doubting thom

Bits and pieces of a half-remembered dream from last night:

I’m at my parents’ house, and my cat Alex is with me. I put him into his walking harness and leash, and my father and I walk the cat up the hill to my mother’s aunt’s house (Doris, who died last year). The house is full of cigarette smoke. Aunt Doris (whose name I spelled–when I was a child–as Darce, since this was how it sounded to me in my family’s Virginia mountain accent), was an inveterate smoker but died of Alzheimer’s Disease (from which her sister, my grandmother, still suffers, having forgotten all of us but having become the mediator in conversations among invisible people representative of her childhood).

Alex curls up on a chair in the living room, and my aunt and I go to the sitting room at the back of the house. Later, my sister arrives, and comes to join me. She studiously doesn’t say anything about the cat, which makes me suspicious. So I ask her if she hadn’t seen Alex on her way in, and she stammers. I run into the living room, and the front screen door is flapping open.

Outside, Dad is searching for Alex up by the road that runs twenty yards from my great-aunt’s front door. He looks up into the tree overhanging the road, and my eyes follow, to see the leash hanging down from a branch, where Alex is perched. Dad climbs onto a stepladder nearby (practically the only thing in this entire dream that was the slightest bit surreal) and passes Alex down to me. At that point I wake up briefly before going back to sleep and having another dream.

The odd thing about this dream was how mundane it was; most of my dreams are more fanciful or play liberally with time and space. In this dream, the relative ages of all the cast, the locations and distances between houses, even the smell of my great-aunt’s house, all were true-to-life. There was the sudden appearance of a step-ladder next to the tree, but that was the only thing that, upon reflection, seemed dream-like. Even the fact that I walked Alex on a leash is real; I do occasionally take him for walks on a harness and leash in the courtyard of my condo building.

When I got to work, and first started this entry, I had remembered a little bit of another dream as well. But the entry was interrupted by questions and then meetings, and when I came back to finish it at lunch, I could no longer remember anything at all about the second dream. I recall only that it was a little more fantastic than the first.

I just saw Sheldon and Lisa off to their new home in Yorktown after their two evenings with me and their Saturday in Baltimore at the regional Magic tournament. As I noted Friday night, it was so nice to spend time with them again; they represent a more social and playful, better integrated and connected, and less stressful part of my life.

I was struck at brunch today before they left at the ways in which one’s language is modified based on the environment in which one uses it; the terminology and metaphors that Sheldon, Lisa and I use together, for example, are very different from those I would use with most of my current friends, my colleagues or my family. We have a set of shared literature, habits and experiences from which to draw; at one point Sheldon described someone of their more recent acquaintance as the “avatar of Obsession on Earth,” a phrase drawing from some of our shared past of role-playing and fantasy that immediately and clearly defined for me just how obsessive the person in question would be. But I would probably never use the word avatar with my family or with most of my current friends or co-workers; even for those that know the dictionary definition of the word, I don’t think it would generally truly describe for them the anthropomorphic manifestation of a god or goddess whose portfolio includes that quality or attribute.

(Oh, except I do use the word among my friends from TSO, There and other visual chat and online gaming environments, where it has a different, very specific meaning.)

Sheldon and Lisa got into town this evening, and the three of us saw
X2: X-Men United at Potomac Yard, and then went for some terrific Afghani food at the Afghan Restaurant on Jefferson Davis Highway in Alexandria.

X2 was fun, though the ending couldn’t have said “sequel alert” more clearly if a naked Hugh Jackman had had the words spelled out in whipped cream on his body (I just wanted to make sure I got that image firmly planted in my mind). And that reminds me of one complaint I had about the movie: not enough beefcake, though I’m certainly not complaining about the big, shirtless (albeit completely smooth) Colossus and the teasingly shadowed but frustratingly brief scene of a naked Wolverine running down the spillway.

And I’m still not sure how I feel about this Nightcrawler, along with Storm my favorite characters from the comic books. Alan Cumming did a fine job, but I don’t think that I prefer the Enochian scarred look of this movie, while very intriguing, to the fuzzy blue elf of my youth.

The lives of mutants in X-Men–their condition is genetic, often can be and is hidden from others, and causes them to be hated and scorned by most of society–has always seemed like a metaphor for (among other things) sexual orientation in our own society, and that was emphasized tonight in Bobby’s “coming out” as a mutant to his family, even to his mother’s statements “When did you first know you were a… uh…,” “It’s my fault” and “Have you tried… not being a mutant?” I realize that this likely is a common reading into X-Men, but I suspect that gay director Bryan Singer also was responsible for bringing that sensibility to the particularly evocative way in which this scene was effected.

It’s been great hanging with Sheldon and Lisa tonight; we’re so easy together. Within thirty seconds we were back in the old rhythms, laughing and playing off of each other like it hadn’t been nine years since we lived together and more than two since we last saw one another.

I noted earlier this week that I had retaken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, as part of the leadership training course I’m attending at work, and that my type had been reconfirmed as INFP. I had talked to Roger about the MBTI before, and after getting my results back on Tuesday, we chatted about it for quite a while that night. Since then, he’d been getting more interested in it. I guessed that he was likely either an ISTJ or INTJ, and I was leaning toward ISTJ. But after asking him some questions to try to get at that axis, it started to sound like he was more likely an INTJ.

So today he took one of the online assessment tools, and it turns out that he is indeed an INTJ, though the preference for N over S is a slight one.

Normally, I don’t think I’m very good at guessing or analyzing other people’s MBTI types. But I think I know Roger well enough–and his T and J preferences are just so clearly defined–to have been pretty sure; I also pegged him as an Enneagram 5, which he turned out to be. I was wrong about Matt, though, having guessed that he would be an Enneagram 4 like me, but he also turned out to be a 5.

When I got home, All Things Considered was playing on the radio (I leave NPR on during the day for Alex, my cat), and I heard two stories in a row with gay themes; so I’ve been listening to the entire broadcast again, and the two stories were just replayed.

The first segment of interest was entitled “Hate Crimes”: “Senators today called for laws that would expand federal penalties for violence against gays.” Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) today reintroduced the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (LLEEA), which would add real or perceived sexual orientation (along with gender and disability) to federal hate crimes legislation.

ATC host Robert Siegel suggested that the legislation may have been given new life by Rick Santorum’s remarks about homosexuality (which I’ve ranted about extensively in this journal). Co-sponsor Gordon Smith (R-OR), described by Melissa Block as a “conservative Oregon Republican,” noted:

…This is the right thing to do. It’s the right time to do it. We are fighting a war on terrorism abroad and yet there’s a war of terrorism at home, as is visited upon thousands of our countrymen every day.

In the next segment, “Detroit Gays Gentrify Neighborhoods”, reporter Cheryl Corley took a look at a leading real estate developer that has advertised in the local gay newspaper, trying to attract gay residents to a downtown that is currently undergoing revival. The president of the development company, which is building loft apartments in these neighborhoods, made the following statement:

The gay community tends to have the guts to go into an area as pioneers, before the masses arrive. I think that the gay community also has the tendencies to actually go out and put their money where their mouth is and invest in the city around them.

Corley went on to state that “some researchers agree that cities with a sizable gay community can lead to a vibrant local economy,” and she points to the “Gay Index” and “Creative Class Theory” by researcher Richard Florida (web site), Heinz Professor of Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University and a current Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution here in DC. Florida’s theory postulates that “communities that mix technology, talent and tolerance are the most successful.”

---

Support your local NPR station; you generally won’t hear positive stories like these on commercial radio, or on commercial or even cable television.

---

[Update: 2003-05-01 23:38] Gene also has written tonight about Richard Florida, from the perspective of posting about Florida’s op-ed in USA Today.

A few quotes from the op-ed:

The key to understanding America’s technological and economic vibrancy lies in our openness to new people and ideas. Tolerance of immigrants, gays and other minorities is much more important to sustained economic growth and the high-paying jobs than the tax cut President Bush has in mind.

…[T]he big new-ideas and cutting-edge industries that lead to sustained prosperity are more likely to exist where gay people feel welcome. Most centers of tech-based business growth also have the highest concentrations of gay couples. Conversely, major areas with relatively few gay couples tend to be slow- or no-growth places.

…Innovation and overall regional economic vitality also are closely associated with the presence of gays and other indicators of tolerance and diversity, such as the percentage of immigrants and the level of racial and ethnic integration.

Why? Creative, innovative and entrepreneurial activities tend to flourish in the same kinds of places that attract gays and others outside the norm.

…What’s less well known, and what I’ve found in interviewing a wide range of people nationwide, is that more than a few heterosexual men and women say that they look for a “visible gay community” as a signal of a place that’s likely to be both exciting and comfortable. These straight people also say they will ask if prospective employers if the firm offers same-sex partner benefits. They’re looking for signs that nonstandard people–and ideas–are welcome.

This last paragraph above had me doing a double-take, and then elicited an incredible warm fuzzy feeling. This amazing statement actually managed to override my almost omnipresent and ever-mounting cynicism about America, at least for the moment. I don’t think I want to read any more news this evening, for fear of losing that sense of hopefulness.

But I’m still cynical enough to note that I don’t expect to see our President (or his “inclusive” friends in Congress) introduce a “Homosexual-Stimulus Plan” (or better yet, “Package”) anytime soon–though the mere phrase may give me some nice dreams tonight.

Today was day four of the leadership training class at work; tomorrow’s the last day. I’ve actually enjoyed this class quite a lot, but it’s exhausting. Yesterday I had some particularly fun: the facilitators turned the tables on us at one point, and had each of our small groups present one part of the performance management cycle. My table selected me to do the presentation, and I got to really ham it up… even got a round of applause.

There’s a guy in this training class–a foreign service officer–who strongly pinged my gaydar within the first five minutes of day one, because of his extraordinarily flamboyant speech, mannerisms and body language. However, he is wearing a wedding band and has mentioned his wife and children several times as well. The first time he said “wife,” I nearly fell out of my chair in shock. Today he was wearing a gorgeous aubergine shirt, and he has used the phrase “drama queen” at least twice this week when referring to former colleagues–do straight men say “drama queen”? He did turn out to be a strong Extravert on the MBTI, though, so maybe a lot of what I’ve thought was being projected as “gay” was just “loud” or “dramatic,” though the speech patterns and tone really do just scream Fire Island and community theatre.

The May 2003 issue of Scientific American offers an intriguing look at the likelihood of the existence of parallel universes or series of such universes–a “multiverse” (I always knew that my roleplaying past would come in handy some day)–as a result of the currently most popular cosmological model.

One of the many implications of recent cosmological observations is that the concept of parallel universes is no mere metaphor. Space appears to be infinite in size. If so, then somewhere out there, everything that is possible becomes real, no matter how improbable it is. Beyond the range of our telescopes are other regions of space that are identical to ours. Those regions are a type of parallel universe. Scientists can even calculate how distant these universes are, on average.

And that is fairly solid physics. When cosmologists consider theories that are less well established, they conclude that other universes can have entirely different properties and laws of physics. The presence of those universes would explain various strange aspects of our own. It could even answer fundamental questions about the nature of time and the comprehensibility of the physical world.

This article is not an easy read, obviously, but a fascinating one, and it offers one amusing “birds and frogs”–why do I suddenly find myself thinking about Hitchcock?–model for more readily understanding the many-worlds hypothesis:

[T]he outside view of a physicist studying its mathematical equations, like a bird surveying a landscape from high above it, and the inside view of an observer living in the world described by the equations, like a frog living in the landscape surveyed by the bird.

From the bird perspective, the Level III multiverse is simple. There is only one wave function. It evolves smoothly and deterministically over time without any kind of splitting or parallelism. The abstract quantum world described by this evolving wave function contains within it a vast number of parallel classical story lines, continuously splitting and merging, as well as a number of quantum phenomena that lack a classical description. From their frog perspective, observers perceive only a tiny fraction of this full reality. They can view their own Level I universe, but a process called decoherence–which mimics wave function collapse while preserving unitarity–prevents them from seeing Level III parallel copies of themselves.

Whenever observers are asked a question, make a snap decision and give an answer, quantum effects in their brains lead to a superposition of outcomes, such as “Continue reading the article” and “Put down the article.” From the bird perspective, the act of making a decision causes a person to split into multiple copies: one who keeps on reading and one who doesn’t. From their frog perspective, however, each of these alter egos is unaware of the others and notices the branching merely as a slight randomness: a certain probability of continuing to read or not.

As strange as this may sound, the exact same situation occurs even in the Level I multiverse. You have evidently decided to keep on reading the article, but one of your alter egos in a distant galaxy put down the magazine after the first paragraph. The only difference between Level I and Level III is where your doppelg

Share this:

• Email
• Print
• Facebook
• X

This just in from Broken Newz:

“Senator Rick Santorum Wants to Sing With Elton John at Grammies”

After recently equating “sodomy,” with bigamy, polygamy, and incest in an interview, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is attempting to mend bridges with the Gay community, perhaps by singing with Elton John at the next Grammies.

…He is [also] about to release his movie-acting debut, “Straight Mile” wherein he plays a struggling young Senator who excels in debates, but suffers from stage fright. In a small but telling scene in the film, Santorum defends a homosexual coworker, saying, “I have no problem with him being a homosexual, as long as he doesn’t engage in homosexual behavior. Or lust in his heart, because that’s a sin, too. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet legislation in Texas making it illegal to lust in the heart, but just because I defend the right of Texas to lock up Ron here for getting laid doesn’t mean I have anything against him….

Personally, I suspect he’ll also be following in Eminem’s footsteps by releasing his own line of clothing. Inspired by the “in-your-face hoodie” from Shady Ltd. that reads “You Got a Problem?”, the hoodie from the Sanctus Ltd. line will sport the reply, “Only With Homosexual Acts.”

The roll call of Republican congressmen standing behind Rick Santorum as a model of “inclusiveness” grew today with the addition of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (who didn’t actually use the i-word, but who rather was “very proud of Rick Santorum standing on principle”) and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who said “[Santorum] is our greatest champion [emphasis mine] for inclusiveness and fairness.”

Sadly, this latter statement is starting to have a ring of truth.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist reiterated his support today for Mr. Santorum by noting that the “man of caring, compassion and tolerance” has “100 percent confidence” of Senate Republicans.

“Tolerance”: now those Republicans have gone and ruined another perfectly good word.

[update 2003-04-30 18:25: I missed the fact that Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Whip, also praised Santorum’s inclusiveness yesterday: “A variety of us have said in one way or another we know Rick Santorum, we know he’s not a bigot. He’s an inclusive senator.”

---

Meanwhile, a Baptist Church in North Carolina was expelled from a local Baptist association last night for baptizing two gay men. We keep being told vis a vis the Santorum incident that many who are religious subscribe to a “hate the sin, love the sinner” philosophy. Would someone explain to me how withholding baptism (not that it really matters to me, since 1) I don’t believe in heaven or hell or an angry white man up in the fluffy clouds; and 2) any jealous, snippy god that might condemn any of its creations, which it’s supposed to love, to eternal damnation, really isn’t worth loving or worshiping anyway) is the sign of a loving Christian orientation?

The New York Times today has an interesting article [nytimes.com], with an accompanying multimedia presentation, suggesting that the prevalent cross-cultural legends of dragons among ancient peoples were based on dinosaur bones, whale or oarfish skeletons, or composites of carnivores that preyed on homo sapien‘s tree-dwelling evolutionary ancestors: pythons, big cats and raptors.

Yeah, right. Like I’m supposed to believe it was really a flock of 400 flying leopards that were widely reported in England in 1532. Sheesh. Do I look that gullible?

---

[Disclosure: I came across this NYTimes.com article on my own, but then saw it also mentioned on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, which I do regularly read.]