On Politicizing Dead Children

In the wake of America’s latest mass murder, I heard a lot of complaints: “These children are dead! How dare you use this tragedy as an excuse to push your latest political agenda!  Give it a rest and be respectful.”
Now, I can understand if you’re personally unable to deal with political discussions at the moment.  Hearing the raw details about an entire classroom full of kids gunned down was an emotional moment for anyone with a heart.  It’s understandable if you need to step away from the debate to grieve.  I think needing some space to process this is a very human and honest thing, and people should respect your need for silence when they’re in your presence.*
Yet some of those complaints went farther, as if anyone who tried to pass a law or push an agenda based on the latest set of fresh graves was a disrespectful oaf.  To which I say, shut the fuck up.
The reason we politicize this tragedy is because we don’t want any more people killed by maniacs toting weapons.  And like it or not, the only real way we can affect that change is by passing laws to change the shape of society.  Certainly there’s been enough uproar and grief over the repeated spate of killings that if social pressure were enough to change such things, it would have fucking been changed. So something clearly has to be done, whether it’s getting politicians to pass more funding for the mentally ill, or giving cops more leeway in dealing with potential killers, or restricting access to guns, or discovering an effective way of stopping the media from turning killers into celebrities, or even arming teachers.
As it is, your cries of “Don’t make this political!” are the ultimate form of disrespect.  It’s a way of saying: do nothing.  Let’s bury our heads in the sand and hope this doesn’t happen again.
Here’s the thing: I think the folks who want to arm teachers are idiots, but at least they’re trying to push a solution that they think will stop tragedies like this in the future.  They’re utterly, bone-headedly wrong… but I’ll at least give them the credit that they’ve acknowledged how horrible this is and are taking proactive measures to try to head this off at the pass.
Because a tragedy on this scale should create a big, messy argument.  This is a big, messy problem.  Anyone who thinks that one solution will solve all of this is hopelessly simplistic.  It’s not just about banning guns, or better mental health care, or the media, or a lack of morality; it’s a convergence of all these factors, and many hidden ones we have yet to uncover, that is causing this.  We need to have a discussion, an honest discussion, about all the things that led to this grotesquerie… and then, while we still have the motivation, to enact a solution that will help ensure that jackasses like this will never do this again.
That’s what politicizing does: it creates solutions.  And it’s uncomfortable.  It involves listening to things you do not want to hear.  It involves dissatisfying compromises.  It means that yes, any of us might bear some responsibility in this killing, whether it’s in the way we fought gun legislation or the way we eagerly turn the television on to hear juicy facts about the killer.  It’s not fun, and it’s not clean and easy, and it’s like wearing a hair suit because fuck, if it was an easy answer we would have fixed that.
But the debate needs to happen.  And it won’t happen if you’re going, “Don’t politicize this!”, which is usually another way of saying, “I’m made uncomfortable by the fact that I might have some culpability in this issue, so please stay silent in order to enable my lack of soul-searching.”
It’s not pleasant, having these debates.  Yet it was far less pleasant for those shot in this latest butchering, and I think the least you can do is endure a bit of discomfort in an attempt to ensure no one else will be murdered. Which is the true respect.

What Percentage Of Scalzi's Tweets are IN ALL CAPS?: A Scientific Report

Anyone who follows sci-fi author John Scalzi on Twitter knows that HE LIKES TO TWEET IN ALL-CAPS.  A lot.
And I wondered, as all good people do: “Exactly what percentage of John Scalzi’s Tweets are in all-caps, anyway?”  Fortunately, I’m a programmer, and I was bored, so I did what programmers do when they’re bored: investigate ridiculous premises.
The first step was to use Twitter’s API to snarf up as many of Scalzi’s latest Tweets as it would let me.  There’s actually a limit on the number of Tweets I can pull up from his history, so alas, I couldn’t get his entire timeline, just Tweets back to late October.
Then, I applied the following logic for each Tweet:

• If it was an @-reply to someone, I didn’t count the Tweet, on the (perhaps erroneous) assumption that Scalzi is less thundrous when talking to a private audience.  (However, you’ll be pleased to note that 64.6% of Scalzi’s recent Twitterstream consists of replies.  He is gregarious.)
• If someone was mentioned by their Twitter handle (like, say, @ferretthimself), I didn’t count those characters, since not even Scalzi consistently bothers to capitalize usernames.
• If it was a hashtag or a URL?  Also not counted.  Though I’d love to see Scalzi start capitalizing his URLs, as in, “My latest essay is at HTTP://WHATEVER.SCALZI.COM/2012/12/15/AND-NOW-A-THOUGHT-FROM-JUSTICE-SCALIA/”
• All spaces and punctuation marks were omitted, since Scalzi cannot possibly capitalize the space key.  ALTHOUGH I BET HE WANTS TO.
• Finally, the first run of the program showed that Scalzi was being unfairly caps-credited for a simple RT.  So those were stripped.

When this was finalized, I was left with a very long string of characters that looked like Scalzi if you replaced his Coke Zero with Red Bull:

FunfactJohnWilkesBoothismygreatgreatgreatetcun
cleItstrueAlsoHehasthesamebirthdayasmeManifIse
eanotherjokeaboutLincolnandtheatersImightjusthav
etoshootsomeoneJustfinishedcheckingthecopyedito
fTheHumanDivision

In the end, I counted all sequences of two or more letters in ALL CAPS.  The final tally?
Total tweets counted: 886 (out of 2,506 total)
Total characters: 63,690
Total ALL-CAPS characters: 5,689
Scalzi’s ALL-CAPS percentage: 8.93232846601%
So there you have it: Scalzi’s online yelling to six significant digits.  When you talk with Scalzi on Twitter, you can rest assured that a minimum of 8% of his public Tweeting will in be ALL CAPITALS.  Those of you kept awake by any ambiguity in just how yelly Scalzi is can now, doubtlessly, rest.  Or could, if he wasn’t screaming in your ear.

So Did We Really Need Gollum?

So all throughout Lord of the Rings, we’re told how “pity stayed Bilbo’s hand” and how it’s a good thing that Bilbo couldn’t choose who lived and who died.  And sure enough, as Frodo gets to Mount Doom, he falters, and it is poor tormented Gollum who actually saves the day.  So yay for morality!
The question is: what would have happened if Bilbo had shanked Gollum?
Because remember, the whole reason why Sauron and the Ringwraiths knew where the Ring was?  Because they captured Gollum and tortured him until he gave up Bilbo’s name.  So if Bilbo had just stabbed Gollum and left him for dead, Sauron would be clueless as to where The One Ring was.
…but Gandalf would know.  Because the chain of events that starts Gandalf’s investigation of The Ring has a fixed point: Bilbo’s 111th birthday.  Bilbo decides to leave the Shire then, on that day, using the Ring in full view of Gandalf, then having a junkie freakout that make Gandalf go, “Maybe I should check up on the history of this ring.”
With Gollum dead, the heroes actually have a head start on Sauron.  Which means they don’t have to travel quietly and isolated to avoid the Ringwraiths, they don’t get Frodo stabbed, they don’t have to make a detour to the elves to save poor stabbed Frodo.
“But Gollum saves the ring at the end!” you cry.  “Without him, when Frodo’s will weakens…”  Except that if they can get to Mount Doom fast enough, they don’t need to worry about that.  In the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo’s ring addiction is so paltry that he actually tries to give the ring away twice, once to Gandalf and once to Galadriel.  Clearly, at any point in the Fellowship, Frodo would have zero issues chucking the Ring into the lava.
So technically speaking, if we can speed up Frodo’s trip to Mount Doom sufficiently, we have zero need for Gollum. The question is, how quickly does that need to be?
Plus, at least in the films, Gollum is actually an enabler, telling Frodo how his world view is justified, how everyone does want to take the Ring from him, causing schisms between Sam and Frodo.  In a very real way, Gollum actually accelerates Frodo’s addiction, probably worsening it.
Without Gollum, there’s a good chance that Gandalf and Aragon just escort Frodo quickly to Mount Doom, without all the side trips and arguments and spider-related shenanigans, in time for Frodo to chuck the Ring in while he’s still got the guts to do it.
So I ask you Tolkien nerds: assuming that Gollum is out of the picture, and that our heroes have a head start on the evil armies of Sauron and can work without interference (at least in the early game), then can we get Frodo to Mount Doom in time to not need a villain to interfere?  (Assuming that, once again, the eagles are dicks who don’t air-freight the ring to Mount Doom because, hey, we’re frickin’ dicks.)
Because seriously, I think we could get Frodo there a lot quicker.  Maybe even in time.
What do you think happens if Gollum gets the shank?

The Hobbit: The Mostly Spoiler-Free Review

The entire time I was watching the Hobbit, I thought, “If the Star Wars Prequels had been done like this, there would have been a lot less complaining.”
This is not to say that The Hobbit is as good as Lord of the Rings – it isn’t, merely because despite Peter Jackson’s attempts to infuse The Hobbit with LotR’s gravitas, it’s a smaller and fluffier tale.  But it knows how to get fanservice right.  There’s so many delightful moments in this for those who loved the movies that it feels like going back home again.  And maybe it’s a little long, and a little silly at times, but there’s pleasure in revisiting that comfy, comfy hobbit-hole.
Beyond that, I’m too tired to string together bits into an essay, so let’s just bullet-point.
Martin Freeman is wonderful as Bilbo, mainly because he refuses to be shackled by Ian Holm’s performance.  Martin Freeman’s Bilbo is the quintessence of befuddled, polite Brit – trying to be nice, yearning for something greater, but not quite honest enough to tell people how he’s really feeling unless he’s backed against the wall.  It’s a delightful performance, filled with great body language and perfect comedic timing….
…but that would all be for naught if Martin’s Bilbo didn’t have a heroic side to him, too.  We know, because the movies tell us he will, that Bilbo stayed his hand for Gollum out of pity.  We know, because of narrative need to show Bilbo’s character development, that this must be A Moment in the movie.  And when the time comes for Bilbo to put on his Big Damn Hero pants, it’s all the more effective because no, he isn’t a hero, he’s a small man determined to do right.
The Dwarves were largely a mass of indeterminate beards, but I plucked a few personalities out of the bunch: Thorin, this movie’s Aragorn, the old smart infodump dwarf, the stupid young one, the two fighting ones.  This isn’t really a detraction, though, as the dwarves are supposed to be a chaos, and so they are.  Much is made in the film of people counting them to ensure they haven’t missed one, and that’s a nice subtle cue to the reader that no, we don’t really know them all either.
The movie zipped along quite nicely.  I was expecting ass-creep, got very little.  People who complain about the pacing may have a point, but I suspect for them there’s no joy in seeing all the tiny parallels and fleshing-outs of LotR’s world.  I kept going, “Oh!  Now I know where that came from!” As I said: fan-service.
Peter Jackson has a sense of spectacle.  This film is gorgeous eye-candy, and that also speeds things along.
Hey, remember when Legolas stabbed an orc with one arrow, then shot another orc with the same arrow, and that was badass?  And then Legolas did the flippy-thing on the horse in Two Towers, and that was badass?  And then Peter Jackson went batshit crazy and had Legolas take down an Oliphaunt in a movie that should have been badass, but instead defied physics to the point where instead of shouting in triumph, you instead suppressed a Flintstone-like urge to yell “YABBA DABBA DOO!”?  Well, sadly, a large portion of the last third of the film consists of a CGI spectacle where physics fail to matter, like the elephany battle squared, and you have a bunch of dwarves jumping and fighting in ways that would clearly not work in the real world, and as such it feels more like a videogame than anything you actually care about.  It’s exciting, but there’s zero tension because, like Indiana Jones, you’re excruciatingly aware that these are guys fighting imaginary constructs on videogame platforms.  And that’s a very sad loss, because this should be a great battle sequence and instead it’s just more eye candy.
The Gollum scene is delightful, as is Gollum.  My love for Andy Serkis swellss.  Unfortunately, the other CGI creations that get full-sequence aren’t nearly as compelling; in particular, a legendary Orc badass looks very plasticine in closeups, with waxy scars, and I kept going, “Uh, yeah, that’s fake.”
The soundtrack is wonderfully interlaced; the Dwarf mourning song feels very organically placed into the film, and the way the movie interlaces threads of old LotR themes with new ones is quite delightful; little tidbits of hobbitness whenever Bilbo’s feeling homesick, snippets of The Ring theme showing up here and there until, like the Aston Martin in Skyfall, the arrival of the One Ring lets it blaze forth…. It’s delightfully done.
Given how quickly X show up when Y requests their presence, do not tell me how the X couldn’t have dispatched the ring right quick in LotR if they’d wanted to.  These guys are delivery service.
The additions to the film are, as I feared, more Jackson than Tolkien.  There’s a lot of sequences where we get to see Big Spectacle and maybe don’t need to, but Jackson wanted an exciting chase sequence here, and so he sifted through the Silmarillion until he found a sentence somewhere that justified it.  And there’s a big ol’ meeting where people stand around and go, “SAURON’S DEFEATED, WE TOTALLY DON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT HIM,” and Gandalf is like, “No, hey, Sauron is totes coming three films from now,” and they’re all like, “Well, let’s discuss this some more.”  Which is not entirely successful at grafting the events of The Hobbit to Lord of the Rings, mainly because it’s a very long and talky scene, but on the other hand it’s kind of like watching the remaining members of Nirvana reunite in that yeah, maybe it’s not that great but you’re just happy to see ’em all standing around again.
Is that Doctor Who as Radagast the Brown?  Holy fuck, I’m glad the man still has a career!  Go you.

First, Do No Harm?

You know what I hardly see anyone ever talking about in polyamory?  What responsibilities we have, if any, to our lovers’ other partners.
’cause I know if I wrote an essay on “Here’s how poly people abuse their lovers,” I’d get a zillion fist-pumps and a hundred inbound links and a hundred comments going, “SO TRUE!  Polyamory is all about being good to the one you love.”
But if I wrote an essay about “Here’s how poly people abuse their lovers’ partners,” I suspect I’d get a faceful of awkward silence, followed by a round of defensive, “Well, it’s not my problem.  I don’t need to worry what happens over there.”
Yet that shit happens.  You and I both know there are so-called “poly people” who start dating with the idea of chipping away at all the other lovers, edging them out like this was some sort of battle in the arena.  You and I both know that there are folks who don’t ask, “Hey, is this cool with your other partners?” when they’re both caught up in NRE and spiralling out of control.  You and I both know that for every case of polydickery, there’s another eager poly person going, “Well, every time I kiss him it’s like tin foil on her teeth, but I don’t care if she’s hurting as long as I’m satiated!”
You’ve got a lot of folks who are basically saying, “Well, if those other people get hurt, that’s awesome, as long as I get what I want.”
And I dunno.  I treat poly like I’m going camping in the woods; leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures.  (Lots and lots of pictures.)  When I’m operating in someone else’s ecosystem, I try to be respectful of not just them, but the people they supposedly love.  And if I sense they’re acting in a way that might potentially hurt those people, I take a full stop and go, “Wait, is this  okay?”
Which leads to some really awkward and painful fucking conversations.  It’s killed some chances at sex, because some folks get really upset when you double-check their motivations.  But my whole goal is to leave this relationship as I left it; when I walk away, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that even if things are dysfunctional, at least I didn’t function it more.
…which is not to say that I’m a slave to the poly web.  If I think my lover’s dating someone who’s doing something bad or irrational, I’ll discuss that with them, encourage them to bring those awful habits up for discussion.  In doing so, I make some more room for myself.  But I always try to treat the guy (or girl) on the other side of me with respect, so at least if I’m pushing an agreement they know why.
Yet that’s also an aspect of privilege.  I’ve got my primary, and I’m always going home to snuggle up in a warm bed with someone I love.  If I was in the all-secondary, all-the-time club, would I be so magnanimous?  There’s a good chance I wouldn’t.  It’d be harder to walk away when the alternative is masturbation in an empty apartment.
I think the reason why the polyamorous really hate having these discussions is because getting to the partners on the other side is fuckin’ hard, yo.  You’re not dating them.  In many cases, you may not like them enough to want to sit down for long couch sessions to determine what they want.  In some cases you may see them as actively toxic.  You’re seeking out the company of people you don’t want to have conversations you hate to have that may lead to a breakup.
As noted, my insistence on “…and is this okay with the collective?” has torpedoed a couple of relationships.  It’s caused some intense fights I would have preferred to avoid, leading to premature shakeouts.  It’d be a lot easier just to shrug my shoulders and go, “Fuck it, that’s their issue” – and maybe that’s the correct thing to do.  You can’t save everyone from their own desires, and if they’ve got a problem, then they should have the guts to walk away.
And you get more sex and love.  For you.
Still, personally?  I can’t counsel a polyamory where you’re okay with protecting your lovers, and okay with watching the people your lover supposedly cares about get brutalized.  To me, that has the unpleasant stink of psychopathy about it, in that those “in the circle” are deserving of protection and those “outside” can eat a dick.
Plus, there’s also the aspect that I’m going to be an occasional inconvenience; that’s just how it is.  If my lover is callously disregarding her other partners’ feelings when I’m the new hotness in town, how can I trust that she won’t do the same to me when the new star rises in the east?
I dunno.  If my partner is dating people I can’t fucking stand on any level, perhaps that’s a valid approach; shes got me.  Dating all people like me might be too redundant, and so she finds people with wildly varying personalities to fulfill all the various needs in her life.  But if they’re so opposed that I can’t sit down with them for an evening and have pleasant conversation, that’s a dealbreaker for me.  I don’t want to have to tiptoe that much.
Thing is, if people weigh in, I’m sure they’ll weigh in as though there are clear and easy moral answers to this.  There aren’t.  Which maybe is why you don’t see a lot of ramblings like this hitting Kinky and Popular on FetLife; it’s really easy to thunder, “DON’T FUCK OVER PEOPLE YOU LOVE!”  Because if you did that, you were 100% wrong.
Yet it’s a lot less morally satisfying to say, “Don’t fuck over people you don’t really care about.”  Because you probably have, on some level.  And knowing how to avoid that is tough, yo.  Tough.