God Between the Sheets, or “How to move from whining about the economy to whoopee!”

Something about sex and marriage, they just seem to go hand in hand...
Texas Pastor’s Advice for Better Marriage: More Sex, More Often: I just think this is a really amusing article: Rev. Ed Young of the evangelical Fellowship Church entreats his parishioners to strengthen their marital bonds by taking the Seven Day Sex Challenge. You guessed it—he told spouses that having sex once a day for a week would bring them closer to each other and closer to God, and "double up the amount of intimacy we have in marriage. And when I say intimacy, I don’t mean holding hands in the park or a back rub.”

Maureen Dowd actually writes a good opinion piece for the New York Times on the new Gus Van Sant biopic, "Milk," the story of the murder of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in American history. He served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with Sen. Diane Feinstein.

With Same-Sex Marriage, a Court Takes on the People’s Voice: A pretty interesting article published a couple of days ago about more of the legal issues surrounding California's gay marriage ban Prop. 8. The state supreme court will probably rule on Prop. 8's constitutionality early next year. If you don't have time to read it all, atleast read the chunk below:

“The California Supreme Court has never articulated criteria for what makes something an amendment versus a revision,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine. “So I don’t think you can predict anything because there is so little law.”

Supporters of the ban say legal history is on their side. “Whenever an amendment or an initiative has been challenged, almost always the court rejects that and upholds the people’s initiative power,” said Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for backers of the proposition, citing past state bans on the use of race, sex or ethnicity in college admissions and caps on property taxes. “These are major policy changes that the court has recognized are fine,” he said.

But Jennifer C. Pizer, a lawyer with Lamdba Legal, which represents one of the petitioners, said that Proposition 8 “essentially nullifies the equal protection guarantee” of the Constitution and sets a dangerous precedent, something that has been cited by several minority groups who asked for relief from the court.

Code Green: Thomas Friedman puts America on the Alternative Energy Alert

The Midway Review, the journal of politics and culture I edit and design, is out on campus today, and here's a copy of my article. The whole magazine can be found at midwayreview.uchicago.edu as a PDF.

Hot, Flat and Crowded:
Why We Need a Green
Revolution—and How
It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
448 pp., $27.95


If you ask Thomas Friedman, thanks to climate change, globalization and climbing population rates, the earth looks hotter, flatter and more crowded than ever before. It also looks like a self-indulgent scene out of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Hieronymus Bosch’s fifteenth-century triptych of excess and greed decorates the cover of Friedman’s newest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, suggesting that the way the United States has been tearing through global resources is finally catching up with us.

In the first half of his book, Friedman recounts the development of the global energy crisis. In responding to the crisis, he claims, the United States has done more to isolate itself from the rest of the world and deepen its dependency on foreign oil than promote innovation. Meanwhile, Denmark’s booming wind turbine industry, Brazil’s emphasis on ethanol production, and Japan’s high fuel efficiency standards are each propelling their respective nations into the future a lot faster than we Americans can manage, even with the help of our high powered SUVs. And if we don’t pull our heads out of the ground, where no doubt we’ve been poking around for oil.

Friedman warns that we as a nation risk falling hopelessly behind in technological innovation. In particular, Friedman fears the convergence of three global he says, for which he coins the mnemonic “hot, flat and crowded.” In the next fifty years, he claims, the world’s population will swell 45%, from 6.7 to 9 billion. Outsourcing of business will likewise increase, causing the numbers and spending power of the world’s middle class to rise in turn. Meanwhile, fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas will add CO2 to the atmosphere and fuel global warming. These developments together will produce a greater strain on the Earth’s ecosystem than it has ever felt before.

The thesis isn’t new. Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, walked his American readers through the leveling of the economic playing field in his bestseller The World is Flat, and cautioned them not to rest on the laurels of the business and political tactics that served us so well through the 20th century. And writers as diverse as Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Al Gore have been decrying the culture of over-consumption for years. But this time, Friedman is hoping to lure the audience of entrepreneurs he snagged with The World is Flat into thinking about the environment, even if their concerns have more to do with profit margins than polar bears.

So what’s different about Friedman’s solution? First, it does not sound much like “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth,” or any other magazine features telling consumers what cars to drive or light bulbs to buy. Friedman knows going green won’t be easy, simple, or fun for the nation, and insists that only drastic changes in policy can make a lasting impact.

Second, and perhaps more importantly for Friedman, green is no longer synonymous with Birkenstocks and tofu. In one of the many anecdotes that punctuate Friedman’s arguments, he explains how even the U.S. Army has cause for concern: at one point an officer observed that transporting oil across the Iraqi desert puts men needlessly at risk of enemy attack. As he says, “[alternative energy] is now a core national security and economic interest.”

Friedman is calling for U.S. business and governments, and not just hemp-wearing, hybrid-driving consumers, to lead a “Green Revolution.” In doing so, he hopes the United States can set an example for developing nations like China and India, who tend otherwise to envy the U.S.’s trajectory of industrialization, despite its history of utter disregard for environmental matters. This process would involve imposing serious gasoline taxes like Denmark’s to encourage consumer restraint, building masstransit systems to rival Europe’s, and trading in our present dependence on dirty energy for cleaner biofuels and more efficient power plants.

Friedman borrows a number of suggestions from the “Carbon Migration Initiative” proposed by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, both professors at Princeton University: replace 1,400 large coal-fired electric plants with facilities powered by natural gas; double the output of today’s nuclear power facilities to replace coal-based electricity; increase wind power eightyfold to make hydrogen for clean cars; double the fuel efficiency of two billion cars from thirty to sixty miles per gallon.

Again, not the kind of prescription you’ll read in Working Mother magazine. To accomplish all this, Friedman wants to tap into a history of American ingenuity—the panache for self-reinvention that made Americans the pioneers of global industry, put a man on the moon and invented the Internet. He wants green to mean more to the country than the color of Jay Gatsby’s light, but knows it will take the leadership of an FDR or JFK to make this happen.

But just as Ronald Reagan stripped the White House of Jimmy Carter’s solar panels when he took office, it is doubtful whether twenty-first century Americans will take heed should the government tell them to green up their lives. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, Friedman applauded America for successfully spurring itself to surpass the U.S.S.R. in space- exploration. But after the events of September 11th shook America to attention again, in a way much more immediate and devastating than the threat of communism had ever been, the opposite happened. Americans were encouraged to spend more, travel more, and ignore the fact that their nation was at war.

Friedman mocks the low-impact, consumerist trends that have made Green a glamorous color in niche markets. But there is one central question he doesn’t fully answer: How readily will Americans, so accustomed to free-market-forces, support this dramatic shift in federal policy, when they could just as easily switch from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs and call it a day?
Only the next ten years will tell. I’m going to hold on to that article, “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth,” just in case.

Aristophanes at the Job Interview

University of Chicago alumnus Scott Sherman's biggest mistake during his job interview was talking about Aristophanes. He majored in Fundamentals four years ago, and wrote his B.A. paper on the function of comedy—Heady stuff to bring up to the producers of The Colbert Report.

Sherman (AB '04) is now a staff writer on the upcoming Comedy Central sketch show, Important Things with Demetri Martin, but last Friday he came back to the University to talk about the job hunt. His trajectory included landing a writing job at the Onion and co-authoring a couple of satirical books, The Dangerous Book for Dogs and a sequel about cats in the same vein.

Sherman brought with him the sobering advice that our first-rate education might not get us anywhere in the writing and publishing world.

"Sometimes your smartness here, and I use the word intentionally, can be a good thing... but to pitch relateable stories, you have to make yourself relateable as well. It made me look stupid that I thought I could talk about Aristophanes and Swift and Cervantes, even sitting in a room with three Ivy-grads."

paid-writing "Is not Proust," Sherman added. "It's not 'I will be inspired to write this book when the tea soaks into the biscuits.'"

But there are some plus-sides to coming from UChicago: "A lot of comedy writing requres fast research, (I didn't know anything about cats before I wrote the book) and I learned how to do that at the U of C."

Wedding Bell Blues

"Am I ever gonna see my wedding day?" not to trivialize the gay marriage ban, but I'm sure plenty California residents asked themselves that question after last Tuesday.

Like most California voters I know personally (and 48% of the entire state, actually) I am ecstatic over Barack Obama’s win, but deeply troubled by Tuesday’s outcome on Proposition 8. Prop. 8, which narrowly passed with 52% of the vote, will add a provision to the state constitution clarifying that marriage is only valid and recognized in California if it is “between a man and a woman.”

I rejoiced at the court’s decision to allow same-sex weddings last May as gays and lesbians across the state posed in tuxedos and white gowns, but now it looks like I’ll eventually be attending some weddings in Canada if this provision isn’t challenged.

I can think of a few reasons the ban should not have passed but did:

• Church-funded initiatives to get out the vote in favor of Prop. 8 framed the issue in terms of legitimizing homosexuality as an identity and practice, rather than an issue simply of whether same sex couples should have the same rights afforded to heterosexual couples.


• This election saw a huge number of new voters turning out for Obama, and several voter misinformation campaigns tried to take advantage of them and the confusing language of Prop. 8.


• This is a stereotype but this time we did see a much larger black and hispanic turnout than in recent past elections.

Last week I read Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the landmark Supreme Court case that made all state sodomy laws unconstitutional, for my gender studies class. We talked about how there were two possible arguments against laws criminilizing sodomy: the right to privacy and equal protection for heterosexual and same-sex couples. But the court’s opinion only discusses the right to privacy, which means there is no precedent for granting the same rights to heterosexual and homosexual couples.

Though it is still unclear what will happen at the level of the state courts in California, I am pessimistic about whether gay marriage—which was also banned in Arizona and Florida, though neither state ever issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the first place—will ever make it to the Supreme Court.

According to an LA Times article published today, opponents of the gay marriage ban may have a case at the state level if they can argue that the constitution’s change"substantially alter the basic governmental framework,” and therefore is a revision that must be passed by two-thirds of the state legislature.

Complicating the issue further are the 18,000 marriage licenses the state has issued to same sex couples since last summer.

Tthe article’s author, Goodwin Liu also addresses a good question I have heard people indifferent to the ban pose: “Why does it matter whether gay couples remain married in a post-Proposition 8 world? One answer has to do with the dignity and stature that marriage confers. Even if marriage provides no greater rights than domestic partnership, a separate-but-equal regime unavoidably signals that same-sex relationships are of lesser worth.

Another answer has to do with the future of gay marriage writ large. Gay marriage is in the cross-hairs of a culture war, and culture wars, both sides know, are won through symbols, examples and personal experiences.”

Thirty years ago, homosexuality was a diagnosable mental disease in the DSM. If this crucial shift in the psychological community and political arena is indicative of a slowly sweeping cultural change, then maybe the gay marriage ban is just a cultural blip on the path to full legitimization, the dying cries of vociferous but transient majority.

As a registered California voter, I’m keeping my eye on this issue.

UPDATE: My favorite memory from the Prop. 8 Protest in downtown Chicago last Saturday:

Tall Man: I can see some anti-gay marriage protestors over there.
Woman: Oh no! Are there very many?
Man: I don't think so; their sign says there's just one man and one woman.

My New President

I remember when President Bush, the second, won for the first time in 2000. I was in sixth grade, taking American history at a liberal school in conservative San Diego, and I obnoxiously proclaimed every chance I got, "He's not my president."

When Bush won a second time in 2004, I couldn't believe, "my country has done it again. How could we have fallen for that bullshit again?" By then, several of my friends were self-important Republicans short on policy-insight, but high on pomp and pluck. I thought it was all over for the democrats, that thanks to the Electoral College or the Religious Right or someone's fucked up sense of humor, the country was rolling down the face of a cliff, and picking up speed.

Last night, I think the United States proved me wrong. I watched the returns come in on CNN, in the Rec Room of my dorm with 20–30 other students. Many students left to bike to Grant Park, site of the official election night celebration, where Obama was slated to speak, but we were huddled at the University of Chicago, in a corner of Hyde Park where you could sentimentally say it all began. We jumped and cheered and hugged each other when the West Coast came in; CNN and MSNBC declared victory for Obama that minute.

I have a lot of homework (this is the U of C) to worry about today, among other preoccupations, but I stayed in the basement to hear Obama speak. Like always his speech was reserved but inspiring, I'd like to think emblematic of the forethought and care he puts into his words and actions. It showed his commitment to the clarity America needs, and the home-grown diversity America encompasses.

As he said in his victory speech, "That's the true genius of America, that America can change. That our union can be perfected." This statement has been demonstrated in the past, and was equally true today.

Finally, from the New York Times (it gives me chills): This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

"An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States."


Come back later for a rant about California's Prop. 8, the gay marriage ban.

Jenny Holzer brings truth and truisms to her new exhibit at the MCA

“You are trapped on the earth so you will explode.” “Unquestioning love demonstrates largesse of the spirit.” “You should study as much as possible.”

If you find these statements either thought provoking or confusing, that’s exactly what Jenny Holzer wants. These ambiguous aphorisms are taken from Truisms, one of Holzer’s most famous installation art pieces, and figure prominently in Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT, her new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

For the past 30 years, Holzer has been translating language into art, finding new ways to convey old, obscure, and overused sayings via light shows over the ocean, billboards in Times Square, and lots of paper and paste. Like fellow conceptual artists Barbara Kruger and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Holzer uses billboards and electronic signs to present works that are public, completely integrated into the consumer-advertising environment, and utterly impossible to ignore. Her words at once evoke violence and love, morality and depravity, and are rich with the social and political contradictions of our era.

This exhibition is no different. Recalling the anxiety pervading her earlier writings, most obviously “Protect me from what I want,” PROTECT PROTECT engages with one of America’s most well versed protection myths: the Iraq War. On the wall immediately to the left of the exhibit entrance in the MCA’s lobby—a space usually occupied by the curator’s introduction—Holzer has hung several enlarged copies of recently declassified planning documents for the war. The most striking document, titled “Alternative Interrogation Techniques (Wish List),” lists such torture methods as sleep deprivation, white noise exposure, and close-quarter confinement.

Another fraught screen print shows an e-mail message, presumably by a high-ranking military official on the ground in Baghdad, cautioning his fellow soldiers to “take a deep breath and remember who we are. Those [interrogation standards] are NOT based on Cold War or WWII enemies—they are based on clearly established standards of international law…. BOTTOM LINE we are American Soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying on high ground.”

Further quotations from U.S. soldiers run throughout the exhibition, conveying feelings of entrapment, desensitization, and sexual deprivation. “It is a hard, hard reality,” her electronic LED display “Monument” reads, “knowing the only ass I’m going to get for the next year is the butt stock of my M16.” Like many of her previous slogans, Holzer’s war quotes have the potential to be both overpowering and trite. To bring the soldiers’ feelings home, Holzer leaves a table covered in human bones in the final gallery.

Other works include pieces like “Thorax” and “Green Purple Cross,” LED displays that zigzag around the gallery walls. The words—taken from “Truisms,” “Survival” and other past works—blink and overlap, flowing between clear blues and indecipherable reds.

It is clear that, in the bomb-littered, bone-dry terrain of Baghdad, Holzer and her subjects find neither protection nor desire. But as another “Truism” reminds us, after every war someone has to tidy up. Holzer doesn't do quite that, but she has swept together some of the most unsightly detritus of the past five years where we must look at them.