Month / October 2007

by Edward Champion

BSS #146: Danica McKellar

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[PROGRAM NOTE: For background on this podcast, see this post.]

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contemplating mathematical positions.

Author: Danica McKellar

Subjects Discussed: Whether the relationship between prime numbers and monkeys is equitable, metaphorical criteria, factor trees, teenage girls and shopping, “fun and friendly” math, relying upon teenage memories and teen magazines to communicate with girls, testimonials as a form of empowerment, the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem and its mathematical applicability, settling upon middle-school girls as a reading audience, middle-school “confidence,” speaking in front of Congress, promotion vs. education, the “proof” that math makes you smarter, textbooks vs. magazines, being “happier while you’re looking fabulous,” the conflation of sexy and smart and “pendulums,” comparing the preparation for a math test with a bikini wax, hair issues, writing a “populist” book, Lawrence Summers’s remarks on women, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, jewelry and makeup as a “universal” quality for women, and feminists and Nazis.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I’m curious, would you call yourself a feminist?

McKelalr: Different people have different interpretations of that word. In terms of the interpretation that says, I believe in equality of men and women, of course, absolutely.

Correspondent: What definitions would you quibble with?

McKellar: Well, there’s so-called Nazi feminists out there that give them that name. That try to say that, you know, women are better than men. And there’s just some of that out there. It’s the good old pendulum they’re trying to swing the other direction.

Correspondent: Well…

McKellar: I really think that men and women are completely fabulous creatures in their own right and very different from each other.

Correspondent: Who are these Nazi feminists? I mean, Rush Limbaugh, of course, coined the term “feminazi.” I’m curious as to who would fall into that particular camp.

McKellar: That’s not what we’re going to talk about.

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by Edward Champion

Unhappy Endings

But there’s another reason he never finishes, if he’s honest with himself. He’s afraid of being disappointed by the endings, which is the reason he stopped reading fiction. He’d read Great Expectations at Rikers and had loved it — this story of a criminal secretly sponsoring some poor kid’s life — until the jail librarian pointed out that Dickens had written two endings. When he found the original ending Vince felt betrayed by the entire idea of narrative fiction. This story he’d carried around in his head had two endings? A book, like a life, should have only one ending. Either the adult Pip and Estella walk off holding hands, or they don’t. For him, the ending of that book rendered it entirely moot, five hundred pages of moot. Every novel moot.

So he only reads the beginnings now. And it’s not bad. He’s even begun to think of this as a more effective approach, to sample only the beginnings of things. After all, a book can only end of one of two ways: truthfully or artfully. If it ends artfully, then it never feels quite right. It feels forced, manipulated. If it ends truthfully, then the story ends badly, in death. It’s the reason most theories and religions and economic systems break down before you get too far into them — and the reason Buddhism and the Beach Boys make sense to teenagers, because they’re too young to know what life really is: a frantic struggle that always ends the same way. The only thing that varies is the beginning and the middle. Life itself always ends badly. If you’ve seen someone die, you don’t need to read to the end of some book to learn that.

— Jess Walter, Citizen Vince

by Edward Champion

Cowards Killing Castro

The San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau City and County of San Francisco, apparently, is proud to announce that “There will be NO Halloween celebration in the Castro in 2007,” which is akin to telling a martinet-minded headmaster telling a bunch of eager students that there is no Santa Claus. If this isn’t a sign of how frightened the United States of America is, I don’t know what is. The campaign has been launched because last year, a few assholes proceeded to stab people, despite vigorous police protection.

I cannot believe that my former hometown, committed to celebrating craziness and diversity, is supporting this bullshit campaign. In early October 2001, when I returned to San Francisco after a five week stay in Hamburg, I was extremely worried about the state of my country. But when I went to the Castro on Halloween night, and I saw San Francisco’s determination to have fun and the people dressed in all sorts of crazy costumes, I knew that everything would be okay.

That San Francisco is now determined to wilt in the sunshine of a long-standing tradition, that it cannot defiantly celebrate Halloween in the Castro and tell those who committed the violence that its spirit cannot be stopped, is a sign that San Francisco would rather embrace fear than fearlessness. Stopping Halloween is not the answer. It gives credence to those who were committed to destroying the annual party. It enables the hoodlums. And it demonstrates that Gavin Newsom is a coward who does not reflect the San Francisco I proudly witnessed six years ago.

I certainly hope that the good citizens of San Francisco resist this PR bullshit, and celebrate anyway. Life is too short to give into the bad apples.

[UPDATE: A guy named Joe points out that this campaign is being sponsored by the City of San Francisco, as opposed to the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. Which, in a sense, is a good deal worse.]