The Adjunct

Baby ‘customizing’ advances claimed:

NEW YORK, March 3 (UPI) — A U.S. fertility doctor says that he will soon be able to allow parents to choose their babies’ eye and hair color.

Dr. Jeff Steinberg, whose Fertility Institute has clinics in New York and Los Angeles, says research that has already made it possible to select a baby’s gender has also yielded the technology to enable parents to make eye and hair color choices, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.

“In the process of doing gender selection … we’ve also uncovered the technology (to) characterize things like eye and hair color,” Steinberg, 54, told the newspaper.

Do we have to limit our choices to the color combinations available between my wife and I, or can we start sticking in genes for any option available from the whole human gene pool? 

If so, I’d like my baby to have purple eyes, skin that’s Obama-brown, and colorless, translucent white hair. Oh, and while we’re at it, make it twins! I shall name them The Sisters of Prognostication, Apathy and Decay, and they shall walk the land for twenty winters, spreading word of the New Order!

Seriously, did no one see Gattaca? This can only end badly: people with low life expectancy will impersonate British Olympic swimmers in order to become astronauts and travel to the sixth moon of Saturn.

Two of the headlines on CNN today demonstrated the great economic dissonance that is more and more prevalent in our country.

The first headline:

Top Republican unloads his mansions

Then, directly below it:

“Make every penny count, and count every penny.”

Compare the two articles, each dealing with the same economy. From the first article:

(CNN) — He has been estimated to be worth in excess of $250 million, but former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may just be belt-tightening along with the majority of Americans.

Romney, the former business whiz and governor of Massachusetts, is looking to unload two of his four mansions, collectively valued in the currently-sour real estate market at close to $10 million.

Compare to this excerpt from the second:

(CNN) —Orman: If you don’t have a good savings rate and something happens, where are you going to go?

That’s when you all of a sudden start putting things on your credit cards — that you can’t do anymore.

That’s when you then start to become an aid, you know, where you’re asking the state to aid you — food stamps and everything.

What should strike you about this is the great disconnect between the two. This is not meant as any form of attack on Romney, nor Republicans. Democrats in Washington are millionaires as well, and even if President Obama only owns one home, his bank account is quite full, just like nearly all our leaders.

No, this isn’t about politics, but it is about a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements: the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

As Orman tells people to pinch every penny, Romney unloaded a few of his spare mansions. As one talks about people going on food stamps, the other pulls in 20 million in spare change.

How can one world possibly understand the other?

Yet it is those penny-people who decide which multi-millionaire shall lead them, in both business and politics. And those chosen multi-millionaires shall try and see what they can do to make things right for the penny-people. It reminds me of one of those conversations where both people are talking to each other about completely different things, yet neither notices.

Fellow adjunct instructor and all around woman of letters Stephanie Han has written about her reaction after reading Naomi Wolf‘s book, Misconceptions:

While she made a few good points, overall, she sounded so out of touch with the average working woman I wanted to throw the book out the window when I read it. The woe-is-me-and-my-group-of-friends-we-all-own-expensive-homes-and-are-lonely was insulting. Hers was not a perfect world but she didn’t seem to get that she had a much better situation than the burger slinging working person.

At the end of Orman’s interview, Larry King helped demonstrate the point I am trying to make by chipping in with his own ideas on what these penny people can do to stay afloat in these tough times.

King: Go cheap. Tip 15 percent, that’s it. Shop — bargain everything. … If tomatoes are 20 cents over there and 15 cents across the street, buy for 15 cents.

That’s right, the problem the penny people are having is that they must be tipping too high! Please, cut off those tips at 15% for your own good. Buy 15 cent tomatoes, because you’re gonna need every nickel.

While this is a little (okay, a lot) of a jeer against Bush, I hope you will also view this as a cheer for academics. The former President liked to deflect criticism by saying that history shall be the only judgement that matters. Well, the historians have made a statement, and it is not in Bush’s favor.

From CNN

(CNN) – Former President Bush has only been out of office for less than a month, but historians have already delivered an early verdict on his presidency.

In a survey of over 60 historians conducted by C-SPAN, the 43rd president ranks the seventh worst (and 36th overall) in the nation’s history, just edging out Millard Fillmore.

That’s pretty harsh. Fillmore is ridiculously unfunny, as seen below.

Oh, Millard Fillmore. He was the last member of the Whig Party, wasn’t he? Good for him! Fuck Andrew Jackson, right?

Continuing…

At the top of the list, the historians rank Abraham Lincoln as the best president in the nation’s history, edging out George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt.

If only we could have a President who followed the writings of Abraham Lincoln, and tried to save our nation with policies modeled after Franklin Roosevelt’s.

Oh, wait.

I get it now.

The duck’s name is Mallard Fillmore, not Millard, and he’s a Republican.

Happy President’s Day!

I would like to call a ceasefire in the Spin War.

It is a destructive war that will have no winner. Everyone suffers, our people and theirs. Let us move beyond this Spin War and into a new era, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Greens and Libertarians, the faithful and the non-believers. Let us put aside the Spin, and replace it with respectful discussion, and productive debate. Let us not seek the power of our party, nor the destruction of our opposing party, but instead try and find what answers shall truly elevate this nation and its peoples.

After reading the title of my previous post, my wife asked me, “So, when are we going to start being dated by Seinfeld references?”

“I think we already are,” I told her.

Oh. I’m getting old.

Much of what I write on this website, in fact anything that I write anywhere, should be considered for the most part tongue-in-cheek. I have always enjoyed sharp banter and acidic wit, and this has culminated in my personal writings often being what I call sharp-witted but what most other people call snarky or, even more often, assholish*. Know please that no offense is intended, nor do I mean to convey a true superior attitude even though in jest my writings claim one. The key word in that previous sentence was jest.

Yes it is all a joke. Or, at least, it is written jokingly. I do not really feel that I know any answers, nor do I think myself particularly superior to anyone else, least of all tenured faculty or my students. I just happen to find that style of humor very amusing, and it creeps out in my more casual writings.

So please, before you jump to the conclusion that I am a pompous asshole, snarkily sneering at all that you hold dear, remind yourself that there is light humor in my writing. I feel the overall essence of my arguments and commentary is valid, but the manner in which I present it is more often than not, to be taken with a grain of salt, and a smile.

* Which I feel compelled to constantly remind them is not a word.

Our month of January is named after Janus, the Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings.

As January 2009 comes to a close, I find it significant how many things are both ending and beginning this month, in particular the end of George W. Bush‘s Presidency and the beginning of Barack H. Obama‘s.

More than just the 44th peaceful change of power for my country, this January sees both an end and new beginning to American policies, philosophy, diplomacy, and concepts of race, religion, and political will. The party that had loudly wielded power for so long now struggles to survive, while the once weak opposing party now speaks softly while carrying a big stick.

I mean this as more than just a celebration of my own political ideology taking control, although celebrate I did, but instead am simply amazed at how endings are indeed gateways to new beginnings, and vice versa.

No wonder Janus and his divine counterpart Jana, worshipped as the sun and moon, were once regarded as the highest of the gods.

How seldom we marvel at the power of a doorway, serving as exit and entrance, containing such power and symbolism. What new beginnings will comes to us all this year? What must end in order for them to do so?