Iran Lately

If you're not particularly keen on keeping up with international affairs, it may surprise you to know that many news agencies abroad are state controlled.  This means the government filters what stories do and don't get seen by the general public.  In the case of Iran, this is also true of certain online news agencies like the Fars, the English language outlet of news for Iranians closely controlled by the Islamic clerical Iranian regime.  What may also surprise you is that they recently decided to publish a news story from The Onion, a satire news organization that prides themselves for off-the-cuff and, at times offensive, comedy.  The Fars reprinted a (completely fictional) Onion News story that rural white Americans were polled to prefer President Ahmadinejad over President Obama.

Now, it's embarrassing enough to get something wrong, but blatent plagiarism, a pseudo-apology, and personal endorsements for the story's validity after the facts were straight leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  And the impression starts to form that a government unwilling to acknowledge the Holocaust while pursuing nuclear weapons is unstable, in the rational/sane sense of the word.

In other words, if you're wondering why Obama and Romney couldn't stop agreeing with each other about bombing Iran during their foreign policy debate, now you know.

China

If you watched last night's Presidential debate, though "debate" would be a lofty way to describe it, you'd think Iran would be a topic of choice.  But, even for as much as the candidates would like to appear opposed they have such similar foreign policies you might as well flip a coin.  As a rational actor (for the most part), the United States' Executive Branch has dealt with countries with relatively little partisan bias over the last decade.  In fact, Obama seemed to be channeling Hans J. Morgenthau with his political vocabulary in his response to the question, "would you consider an attack on Israel an attack on the United States?"  By the way, neither candidate answered that question directly.  But there are some foreign policy topics out there that appear divided.  So, what is it about China that makes people say, "hey, yeah!  China's a 'cheater,'" or "let's get tough on China!"?  Well, if you're Mitt Romney, you know that taking a position against the incumbent will garner support from voters' ill-will toward President Obama on any number of other issues.  This is based on reports of manipulated currency value, industrial espionage over many decades, and other issues.  Whether Obama is on the opposite end of Romney's attacks is up to you to decide.

China's primary interests are within its immediate scope.  According to the International Herald Tribune's (NY Time's world edition) October 23rd 2012 front page, China doesn't have a party favorite, and they view Romney's rhetoric as simply that.

Rumors about China ought to be addressed:

1) Million-man Army?

False, it's approximately 2.3 million (or 200 waang where 1 waang = 10,000), and it used to be closer to 10 million than 1 million.

The flip side to this is that with only 4.3% GPD spent on their military, there's not much to fret over as far as overwhelming numbers are concerned.  Those number are likely to be less trained, and less equipped than the United States.  And the logistics of an overseas offensive would boggle the mind of any commander charged with the task.

2) Are the Chinese "cheating" the world economy?

Absolutely.

And they're doing it a lot of different ways.  The 14th Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said so.  Apart from resisting currency appreciation against the dollar to improve exports and domestic growth, they heavily subsidize these areas to ensure such business remains stable, which isn't completely out of line, the United States subsidizes lots of industries.  However, its industries are primarily concentrated on domestic standards like food supply, and imports like oil to keep the economy growth up.

On the flip side, no one said they couldn't play this way.  The international market is rarely regulated by rules we would consider laws that one could "cheat."  Their primary responsibility as a government is to their people and to themselves second to no other consideration.  Human rights violations aside, no one can tell them to behave.  World economic growth is only their concern as far as it effects them negatively or positively.

3) We are all going to be speaking Chinese soon.

No one knows the future, but just to give you all an idea about how unlikely that is, there are 8 significant Chinese dialects in the world, and the leading two Mandarin and Cantonese have been compared to how different English is to German.

On the other hand, China could strong-arm an exclusive language in China and over time unify the language base, but that's just the apocalypse conspiracy theorist in me playing devil's advocate.


In other words, you can love China, or hate them, or be completely indifferent, and have plenty of reasons why.

Gender Equality

NPR posted a blog by Maria Godoy on a topic centered around a comment Mitt Romney made during the recent political debate in New York.  Ordinarily, NPR is an excellent educational and news outlet with their partnerships with the BBC.  This was an exception to their stellar reputation.

The title of the blog is Out of the Binder, Into the Kitchen: Working Women And Cooking.  In it, Maria places a massive black-and-white 1950's ad portraying a woman, presumably a housewife wearing an apron and a smile as she opens an oven to place a meal out on the table.  The image takes up more space than her blog text.  It's quickly followed by an image of actor Ryan Gosling in a meme that capitalizes the feelings of Internet communities on Mitt Romney's expression.

The blog stems from survey data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on time use between men and women who are working.  The result was that, on average, women clean and cook about twice as much as men do in addition to their job requirements.  The gap widens with those who have children.  The conclusion and quotes that make up the remainder of the blog take those details and harp on gender equality.

Unless I'm missing something, this was the most incomplete trash I've read in a long time.

In other words, facts like "time spent cleaning" should be given SOME kind of specificity.  Like, how many tasks completed during time spent, or quality of completed tasks, or maybe measure the attitudes toward cleaning of each participant, or something!  Anything!  I can easily see men coming home and putting something in the microwave, whereas I can just as easily see a very involved and high quality recipe being made by women.  And I'm not saying that because of any reason other than I've seen it with my own two eyes; I couldn't tell you what my male roommate eats when he comes home I happen by him as he's eating.  When my female roommate is cooking, I could be anywhere in the house and the smell gets to me.

I was reminded of a similar, and popularly cited book, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, for the statistic that women use an average of 20,000 spoken words in a day versus a 7,000 spoken-word day for males.  The conclusions drawn from most of the front-running distributors of this finding were that women were simply superior communicators and that men were simple, predictable creatures.  A NYTimes article on the uselessness of men goes so far as to joke that as long as men remain entertaining, women will keep men around, and the author thoughtfully shares the hope that it is enough.  Dr. Brizendine's finding has been disputed (though poorly, likely due to financial limitations).  Another fun argument is that women, possessing more genetic material was an obvious advantage.  If only genetics were so simple.

The data collection needs to include, for example, in the word collection, efficiency of language, what is the topic of communication, social dynamic, etc.  Otherwise, we're left at the mercy of people who believe they can glean truth from incomplete facts and make broad-based claims about gender equality.  On the one hand, you'll have the ultra feminist claiming superiority in communication, and on the other you'll have masculinists and entertainers saying women are incapable of being quiet.

Coming full circle, the Godoy blog about gender equality in time spent cleaning needs serious details to draw any meaningful conclusion, and a piece of advice for their next blog, don't try to cover poor journalistic work ethic with an Internet meme.  Seriously.

Presidential Debate 2012

I wish I didn't have to post about such a hot topic.  I respect people enough to see the debates and draw their own conclusions, but there are a few things about my background that make me feel qualified to add to your informed opinions.

Yes, Mitt Romney had a better showing, that's not exactly a (seriously) disputed fact except from the most die-hard Democrats.  Romney made a strong stand where he knew he could, and he defended well where he knew he must.

On the other hand, if this debate had been held in say, Florida, where senior citizens would have packed the audience, the (silly) undecided-voter meter CNN showed might have told a different story.

Full disclosure: I'm not in support of either candidate.  My candidate is Ron Paul, and I still plan to vote for him due to personal convictions.  However, I believe it's important to pay attention to the primary candidates, because they will have the most impact on politics for the next 4 years.

In other words, I want people to be able to take away what I took away from this debate.  I want people to know that as Democrats, your president is not out of the race, no matter what the "talking heads" say about that first debate.  For Republicans, yes your candidate did very well on the aggregate, but even his best critics are saying this is his best appearance yet; there's no guarantee he will be able to maintain his composure.

Obama used up more time during this debate, and with good reason.  He has a lot to answer for after 4 years in office.  Romney has it easy in terms of debate during tough times.  All he needs to do is close his eyes and point to a topic to catch the President on his heels trying to catch his balance.

I've made some bi-partisan questions up to ask yourselves in case you consider yourself one of the few undecided:

-  What does the size of government mean to me?

-  What candidate supports my most important issue(s)?

-  Do I know where my polling center is for when I go vote and when election day is?

Happy election year everyone.  Please go vote.