I hate wizards

I was having trouble with my wireless connection in windows and went through about three or four of those damned help and support wizard programs to try to solve the problem and I realized that I had never successfully treated a problem in windows through one of those wizards. It's always the first thing you find when you want to add a new printer or repair some network connection or anything like that, but it never works. Whenever I do solve the problem, it's by googling an error message or symptom and reading what other people did on some discussion somewhere in the nether regions of the interweb. It's just frustrating that windows itself doesn't ever seem to be able to correctly identify the problem it is having. OSX has it's fair share of snags, but at least I never have to have my hopes smashed each and every time I initially attempt to solve a problem.

You maniacs! You blew it all to hell! God damn you all!

Oh man, the season finale of Battlestar Galactica was so emotionally tramautizing that I may have to take a day or two to recover. After a whole season where each episode took an hour just to reveal one more plot twist, this final episode put in a whole series worth of emotion and action. If anyone wants to talk about it, please email me, I don't know what to say right now.

The right to bear arms

In another example of Anthony Kennedy's omnipotence, the Supreme Court ruled today that individuals have the right to own firearms outside the realm of an organized militia. Though I still don't really see how this interpretation arises from the text of the second amendment, the troubling issue arises from Scalia: From the NYTimes:

Scalia said nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."

But where does this assurance arise? If carrying a weapon is a constitutionally protected right and there are no explicit measures for removing that right, I don't see where Scalia can argue that longstanding restrictions to gun possession are safe. Maybe he expands on his reasoning later on in his opinion, but I don't know where he could get it from.

Obama and McCain

I've had my first email debate this election cycle with a republican friend about the relative strengths and weaknesses of McCain and Obama and I would like to examine some of the issues that came up. The debate started with an encouragement for me and some of my hippie comrades to read an article I had coincidentally just finished reading. There were some legitimate complaints, such as Obama's NAFTA tirades during the primaries in an attempt to woo more union support. However, most of the points were either wrong in my opinion based on policy differences or unfair. For example, I think Obama's foreign policy positions are needed after 8 years of warfare in place of diplomacy. I think it will make us safer and will make it harder for al Qaeda to recruit members if the US is seen as less agressive.

Furthermore, I think the article's focus on the Rev. Wright affair is wrong. Obama was criticized for first claiming that Rev. Wright was an undeniable part of his history and then disavowing him after his comments became too inflammatory. In Obama's defense, there was nothing he could do. His initial speech on race was inspiring and truthful, but Wright's subsequent tirades were too just too much. I'm sure it put Obama in a horrible position because he knew the anger that many black Americans possess but couldn't let that define his image.

As far as McCain is concerned, I do like him more than any other potential republican I can think of. I think the world would be a better place if he had won the primaries in 2000. However, there are many positions of his that are unacceptable or just not as good as Obama's. First, though I respect the position he is in to court a conservative base, he has gone back and forth on tax issues, guantanamo detainees' rights, and social issues. I don't know where he will stand during his presidency. True, changing economic situations warrant changing economic policies, but I don't see how the US will be able to afford anything if Bush's tax cuts aren't reversed. Our level of debt is just too much and I don't think he will be able or willing to cut government expenditures enough to compensate. As far as our captured enemy combatants, McCain was their biggest GOP defender until he came out so vehemently against the recent supreme court ruling granting them haebeus corpus, a right they deserve if they are not given rights as POWs. Finally, his foreign policy position is downright frightening. How would you feel as an Iranian if the US president was shown as having joked about bombing your country? I know how you would feel, the same way we feel when the Iranian or Venezuelan presidents call us the Great Satan. Such rhetoric is unacceptable.

Homosexuality and sexual antagonism

More evidence to support my favorite ultimate explanation of homosexuality came out recently. Published online, Ciani's article lays out the evidence that sexually antagonistic alleles are responsible for male homosexuality. Such an allele will, when existing in a female, increase her fecundity by some mechanism, such as androphillia, an increased attraction to men. This allele, when found in men, will have the same effect. Furthermore, if this allele is found on an X chromosome, it will spend about two-thirds of its evolutionary history in women and about one third of its time in males, so even if it has a relatively weak positive effect in women it will still be selected for despite it's high cost to male reproductive success. Furthermore, since this allele is passed on through females, several key testable predictions arise. Most notably, the fitness of gay men's maternal female relatives should be higher than the fitness of straight men's maternal female relatives and the fitness of both groups' paternal female relatives should be equal. Both of these predictions were found to be true. An article in slate does a great job explaining it further.

The only bad part about the slate article were the implications at the end:
"But the word consequence suggests a sixth, less happy implication: How would gay men see themselves and be regarded in a society that understood their condition as a side effect of female evolution? Would male androphilia be treated like sickle-cell anemia—the unfortunate cost of a genetic mutation that's beneficial in other people? We medicate sickle-cell anemia. Would we medicate homosexuality?"

The answer is flatly no. We medicate sickle-cell anemia because it causes pain and discomfort to those who have it and, more importantly, we only treat it if the patient wishes it to be treated. If a treatment could be found that would reverse the effect of this allele in males it should be made available to those men who want it, but no doctor or parent would be ethically allowed to give it to a person who does not want it. Hmm, on second thought, I could see an argument for allowing parents to reverse this effect in their children, since parents are given so much leeway in the treatment of their children. Though it strikes me as terribly unethical to do so, I can't yet formulate why that treatment should not be allowed. I can understand a parent wishing to alleviate their child from a more difficult upbringing that comes with being gay in a world that treats gays unfairly, but that psychological stress comes from external sources. The teasing and discrimination should be treated, not the homosexuality.