doubting thom

Today was day two of the week-long leadership course. We spent a little time first thing discussing in small groups our responses to our homework case study from last night. Then we spent the rest of the morning exploring the MBTI, and looking at the responses to various situations by the opposing functions on the individual axes. For example, we separated into Ns and Ss, and were given a cup containing M&Ms, and then had to record on newsprint the thoughts that came into our heads; the Ss tended to describe the cup, list the colors of the M&Ms, and give other facts and details, while the Ns used words like “cool,” “kaleidoscope,” “impressionistic painting,” etc.

For exploring the T/F axis, we were asked to list the thoughts and feelings that came into our heads around the theme of conflict, how we’d like to be approached around a conflict, and how we tend to deal with it. For the P/J axis, we described how we go about planning a vacation, and when.

This took up the entire morning until right before lunch, at which point we were actually given our own full type results: my re-testing confirmed that I am an INFP, though the F was a little stronger than I expected; previous tests had shown me fairly close to the center point. Similarly, I knew I was a strong P, but this time I tested 100% P, much higher than any time before; as expected, I tested as a fairly strong I, and an off-the-scale N (I’ve scored 100% N on the S/N scale every time I’ve taken the assessment in the past twenty years).

The oddest thing was to see how unreflective our training group was, entirely coincidentally, from the general population. Es make up, I think, 75% of the general North American population, and are highly represented in the State Department too, we were told, yet in our training class we were 75% I to only 25% E. Similarly, INFP–my own type–describes only about 1% of the general population, yet six of us in the class–fully one quarter of the group–were INFPs, the largest single type represented among us. INFP also tends to be overrepresented among Internet users who have recorded their test results, at nearly 8%, and very heavily overrepresented among Blog writers who have recorded their types at Bloginality–with 21% of respondents, as of today–which I find fascinating. Is there something about the INFP type that tends to be more likely either to take training (though, since it’s mandatory for all people at a given grade, it should be more reflective of the general population, or at least of the management levels within the State Department), write a blog, take tests, or all of these?

In the afternoon, we talked about EEO issues, affirmative action, sexual harrassment, and diversity more generally, the latter also in the context of Secretary Powell’s statement that we want to “attract, retain and unleash” the “best and brightest.”

I was starting to get really pissed at one point during the morning exercises. There was one woman who was in my group during both the N and F exercises who completely ignored any of my comments–she was recording on newsprint, and we’d been directed to write everything down that was thrown out. It got to where the other people started noticing, and when I would throw out a word and she would ignore me, one of them would then repeat it at which point she would include it. I was standing right beside her, so it wasn’t as though she couldn’t hear me. And I never met her before the class started yesterday, and we were at different tables and in different groups that entire previous day, so there’s no history between us of which I’m aware. I even tried to bring it up with her, to find out what was going on, but she just ignored that as well; she wouldn’t look at or acknowledge my existence. It was a very surreal, frustrating and alienating experience.

Additional pictures at ananova.com

Three-and-a-half inch stilletos reportedly inspired by the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz and designed by Stuart Weitzman went on sale today in London for one million British pounds. The shoes, originally for an unnamed actress to wear to the Oscars–but allegedly withdrawn by Weitzman “as a mark of respect to soldiers fighting in Iraq” (huh?)–were woven with platinum thread and are set with 642 rubies, totalling more than 120 carats.

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Y’know, now I don’t feel so bad about how much I paid for my pair of Campers.

I left work right after 5:00 this afternoon, in order to get my car to the inspection station, which I thought was open until 6:00. When I got there, it turns out they close at 5:00.

Of course, I shouldn’t have waited until the last few days of the month to get it inspected. I’m usually much better about that, but I’ve been frustrated with the car lately that I just haven’t wanted to bother. So now I’ll have to try to see if my boss will let me leave early tomorrow or Wednesday so that I can get the car to the inspection station before 5:00.

Guess whose MBTI results tomorrow will not show a propensity toward J on the organization and planning (J) vs. spontaneity (P) axis?

I’m in Basic Leadership Skills training from 9-4 this entire week at work; it’s part of a mandatory program instituted by Secretary Powell, who practices what he preaches about valuing people and developing the leadership skills of all State Department employees. However, as with anything in the government, bureaucracy and regulations get in the way.
The idea is that at upon reaching a certain grade level (GS-13) in the Civil Service and a roughly corresponding one (FS-03) in the Foreign Service, all State Department employees must enroll in this five-day Basic Leadership Skills course, which talks about organizational culture, communication and preference styles, and supervisory skillsets. At the next grade, you enroll in Intermediate Leadership Skills, and then at the next in Advanced.
But this doesn’t account for the fact that not all GS-13s and FS-03s are alike. Some have never supervised anyone before, while others have, and some have no supervisory responsibilities in their current position. In my class of 24, I’m unusual in having come into the government at this level directly from private industry rather than from within the Department or from another government agency; before taking this job I’d been managing departments (with almost two years at the CTO level) for the past six to seven years, and managing teams and workgroups for another six or seven before that. I’ve had much of this sort of training before.
Granted, the part on organizational culture is particularly valuable to me anyway, because the culture, values and processes here in the government are very different than the other places I’ve worked, even the not-for-profits and academic institutions. And learning about new theories and models (though none of what we’re going to be covering looks to be particularly new) and networking with other managers throughout the department certainly has value as well. But it would be nice if there were some degree of tailoring available, rather than only a one-size-fits-all approach.

Mean lil fellow, aren’t you?

Which Monty Python Character are you?
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Who could argue with such a scientific assessment of my personality?

Wasn’t up too terribly late last night; I think I was in bed between 2 and 2:30, and didn’t get up for good (I was up once to feed the cat, and awake several other times from about 6:30 am on) until about 11:45. I remember just bits and pieces of dreams from last night; one sequence that is still with me was my being at some sort of combination house-antique store-musuem, in which lived a big cat (I’m pretty sure it was a Russian Blue). I was trying to leave through one of the back doors, and the cat kept running over to try to get out (this is exactly the behavior of Alex–my Maine Coon–when I go to leave the condo). He did manage to get past me, and out the door, but I snagged him up and brought him back; he was licking me and kissing me the whole time.
A number of days later, I was visiting my parents, and they told me that they believed the cat had rabies, but that it had gotten out again and no one had been able to find it to confirm it, so I would have to start prophylactic treatment. It had been long enough since I’d been there, that there was concern that the disease might already have taken effect. Yet I was procrastinating making the call for an appointment with a doctor (just as I continue to do in real life). And that’s all I remember.

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For more than a week I’ve been spending a lot of time struggling with my installation of Movable Type, the software with which this journal was created and is maintained. Several weeks ago I had upgraded to the most recent version, and things had been working fine until sometime over a week ago when I started getting time-outs, internal server errors, and page not found errors when rebuilding new entries or rebuilding the entire site. I hadn’t changed anything. I visited the support forums for the software, and other people were describing the same thing–many noting that the problem had only come after upgrading to the current version, and often only on some blogs within an installation but not others, and seemingly out of the blue after working normally for a while. No one so far has been able to completely resolve it or even tie it to any specific cause.
My frustration has been growing, and yesterday I spent almost the entire time between noon and 8pm, except for a few bio and meal breaks, working on the blug (to be fair, a good deal of that time also was spent looking at other blogs, adding some new functionality, etc.). I finally did get the overall rebuilds to begin working correctly again–by decreasing the number that are built at once, even though this had never before been a problem–but this entry will be my first test of whether new postings also are reliably working.
[Update: it did work, hoorah; and this re-saving of it with the update will be a test of that functionality, which had been breaking as well, seemingly at the point where it normally would try to ping.]
[Update of Update: no, the resaving of an item still is causing a time out and pings not to be sent, though at least the actual text changes do get saved to the database and thence to the site.]
[Another Update: well, it seems to be related to categories; if I only have one category when building an item, it builds fine. When I add additional categories and rebuild it, it times out and fails. And when rebuilding the entire site, it was the category archiving that was failing along with individual entries. So I’ve turned category archives off, and now everything is working fine.]

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I watched Some Like It Hot for the first time last night (yes, I know–believe me, if I had ever had a gay card, it would have been taken away from me, shredded, and the pieces burned and buried in a landfill many years ago. I saw my very first Opera–not counting a college production of Don Juan–just a month ago, too.). Really enjoyed it, and some of the queer subtext was quite funny.

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After the movie I went into There, briefly, in a good mood, where I joined Matt, Lee and Roger already in a conversation. Matt and I started talking about Santorum’s comments, the President’s description of the man as “inclusive,” and the phenomenon of “bug-chasing” and other real-world topics, but Lee and Roger left the conversation–Lee didn’t want that part of the real world to intrude upon the game. So eventually we re-joined them, where they were continuing to explore the range of clothes and grooming options for their avatars, but by then I was feeling pissy and bored, and Matt was feeling just bored, so he logged out to watch some TV, and I logged out to do some other things.
I don’t mean to make Roger and Lee come off as prissy little gay bois only interested in clothes and looks–in real life, they’re not at all like that, though in game they do sometimes get rather caught up in shopping for their avatars and trying on lots of different looks (and I’ve certainly done my share of that off-and-on in game, too). It was just the particular circumstances of last night, of coming into game feeling really up and social, and feeling a little shot down because I was engaging in heavier conversation. At the same time, I can understand how they felt. Geez, I’m always so wishy-washy about describing even the mildest conflict, since I want to be so fair about presenting all sides and not always assuming I was in the right; in this case, certainly, there were no right or wrong sides, just different moods and tastes.
This is related to an email exchange between Gene Cowan and I on Friday in which we touched on the first–and unpleasantly unsuccessful–virtual contact he and I had had around 1995; his blog query about whether he should include more personal diary-like entries; and how other people that one writes about–and who might read these entries–might feel or react to being discussed in this sort of forum, often from a purely one-sided perspective.
Bad, wicked, naughty brain! Always thinking and rethinking and processing and reprocessing every little detail and every little fear. Sometimes I wish it would just shut up.

A friend sent this quote to me today. Surprised I hadn’t seen it before, at first I assumed it had to be an urban legend, but a quick search confirms that it is, indeed, the real thing (and I was apparently under a virtual rock when this was making the rounds of the internet over the past few months).

Hermann Goering, in a series of prison interviews conducted by and collected in Gustave M. Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diary, spoke in 1946 about how the people of any nation can be led into a war they don’t want. The excerpt below is narrated by Gilbert:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Eleanor Clift (newsweek.com) on why Santorum is in no jeopardy of being Lotted (I hope I’ve just coined that).

Some quotes:

The base [of the Republican party] identifies with Santorum. He’s their champion. At the first hint of controversy, powerful figures on the right flooded the White House with calls warning “not to walk away from Rick.”

The White House is behind Santorum. More than anybody in the leadership, he’s their guy. Hardcore and ambitious, he goes to the wall for every Bush initiative and for every right-wing cause. He’s leading the party’s fight against reproductive cloning and stem-cell research, and is working to pass an exclusion to allow faith-based groups that receive federal money to practice discrimination in hiring that would otherwise be illegal.

Bush knows that to break with Santorum would cost him dearly with his conservative base. Asked for Bush’s reaction to Santorum’s broadside against gays, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer reached new heights of verbal gymnastics. He said the president doesn’t typically comment on Supreme Court cases. When the reporter pointed out that Bush had spoken out quite a lot about the Michigan affirmative-action case currently before the court, Fleischer said, “That’s why I said–typically.” Fleischer did say, though, that the president thinks Santorum is “an inclusive man.” When it comes to entertainment, Fleischer is on his way to matching the Iraqi information minister.

Again with the “inclusive” label, first from Frist and now from Bush via Fleischer. How much clearer can the Republicans be on just what they really think about gay people? We’re so far outside that tent that someone who unabashedly and unapologetically spews hateful nonsense implying that we are the equivalent of child molesters can be hailed as a paragon of inclusiveness. This is the true face, not just of Rick Santorum, but of George Bush and his compassionate conservatism.

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What Fleischer said:

But the president believes that the senator is an inclusive man. … The president has confidence in Senator Santorum and thinks he’s doing a good job as senator–including in his leadership post.

Are we surprised that this is the definition of “inclusive” propounded by Mr. Bush? When governor of Texas, he said he would veto any attempt to overturn the state’s sodomy law–the very case before the Supreme Court now that has loosened Santorum’s lips… I’d have liked to have said “that has gotten Santorum in trouble,” but it’s clear that he won’t get into trouble just for bashing us queers–calling the sodomy law “a symbolic gesture of traditional values.”

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Ah, thanks to Andrew Sullivan’s blog for pointing me to today’s Chicago Sun-Times editorial. Here’s perhaps the best line I’ve seen so far in the debate over Santorum:

And one last point. How can we have any hope of creating a democratic government in Iraq free from domination by repressive religion if we cannot free our own laws of official faith-based biases inflicted on our fellow citizens?

And here’s one of Sullivan’s thoughts about Mr. Bush’s statement today about the “inclusive” Mr. Santorum:

It hurts me to say this, Mr President, but your statement today has just made matters far worse. Senator Santorum believes that gay people should be subject to criminal prosecution for their private, adult consensual relationships. He has equated homosexuality with the abuse of minors. He has associated homosexual relationships with bestiality. If that is an example of “inclusiveness,” then what would exclusiveness be? For the president to call the criminalization of an entire group of people the position of an “inclusive man” leaves me simply speechless. It indicates that the White House still doesn’t understand the damage that this incident is doing, the fact that it is beginning to make it simply impossible for gay people and their families–or any tolerant person–to vote for the president’s party.

Well, I never imagined that the conservative Sullivan and I–cute though Andrew may be–would be bedfellows, but there you have it. Oops… is that the police I hear knocking at the door?

Today’s Friday 5
1. What was the last TV show you watched?
Um, wow… I think it was an episode of Changing Rooms one day last week, on BBC America.
2. What was the last thing you complained about?
Just a few minutes ago I was complaining to someone at work about the number of interruptions and meetings I’ve had today, leaving me with little time to actually accomplish anything (of course, here I am posting on my journal rather than getting anything accomplished).
3. Who was the last person you complimented and what did you say?
Obliquely, I complimented Gene Cowan earlier today for his web design and writing skills over the past years that I’ve been following his site and more recently his blog.
4. What was the last thing you threw away?
A sticky that was on my monitor reminding me to do a task for my boss before 2:00 this afternoon.
5. What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited?
Well, I had just immediately visited T. Kevin’s Synaptic Discharge, which is what reminded me I hadn’t yet done today’s Friday 5. Before that, though, I had been looking at the News in Latin site, which was referenced in Gene Cowan’s Just As I Thought blog.

Wow… with apologies to my two gay friends employed by McPaper, I have to admit I was surprised to find such a queer-friendly editorial as this in USA Today.

When commenting that Santorum’s positions in the Senate and in the Republican hierarchy seem secure even after his remarks comparing homosexuality to incest, and suggesting that the state has the right to legislate consensual adult sexual activity within one’s own home, the editorial noted, “That’s because too many people in the GOP either forthrightly agree with his views or cluelessly wonder why an apology is required.” It continued, “Neither scenario bodes well for a party that needs to show it can govern a divided nation in the short term and expand its political base over the long run.”

Let’s hope they’re right.

The article also points out that, “[r]ushing to Santorum’s defense, Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee only made matters worse on Tuesday, when he said: ‘Rick is a consistent voice for inclusion and compassion in the Republican Party.’ If Santorum is the GOP’s idea of inclusive, that fact is best left unadvertised.”

<chuckle>

Meanwhile, Olympia Snowe, fortunately, continues to be a breath of fresh air. On the heels of her stance against Bush’s “Leave No Millionaire Behind” tax-cut strategy, she has spoken out against Santorum’s comments:

Discrimination and bigotry have no place in our society, and I believe Senator (Rick) Santorum’s unfortunate remarks undermine Republican principles of inclusion and opportunity.

Hey, wouldn’t it be interesting to see a cross-party Dean/Snowe ticket for the 2004 presidential election?

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Oh, and I love the reaction Santorum’s remarks are getting from Andrew Sullivan. This has really pissed him off at the “conservative” leadership within the Republican party. Yeah!

His blog entries for today and yesterday show an impassioned sense of betrayal by others who deem themselves to be conservatives. Here are some quotes:

But something this basic as the freedom to be left alone in own’s own home is something I naively assumed conservatives would obviously endorse–even for dispensable minorities like homosexuals. I was wrong. The conclusions to be drawn are obvious.

This is not about homosexuality as such. It is about the principles of limited government, tolerance, civility, compassion and the soul of the Republican party. There are no deeper political issues. No war is worth fighting if our political leaders feel contempt for basic liberties at home. I realized this more profoundly after reading Santorum’s full remarks, which are far more alarming than the small, doctored quote that created the immediate fuss.

[quoting a letter to him] “If Santorum is somehow representative of what is conservatism in the United States today, then I say no thank you to it.”

Me too.

It’s hard to find the right analogy, but it’s not that far from saying that you have nothing against Jews, as long as they go to Church each Sunday. (Which was, of course, the Catholic position for a very long time.) Worse actually. It’s like saying that, even if Jews practised their religion at home, in private, they could still be arrested for undermining the social order. Their very persistence in their identity–which harms and could harm no-one else–is a threat. Do you think someone who said that would remain a leading pillar of the Republican Party?.

The rest of the GOP is maintaining silence. Thanks, guys. We get the message. As one reader put it, “I was warming to the Republicans over Iraq. But statements like these have me running back to the Democrats.” I can fully see why.

What he disapproves of mustn’t only be denied public recognition; it must be criminalized. If you think I’m exaggerating, read his full comments. They are not a relic of a bigoted past, as Trent Lott’s were. But they are an expression of a bleak future, in which tolerance and privacy are subject to the approval of “moral” majorities and enforced by the police. If that truly is his view, he needs to explain it further. And the Republican party has to ask itself if it wants an unconservative extremist as one of its leaders.