the plot of the movie, but that just goes to show that screenwriters need to scrap this plot completely–it’s hopelessly outdated today.
A recent season of “24″ was particularly bad on this point–Jack Bauer had the only copy of a cassette that contained a key recording, and he needed to get it back to his headquarters. So instead of calling someone on his phone and playing the tape for them, so that they could record a copy, he crash-landed a plane on a highway so as to bring the original in to headquarters. (And yes, he had a phone, or a radio, or something, that worked just fine on the plane and let him talk to headquarters.) And even after all of that, they still didn’t think to make any copies of the recording, so of course the bad guys were able to get in and erase it.
Memo to screenwriters: Information is digital now. It’s really easy to make lots of copies. Please remember that.
Movies, Rant, TV | Comment (0)Stupid Microsoft Interface of the Day
Stupid Microsoft Interface of the Day:
This one’s a doozie. I’m sitting in focus groups, taking notes in Microsoft Word, and right in the middle of a really crucial section, a Windows Installer popped up on my screen and started installing something. I don’t know what it was trying to install–it didn’t tell me, or ask my permission. And the installer completely locked up my computer, so that I couldn’t take notes. I canceled the install as quickly as I could, but even canceling took more than a minute, and my computer was locked up that whole time.
Never install software without asking permission, and never lock up a user’s computer without a damn good reason. I can’t just hit “Rewind” on these groups, because they’re live, and this cost me some useful notes.
Geek, Rant | Comment (0)