Do you suppose Edwards will have his hair done for it?
Uh, yeah, right. Did I tell you that my latest "well, it would not be so bad..." (since Hilary and Obama, much as we love (!?!) them, are still un-electable (un-electible?) in this country, and Edwards, though well-meaning, a lightweight (and by the way why can't we have his wife for president??????) and John McCain, my former "well, it would not be so bad..." pick is too old, apparently, never mind this war-do-or-die motif he has taken up...) pick is Chuck Hagel? -and not just because his last name is so close to "Hegel"...
If a hardline anti-abortion candidate is "not so bad," I guess
(You don't need to put your email in the box. I've been taking it out.)
I'm not convinced that Hilary and Obama are unelectable. The war and Republicans generally are very unpopular right now, and while they'll take a hit for being female or black, it won't necessarily be enough to keep them from winning.
"are still un-electable"
Nonsense.
1: Are you thinking he'll gave a Sanjaya faux-hawk?
I am really happy that Bill Moyers is around.
5: I think people overrate that stuff a bit, especially as regards the misogyny. Countries much less respectful of female equality than the US have had female leaders. You could probably make a similar case for significant ethnic difference, though I would bet the success rate is smaller.
I'm thinking about getting this for my honey, if I can find the stuff for tie-dying.
I don't think Hillary Clinton's problem is being female. Her problem is being Hillary Clinton.
All the states where potential Democratic voters won't vote for a woman or a black man? Those aren't the states we're going to win anyway.
I confess I don't really understand the Hillary hatred, which incidentally I share. I fear I've been conditioned.
I mean, the rap is just that she's not a very nice person, right? I don't see how this is critical. Don't we kinda want the person we send to deal with AQ, China, Iran, et. al. to be not very nice?
Where's the apostropher's canonical anti-Hillary comment when I need it?
16 comments and nobody is mocking our host for trying to sound like a Southerner?
15: I don't find her personally unpleasant, so that's not why I won't vote for her, I actually think she's pretty likeable. But substantively (1) she's a big old hawk -- she's still, today, talking about maintaining a military presence in Iraq indefinitely to 'fight Al Qaeda'. I just think that's a terribly, terribly stupid position, and it's a big enough deal to swing my vote. (2) I think she has bad judgment on when and how to compromise politically, going back to the mess of a health care plan in 94. It's not that she compromises, everyone has to do that sometimes, it's that she walks away from popular positions when she'd have been better off sticking to her guns.
Where's the apostropher's canonical anti-Hillary comment
About all these patriarchal countries having female leaders...in how many of these cases do they actually see a ballot with e.g.Benazir Bhutto's name on it, and have to actively choose HER, personally, over a male candidate? I've always thought that most countries, unlike the US, have more parliamentary systems, where the head of state is determined by which party wins the parliamentary election, not by a person-vs.-person race between potential heads of state.
This could make our system more biased toward candidates who don't break the mold of previous candidates. In our system people have to actually be convinced to affiliate themselves with a woman candidate over a man candidate, rather than voting for the party they habitually vote for which happens this time around to have a woman in charge.
How many people in the UK have actually seen a ballot with Tony Blair's name on it, and voted for him personally? A few tens of thousands in his Durham-area district, right?
23 s/b 18, and I should get another cup of coffee.
About all these patriarchal countries having female leaders...in how many of these cases do they actually see a ballot with e.g.Benazir Bhutto's name on it, and have to actively choose HER, personally, over a male candidate?
My sense is that it's the family name, more than anything else. You see that even here: Sonny Bono's wife becomes a Member of Congress, etc. And, to some extent, that's what motivates the HRC campaign.
I thought that 23 was some sort of weird self-referential comment like, "Apo gets it right, and obviously I do too."
(I am not happy with the punctuation in that sentence, but I am not sure why I think that it is wrong.)
When it comes to determining whether a comment of mine is obscurely clever or just inept, the smart money is usually on inept.
I could not be paid to watch a Democratic debate over a year and a half before the election. Jesus H.
Yeah, didn't you hear about the Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves Relief Act of 2007?
I'll watch it for you for $100, Ogged.
I'd totally watch it for money. I don't know that I'd be willing to do the work that would prove that I'd watched it, i.e. write up a summary or get other people to testify to my having watched it or whatever else one might do to try to demonstrate that one had watched it.
However, I don't have cable, so I can't watch it.
And I am utterly disinterested in the build-up of bile guaranteed by living in an eternal election cycle. $100? Pah. You couldn't find enough ponies to deliver the hundred bucks I'd accept.
McManlyPants clearly makes more money than I do.
McManley could outsource watching the debate to Apo and pocket the $25.
Sonny Bono's wife Mary won the election after he died. She's been in congress for almost 10 years now.
From this page you can learn other facts, such as that she has a liberal voting record as well as a conservative voting record.
42: I have no idea. My real concern is that the $100 would get ruined when I spent the second half of the debate horfing pea soup in wide arcs around my living room as my head spun in a circle.
Well, so Chuck Hagel is apparently out, eh? Ok, then my vote goes to Elizabeth Edwards.
44: Gods, why didn't I think of that? Damn.
I thought Mary Bono was Cheney's preggo lesbo daughter.
47: What makes Edwards a lightweight? He's certainly not dumb, and he's got wonky positions on all kinds of stuff. Just looks?
I'm watching just for free beer and pizza.
For $100, I'd even listen.
50 gets it right. Here in "exbeforelast" we have a well-meaning person whose mind has been poisoned by the Heathers of the media. Like everyone else.
Not necessarily; there could be good reasons for calling him a lightweight. I just don't know them.
For one thing, it's possible he has a styrofoam core. I haven't cut him open and checked; one never knows!
What did he accomplish in the Senate? (Straight question, not snark.) I'm suspicious of the guy because anybody who makes bazillions as a plaintiffs' lawyer is way better at being convincing than I am at sniffing out bullshit, but I'm persuadable. And I like his wife. OTOH it's hard to figure what would make me put Edwards ahead of Barry O. or behind Hillary!, so maybe I'm not so persuadable.
Erm, he was in the senate for one or two terms (I can't remember offhand) and in the minority for almost all of it. I expect he accomplished pretty much nothing, but that doesn't speak to his capacities, just his circumstances.
And you're just voting for Barry O! because you're a Hawai'ian chauvinist. (Whereas if I do it, it will be the result of a well reasoned analysis of what a charming voice he has.)
Chastity.
The precise common law definition of which we spent some time discussing around here this afternoon.
46: Well maybe if you didn't eat all that pea soup before the debate came on. I know it's tasty, but it sounds like you're talking about a lot of soup, and if you already know this is going to happen I'd think you could just skip it.
In what way is Edwards more of a lightweight than Clinton or Obama? I don't get it.
Is Sharpton in the debate? Because that always makes a debate worth watching. But I don't think he's running this time, is he?
It's be even better if Jonathan Sharkey was in the debate, but I'm not sure he's running as a Democrat.
I don't know who Jonathan Sharkey is, so I'll replace his name there with "Jack Thompson".
56: Worse--because I'm a "he went to my kid's school" chauvinist. But I also read his first book while he was running for the Senate and am most of the way through the second one now, and I'm convinced that he's smart, capable, and generally pointed in the right direction. And he's talented as hell. More experience would be good, but experience in the Senate unfortunately turns out to be an electoral negative, so I can't fault him for seeing his shot and taking it. I started out thinking that if he ran this year he'd mostly--and appropriately--be running for Vice-President, but I'm not a big Hillary fan and Edwards doesn't have materially more experience than Obama does, so what the hell.
Yeah, I'm poised on a knife-edge between the two of them, but for now I'm on Edwards' side because of the poverty focus, and more broadly because he doesn't seem to be running away from the left, which Obama does a little. But that's more an impression of Obama than anything all that solid -- I figure I've got almost a year to really make up my mind.
And re the substance of Edwards' Senate service: yeah, one term in the Senate minority isn't much of an opportunity to get stuff done, so I wouldn't fault him if he didn't. I'm just wondering if there's anything there that would help to convince me that he can do more than talk really pretty. (Cue 6-8 comments correctly accusing me of hypocrisy for not applying the same skepticism to Obama.)
I like the poverty focus, but the idea of having somebody as international as Obama in the WH is just delicious.
Oh, they all look so wonderful! How can I choooose! Except for the stale Mallomar that is Hillary, but hey, C, you win and we'll rap.
64: So far I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on the running away from the left thing. There's a lot in his current book that's pretty clearly trying to reach out to people who have been voting Republican because they've been convinced that Democrats look down on them, which he does by paying lots of lip service to Republican framing of issues. He's good at it. That's going to be much harder to pull off in a campaign and I'll keep watching for him to run off the rails, but at this point I'm not going to fault him for trying.
Exbeforelast, Ogged is trying to silence you -- just like he always did, just like Muslims always do! Please email me with the real shit on that guy.
And Hillary starts off by blaming Iraq's problems entirely on the Iraqis. I'm not sure I can stand to watch this for long.
So I'm watching the streaming video of the debate. Clinton starts by saying that the Iraqis need to step up and take responsibility for their country. How can you not hate her?
Sen. Edwards was in the majority from April 2001 to January 2003.
70/71: she does realize this is a Democratic primary debate, and not a debate for the general election, right? Does she even want the nomination?
Why are they being asked to defend hedge funds? So weird.
On the topic of Sen. Edwards accomplishments in office, I can't think of any off-hand and I live in his state. However, I didn't pay much attention back then. My only real sense of him was when a bill was up for a vote that would have inadvertently banned the creation of software to be used in legitimate network security activities and I called his office to encourage him to vote against it. I didn't get a lot of "uh-huh, that's nice," they put me on the phone with a staffer who (he said) was literate in network technology and asked smart questions and had a real conversation with me about it and, IIRC, Edwards voted against the proposed ban when it came up shortly thereafter. I don't imagine I made his mind up for him but it was nice to see him vote the right way and it was nice to come away feeling like he chose staff that gave a damn.
None of this makes him necessarily superior to other candidates, though, etc. Now back to sticking my fingers in my ears and singing a nonsense song.
I gotta say, I'm enjoying Mike Gravel.
"I led the fight to" is banned!
Is this absurdly early for a primary debate, or are they usually this early and I'm just forgetting? I'd expect them to start in late fall of this year, at the earliest.
Now I'm watching the debate on a 20-minute delay, because I had to give Noah a bath. Did anybody throw up or snap and attack another candidate or anything?
Edwards pulled off his wig with a flourish to reveal a painting of Rameses the Ram on his bald head.
Did anybody throw up
Yes. I did.
I'm waiting to see Gravel's impaling stick before I throw all of my support to him.
85: That's Sharkey. Gravel is for stoning.
It's so weird, whenever I watch these things, to be reminded that saying some plainly true things can marginalize a candidate.
Things like, "We're going to be as successful fighting terrorism as we were fighting drugs"?
"I denied George Bush the boots on the Ground"
Obama's stock just went way down for me.
Barack Obama: "I'm not planning to nuke anyone right now"?
Exactly, if we haven't experienced nuclear holocaust by 2012, I'll be sorely disappointed.
Is the tall redhead Kucinich's wife? Hot! So wrong, and yet so right.
Here's a question: For those who support Obama or Edwards, how many consider Hillary their second choice? I wonder if there's a cap on Sen. Clinton's support roughly where it is right now. (I'm an Edwards-Obama-Clinton person myself.)
Yeah, for an aging leprechaun, he's swinging way above his weight class.
He got married to some hippie like last year. Pretty sure I read about it here.
Yes, but LB failed to note that he's overchicked, as crude bad people say.
I've settled, for the moment, on Edwards because he's the only one who's talked in any detail about policy and in the interviews I've heard, comes off as the least bullshitty of the bunch. Also, he has a podcast and I have a commute. I reserve the right to get crushy on Obama if/when he stops talking about hope and starts talking about health care reform. Hillary is right out, for Apostropher's Canonical Reason, among others.
I really wish I could have watched the debate. Couldn't get the msnbc video to work.
Did that rumor about Richardson's being a groper ever get straightened out?
101: Oh, my, I hadn't heard that.
Steve Clemons made a big public stink about it when Richardson announced. He wrote a post laying out all the rumors and calling on the campaign to address and clarify the issue. I don't know what's happened since then.
99: If I didn't say it, I thought it. She's lovely, and he's a hobbit. A pleasant hobbit, but a hobbit.
101, 103: I've heard the rumor, and also that people are smearing him for being a generally huggy, talk-to-you-with-a-hand-on-your-shoulder guy. I don't know what the truth is.
Late to the party, but here goes. Yes, there are stories going around Richardson being a groper; but there is more. There are also rumors of spousal abuse, and I heard that at a political luncheon last fall, a luncheon feature none other than Richardson himself. This conversation on the QT took place in the parking lot.
I was tuning in and out, but I gathered that he was answering a question about America's stock of nuclear weapons by making reference to Iran, the worst country in the world, which all experts agree is making a nuclear bomb, which is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, etc etc. There should be a transcript any minute now, so I can look over it again. I bet it won't sound as bad to me in writing. I have such a negative reaction to hearing politicians speak, it surprises me.
Kucinich's wife graduated high school in 1996! Kucinich, probably 1964.
The candidates were more eager to talk about their own children being gay than about impeaching Cheney. Sigh.
107: Okay, the spousal abuse thing is ridiculous. What's even more ridiculous is that not only has there been no substance to any of these charges, there's been no attempt to substantiate, investigate or debunk them at all, and until someone bothers to actually provide some names, places and dates, I'm really fucking sick of hearing about them. The implication is that I'm supposed to evaluate this person based on rumors and half-truths, which is bullshit. Put up or shut up, o world of internetuendo.
See, the reason I'm so hesitant to believe rumors like those is that I can't believe that anyone would make a run for the President with that kind of story waiting in the wings. If it were even colorable, let alone true, it would destroy him.
And now all the talking heads rush to call Gravel a "radical".
Well, even if he's the kind of guy who people would say beats his wife, well, I think that tells you something, doesn't it?
114: Sort of like, if that's the kind of country people just say has a nuclear weapons program, they have to be up to something, right?
Gravel was there to move other candidates slightly to the left and provide cover for any such moves, he did so effectively. He also probably did something positive for his campaign, in the sense that more people now know he's running, and some miniscule percentage of them probably weren't turned off by the fact that he was an ass to the other candidates. Personally, I think it's important enough that any of them beat whomever the Republican nominee is that (unless his thinking is described by my first sentence here and he's a very good actor) I was pissed at him for most of the debate.
115: Exactly! You see what I'm talking about. So, by not voting for Richardson, it's kind of like I'm pre-emptively bombing the fuck out of sexual harrassment. I don't know who'd have a problem with that except for sexual-harrassment apologists, and if they like it so much, maybe they should just go let the governor squeeze their own titties.
The main impression I got from Richardson was: "I'm willing to drop bombs and I'm willing to shoot people. I'm a governor."
Things I liked: Hillary thinking to mention Afghanistan in her answer to the stupid "two cities are bombed during this debate" question.
Whichever of them correctly explained what was hled in Carhart last week, though they should have specifically said it wasn't about late-term, since Brian Williams screwed it up.
I am disappointed to see that Clinton is beating Gravel in the 'who did the best?' poll running on Dailykos. (But by only three votes.)
FWIW, I voted for Dendahl for Governor of NM last fall. I also voted against Richardson's man at the precinct elections, and aainst his supporters at the Democratic Party of Bernalillo County central committee meeting. My impression is that Richardson is more interested in personal loyalty than in any principles, and that he appoints stupid people to judgships based on their political support. He also panders for votes. The executive director of the state party is his man, I believe, and I have a very low opinion of that guy's ethics and character. Diane Denish, our lieutenant governor, told a newspaper last year that she didn't like the way Richardson was always putting his arm around her, etc.
more interested in personal loyalty than in any principles
This hasn't been working out for us so well these past few years. Man, I remember how when Bush came in everyone was falling over themselves to praise his team's loyalty, how it was a sign of their seriousness and ability to work together and remain shipshape and shit.
122: Dude, we were talking about the former governor of NEW MEXICO running for president, not Texas.
122: But on the bright side, it's easy to imagine someone like that being President, isn't it?
I have absolutely no idea how that got there.
"Is the tall redhead Kucinich's wife? Hot! So wrong, and yet so right."
People are either very pro-redhead or hate redheads. Rarely are people ambivilent.
mmmmm redheads.
There are people who hate redheads?
Ooh, I finally got to see some of the debate, the round of questions about Iraq. Because complaining is way more fun than being constructive, I found something negative to say about everyone:
Clinton: That head-bobbing-blinky thing that Clinton does when she speaks is very annoying. Also, "I did as good a job I could at the time..."
Biden: Also annoying is the way a clown like Biden can, for brief periods, do such a convincing impersonation of a competent person.
Edwards: Squints a lot when listening, like he has to concentrate extra hard to get the question. Or his contacts are dry.
Obama: To my surprise, the loose-limbed, casual body language that makes him so likeable during stump speeches comes off as amaturish and uncomfortable in this format.
Dodd: Old, eyebrowy, and making a lot of sense when on-camera; impossible to remember when off-camera
Kucinich: In 2004, I thought Kucinich served a good purpose by saying true things that the other candidates couldn't. Now, I kind of wish he would shut up and stop looking weird at me, and Gravel is serving the same good purpose better than Kucinich is. Also, "I have a plan, HR 1-2-3-4..." (Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Iraqi Peace)
Richardson: I know that the fiery Latins tend to be "expressive" when they speak, but still, I think he was a little "handsy," if you know what I mean. Also, he kept "accidentally" brushing up against my ass while I was watching the clip.
Gravel: He completely sucks, because I had to not only agree with, but admire, his answer to the Iraq war question AFTER I had already made a bitchy comment about him elsewhere, making me look/feel like a fool, and I can't have that.
HR 1-2-3-4! That's the combination on my luggage!
At least 4 people in the room made that joke, and loudly.
Another Hillary data point: her forehead and eyebrows did not move. Disconcerting.
People are either very pro-redhead or hate redheads.
Huh, in my limited experience, this is true, but it's also another on a list of make-or-break attraction criteria that other people seem to care about, while I don't.
Most people I meet seem to have very strong opinions concerning romantic prospects when it comes to:
1) Height: the prospect MUST either be taller or shorter
2) Redheads: to be either avoided or pursued above all else
(and for homos-)
3) Effeminacy: Dan Savage (on record as preferring sissies) aside, if they have an opinion at all, both butch and nelly guys seem to come down on the butch-is-better side of this equation.
And yet, these are all (outside of extreme outliers) irrelevant variables to me. Which makes me feel slightly confused when the subject comes up.
132: I find the redheads thing a somewhat mystifying criteria too. People hate redheads? Apparently?
132: I've never gotten the whole "they MUST be butch/nelly" thing, either. Depending on circumstances, my own behavior can fall anywhere between out in the yard with a chainsaw to mincing around like any other stereotype. What I find attractive may sound crazy, but here it is: a whole person with a range of experience and expression. I suspect that among Our Kind the obsessive demand for one set of mannerisms or another says explicitly a great deal more about the sort of person the desirer wishes himself to be than it does about the guy he desires. I suspect the same is true of breeders with particular requirements but I think it's more obvious when it's a guy projecting some kind of desired self-identity onto another guy.
outside of extreme outliers
What does an extreme outlier for redheadedness look like? Maybe?
134: agreed, every word. Actually, I think the height thing, for breeders, is usually about the same kind of gender-role rigidity that the butch/sissy thing is for homos. Requiring a person to physically conform to gender role expectations seems really extreme to me, but it's apparently really really common.
Yep on the height thing -- I think that's exactly what it's about.
Requiring a person to physically conform to gender role expectations
But there is probably a roughly equal number of "guys who dig short chicks" as there is "guys who dig tall chicks", no? Are there "chicks who dig short guys"? -- I guess probably not, or in vanishingly small numbers.
139: "Dig short chicks" isn't the way to think about it -- guys who aren't attracted to women their size or bigger? I'd say that's probably more common than not. Guys who find delicate little women particularly attractive? Also very common.
It's pretty symmetrical -- given the difference in average heights, the only people who really notice it all that much are big women and little men.
Are there "chicks who dig short guys"?
Megan of From the Archives, for one.
I thought her criterion was that the man be weak.
She likes them around her height or a little less.
Most people's preferences of this sort (height, weight, etc.) are strong when they're young and strong in the abstract. I'm not convinced that it does much more than initial, not very important, sorting.
Yeah, depends on the person, depends on the life-stage.
137: I've never really thought about that gender-role dynamic in hetero heights before, but that makes total sense. Come to think of it, I've seen the same prefs exhibited by strict top/bottom gay guys, too.
I was an outlier but nobody ever expressed a strong preference for/against to me.
I'd make a distinction between preferences, reflecting some sort of conscious choosing, and recognising a pattern of whom you're most attracted to.
I had preferences, which seem conventional and arbitrary to me now, when I was younger. Today I feel open to the attractiveness of what seem like all types; I can't think of a single physical characteristic that would be a negative per se.
On the other hand, there is a type, a look to which I've always been very strongly attracted. Lisa Edelstein, of House, is the type to perfection: I think she's stunning. The University of Chicago was a happy hunting ground to me.
Yeah. These things are more visible when you don't fit the role, but 'little' is an important component of presenting as femme, in the same way that 'big and strong' comes off as butch. I was watching Buffy season 4 last night (yeah, so I'm a decade behind on my pop culture. Your point?) and the Buffy/Riley relationship is visually a cartoon exaggeration of gender roles.
145: "depends on the life stage" s/b "how worried the person is about dying alone and being eaten by rats, and so reconsiders whether the standards should slip"
Lisa Edelstein is gorgeous and the costuming on her on House really suits her.
What I find attractive may sound crazy, but here it is: a whole person with a range of experience and expression.
I'm totally, totally with McManly on this one.
I believe Megan specifically would only want a man she could beat up, not necessarily a short man. Muhammad Ali, for example.
Is Edelstein Cuddy? She is very attractive.
148: That has bugged me about Whedon. I realize he's playing around with the tiny-woman-as-victim-of-evil meme, and so it makes sense to have Buffy be a tiny-woman-who-isn't-a-victim but between her and River on Serenity I want to say Joss, it's okay if your heroines weigh more than 90 pounds.
Not so much as victim of evil, but more 'exaggerately-femme woman as kickass heroine'. It is hard to play with gender roles without buying into them, though.
I believe Megan specifically would only want a man she could beat up, not necessarily a short man. Muhammad Ali, for example.
Wait, do you think Ali is short?
strict top/bottom gay guys
That's another one I don't really get.
It's a gay thing, cereb. You wouldn't understand.
155: He's not short, but he's also not moving too fast these days. I shouldn't have brought up Megan -- she just mentioned a preference for guys a little shorter than she is a while ago.
I looked up Ali's height. I was under the impression he wasn't that tall by modern standards, but he was 6' 3", which is fairly big.
Ali is to me the limit case for the constellation of issues ogged raises when he notes that he finds it harder to enjoy the NFL now that he knows what happens to the bodies later on. Ali was so remarkable physically, he accomplished as much as an athlete could hope to accomplish, he was genuinely socially important (even if those claims are overinflated these days), and the effect of his career is so obviously cruel to who he was. It physically hurts to see him, sometimes, but I can't bring myself to wish away his career.
That, and the mental acuity. He was witty, and clever, and not-that-handsome-should-be-important but that too. And now he appears to be a wreck on all fronts.
I've seen him on TV and he's still been fairly witty -- crippled by his disability, but still with the acuity.
Oh, that's a comfort. I haven't seen extended interviews -- in the clips I've seen, it looks as if he can hardly speak.
Yeah, he struggles to speak But what he says demonstrates there's a wit there. A certain self-deprecating, wry humour.
It physically hurts to see him, sometimes, but I can't bring myself to wish away his career.
When I was in grad school, I found it impossible to speak civilly to another grad student -- a cognitive neuroscientist, mind you -- after I found out that he boxed recreationally. It was always Ali who came to mind.
There's just no comparison -- someone boxing or doing martial arts recreationally probably takes less punches in their entire life time than a pro-boxer takes training for and fighting a single fight.
a cognitive neuroscientist, mind you
A koan.
There's just no comparison -- someone boxing or doing martial arts recreationally probably takes less punches in their entire life time than a pro-boxer takes training for and fighting a single fight.
Agreed, and both ttaM and I have done it recreationally/educationally The training methods and philosophies of boxing have always seemed pre-modern to me, and I'm sure most of the damage is done in the endless sparring. Even if the point is to make actions instinctive and resilient when you're literally addled, there are probably better ways.
There's just no comparison
Of course, there IS a comparison, and you made it: a pro takes more and harder hits than an amateur does. But an amateur is still likely to take some good solid hits, and every time it happens, the brain is certain to sustain minute amounts of damage from bouncing back and forth against the skull, and from white matter shearing from the whiplash action on your neck and the deformation of the brain from all the movement inside your skull. Brains are great at making up for lost capacities, so you could do a lot of this before you ever noticed that you'd been getting just a little tiny bit stupider with every hit you take. So, yeah, there are worse things you could do to yourself for recreation and if you really like boxing, then knock yourself out (ha!). But if you're going to be a brain scientist and go get punched in the face for fun after work, I'm still going to think you're a dick.
170: I suppose it's your call who you think is a dick, but recreational boxing - and most pro martial arts, for that matter, are very different animals from pro boxing. In recreational boxing people wear headgear and they generally aren't hitting hard enough for knockouts. Specifically there's going to be a lot less of the getting-rocked-and-getting-back-up-again insanity that pro boxers (and NFL players) go through. Same thing with MMA fighting; if you get hit in the head hard enough to lose your balance and/or stop defending yourself for even a second, they'll generally stop the fight.
Now, obviously there's no way to cast getting punched in the head as good for you physically, but it's not like the general outcome is going to be Parkinson's or mental retardation. I mean, by your standards somebody studying the brain shouldn't eat bacon, let alone drink or do drugs. How much of the field will that disqualify?
Well, Apostropher for one. If he had any plans to study the brain, they should be right out.
See, I'm a little touchy here because this hits close to home. (no, I don't box)
But you're drunk, high, and pork laden as you're posting?
Small world.
Well, who isn't. But I'm expected to learn a number of things from cognitive neuroscientists, at leasst, and I personally feel that the years when amateur functional neurochemistry was my primary hobby can't help but enhance my ability to grasp, say, the biological basis of conceptual mapping, or the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in social cognition.
It's like taking something apart to see how it works: sure, it might not go back together again perfectly, but look how much better you understand it now!
I think the biggest difference between amateur and pro, after the amount of time spent taking punches, has got to be quality. I don't box, do martial arts, etc., but I feel certain that, relative to pro boxer, amateurs suck.
Compared to pro boxers, pro martial artists suck at punching. Nobody else punches remotely as hard as pro boxers can.
Amateur functional neurochemistry? Impressive.
Well, I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in the past year I've taken an appreciably hard punch to the head. If you are sparring with relatively light contact and if you are with a partner who is halfway respectful, it doesn't happen very often.
I'd be at higher risk of brain damage playing soccer seriously.
re: 177
That's true, but it's not really power, imo. Pro boxers are incredibly quick. They unload a lot more punches in a given time.
180: There was a funny study that got linked somewhere in the last year or two, claiming that punch for punch, boxers hit harder than practitioners of any other martial art. (Obviously, people practicing martial arts involving kicking can kick harder than boxers can punch.)
Now, for a really dangerous sport, try Dressage or Cheerleading.
I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in the past year I've taken an appreciably hard punch to the head
Psst...I think the punches to the head may be messing with his counting abilities.
I feel certain that, relative to pro boxer, amateurs suck
Of course they do. And the pros have always sparred, that is actually boxed, daily with a sparring-partner, another pro whose size and style mimics the trained-against opponent's. The pro's superiority is both in the capacity to very quickly deliver very powerful punches in combinations, which doesn't hurt much to practice, although it's exhausting—and in the practiced ability to do this while being punched with the same force/skill. I said daily, for months, against in Ali's case another 230 lb. pro. That guy must have done Ali's brain much more damage than Joe Frazier or George Foreman ever did, and he was being paid to do it.
If you could prove that you could box just as well without being punched by a pro heavyweight every day for months, you'd take away boxing's terrible damage almost entirely.
185 - how does MMA differ from MDMA?
I don't think I've ever been punched in the head.
186: Only one oxygen hanging off of the phenyl ring?
Or I guess technically no oxygens, otherwise it would be MOMA.
Shit, but then it's just be meth. I suck at the chemistry jokes. I ban myself.
What's the difference between MoMA and MDMA?
187: I got punched in the ear once -- a fight broke out on the schoolbus that was driving me and the other teachers from my school back home after a dance in Samoa. It was accidental -- a multiperson drunken brawl on a school bus doesn't offer a lot of places to get all the way out of the way -- but surprising. My ear was ringing until I went to bed that night.
It's just occured to me that one of the reasons my intense feelings of hostility and alienation in high school, which I've been recalling the last couple of weeks, never led to violence may have been that I punched a bag sometimes until I collapsed, and couldn't lift my arms.
by your standards somebody studying the brain shouldn't eat bacon, let alone drink or do drugs.
Only, not really. Every time you get hit hard in the head, you get real, physical damage to brain tissue. By contrast, you have to eat enough bacon over time to wreck your vascular system in order to hurt your brain with hypoxia, and you have to do enough drugs to re-regulate the involved receptors or excite the involved neurons to death. Booze IS actually directly neurotoxic, but the last time I read anything about it, the jury was still out on how much ethanol toxicity a neuron could tolerate before it got permanently damaged. (My neuroscience hero, Robert Sapolsky, abstains from booze and caffeine completely precisely because of their neurotoxic effects).
I like lots of things that are bad for me, but I guess the symbolism of a neuroscientist doing something that all neuroscientists KNOW causes brain damage bothered me. It'd be like a lung scientist who only smokes at the bar. Probably not enough exposure to be a real hazard, but still kind of hard to watch.
191: MoMA's free on Friday afternoons; MDMA is only sometimes free on Saturday nights, and then only if you know the DJ.
194: Hmm... with doctors this line of reasoning makes sense. But if you're just trying to figure out how something works out of intellectual curiosity... the "wow, that blow to the head actually turned everything GREEN. I wonder what makes that happen" approach doesn't seem completely insane.
"you have to eat enough bacon over time to wreck your vascular system in order to hurt your brain with hypoxia"
Among other dangers.
Also, I can't hit the papers from where I'm at now, but my understanding was that the danger from multiple strong blows to the head (e.g. multiple concussion syndrome) was orders of magnitude more dangerous than a single concussion, assuming you immediately stop putting your head at risk.
Third, I think you're misunderstanding what amateur boxers actually do: they aren't trying to knock each other out with blows to the head. They're trying to exercise their technique, score points if it's a scored bout, and get exercise: amateur boxer's are highly unlikely to ever get a concussion. One five month study of amateur boxing I just found showed zero head injuries in training, and found the head injuries from competition to be mild single concussions at most. Which aren't great for you, but one or two concussions over a person's lifetime simply are going to cause a negligible amount of brain damage.
Like I said, if you're looking for dangerous, try Dressage.
186: Well, they both involve a lot of touching. Kind of opposite ends of the spectrum of touching, but don't tell that to these guys.
197: Two grade 1 concussions is all it takes, and fit, college-aged men are plenty strong enough, without being hulking heavyweights, to cause a grade 1 concussion in a sparring partner wearing headpadding. Also, concussive injuries are a big focus of interest precisely because there are immediate behavioral identifiers that an injury has occurred; but the only difference between a concussion and a sub-concussive injury is that the concussion was a strong enough injury to notice - the same damaging force acts on the brain, and I have no doubt that the same shearing/stretching kinds of injuries that are evident on a cellular level after mild concussion are present, if less so, after a sub-concussive injury. Brains are built to take some damage, but I don't know why you'd do that to yourself on purpose.
199: I had understood it to be two concussions without being given a chance to recover from the first one?
In any case, given the conclusions of that study, the answer seems to be, if you enjoy amateur boxing and you would like to avoid even the relatively remote possibility of a mild concussion, don't enter competitions. Second, if you've gotten a grade 1 concussion, don't be an amateur boxer.
People do it to themselves on purpose because it's great exercise and it gets out aggression in a basically safe way. I mean, not to make more analogies (so banned) but should cognitive neuroscientists avoid touch football games because pro football carries such a great risk of injury? I don't think the deal with amateur boxing is very different at all.
The analogy in 200 seems a fair one.
The difference, in terms of the level of impact experienced and the number of injuries suffered, between light or semi-contact boxing or martial arts sparring and pro boxing is of the same order of difference as between touch football and the NFL.
I spar regularly (in a style of kickboxing) and I don't think I've ever experienced a head impact that would be classified as a grade 1 concussion or near it.
I've had significantly worse head injuries playing soccer in the park (and coming off my bike commuting to work).
I accidentally gave my sifu's* wife a black eye once, but I don't think she suffered brain damage. No doubt I nearly did, once my sifu found out.
* no relation.
I should just let go of this argument, but I can't help myself: the deal with amateur boxing is different from touch football because amateur boxing definitely involves getting hit in the face while touch football does not necessarily involve getting squashed by a 300 pound linebacker. Getting knocked out cold by a giant heavyweight boxer is really bad for your brain, getting repeated type 1 concussions from sparring at the gym is pretty bad for your brain, and - this is where we seem to be talking past each other - I'm asserting that sub-concussive injuries that could occur with any strong blow to the head are also bad for your brain. I assert this not referring to clinical or sports-injury studies, but from knowing how soft and easily distorted brain tissue is, something any cognitive neuroscientist should know also. Watching a cognitive neurscientist box is like watching a lung scientist smoke or a cardiologist eat cheeseburgers: maybe it's no big deal in the end, but the irony's right there up front. I do (veterinary) brain surgeries on a regular basis, and based on nothing other than the fragility of brain tissue that I see, I wouldn't box, I wouldn't let my kid box, and I wouldn't let a brain surgeon who boxed get near me with a ten-foot-scalpel.
I don't think that I've ever been attracted to a man who was shorter than I am, but I also don't think that I know many/any men who are shorter than I am. I'm 5'2 1/2" and 112 lbs. (I only know that, because I had a physical yesterday.) There aren't all that many men who are smaller than I am.
I get a fair number of bruises, but it would be rare to get anything more than a tap to the head or face, although it has happened. I'm not sparring with idiots.
We do spar wearing shoes though, which, I suspect (perversely) encourages a certain amount of caution about levels of contact and discourages people from 'wailing' away at each other.
201: Soccer is another great way to get mild repetitive brain injuries, and between your sparring and your soccer, I guarantee that you've lost brain tissue to your recreations.
"I'm asserting that sub-concussive injuries that could occur with any strong blow to the head are also bad for your brain."
I'm not denying that strong blows can cause repeated sub-concussive injury. What I'm denying is that strong blows to the head happen often. In my experience, they are quite rare.
It happens more in amateur boxing sparring than in martial arts sparring, but it doesn't happen that much unless you are an idiot or are sparring with idiots. Unless we are using very different definitions of 'strong blow'.
I think we are talking past each other to some degree; I would say that the risk of potential serious traumatic brain injury in e.g. horseback riding or pole vaulting or distance running or walking around in Japan if you're tall much outweighs the minor injuries you might or might not get from the equivalent of being slapped in the head a couple times a week.
Also, I might be really misunderstanding my brain anatomy here so, woo, brain surgeon around to answer questions, doesn't the CSF filling the brain cavity mean that, unless the Dura actually contacts the skull, there isn't really a traumatic impact on the brain?
Double also, I would make a distinction between cognitive neuroscientists should really know better, but they're not being hypocritical the way a neurosurgeon sort of would be. If it were dangerous to your brain. Which I'm not convinced of.
Another article which seems to point away from amateur boxing (or Jiu-Jitsu chokes) causing measurable brain damage.
Also, there are lots and lots of Parkinson's patients who look exactly like Ali from a symptomology standpoint but have never taken a blow to the head. Especially given Ali's style, brain injuries are probably a safe bet, but he doesn't look much different than anybody else at his stage of PD.
I watched a show once called Pros vs. Joes, where ex-college athletes take on recently retired pros at various things&mdashtry to tackle Eric Dickerson, grab a rebound away from Kevin willis, etc. One of the challenges was lasting a round with Roy Jones, Jr. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen, because he was clearly just toying with them and still beat the ever-living hell out of each of them.
208 to 203, implied by mutual wordiness.
209: On the other hand, have you ever seen any of Butterbean's Pride fights?
re: 206
I go years without playing soccer and when I used to play semi-regularly (as an adult) it was casual kick abouts in the park with friends a few times each summer. So I don't worry about cumulative soccer-related injuries at all.
If you took the line that we ought to not do activities because they can cause sub-clinical levels of injury that may accumulate over time, we'd never do anything.
Cycling regularly can trash your knees, as can any number of other sports. Running regularly can cause chronic shin splints, some swimming strokes lead to lower back problems, and so on, and so on, for almost any sporting activity.
There's always a balance to be struck between the enjoyment and fitness benefits you get from a sport and the risk of injury.
For what it's worth, I, personally, wouldn't want to do any regular full-contact sparring, for precisely the reasons you give as the risk/fun balance is all wrong, for me.
I don't have anything to say about martial arts sparring, because I've never watched any of it except Judo and Aikido, where there are no strikes to the head. I've watched a little amateur boxing, not a lot, and the people I saw were hitting each other in the face hard enough to make me wince. That's all I've got to go on. But it wouldn't surprise me if our definitions of "strong blow" vary also.
. One of the challenges was lasting a round with Roy Jones, Jr. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen, because he was clearly just toying with them and still beat the ever-living hell out of each of them.
Oh. My. Gawd!!! First, that is the scariest television thing I've ever heard in my life. Not the least because it seems to me that there is good reason to think that Roy Jones, Jr. is mean. Second, that is the greatest television thing I've ever heard in my life.
212: I would never do a sport that involved somebody hitting me in the head full strength, but then, I really don't like getting hit in the head. But I don't think boxing with amateurs at a gym a couple times a week is really that much more dangerous than any other contact or semi-contact sport you can name.
Re: cycling, would it be hypocritical for a urologist to enjoy road biking?
Another point I would make about boxing: unless you really understand the sport, it can be quite difficult to tell how hard somebody is really being hit. Perhaps the blows you saw weren't as strong as they looked, cerebrocrat?
For what it's worth, I've seen some amateur boxing matches in competitions that certainly involved punches harder than I personally would want to experience with any regularity at all.
I don't quite understand why anyone (except maybe the boxing neurologist) is enormously irritated by cerebrocat's position. He's not asking you not to hang out with boxing neurologists.
A few years ago I saw Tyson in a bar around town. (He's here fairly frequently, I've seen him in a few restaurants -- I think his daughter is enrolled in one of the local universities?) I was very drunk, with some friends, and came this close to heckling him and calling him an old washed-up nobody, and just generally harassing the hell out of him to try see if I could provoke him into going outside with me to beat the living shit out of me. Because I can think of nothing greater than being able to say I was in a streetfight with Mike Tyson. (Even the old, washed-up Tyson.) And even if he didn't go outside, being able to say I challenged Tyson to a fight would itself be a pretty good story. The only thing that stopped me was that I realized (1) Tyson seems like the kind of guy who might not take heckling well, and (2) if he hit me he very likley kill me. Literally, dead. And that wouldn't be cool.
Also, he seemed like he wanted to be left alone, and I didn't want to be an ass.
You should totally do it, Brock. Make sure you get a picture.
218/219 was, in case it was unclear, a confession of cowardice. I still wish I'd fought the bastard (who by the way has cost me a lot of money being such a shitty boxer over the last 15 years). Although I think if I had fought the bastard, I'd probably be wishing to this day I hadn't.
208: doesn't the CSF filling the brain cavity mean that, unless the Dura actually contacts the skull, there isn't really a traumatic impact on the brain?
No. Distortion of the brain moving around inside the skull can cause shearing or stretching injuries to the white matter; break an axon and the whole cell dies. Also, having the dura contact the skull, particularly the uneven ridges around the orbits in front, isn't that hard to do in a whiplash scenario.
I would make a distinction between cognitive neuroscientists should really know better, but they're not being hypocritical the way a neurosurgeon sort of would be.
I would not make this distinction; if anything, I'd expect a research scientist to know better than a clinician. Neurosurgeons are pretty hardcore, but even still in my experience, medical doctors have a more mechanistic and need-to-know-basis approach to their subject. It's true that a lot of cognitive neuroscientists don't know their brains as well as they should, and I don't approve.
212: If you took the line that we ought to not do activities because they can cause sub-clinical levels of injury that may accumulate over time, we'd never do anything.
But this is not the line I take. As I said, I do and enjoy lots of things that are bad for me. I've known a couple bug scientists, and I'd be appalled and surprised to see one casually squash a bug the way other people might, because I tend to expect scientists to have a certain respect for their subjects. I was offended to see this clown boxing not because I expected him to be drooling in 30 years as a result, but because he was a brain scientist, for fuck's sake, and he knew/should have known that blows to the head harm brain tissue, and it's just bad form.
217: I'm studying with neuroscientists right now, and while I'm never going to be a clinician, I do spend a lot of time thinking about whether it's okay to do things that I know are harmful to my brain (e.g. beer, related), and I also love combat sports. So I'm interested, if not irritated.
Also a lot of neurologists take the position that boxing should be banned outright.
Some of the defenses of amateur boxing seem to premise amateur boxers who are too weak and poorly trained to do professional-quality damage, but who also are civil and humane enough to refrain from capitalizing fully on the other guy's weak spots. My guess is that an aggressive amateur boxer can do a lot of damage against someone whose defense are weak, even though he's not very good.
Perhaps the blows you saw weren't as strong as they looked, cerebrocrat?
Sure, this is entirely possible, I have no way to know. But I was trying to make it clear that it doesn't take a giant-guy-hitting-you-so-you-see-stars kind of blow to cause small brain injuries; there are consequences to sub-concussion level hits.
As I said, I do and enjoy lots of things that are bad for me.
Ah, I think I misunderstood your position.
re: 218
That's just crazy!
I've read of serious pro-boxers who have bodyguards for precisely that reason. To avoid being hassled by assholes (or otherwise nice guys who are temporarily en-assholed by drink).
222: Maybe, like Dexter, he was seduced into study of human biology by his perverse love of having it destroyed?
I really am still not convinced amateur boxing is any kind of deal. Maybe I'll try to find some papers about the aggregate affects of sub-concussive neurological damage.
Seriously though, you know alcohol is worse for you.
Effects, that is. The aggregate affects of sub-concussive neurological damage would not doubt be pretty boring.
Also a lot of neurologists take the position that boxing should be banned outright.
If I weren't a recovering libertarian/republican, I'd probably be more sympathetic to this myself.
221: It is not cowardly to fail to do antisocial things which result in your own death. A lesson everyone should learn.
That's just crazy!
It is, indeed. I assume you're kidding, Brock, but if you're not, then don't be an idiot. You might as well step into traffic to see how tough you are.
This is the cutest pet peeve ever, cerebrocrat.
re: 224
My guess is that an aggressive amateur boxer can do a lot of damage against someone whose defense are weak, even though he's not very good.
Sure. It's definitely possible that if your sparring partner is an aggressive asshole that you could get hit pretty hard. And that's always a risk, I suppose, in actual competition fighting rather than sparring (where you can choose who you spar, and choose not to spar with people like that).
232: Noooo! This is interesting.
You assume I'm kidding about which part? I was drunk -- I'm not kidding. Kidding about the fact that I regret it to this day? Well, I suppose so, although if I had lived (and maintained full limb function) it would be a pretty fucking great story. Plus, maybe I could've taken him. I've never boxed in my life; perhaps I'm naturally gifted?
234: Right! That's one thing I think I'm having trouble getting across: when you're training with people, they are at least nominally people who don't want to hurt you, and they don't like getting hit in the head any more than you do, so both parties are presumably going to work to not hurt each other, within the bounds of actually learning the sport, getting a workout, and satisfying your competitiveness.
Even "full contact" sparring is not generally oriented towards beating somebody into unconsciousness. Shit, even the UFC isn't oriented towards that, really. Pro boxing is the only venue where traumatic brain injury is more-or-less the whole idea.
"although if I had lived (and maintained full limb function)"
A vanishingly unlikely occurence, but sure. You probably would have also gone to jail.
May I suggest next time you're drunk you get somebody to shoot an apple off your head with a shotgun or something? Might be safer.
Stepping into traffic isn't much of a competition. I would however consider wrestling an alligator in a swamp. That too would be a good story. (And also might kill me.) I wouldn't try that one though because I'd be scared the bastards would gang up on me. The gators have no respect for fair sportsmanship.
re: 236
!!
I can't ever imagine being drunk enough to want to do something like that: the 'picking a fight with a stranger' part, not the 'generally doing something stupid' part.
Maybe I could have taken him
That's funny!
re: 237
Yes! Exactly. I spar with people I consider friends. No-one wants to hurt anyone. Also, for what it's worth, about 70% of the people in my class are women. It's not a high-testosterone full-contact sort of environment
Jail would have been a small price to pay, and totally worth it. Paralysis would have been a bit much.
Look, even in an intoxicated state, I still reasoned my way to the conclusion that it was a bad idea, okay? I'm not stupid. (Although I was probably about three drinks away...)
242: The closest I ever got to an honest-to-god bar fight, I backed off because it was a nightclub night my friend was promoting. The next night, I went to this underground fighting event, and the first bout featured the same guy who'd tried to start shit with me!
I still feel a little like a wuss for not pursuing it, but much less than I did before that moment.
241: Oh, I'd never pick a fight with a random stranger. I'm a happy, giggly drunk, not a mean one. But, please understand, this was Tyson. And in case it wasn't clear, this was after his face tattoo, which of course would have made the whole experience that much better.
I'm way late to this party, but I have a political information question that I need answered. I may just have to e-mail apostropher directly, but I thought that I'd ask here first.
Does anyone know of a good, short description of the gawd-awful bankruptcy bill and the people who supported it.
I was watching Meet the Press with a friend this morning, and I was telling him why Joe Biden is such a douchebag. Biden was doing a pretty good job of that himself. Russert brought up his description of Obama as "clean and articulate," and Biden didn't even acknowledge that his comments were less than on pitch. Biden also said that when he did something/ made some comment in 1987, he was just an "immature 42-year old."
Anyway, my friend, who seems to be a pretty avid Meet the Press watcher knew almost nothing about the bankruptcy bill. He's an avowed liberal but seems to think that Edwards is a bit calculating (though everyone is) and has thrown his $20 to Obama. I want to make sure that he's aware of everyone's votes on the Bankruptcy Bill.
I got lost looking through the talking points memo stuff. I just want 3 or 4 paragraphs that capture the essence of the thing.
244 -- the "happy giggly" stuff might make it more difficult to take on a fight with Mr. Tyson.
245: BG, hilzoy had a good round-up post. It's more than you're looking for, but you might find one or two pieces helpful if you have time to look at her links.
In my opinion, this nonsenseoutweighs virtually everything else we know about H. Clinton. Compare it to the dissonance between Bush's "compassionate" rhetoric and his allegiance to Karl Rove.
