Marcus Bachmann presents nation with etiquette problem

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 10 Comments

Michele and Marcus Bachmann—which of these people is insufficiently accustomed to making false pledges?

In her ongoing attempt to turn “job creators” into a political meme synonymous with “rich people,” Michele Bachmann has made much of the mental health clinic she founded with her husband, Marcus Bachmann, PhD. Although Marcus and Michele deny it, the Bachmann Clinic has been accused of performing “reparative therapy”—an APA-discounted approach to changing the orientations of homosexuals. Basically, it’s a pray-the-gay-away therapy, in which deeply conflicted homosexuals are told to read the Bible, repress their same-sex attractions and, if necessary, commit to lives of celibacy. Telling people that their romantic impulses are unnatural and possibly the result of a malevolent, supernatural force is clearly the best way for a board-certified psychiatrist to promulgate mental health, so we’re not even going to talk about that. Instead, we’re going to address a stickier, even more deeply throbbing problem, which I think Jon Stewart captures nicely in this video:

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Marcus Bachmann: that man is a homosexual.

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TSA continues to research Castillo Limit

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 4 Comments

Those of us who have our thighs caressed by a high school graduate every time we pass through Missoula International Airport* often wonder about the theoretical limit at which TSA screening procedures would not be worth preventing terrorist attacks. I call it the Castillo Limit, after former Miss USA Susie Castillo, and it’s hard to say where it would lie. Taking my nail clippers does not approach the Castillo Limit. Making everyone fly naked in a tank of that breathable gelatin from The Abyss seems like we overshot it. Somewhere in the middle is the precise border between liberty and security, but where exactly is a matter for our elected minders and, of course, international terrorists. At least one and possibly both groups got a little closer to discovering the Castillo Limit yesterday, when the Times announced that terrorists were exploring the idea of surgically implanted bombs.

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Gay Softball World Series trapped in epistemological nightmare

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 2 Comments

Gay.

If you’re like me, you’re still waiting to get that $15,000 you won betting on who would finish second in the 2008 Gay Softball World Series. First place, as usual, went to the Florida Marlins. Second originally went to D2, a gay softball team from San Francisco, but D2 was stripped of its runner-up title after an examining committee ruled that three of its members were not gay. Now the five men questioned have filed a federal lawsuit against the North American Gay Athletic Association, seeking to get A) D2’s second-place finish reinstated and B) themselves $75,000 in damages. The suit has the potential to end NAGAA’s current rule allowing two heterosexual members per team, which makes the league about 80% gay. “That’s why I love this organization,” said assistant commissioner Chris Balton. “That’s what the rule means. If we allow it to be open, it would be just another softball tournament.” So, like, 60% gay?

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Regarding death

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 7 Comments

Patti Smith at the grave of Jim Morrison in Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, 1976

Students in introductory painting classes are typically instructed not to use black, as it flattens the composition. Browns, blues and heavily darkened versions of any other color create depth through shading, but the eye sees black as nothing, and nothing is a plane. Absence, by definition, is the absence of dimension. It’s satisfying to know that art schools will continue to produce versatile metaphors long after they’ve stopped producing artists, but this particular truism of painting has lived through the invention of its own counterexample in the black and white photograph.

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Belief in free will correlates with honesty, hard work

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 2 Comments

This post has nothing to do with the Gil Scott Heron album. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow, I guess.

Don’t get discouraged by the first paragraph of this John Tierney editorial. When I read the sentence, “suppose Mark and Bill live in a deterministic universe,” I thought I had accidentally clicked on David Brooks and was about to read 750 words about how Mark is a hardworking small business owner, Bill is an Ivy-League professor, and their opinions about NASCAR are going to decide the 2012 election. Fortunately, though, Tierney is not a smug panderer out to steal your last McNugget. Instead, he has written a thoughtful column about the problem of free will that links to actual scientific studies, including this one suggesting that belief in free will correlates with hard work. Tierney concludes that, “The more that researchers investigate free will, the more good reasons there are to believe in it.” This argument is totally unconvincing, of course. You can’t choose to believe in free will just because it might make you more successful, in the same way you can’t choose to believe you’re stunningly attractive just because it will make you more confident on dates. And like that, we arrive at one of the fundamental problems of free will.

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