Bob Hayes Online

Perhaps not. I disapprove of the unorthodox theological and economic beliefs (on principle, basically), but you have to admire the effort, craftsmanship and beauty that these folks have created.

Here’s a taste; go to the link for more photos and background.

I don’t think of myself as much of a drinker*, but apparently the quiz does not lie. I got nearly all of these on the first hint, and most of the hints weren’t all that revelatory.

94%DRUNKARD

*Blogger Bashes excluded, of course. We established long ago that a central operating principle of the Blogger Bash is that what happens at the Blogger Bash, stays at the Blogger Bash. Because nobody can remember anyway.

I heartily endorse this post.

(H/T Colfax)

Here’s a weird one.

Do you believe in reincarnation? (George S. Patton did, you know.)

In late 1977, the plane carrying the rock group Lynrd Skynrd crashed into a swamp outside of McComb, Mississippi. The crash killed “Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, Steve’s sister Cassie (a backup singer), and road manager Dean Kilpatrick.” One male rock legend, a lesser but still excellent male musician, and that musician’s no doubt talented but professionally unremarkable sibling. (And the road manager, Dean Kilpatrick.)

McComb is a town of about 13,000 people. It is a complete no-account burg, or would be if it weren’t for the connection with the famous plane crash - and for one other thing. McComb is the birthplace of a number of notable musicians, from King Solomon Hill (1897) on. After 1950, no musicians of account were born in McComb - except for Britney Spears (1981), Brandy (1979) and Brandy’s younger brother Ray J (also 1981).

That is, a rock legend, a lesser but still illustrious talent, and someone who hasn’t quite made the big time on their own, but who does have a connection to fame. All born within a few years of a tragedy that saw the deaths of some of rock’s great lights, within a few miles of the birthplace of the latter-day talents.

There are two possible reactions to this story. (Well, more than two, but two that lots of people would fall into.)

1) “This is weird. That’s too many coincidences to just be random chance. Something mystical or ghostly is going on.”

2) “This is weird. But it’s just a random concatenation of factors.”

Which of these reactions do you have? Or do you think something entirely different?

Imagine a spectrum of every possible state of male-female* relations and relationships. The spectrum is polarized arbitrarily in terms of which gender has more power, privilege, status, comfort, quality-of-life, etc., overall. On one end of the spectrum, it is Planet Man - men have everything, women are less than property, it’s an absolute female dystopia. On the other end of the spectrum, it is the Lair of the Amazon Queen - women rule all, men are dogs, and so forth. Between these goofy extremes lie the vast range of other, more equitable possibilities.

I can envision a world where men and women basically get along; where we share the world and one another in harmonious and fruitful ways. It seems obvious to me that for such a world to exist, men and women both must be valued humans, individually powerful, respectful to one another, and so forth. The gender relations world - the set of relationships and powers and so forth - that I see as optimal is somewhere around the center of the spectrum I’ve described. There are fundamentalists who think that men should be in more leadership-type roles, and there are feminists who think that women should be in the forefront of more areas of human life - but the bulk of those and similar groups would, I suspect, also draw their optimum point somewhere around the center of the spectrum.

There are exceptions to that last statement, important ones. There are people who desire to see a society in which one gender or the other is frankly triumphant, dominant over and perhaps outright oppressively exploitative of the other. To some degree, these people have a right to live (together, presumably) as they wish. The more extreme forms of this kind of social organization are likely to violate American cultural and legal mores, however, and that’s a point of conflict that won’t ever go away as long as that type of group exists; the conflict sites will be physical incarnations of that “to some degree” in the last sentence. There are also people who don’t necessarily care what society does, but who intend to personally be the alpha beast in their gender relationships. Some of these people are harmless blowhards; others are deadly. And there are no doubt other exceptions that I have missed. But still - there is a big chunk of us somewhere near the middle.

I believe there is social value in the vast numbers of people in this society - my intuition says a majority, if not an outright near-consensus - who would pick points in the center of the spectrum - call us gender centrists - recognizing the commonality in what we want to see in the world, versus the visions of those with more extreme social orders in mind. We disagree on many details and many arrangements, but we all have a broad vision of men and women treating one another fairly and with respect - sharing this world and living in it together. There is value in finding that common ground again and seeing what we can do towards realizing a better society together.

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* I realize that I’m oversimplifying the gender universe by leaving out transgendered people and others who do not identify with the male-female dichotomy. I think the concept is useful even in the absence of it being all-inclusive, and I do not know how to articulate the concept clearly and all-inclusively. I’m also leaving out the idea that some of one gender can be highly privileged while others are highly oppressed, for similar reasons of brevity and clarity.