Andrew Hickey

The idea that time isn’t “real” is an ancient one — if we’re allowed to refer to things as “ancient” under the supposition that time isn’t real. You will recall the humorous debate we had at our Setting Time Aright conference a few years ago, in which Julian Barbour (the world’s most famous living exponent of the view that time isn’t real) and Tim Maudlin (who believes strongly that time is real, and central) were game enough to argue each other’s position, rather than their own. Confusingly, they were both quite convincing.

The subject has come up once again with two new books by Lee Smolin: Time Reborn, all by himself, and The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time, with philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger. This new attention prompted me to write a short essay for Smithsonian magazine, laying out the different possibilities.

Personally I think that the whole issue is being framed in a slightly misleading way. (Indeed, this mistaken framing caused me to believe at first that Lee and I were in agreement, until his book actually came out.) The stance of Maudlin and Smolin and others isn’t merely that time is “real,” in the sense that it exists and plays a useful role in how we talk about the world. They want to say something more: that the passage of time is real. That is, that time is more than simply a label on different moments in the history of the universe, all of which are independently pretty much equal. They want to attribute “reality” to the idea of the universe coming into being, moment by moment.

Such a picture — corresponding roughly to the “possibilism” option in the picture above, although I won’t vouch that any of these people would describe their own views that way — is to be contrasted with the “eternalist” picture of the universe that has been growing in popularity ever since Laplace introduced his Demon. This is the view, in the eyes of many, that is straightforwardly suggested by our best understanding of the laws of physics, which don’t seem to play favorites among different moments of time.

According to eternalism, the apparent “flow” of time from past to future is indeed an illusion, even if the time coordinate in our equations is perfectly real. There is an apparent asymmetry between the past and future (many such asymmetries, really), but that can be traced to the simple fact that the entropy of the universe was very low near the Big Bang — the Past Hypothesis. That’s an empirical feature of the configuration of stuff in the universe, not a defining property of the nature of time itself.

Personally, I find the eternalist block-universe view to be perfectly acceptable, so I think that these folks are working hard to tackle a problem that has already been solved. There are more than enough problems that haven’t been solved to occupy my life for the rest of its natural span of time (as it were), so I’m going to concentrate on those. But who knows? If someone could follow this trail and be led to a truly revolutionary and successful picture of how the universe works, that would be pretty awesome.

Cloak & Dagger #4



Let's talk turkey: no one likes Cloak & Dagger.

I hear you sputtering and frothing, your monocle plopping off and tumbling into your bowl of French onion soup as you stare in disbelief at the words on your computer screen. No one likes Cloak & Dagger, you say? Why I never!

Before you get offended, think about it for a minute. Cloak & Dagger first appeared in 1982 in the pages of Spectacular Spider-Man, created by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan. They spun-off into their own mini-series in 1983, followed by the launch of an ongoing series in 1985. This series ran for 11 bimonthly issues before being folded into a relaunched Strange Tales anthology, with Dr. Strange as the co-feature. After 19 issues of that, Cloak & Dagger and Doc were once again split into separate series. The new Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme book ran for 90 monthly issues, whereas The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak & Dagger lasted for 19 bimonthly issues - and in that time crossed over with Inferno, Acts of Vengeance AND The Infinity Gauntlet.

The important thing to remember is that this was a period of historic success for the comics industry. In the late 80s and early 90s, getting canceled required a significant effort. And it's also worth noting that Dagger's "costume" is that she is a skinny blonde girl with perky breasts in a translucent body suit that manages to involve both cleavage and and an exposed belly-button. They tried everything: Spider-Man was practically a co-star, they were pals with the New Mutants, they had two Marvel Graphic Novels, one of which was even a team up with Power Pack. (OK, maybe that last one wasn't exactly a recipe for commercial success, but still.) Marvel really tried with these guys. They saw a Cloak & Dagger sized hole in the market and tried their best to fill it for seven long years. Unfortunately, it really wasn't as big of a hole as they thought.

That doesn't really say anything about the books, or the characters themselves. I admit that even though I've never been a big fan, I've always thought the duo had some potential, even if that potential has usually been hidden under a pile of regrettable crud. They've got a memorable, if kind of racist visual, after all - literally the whitest white girl you can imagine juxtaposed against the darkness of Cloak's, er, cloak. The problem is that in addition to this memorable / problematic visual, everything else about the premise has also dated terribly. (And hey, if you think that 1982 was probably one of the last moments when an interracial couple like C&D might still carry a bit of heat in mainstream culture, you'd be correct. This is especially true if you also filled the book with racists who spent half their time telling Tandy that Ty was a literal demon. Why, you might even say some racial panic was baked right into the premise. But in 2015 that part of the characters can be very easily ignored since in most parts of the country interracial relationships have become, you know, relationships.)

Do you remember the 1980s? Do you remember what everyone was worried about in the 1980s? I mean, besides nuclear war, the homeless, decaying manufacturing capacity, and growing wealth inequality inspired by Republicans having adopted trickle-down economic policies inspired by the nonsensical Laffer Curve? Yeah, I'm talking about drugs, as in, The War on Drugs. Conservative and conservative-leaning politicians across the country - and much of the rest of the world - ginned up a moral panic over surging rates of drug use. Whereas in a better world the viral spread of crack cocaine and resurgence of other hard drugs would have inspired government to mend the holes in the social safety net that enabled illicit drugs to pour into ruined inner-city neighborhoods (and even white suburbs) across the country while also establishing a drug abatement philosophy that treated addiction as a medical condition instead of incarcerating addicts, the good old U-S-of-A decided it was better simply to criminalize and demonize. If you're "of a certain age," you undoubtedly remember this PSA, or some variant thereof:



The War on Drugs, and the Rockefeller-inspired drug laws passed in its wake, backfired immensely. To begin with, look at the basics of drug education during the period. Remember D.A.R.E.? It stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. This was a program that sent armed cops into classrooms all across the country to lecture kids about the dangers of drugs. All drugs. Marijuana remains a Class-1 narcotic in the United States, in case you forgot, meaning that on paper it's as dangerous as heroin or cocaine. The first and worst lesson kids took away from D.A.R.E. was that all drugs were equally bad, which meant that every single anti-drug lesson the student learned in primary school was completely erased the moment the high schooler took his or her first hit off a joint. My parents were and are recreational pot smokers and I could see with my own two eyes that half of what they told us in D.A.R.E. in the mid-80s was bullshit - stuff like, smoking marijuana once can under certain circumstances put you into a permanent coma (for instance, that's an example from memory). The other half was simple common sense stuff about peer pressure and the like, but because it was so intimately intermingled with bullshit the whole message was irreducibly tainted.

Mighty Marvel never met a trend it couldn't bite - be it disco, punk, or Iran-Contra, Marvel has found a way to capitalize on every passing fad or current event since Stan sent the Fantastic Four on their fateful rocket mission to beat the Soviets to the moon in 1961. 1982 predated the crack epidemic by a couple years (crack came into use in the early 80s as a response to the collapse of the cocaine market due to oversupply), but coincided precisely with the rise in heroin abuse that accompanied Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. (The Mujahideen flooded the west with cheap poppy in order to fund their insurgency by buying weapons . . . often from the same United States that was coincidentally also experiencing a surge in heroin use. This was the same Mujahideen who later formed the core leadership of al Qaeda and who were considered staunch allied of the United States until, well, they weren't.) So what were the kids into in 1982? Heroin! Oh, I kid. Sort of.

Cloak & Dagger were created to be every 1980s parent's worst nightmare: two latchkey kids - one from a posh upbringing, one from, er, Boston - who banded together as runaways, only to be kidnapped and given experimental drugs. These "experimental drugs" - essentially a kind of synthetic super-heroin that had killed all previous test subjects - left Tandy Bowen and Tyrone Johnson alive but in the possession of amazing powers. Dagger generated and could throw knives of pure light, whereas Cloak became, er, a giant cloak that could swallow people into a universe of absolute darkness. He could also teleport himself and others, which is a useful and surprisingly rare power that meant Cloak always got an invite to massive events where teleportation powers gave the writer an easy logistical cheat (such as the aforementioned Infinity Gauntlet, Maximum Carnage, House of M, and Civil War). But these powers did not come without a price: Cloak was left with a permanent hunger for Dagger's "light," and if he didn't receive regular infusions of said "light," he experienced symptoms similar to those of drug withdrawal. This led, in turn, to him being a bit of a whiny bitch, and creepily possessive of Dagger, to the point where his sole function in many Cloak & Dagger stories is telling her that he doesn't want to go off and play with the other super heroes.

For a while Cloak & Dagger were mutants whose powers had been awakened by the super-heroin. (Just typing that makes me feel dumber.) Then it turned out they were the pawns of Marvel's 17th greatest demonic mastermind, D'Spayre. Then after a while they joined Norman Osborn's short-lived "Dark" X-Men, and subsequently joined the real X-Men, only to be told that they were never actually mutants to begin with, at which point they left the X-Men, only to have their powers magically reversed during Spider-Island, of all things. Their new look is kind of cool, but so far as I know no one has used the characters since.

(And while we're on the subject, just why do you need synthetic "super-heroin," anyway? Isn't heroin already plenty addictive? Giving someone a more potent dose of heroin usually just kills them. And the whole reason behind the heroin epidemic at the time is that it was cheap, so a synthetic version would probably have been unnecessarily expensive. Comic book criminals are fucking stupid.)

With that said, there were rumors a while back that Marvel was looking at developing Cloak & Dagger as a TV show for ABC Family, which would be perfect, since supernatural adventure stories with star-crossed lovers aimed at teenagers are kind of a "thing" right now. Just, you know, drop the super-heroin angle, because the last thing they need to do is inspire a new generation of junkies to try heroin in hopes of gaining awesome superpowers.

So yeah, no one likes these guys. Before you burst into the comments with an angry jeremiad about how Cloak & Dagger are the most underrated duo in comics - think about the fact that your opinion is a statistical anomaly, and that if enough people cared about them to support a book at any point in the last 25 years, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Cloak & Dagger aren't terrible: for the most part they're just . . . there. (When they aren't also being just a teeny-tiny bit racist.)

Based on this preamble, you can probably tell their run-in with the Beyonder is going to be fun.

The mid-to-late eighties was also the era in which the Punisher first rose to prominence, so it's not as if there wasn't a legitimate demand for street-level urban vigilantes (mostly) fighting on the front lines of the War on Drugs. But alas, Cloak & Dagger were no Frank Castle. Until the day I die I will regret the fact that the Punisher's solo series did not begin until after Secret Wars II was nothing but a memory, and so there exists as yet no official meeting between the Punisher and the One From Beyond. (I did, however, write my own, even if the image link is long dead.) But there does exist an editorially-mandated crossover between the Beyonder and Cloak & Dagger, which is as wonderful as you hope.

Out story begins, as most do, with the Beyonder wandering the mean streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side, which looked significantly different thirty years ago than it does now.



Now, of course, the Beyonder doesn't understand poverty, which is understandable, because to an omnipotent being from another universe seeing Earth for the first time, poverty is a pretty weird thing.



Now who do you suppose just happens to be hanging out on a rooftop right near where the One From Beyond decided to take his nocturnal stroll down the mean streets of not-yet-gentrified urban hell New York City?



There are a few things that usually come up in any discussion of Secret Wars II: there's the bit where the Beyonder turns a building into gold, the part where the stupid kid sets himself on fire because John Byrne wants to prove an even stupider point, but most importantly, the issue where Peter Parker teaches him to go to the bathroom. This one comes in for a lot of criticism because of the fact that, well, it is goofy. But the incident makes more sense in the context of the issue in which it occurs - Secret Wars II #2 - which is itself a relatively light-hearted and humorous installment of the series, focused on a child-like Beyonder learning how to do things like eat, defecate, and use money. In context, it makes sense. Therefore, I'm always surprised that more people don't know about Cloak & Dagger #4, because I believe this represents the event's true goofy zenith. There is no context in which the events of this comic book can be said to make sense.



The Beyonder, thinking that these strangers are sincere in their desire to satisfy his desire, happily accompanies them into the tenement. This does not sit well with our heroes, who also use the incident as an opportunity to expostulate on their ethical prerogatives.



At this point . . . well, here's where shit get real.



So, to wit: the Beyonder has entered a shooting-gallery and is about to be rolled over by a few dealers. They apparently plan on giving him an overdose of heroin, instead of just - you know - hitting him on the head and taking his wallet, which would undoubtedly save them the trouble of using up valuable inventory. But then, of course, we would be spared the unseen spectacle (thanks, Comics Code!) of the Beyonder actually shooting heroin.



Being the killjoys they are, Cloak & Dagger show up just in time to interfere with the whole operation. The Beyonder, as you can imagine, isn't too happy with this turn of events.





Cloak & Dagger was never exactly a subtle book when it came to its religious allusions. You may have found yourself wondering, when you began reading this article, whether or not the scene depicted on the cover - that of the Beyonder crucifying Cloak & Dagger - actually transpired in the story itself. And now you know the answer is yes. The Beyonder crucifies Cloak & Dagger because they beat up his drug dealers.



And that was the end of Cloak & Dagger, as the dysfunctional duo were cured of their self-destructive powers and set free to start a new life, which included marrying and settling down, opening a bakery in Williamsburg that just happened to take off a few years later when the neighborhood began to change, and subsequently ending up as recurring guests on Martha Stewart Living because of their famous shortbread.

Oh, wait, the story isn't over. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccckkkkkkkkk.



And so, I give you the greatest moment of Secret Wars II, and maybe, just maybe, by extension, the greatest moment in Marvel history, and as such, the greatest moment in the history of all comics: the Beyonder getting high on smack.

Are you ready?









































Are you sure?









































OK, here we go:



You aren't imagining it: this scene is so hot that the letters are burning right through the page, rendering them completely illegible. Eighties printing at its finest.

But in all seriousness, it wasn't until a few years ago that I was actually able to make out what this page was saying. When I got the Secret Wars II Omnibus (because of course I got the Secret Wars II Omnibus, are you kidding me? It has its own special pedestal and we record all births, marriages, and deaths inside the flyleaf) the first thing I did was turn to page 550 and see if the improved printing allowed for the page to be read. It did, just barely. It reads:

The being from beyond "allows" himself to experience not only its "rush" - that overpowering, initial sensation of pleasure - but also the agony known to every abuser of papaver somiferum from time immemorial. He could end his descent into this poisonous purgatory at any instant and yet he allows the horror of it to sweep over him, so that he can expand his awareness of both the drug and a world where its availabllity is commonplace. An underworld where what is sold in the name of happiness begets hunger - where hunger begets desire - where desire begets need - where need begets crime . . . where crime begets retribution and so on in an endless cycle of addiction - world without end!

Now, the last thing I want to do is pick on poor Bill Mantlo. He's been dealt a rotten hand by life and deserves every ounce of support and well-wishing we can muster. But. This is a thing that happened. The Beyonder shot heroin on his watch. Not only did he shoot heroin but he also magically experienced the rush and the comedown from a massive dose of the drug in what appears to be the blink of an eye - which, you know, I'm no expert in intravenous drugs, but I'm pretty sure that's not quite how heroin works.



The Beyonder, being a child with the powers of God, overreacts just as you would expect, by wiping out the drug dealers and then returning their powers to Cloak & Dagger in order to carry on the War on Drugs in his name. They're not thrilled by this fact. He seems surprised, despite their having explicitly told him just a page ago how happy they were to be free of their powers. Not that bright, this one.



So the One From Beyond obliterates the drug trade in New York City by destroying every drug dealer. He can do that, you know. In case you forgot. Here's American domestic drug policy in the 1980s in a nutshell: because drugs are seen as an absolute moral wrong, the Powers That Be decided to crack down in as vicious and permanent a way as possible on those who use and sell narcotics, while the bleeding-heart left sat on the sidelines and wondered whether or not drug offenders might not need to be reformed (while actually doing very little to stand in the way of draconian sentencing laws because they proved to be very popular with the same electorate who elected Reagan twice).



Well, seeing as how New York drug use rates didn't drastically plummet in 1986, you can guess what happens next. Because Cloak & Dagger apparently didn't get the memo about this being Reagan's America, they obviously sympathize with the subhuman scum the Beyonder saw fit to scour from a city where decent people are afraid to walk alone at night.



As goofy, strange, terrible, ludicrous, and amazing as this story is, you could also point to it as being perhaps the archetypal Cloak & Dagger story. This, after all, is the one where God comes down and explicitly explains the series' core metaphors: "Cloak represents the darkness - the despair a man may expect as his punishment should he commit a crime - while you are the light of his salvation. Who also just happens to be a bangin' blonde chick while the face of criminal punishment in America is, coincidentally, a young black male."



Superheroes are strange people. You'd think, after encountering a man with the powers of God - not "a" god but capital-"G" God - able to kill thousands in the blink of an eye and then magically resurrect them moments later - they might be slightly . . . affected by the experience. You might even say this could be a life-changing experience for any sane person. But not our heroes! Just another day in the office for ol' Cloak & Dagger.



And so now we have seen the War on Drugs through the eyes of Marvel Comics ca. 1986. As awful as parts of this story may be, it's also premised on a degree of sympathy and compassion for drug users that was not necessarily to be expected in the period. This was the era of Arnold and Sly, after all, who enthusiastically took on crime with both guns blazing. Marvel had it's own answer to these type of inherently right-wing law & order fantasies waiting in the wings, in the form of the aforementioned Punisher. The Punisher was a success where Cloak & Dagger had failed, perhaps on account of the fact that the liberal pieties with which Mantlo approached the drug war were simply out of touch with the times. People wanted to see drug dealers being blown up with rocket launchers, so by God that's what Marvel gave them.

After Mantlo left the book, Cloak & Dagger migrated away from street-level stories and towards more supernatural superheroics - part and parcel of sharing a book with Dr. Strange, one suspects. That direction, of course, proved no more popular. Cloak & Dagger remain oddballs - borne of equal parts opportunistic fear-mongering and liberal sentiment, a concept with never-fulfilled potential relegated to the margins of the Marvel Universe, and predicated on regrettable racial imagery. When it comes to Marvel, of course, you can never say never - the greatest proof of that is another Mantlo creation with a far more unlikely pedigree, whose toys can currently be found clogging the aisles of a Wal-Mart near you. Will we live to see Cloak & Dagger redeemed, plucked out of the unfortunate circumstances of their creation and modernized sufficiently in order to allow the characters to shine? Perhaps. Only the One From Beyond knows for sure.

As I've mentioned here many times, my father spent most of his adult life working for the Internal Revenue Service. It was a job and here were the good things about it:

The weekly paycheck was an absolute certainty. He and his family received very good health insurance. If he didn't do anything stupid, he would receive tiny raises from time to time and be able to retire when he reached 60 years of age. And when he did retire, he would receive a modest pension until he died and if his wife survived him — which she did — she would receive that pension until she died — which she did.

I cannot tell you how important and wonderful that health plan was for her. Without it, she would probably have died 5-10 years sooner, suffered more while she was alive, and worried constantly about medical bills costing her that lovely house he'd left her.

Those were the good things. Note that none of them had to do with what he would do each day when he went to work. All that, he hated. He especially hated answering to unqualified or bossy bosses. Obviously, I am giving you his description of his workplace here. He believed many of the policies he was ordered to almost blindly enforce were foolish, pernicious and unfair. Particularly during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, my father was sent forth to wring every possible dime out of poor people (especially single parents) but to kiss the derrieres of wealthy folks and to not make too much of a fuss when a rich guy didn't want to pay what the law said he was supposed to pay.

According to my father, some of that was a matter of certain people in Washington rewarding their friends and campaign donors. And some of it was because affluent people could afford good lawyers and accountants. It was simply easier to collect from folks who couldn't…even when they didn't have the money.

The single parent thing really got to him. He did not have the power to waive or prune the tax bill of a delinquent taxpayer. At most, he could negotiate payment plans within predefined department guidelines and he needed the blessing of his superiors to go beyond those guidelines. More than once, he went to his bosses and said something like, "I'd like to forgive a part of this woman's tax bill and give her longer than usual to pay the rest. She was recently widowed. She has five children to feed and clothe and her husband left her in serious debt, above and beyond her taxes, and she has no source of income at the moment."

The reply to that kind of request was usually along the lines of, "Denied. Tell her that if she cares about those kids, she'll hurry up and find a new husband who can support them." Single male parents fared a little better but not by much.

That was one example of many reasons he hated to go to work most mornings. Even though he blamed the stress for causing his bleeding ulcer and many sleepless nights, he did the job. To men of his generation — he was born in 1910 — there was nothing more important than providing for your family both in life and death. He provided well when he was alive. There was never anything I really needed we could not afford, though I recall wishing when I got braces on my teeth, that my orthodonture had not been affordable. He left my mother a home, a pension and that all-important health insurance.

It was around 1951 when he married the one and only love of his life. And it was no coincidence that was the year he committed to the I.R.S. job for the rest of his life.

Prior to that, he had worked in a number of different jobs. He worked as a copy boy at the Hartford Courant, then as now the largest newspaper in Connecticut. He worked as the Night Clerk at Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford. He worked on and off for the I.R.S. division in Hartford. He was originally hired, in part because of his limited experience at the Courant, to work in Press Relations. That was not a bad position, he said, but then they reorganized the division and moved him, much against his will, into being a Revenue Officer. He didn't like it but he did it there and later, he signed on to do it in Los Angeles for the rest of his working days.

Notice I use the word "job" here. My father had jobs. He never had a "career," at least the way he defined it. Once I began to work steadily as a professional writer, he'd sometimes say to me, "You've got a career." He always had a big grin on his face when he said it.

Don't write to me about the real definitions of these words. Around my father, the difference was simple: A job was something you did to buy groceries and pay the mortgage. A career was something you wanted to do. Not one child in all of America has ever said, "I want to grow up to be a Revenue Officer for the Internal Revenue Service."

In '51 when he took that job in L.A., he not only abandoned any hope of ever having a career, he gave up one other important thing. He gave up the dream of ever being rich.

He would henceforth receive a steady paycheck and a pension but the amounts involved would never buy much more than the necessities of life and an occasional vacation. You could not get rich working for the I.R.S.; not even if you took bribes. His best friend at the office tried that and even if he hadn't been caught and sent to prison, he would never have owned a mansion and a yacht. My father, who was so honest he returned found wallets with all the cash intact, would never have even tried it.

Most people in my line of work (writing) never achieve anything even vaguely resembling a steady paycheck. A good many never earn half as much money as my father did at the job he hated. But in writing, there is at least the theoretical possibility of wealth. It may be unlikely but it's not utterly impossible that your next writing job will lead to you publishing a best-selling novel or writing a screenplay that will bring in millions.

That's not why most of us do it. I do it because I never came across any profession that seemed preferable or within my limited skill set. I sometimes pause to consider that fundamental difference between what I do and what my father decided to do. I've never had the job security he had but I've also never had a cap on my potential earnings. There's the trade-off.

As you might imagine, I know a lot of writers. I know writers who are unsuccessful and happy. I know writers who are unsuccessful and unhappy. I know writers who are successful and happy. And I know writers who are successful and unhappy. That last group is generally the saddest of the four.

I suspect some of the unhappy ones (successful or otherwise) would be happier if they had a job instead of a career. Not knowing what your income will be next month — or even if you'll have one — can cause stress and bleeding ulcers and sleepless nights. My father's problem was not that he had a job. It was that he had the wrong job and was never able to find a better one — and once he had the responsibility as the Bread Winner, unwilling to risk the security he'd found.

He retired at the age of 63, just in time to watch and cheer the televised Watergate hearings. There were many revelations in them about how the Nixon Administration had used the I.R.S. to reward its friends and punish its enemies and he was so, so happy to see much of that exposed even if it didn't lead to total reform. Mostly though, he was happy to be out of that damned job.

His last few years at it, he looked more like he was in his eighties than his sixties. The day he retired, he dropped the extra twenty years from his face and maybe five or ten more just out of sheer relief. He lived another 20.5 years in fairly good health. They were not free of stress as he could always find something to worry about but it was never as bad as his years at the I.R.S.

Which is not to say retirement did not have its downsides. The main one was that he was bored out of his mind.

He followed a couple of stocks he owned, more for the hobby than for the money. He rooted for the Lakers and never understood how it was possible for them to win a game if it wasn't televised and he wasn't in front of his TV yelling at the screen. He prayed for jury duty, got it a few times but discovered that his past profession disqualified him from ever actually getting on a jury. At times, I would find busy work for him, giving him errands to run for me. They usually did not turn out well as I've explained here before.

He never wished for a second he was back at his job. But he did wish he had something to do all day and really feel like he was doing something.

I turned 63 last month. Only about a week ago did this dawn on me: I am now the age my father was when he retired. It has never for a second occurred to me to do that.

I consider myself fortunate that I have a career and that every morning, I not only have something to do…I have something I want to do. That's another difference between a job and a career…and it may be the reason I don't feel 63 except sometimes around the knees.

The word "genius" gets tossed around a lot in the entertainment world, applied at times to anyone who has been anywhere near a success. One of the few people I've met who truly earned it was Stan Freberg.

Stan had more than a few successes. Right out of high school, he was hired as a cartoon voice actor for Warner Brothers Cartoons. He was half the cast on one of the first hit TV shows for kids, Time for Beany. He was a best-selling recording artist for Capitol Records, creating discs that have stood the test of time for both inventiveness and sheer musical delight. He starred in the last real network radio comedy show in the classic tradition.

And then he got into advertising, bringing the concept of the "entertaining commercial" to a whole new level. For a long time in this country, if you laughed at a radio or TV ad, it was either created by Stan Freberg or by an advertising agency that was consciously trying to imitate Stan Freberg.

Those were the highlights of his career and there were others as an actor, puppeteer, voice performer, writer and all-around creative talent. He inspired several generations of notable practitioners in his fields.

I had a long and fascinating history with Stan, starting when at an early age, I discovered his work and loved every single bit of it. I used to tell him — quite honestly — that I got a goodly chunk of my sense of humor from him. I was hardly the only person who told him things like that. I later got to know him and work with him and consider him a very close friend. I'll post some more stories about him in the coming days.

Six months and three days ago, some of us were involved in a tribute to Stan that was staged at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The last year or so of his life, Stan's health fluctuated. To put it in the simplest of terms, he had good days and bad. On the good days, he was sharp and alert and he sounded a lot like the old Stan Freberg. On the bad days, he didn't. Alas, the tribute fell on one of the bad days. He really could not speak the way he wanted to, could not tell the stories he wanted to. Still, he was well aware of the love in the room. There was so much you couldn't miss it.

A few days ago, Stan was hospitalized with pneumonia. Last night, he took a turn for the worse. He died shortly after 10 AM this morning in the place he most enjoyed being…in the arms of his beloved wife, Hunter. She took such good care of him. Without her, I have no doubt we'd have lost him years ago. He was 88.

People are writing and calling to ask me if I know of plans for a public memorial. There are no plans yet. I believe there will be something but not for a while.

Stan Freberg was an extraordinary man. He was very honest and very perceptive, an observation which should come as no surprise to anyone who knew him only through his work. That was one of the things that was so compelling about it: Even his advertising was truthful. He would not sell a product, no matter what fee was involved, if he didn't believe in the message. He was one of the first people in his field to turn against cigarette advertising, for example.

He was gifted with an amazing imagination and the performing gifts necessary to transfer that imagination into something that others could see and hear. He was a wonderful singer, a superb mimic and a terrific actor. And take note of this: Of all the actors who'd been doing voices for animation in recent years, Stan was the guy who'd been at it the longest. He recorded his first cartoon voice roles in 1945 for release in 1946. As far as I know, his last job was in an episode of The Garfield Show I voice-directed last year. It's currently scheduled to run on Cartoon Network this October, giving Stan a career span of 69 years.

Right after Stan's first wife died, I would go over and take him out to dinner, just to get him out of the apartment. One night, I took him to Matteo's, an Italian restaurant that like so many in Los Angeles, boasts not so much about its food but about that fact that Frank Sinatra used to dine there often.

The maître d' they had then would greet you and then, to make you feel special, he would tell you, "I'm going to seat you in Mr. Sinatra's booth." Every time I went to Matteo's, I was seated in Mr. Sinatra's booth and it was a different booth every time.

I don't think it's there now but when you walked in, you passed a display of photos that looked like a shrine to Mr. Sinatra. As the maître d' escorted us to tonight's Mr. Sinatra's booth, we passed it and I pointed out a picture. It was this picture…

The man you don't recognize at lower left is record tycoon Glenn Wallichs. The others were then the top recording artists for Capitol Records: Frank, Danny Kaye, Gordon MacRae, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin and Stan. That evening at Matteo's, Stan was the only one still with us.

I pointed to it and said, "Hey, Stan! There's you with Frank!" The maître d' whirled around and gasped, "You mean you actually met him?" It was pretty much the same line reading he'd have given if I'd said, "Hey, Stan! There's you with Jesus Christ!" Stan did know Frank. They were good friends. Once when Frank toured Australia, he took along Freberg as his opening act.

We had a lovely dinner. When I asked for the check, our waiter said, "It's been taken care of." I thought Matteo's was comping us but no. A minute later, he came over with a cloth napkin on which another diner in the restaurant – one, the waiter said had already left – had written in ballpoint pen…

Mr. Freberg…you don't know me but your work has meant so much to me over the years. It's an honor to pay you back in even a tiny way by paying for your dinner tonight.

It was not signed.

Stan sat quietly when he read it and he cried a tiny bit. Being around him, I was aware that he often got reactions and praise like that and it wasn't just "You're very funny," though there was that. More often, it was heartfelt acknowledgement that the work was special and that, like the guy said on the napkin, it "has meant so much to me over the years." That's kind of the same thing I've been trying to say here but I didn't have a cloth napkin.

Shabcast 3 was supposed to be the second part of my discussion with Josh Marsfelder.  (Here's part 1 of that discussion.)  But events have intervened.  Now, Josh and I will carry on our talk in Shabcast 4 (hopefully out quite soon... so you'll probably get two Shabcasts this month, you lucky blighters).  Shabcast 3, meanwhile, has been devoted to an emergency, hastily-convened discussion between myself, Phil Sandifer and Andrew Hickey on the subject of the recent right-wing incursion upon the Hugo Awards.

Download Shabcast 3 here (thanks once again to the Pex Lives guys for donating their bandwidth).  We do a fair bit of fash-lambasting, and Andrew especially gives lots of background to this particular issue, but we also find time to roam and rove a bit around some related topics, such as modernism and postmodernism and geek privilege and GamerGate and "what is SFF anyway???".

Andrew and Phil have both blogged about the Hugos issue (which is why I asked them to speak to me about it), and here are some more links...

Here's Charlie Jane Anders at io9.

One of the movers behind this business is the utterly reprehensible fascist shithead and 'fantasy author' Theodore Beale (AKA 'Vox Day').  Here's his entry at Rational Wiki.  And here is every post ever about him (there's lots of them) at David Futrelle's excellent MRA-watch blog We Hunted the Mammoth, cataloguing the man's career of saying vile, nazi things.  This is the guy who created a slate that swept the nominations at the Hugos, thanks to him organising his tiny gaggle of reactionary scumfuck fans.  Read, boggle and weep.

(Once again, here is the link to download or listen to our shabcast.  Special thanks to Phil and Andrew for joining me to do it at such short notice.)

NOTE 7/4/15:  I originally included a link to a Bibliodaze article about last years' Hugos.  Thanks to Phil Sandifer for pointing out my stupid mistake.

Can it really be that time of year again? Comes round sooner every year, doesn't it?

Right, then. Hoist the mainsail and roll out the fact cannons, because it's time to go and scupper some of the remaining frigates of bullshit still afloat out there on the high seas of the Internet!

Today's topic is something that's haunted the Eostre debate for years, dragging in such luminaries as Eddie Izzard and Bill Hicks, and it is this: aren't eggs and bunnies obviously pagan symbols of fertility, though?

In my experience, you can cite sources and quote Bede and quote Grimm and quote Hutton and point out the limits of what's known until you are blue in the face and still you will hear the retort 'yeah well that's all very interesting, Cav, but at the end of the day, eggs and bunnies are obviously pagan fertility symbols, aren't they? I mean it just makes sense. Fertility, innit?'

Okay, let's break it down. Let's look at the concept of 'pagan fertility symbols' and how that very concept is completely flawed, based as it is on MODERN thinking rather than anything pre-Christian faiths actually believed.

What people are actually saying when they claim 'eggs and rabbits were obvious pagan fertility symbols' is 'eggs and rabbits remind us of reproduction, and those pagans were all about Fertility weren't they, so they must have been fertility symbols'. Pull up a chair while I bore you rigid explaining why this is a load of wank.

Symbols, Culture and Context
Firstly, if you're going to claim that a naturally occurring phenomenon is a 'symbol', you have to show evidence of its USE as a symbol in a particular context, as verified by participants in the culture in question. In itself, an egg is just an egg. So, 'bats are used in Chinese art to symbolise good luck' is a coherent & potentially verifiable statement.

The problem we so often face is that learned men have, for years, decided that they are more equipped to decipher the 'symbolism' of various folk traditions than are the people who actually practice those traditions. We are thus confronted with a horrendous backlog of prescriptive analyses of alleged 'symbolism' which, on being investigated, inevitably prove to be the pet theories of some folklorist or other of the last century. Ron Hutton is particularly brilliant in his acid condemnation of these people:

'...it was assumed that the people who actually held the beliefs and practiced the customs would long have forgotten their original, 'real' significance, which could only be reconstructed by scholars. The latter therefore paid very little attention to the social context in which the ideas and actions concerned had actually been carried on during their recent history, when they were best recorded. Many collectors and commentators managed to combine a powerful affection for the countryside and rural life with a crushing condescension towards the ordinary people who carried on that life.'

When people refer to 'the eggs and bunnies' of Easter, they don't generally specify which artistic or other cultural context they're referring to in which said eggs and bunnies appear. Obviously, the artform we're all familiar with is the greetings card. Easter postcards are believed to have originated in 1898 or thereabouts and employed the familiar motifs of yellow chicks, eggs and anthropomorphised rabbits. But they also featured cherubic children, lambs, little gnomes, fairies climbing out of eggshells, and a host of other peculiar images such as a child driving an egg-shaped chariot.

So we have a rich visual heritage of modern Easter imagery that involves eggs and bunnies. This explains why we associate those images with Easter. We've been drowning in this iconography since childhood.

It's worth noting here that the greetings card industry thrives on cuteness. Fluffy chicks are cute. Fuzzy bunnies are cute. Foxes were not seen as cute. This may be part of the reason why the other egg-bringers of Easter, such as the Osterfuchs or Easter Fox, are all but unknown now. The Easter Fox, the Easter Stork and the Easter Cuckoo are all recorded egg-bringers in various parts of Germany, but the bunny has long since eclipsed them all. I believe we can blame the greetings card industry for the bunny's usurpation of the Easter Hare, too: it was the Osterhase, the Easter Hare, that was the egg-bringer in the earliest recorded mention of an Easter Egg-bringing animal (in De Ovis Paschalibus). Rabbits are cuddly, whereas hares are staring-eyed and a bit mad.

So what did eggs and bunnies symbolise to the people who printed and sold the Easter greetings cards? I think we can safely conclude that they symbolised market appeal, while selectively tapping into familiar pre-existent traditions.

Turning to the actual tradition of a hare bringing eggs, it's difficult to see how the hare can 'symbolise' anything, because it's not being employed in a context in which a symbolic subtext could meaningfully apply. In England, we have a legend that the Devil spits (or pisses, depending on who you ask) on the blackberries in the hedgerows on October the somethingth, so we shouldn't eat them after this date. The practical purpose of this tongue-in-cheek legend is to prevent us (and our kids) from eating blackberries after a frost. The Devil doesn't 'symbolise' anything.

The functional purpose of the Easter Hare, by contrast, is readily apparent: he allows parents to prepare a tasty, colourful treat for children while pretending that they were not responsible. In this respect he is exactly like the Tooth Fairy or Father Christmas. Nobody wastes their breath arguing what the Tooth Fairy may 'symbolise'. We just understand.

Let's remember, too, that Jacob Grimm - who is singlehandedly responsible for the reconstructed Goddess 'Ostara' - considered the Easter Hare tradition 'unintelligible'. The best he could do was to speculate that the hare might have been the 'sacred animal' of his speculative Goddess. But when the granddaddy of German folklorists has nothing solid to say about an Easter animal, maybe the rest of us should be hesitant about slapping it with the 'pagan fertility symbol' label.


Easter Imagery Before The Greetings Card Era

We cannot say whether rabbits, eggs or hares were used to symbolise anything in pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon sacred art, because there aren't any known examples of such a use, symbolic or otherwise (to the best of my knowledge & research). It is therefore seriously pushing it to claim any of these things were 'pagan symbols'. The claim is made not by reference to Anglo-Saxon religion itself, nor to documentary or archaeological evidence thereof, but by reference to activities in an entirely Christian context that were first documented many centuries after Christianization and are imaginatively supposed to be dim and distant echoes of a forgotten pagan past. Such an interpretation, long after the fact, is exactly the kind of learned speculation-from-without that Hutton condemns above.

There is a tradition of rabbits and hares being used in a symbolic manner in Christian art. Wikipedia is pretty good on the subject. Strikingly, we find that rabbits and hares were employed as symbols of virginity as well as symbols of fertility or lust. This should act as a warning against any simplistic, generically 'pagan' interpretation of perpetuated images.


The Problem With Eggs

There's already an adequate explanation for why eggs are decorated and celebrated at Easter. They're back on the menu again after having been forbidden during Lent. Moreover, as Horrible Histories consultant and all-round top bloke Greg Jenner explains, in the days before modern farming techniques chickens only laid eggs at all between spring and autumn. There is thus a calendrical appropriateness that has nothing to do with 'symbolising fertility'.

It is often pointed out that the decorated eggs from the Zoroastrian New Year celebration of Nowruz 'represent fertility'; indeed, Nowruz is inevitably referred to in discussions of Easter's alleged pagan roots, as if one non-Christian spring festival somehow set the template for all others to follow, regardless of cultural, temporal or geographic distance. The symbolism does not appear to be universal; other descriptions of Nowruz eggs hold them to represent creativity and productivity. Decorated eggs are only one optional element of a Haft-Seen and do not form one of the seven S-items.

In Easter greetings card art eggs are frequently depicted as freshly hatched, with unrealistically fluffy chicks peeping out. This calls our attention to a singular problem with the notion that eggs represent 'fertility'. It is impossible to tell by looking whether a given egg is fertile or not. In fact, the eggs that are typically eaten are NOT fertile, for a very good reason. Unless you are deliberately trying to breed chickens, you don't let the cockerel fertilise the hens' eggs. Fertile eggs run the risk of containing developing chicken embryos, which (at least in western Europe) isn't something you want to run into. (There are issues about whether fertile eggs are kosher, recalling the inarguable and evident influence of Passover upon the Christian Easter.) So unless you show an egg in the act of hatching or shortly after, there's no way to demonstrate that what you're showing is a fertile egg.

The typical symbolism accorded to Easter eggs is that they do not celebrate 'fertility' but rather new life, a subtly different concept. 'Fertility' has (entirely non-coincidental) steamy associations, smacking as it does of Summerisle-esque pagans frolicking naked under the full moon, whereas 'new life' puts one in mind of lambs and fluffy yellow chicks. If we look at what our modern heritage of Easter iconography really depicts, it's not fertility, which is merely the passive potential to produce life. It's the actuality of new life. Little lambs, hatching chicks: spring's busting out all over.

Lambs and chicks, by the way, provide a very useful thought experiment. Why is it that people always mention 'eggs and bunnies' as 'pagan fertility symbols' but never mention the other, equally common symbols of Easter, namely fluffy yellow chicks and white lambs? The obvious answer is that fluffy yellow chicks and white lambs do not make us think of pagan fertility rites. They're too innocuous, too cute. They don't put us in mind of sex. So to harp on about 'eggs and bunnies' and ignore the other, incompatible imagery is disingenuous, focusing selectively on only those Easter images that pander to our preconceptions of pagans.

Next time you hear the 'eggs and bunnies' argument trotted out, try saying 'So fluffy chicks and white lambs make you think of sex, do they?' while stroking your chin thoughtfully. You may see some surprising results.


So What Is A 'Pagan Symbol' Anyway?

Glad you asked. 'Pagan' is bloody useless as a cultural signifier, because it's exclusionary, not descriptive. It describes what something is NOT, not what it was. It's like claiming something was a 'barbaric symbol' or a 'gentile symbol'.

Which specific pre-Christian faith do we mean when we say 'pagan'? Norse? Celtic? Saxon? Greek? And which time period are we talking about? Neolithic? Bronze age? Early mediaeval?

The moment we begin to speak of 'pagan symbols' we inevitably invoke the Pagan Sausage Machine Fallacy, i.e. the delusional belief that there was such a thing as a common 'pagan' identity in which the various pre-Christian faiths shared, and that there are fundamental factors common to them all. 'Pagan symbolism' means thinking of 'pagan' as a mindset; a naive, scary but oddly appealing, fertility-obsessed, nature-worshipping, openly and frankly sexual way of seeing the world. If this seems familiar, it's because the Victorians created it (and dreaded it) while the neopagan movement embraced it and tried to identify with it. It may be compelling, particularly when it's used as a stick to beat Christianity with, but it's not real. It's nothing but the exaggerated, idealised contrary to urbanised humanity; what we needed our ancestors to represent back then, rather than who they actually were.



Yeah But Fertility Though

The same woolly-minded thinking that tends to cludge all diverse pre-Christian beliefs into 'paganism' also tends to posit 'fertility' as one of the pagans' prime concerns. This is because such an image was the very antithesis of the modern post-industrial society that produced Frazer et al. To the Victorian and post-Victorian folklorists, the bestial primitivism of the 'pagans' produced a sort of horrified fascination. They spoke of 'fertility rites' as a sanitised way of discussing the phallicism and ritualised sexual behaviour that they believed was going on.

In Margaret Murray's case, the belief in an underground pagan 'fertility cult' ran so deep that she attempted to connect it with historical accounts of witchcraft. This in turn led to Gardner's creation of Wicca, which was nothing more than an attempt to make Murray's theory into reality. Murray's work has of course been long debunked, but the intrusion of flawed theory into real-world practice helps to perpetuate the misconceptions; self-indentified pagans are now asserting that 'their' traditions really do reflect an ancient preoccupation with fertility, now construed as healthy and natural, in the face of censorious Christian prudery.

'Fertility' is such a darkly evocative term, isn't it? This is especially true when it is used in the context of pagan religion. Whose fertility is being implied? The fertility of the land? Of the beasts? Or of the people? Or, most likely, some generic boundary-crossing 'fertility' in which land, beasts and people are blent together in a piquant, sweaty, atavistic fug.

To speak of 'pagan fertility symbols', then, is to perpetuate an ignorant and condescending view of the past that said a lot more about the respectable scholars who created it than it does about the people we seek to understand.

It's illuminating to look at the frequency with which the term 'fertility symbol' occurs in published works over the last couple of centuries. As you can see, a phrase (and concept) we take completely for granted has only come to prominence very recently.

The pagan Anglo-Saxon culture that gave us the word 'Easter' (from Eosturmanoth, as Bede attests) has one known 'fertility symbol' of which I am personally aware, and that is a cake. Cakes were placed into ploughed, barren fields in order to restore fertility to them; see the Acerbot, a (barely) Christianised ritual.

What you will not find are eggs and rabbits.

Next Easter Rant: Figuring out when Eostre's feast days really took place

Neopaganism really is its own worst enemy sometimes. If you wanted to celebrate the feast of the Goddess Eostre as attested by Bede but all you had to go on was the modern-day pagan Internet, you’d probably end up thinking that there was a festival called ‘Ostara’ that took place on the day of the Spring Equinox. You might even convince yourself that this ‘Ostara’ festival was the natural and obvious forerunner of the Christian Easter.

Unfortunately, you’d be completely mistaken. ‘Ostara’ is an entirely modern celebration and was created in the last century by neopagans. The Spring Equinox was not celebrated in the Anglo-Saxon pagan calendar.

So, if we want to get all reconstructionist, when WERE Eostre’s feast days?

Going by Bede’s testimony, we know that the Anglo-Saxons divided the year into two halves, winter and summer. They employed a lunisolar calendar. Each year was bracketed by the winter solstice, falling approximately at December 25th on which a festival called Modranecht (Mothers’ Night) was celebrated. Each solar year contained either twelve or thirteen lunar months, with the new moon signalling the beginning of a given lunar month. Because you can’t neatly fit lunar months into a solar year, it was necessary to count an extra month in some years, a 'third Litha'; this was referred to as an embolismic month.

This article is one of the best breakdowns I’ve seen of how the Anglo-Saxon calendar worked.

The intriguing thing about the Anglo-Saxon summer and winter periods is how they were separated. We know from Bede that the formal beginning of the winter half of the year was the full moon of the month of Winterfilleth. Modern people might tend to imagine that the Autumn Equinox would be the natural point at which to mark the switch, but Bede explicity says otherwise. The very name ‘Winterfilleth’ refers to the tradition of marking winter’s beginning by the full moon of a given lunation.

Now, one thing we can readily observe about the Anglo-Saxon calendar is its symmetry. In the midst of the winter half of the year are two months called ‘Fore Yule’ and ‘After Yule’, while in the midst of the summer half are ‘Fore Litha’ and ‘After Litha’. (One month is not before a given event and the other after it; the sense is more that the former month is the first half of a given timespan, the latter the second half.)

Therefore, given that winter began with the full moon of Winterfilleth, we can speculate that summer began with the full moon of the month diametrically opposite to Winterfilleth in the calendar; and fortunately for our speculative reconstruction, the month in question is Eosturmonath, the month in which Bede claims feasts were held in Eostre’s honour.

This gives us a rather exciting platform from which to work. If Eostre’s festival took place during the full moon of Eosturmonath, we immediately have an explanation for why it involved ‘feasts’ as opposed to a single feast; the full moon lasts for multiple days. In addition, the festival would be in celebration of a calendrical event – the formal beginning of summer – as well as being in honour of a Goddess whose name is cognate with terms meaning opening and dawn.

It is also possible to see an Eostre-festival in a sceptical light, as the celebration of summer’s beginning with no reference to a Goddess at all (outside of Bede’s habit of imaginative speculation). Bede tells us of Winterfilleth only that it was observed, without reference to any deities. The full moons of Eosturmonath and Winterfilleth may therefore have been two calendrical events that were marked in a wholly secular way.

Personally, however, I like to imagine that the full moon of Eosturmonath really did signal the feast of a Goddess called Eostre and the beginning of summer; if nothing else, it is always fun to brandish such things in the face of those who celebrate an unhistorical and artificial Spring Equinox festival called Ostara. Much like the Roman Church of old, which was furious at the Ionian Church for celebrating Easter on the ‘incorrect’ date, we can lift up our voices and cry as one: you’re doing it wrong!

Next Easter Rant: The Case for Eostre, part 1 - The Eostur Sacrifice

[content note: mental illness. I am still in training and do not understand these issues even as well as a fully-trained psychiatrist, let alone a researcher, so take all the biology and studies in here with a grain of salt until you double-check]

I.

IO9’s new article The Most Popular Antidepressants Are Based On An Outdated Theory jumps on a popular bandwagon of criticizing psychiatry for botching the “chemical imbalance” theory. See for example The New Yorker, BBC, The New York Times, and various books.

(…and also The Myth Of Chemical Imbalance, Debunking The Chemical Imbalance Myth, The Chemical Imbalance Fraud, and Depression Delusion, The Myth Of The Chemical Imbalance, etc)

According to all these sources psychiatry sold the public on antidepressants by claiming depression was just a chemical imbalance (usually fleshed out as “a simple deficiency of serotonin”) and so it was perfectly natural to take extra chemicals to correct it. However, they had no real evidence for this theory except that serotonergic drugs effectively treat depression, which is not very much evidence at all (antibiotics effectively treat pneumonia, but pneumonia isn’t “an antibiotic deficiency”). And now the research is unequivocal that serotonin deficiency is not the cause of depression, and psychiatry has ended up with lots of egg on its face.

This narrative is getting pushed especially hard by the antipsychiatry movement, who frame it as “proof” that psychiatrists are drug company shills who were deceiving the public. The conversation has required a host of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals.

For example here antipsychiatry blog Mad In America attemps to rebut psychiatrist Dr. Ronald Pies, who argues that psychiatrists never pushed the chemical imbalance theory. Pies says that “The ‘chemical imbalance theory’ was never a real theory, nor was it widely propounded by responsible practitioners in the field of psychiatry,” and cites the American Psychiatric Association’s 2005 statement on the causes of depression:

The exact causes of mental disorders are unknown, but an explosive growth of research has brought us closer to the answers. We can say that certain inherited dispositions interact with triggering environmental factors. Poverty and stress are well-known to be bad for your health—this is true for mental health and physical health. In fact, the distinction between “mental” illness and “physical” illness can be misleading. Like physical illnesses, mental disorders can have a biological nature. Many physical illnesses can also have a strong emotional component

Mad In America doesn’t accept his claim, and counter-cites two speeches by American Psychiatric Association presidents to prove that they did push the chemical imbalance theory:

In the last decade, neuroscience and psychiatric research has begun to unlock the brain’s secrets. We now know that mental illnesses – such as depression or schizophrenia – are not “moral weaknesses” or “imagined” but real diseases caused by abnormalities of brain structure and imbalances of chemicals in the brain.” – Richard Harding, 2001 APA president

And:

The way nerves talk to each other, and communicate, is through the secretion of a chemical called a neurotransmitter, which stimulates the circuit to be activated. And when this regulation of chemical neurotransmission is disturbed, you have the alterations in the functions that those brain areas are supposed to, to mediate. So in a condition like depression, or mania, which occurs in bipolar disorder, you have a disturbance in the neurochemistry in the part of the brain that regulates emotion. – Jeffrey Lieberman, 2012 APA President

I have no personal skin in this game. I’ve only been a psychiatrist for two years, which means I started well after the term “chemical imbalance” fell out of fashion. I get to use the excuse favored by young children everywhere: “It was like this when I got here”. But I still feel like the accusations in this case are unfair, and I would like to defend my profession.

I propose that the term “chemical imbalance” hides a sort of bait-and-switch going on between the following two statements:

(A): Depression is complicated, but it seems to involve disruptions to the levels of brain chemicals in some important way

(B): We understand depression perfectly now, it’s just a deficiency of serotonin.

If you equivocate between them, you can prove that psychiatrists were saying (A), and you can prove that (B) is false and stupid, and then it’s sort of like psychiatrists were saying something false and stupid!

But it isn’t too hard to prove that psychiatrists, when they talked about “chemical imbalance”, meant something more like (A). I mean, look at the quotes above by which Mad In America tries to prove psychiatrists guilty of pushing chemical imbalance. Both sound more like (A) than (B). Neither mentions serotonin by name. Both talk about the chemical aspect as part of a larger picture: Harding in the context of abnormalities in brain structure, Lieberman in the context of some external force disrupting neurotransmission. Neither uses the word “serotonin” or “deficiency”. If the antipsychiatry community had quotes of APA officials saying it’s all serotonin deficiency, don’t you think they would have used them?

Further, anyone who said that depression was caused solely by serotonin deficiency wouldn’t just be failing as a scientist, but also failing as a drug company shill. Pfizer spent billions of dollars on Effexor, which hits norepinephrine as well as serotonin, and they’re just going to dismiss all of that as useless? GlaxoSmithKline has Wellbutrin, which hits dopamine and norepinephrine and maybe acetylcholine but doesn’t get serotonin at all. So everyone, including the shills, especially the shills, has been very careful to say that depression was a “chemical imbalance” rather than a serotonin deficiency per se.

So if you want to prove that psychiatrists were deluded or deceitful, you’re going to have to disprove not just statement (B) – which never represented a good scientific or clinical consensus – but statement (A). And that’s going to be hard, because as far as I can tell statement (A) still looks pretty plausible.

II.

If you listen to these articles, psychiatrists decided that neurotransmitters (or just serotonin?) were implicated in depression solely on the evidence that SSRIs were effective antidepressants, even though every study trying to measure serotonin levels directly came back with negative results. For example, The Myth Of The Chemical Imbalance Theory writes:

There is no question that the chemical imbalance theory has spurred chemists to invent new anti-depressants, or that these anti-depressants have been shown to work; but proof that low serotonin is to blame for depression – and that boosting serotonin levels is the key to its treatment – has eluded researchers.

For starters, it is impossible to directly measure brain serotonin levels in humans. You can’t sample human brain tissue without also destroying it. A crude work-around involves measuring levels of a serotonin metabolite, 5-HIAA, in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which can only be obtained with a spinal tap. A handful of studies from the 1980s found slightly decreased 5-HIAA in the CSF of depressed and suicidal patients, while later studies have produced conflicting results on whether SSRIs lower or raise CSF levels of 5-HIAA. These studies are all circumstantial with regards to actual serotonin levels, though, and the fact remains there is no direct evidence of a chemical imbalance underlying depression.

The corollary to the chemical imbalance theory, which implies that raising brain serotonin levels alleviates depression, has also been hard to prove. As mentioned previously, the serotonin-depleting drug reserpine was itself shown to be an effective anti-depressant in the 1950s, the same decade in which other studies claimed that reserpine caused depression-like symptoms. At the time, few psychiatrists acknowledged these conflicting reports, as the studies muddled a beautiful, though incorrect, theory. Tianeptine is another drug that decreases serotonin levels while also serving as a bona-fide anti-depressant. Tianeptine does just the opposite of SSRIs – it enhances serotonin reuptake. Wellbutrin is a third anti-depressant that doesn’t increase serotonin levels. You get the picture.

If you prefer your data to be derived more accurately, but less relevantly, from rodents, you might consider a recent meta-analysis carried out by researchers led by McMaster University psychologist Paul Andrews. Their investigation revealed that, in rodents, depression was usually associated with elevated serotonin levels. Andrews argues that depression is therefore a disorder of too much serotonin, but the ambiguous truth is that different experiments have shown “activation or blockage of certain serotonin receptors [to improve] or worsen depression symptoms in an unpredictable manner.”

Other problems with the chemical imbalance model of depression have been well documented elsewhere. For instance, if low serotonin levels were responsible for symptoms of depression, it stands to reason that boosting levels of serotonin should alleviate symptoms more or less immediately. In fact, antidepressants can take more than a month to take effect. Clearly, something here just doesn’t add up.

Clearly!

GABA is a neurotransmitter that promotes inhibition and relaxation. Suppose I were to tell you that alcohol is a drug that mimics the effects of GABA. Which it is.

You might say: something is wrong with this theory! After all, people who drink alcohol don’t always get relaxed and inhibited. A lot of the time they get uninhibited and angry and violent! And then if they drink too much of it, they get super-inhibited to the point where they’re in a total blackout. Also, alcoholics who have been drinking for many years have higher levels of anxiety than non-alcoholics, but anxiety is also the opposite of relaxation! Clearly, something here just doesn’t add up. Maybe the neuroscientists are all shills for Budweiser!

Or else maybe the brain is kind of complicated. In the case of alcohol we pretty much know what’s going on. Alcohol does inhibit and relax you, but in some people and at some doses, it preferentially inhibits and relaxes the parts of the brain involved in inhibiting and relaxing the rest of the brain, meaning that the person as a whole because more uninhibited and violent. At higher doses, it inhibits and relaxes the entire brain, leading to confusion and eventually blackout. And once you’ve been taking alcohol for many years, your brain adjusts to the higher level of GABA-like chemicals by producing fewer GABA receptors, making you more anxious.in general. It’s a whole bunch of contradictory effects, but when you look at the neuroscience it makes sense.

We know less about the serotonin picture, but what we know suggests something similar is going on. Serotonin has different effects in lots of different parts of the brain. There are fourteen different types of serotonin receptor, all of which do subtly different things. Some serotonergic neurons have autoreceptors that cause decreased release of serotonin in response to serotonin. The brain responds to different levels of serotonin by slowly altering endogenous serotonin production as well as the expression of the different serotonin receptors. Etc, etc, etc.

Lest it sound like I’m making excuses rather than presenting evidence: A study on a monkey model – generally preferred to humans when you want to kill your patients and take apart their brains when you’re done – showed that depressed macaques had elevated levels of serotonin in the dorsal raphe nuclei and decreased levels of serotonin in the hippocampus, resulting in average levels of serotonin in the cerebrospinal fluid where the experiments mentioned above took their serotonin measurements. A study with a more sophisticated measurement process, Elevated Brain Serotonin Turnover in Patients With Depression, found that depressed subjects had serotonin turnover as measured in the jugular vein about twice as high as healthy controls (p = 0.003), and successful treatment with SSRI therapy corrected this imbalance (though others dispute the methodology).

All of this sort of fits. If depression involves a distorted pattern of serotonin across the brain, then both certain drugs that increase serotonin levels and certain drugs that decrease it might be helpful. And SSRIs might take a month to work if their mechanism of action isn’t the direct serotonin increase, but a contrary response they provoke from the brain. I think I heard from someone in the field that a month is about how long it takes for them to change the levels of expressed 5HT receptors by altering genetic transcription. Or something. I’m not a neuroscientist (though you can read some more complicated work from people who are) and I don’t know. The point is that you can get a heck of a lot more complex than just “Too little serotonin!” versus “Too much serotonin!”

So does this mean depression “was really serotonin after all”?

No. It means we have good evidence serotonin is involved somewhere. Among the other things that we have good evidence are involved somewhere are: dopamine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, cytokines, BDNF, thyroid hormones, and whether the kids at school picked on you in first grade.

Suppose you ask me what caused you to become blind. I happen to have your medical records and know that the answer is proliferative retinopathy secondary to Type 2 diabetes, but you’ve been living in a cave your entire life and never even heard of diabetes. Which is the correct answer to your question?

1. Your blindness is caused by tiny little blood vessels growing all over your eyes
2. Your blindness is caused by imbalance in a chemical called protein kinase C-delta and the resulting signaling cascade
3. Your blindness is caused by too much sugar in your blood
4. Your blindness is caused by your cells becoming less sensitive to insulin
5. Your blindness is caused by you drinking too much Coca-Cola

All of these are true. You drink too much Coca-Cola, it causes your cells to lose insulin sensitivity, that causes too much sugar in the blood, that increases the activity of PKC-delta, and that causes little blood vessels to grow all over your eyes. Sometimes the chain is different. Maybe you drank too much lemonade instead of too much Coca-Cola. Maybe you drank too much Coca-Cola, but actually instead of causing diabetes it caused hypertension and then you got hypertensive retinopathy which made you blind. Maybe it was diabetic retinopathy, but actually you haven’t gotten to the proliferative stage yet, and you just had a lot of your blood vessels get damaged and start leaking and causing macular oedema. Maybe it was diabetic retinopathy, but you had a perfect diet and lost the genetic lottery. I don’t know.

If someone told you “We think it involves an imbalance in protein kinase” it would be woefully incomplete. But if someone said “That doctor there said your blindness was caused by an imbalance in protein kinase, that proves he’s a fraud!”, well, no, it wouldn’t.

Except the situation is even more complicated than this, because at least I specified this guy had diabetic retinopathy. What if somebody just asked “What causes blindness?” “High protein kinase” or “high blood sugar” would be two answers, and you could find tests supporting both. But “cataracts” would be another good answer. So would “people getting acid thrown in their eyes”.

All I’m saying is that depression is complicated. Discovering its relationship to the serotonin system is a lot like saying “blindness quite often has something to do with the retina”. It’s a big step forward, and don’t believe anyone who says it isn’t, but it’s not anywhere near the whole picture.

III.

And this starts to get into the next important point I want to bring up, which is chemical imbalance is a really broad idea.

Like, some of these articles seem to want to contrast the “discredited” chemical imbalance theory with up-and-coming “more sophisticated” theories based on hippocampal neurogenesis and neuroinflammation. Well, I have bad news for you. Hippocampal neurogenesis is heavily regulated by brain-derived neutrophic factor, a chemical. Neuroinflammation is mediated by cytokines. Which are also chemicals. Do you think depression is caused by stress? The stress hormone cortisol is…a chemical. Do you think it’s entirely genetic? Genes code for proteins – chemicals again. Do you think it’s caused by poor diet? What exactly do you think food is made of?

Diabetes is caused by a chemical imbalance: too much sugar (or too little insulin) in the blood. Parkinson’s is caused by a chemical imbalance: too little dopamine in the basal ganglia. Heart attacks are caused by a chemical imbalance: too many of the wrong kinds of lipids and lipid-related plaques in the coronary arteries.

I can get even more nitpicky if you want. The Donner Party died of chemical imbalance – too few fatty acids, proteins, and carbohydrates. The passengers of the Titanic died of a chemical imbalance – H2O in the lungs instead of O2. And it was a chemical imbalance that got Hiroshima in the end: excess uranium-235. Anything that’s not caused by ghosts is going to be “a chemical imbalance” in some sense of the word.

This is why I’m being so insistent that psychiatrists referred to “a chemical imbalance” rather than “a serotonin deficiency”. They were hedging the heck out of their bets. It might be BDNF, or cytokines, or whatever. But if something happens in the body and doesn’t show up as a gross anatomical defect on MRI, it’s a pretty good bet it’s chemical in some sense of the word.

So is this a giant cop-out? Psychiatrists said “it’s a chemical imbalance” to make it sound like they knew what they were talking about, when in fact all they meant was “it’s a thing that exists”?

Sort of.

Anything that isn’t caused by ghosts is going to be “a chemical imbalance” in some sense of the word. But in the latter half of the twentieth century, “depression is not caused by ghosts” was a revolutionary statement, and one that desperately needed to be said.

I still see this. People come in with depression, and they think it means they’re lazy, or they don’t have enough willpower, or they’re bad people. Or else they don’t think it, but their families do: why can’t she just pull herself up with her own bootstraps, make a bit of an effort? Or: we were good parents, we did everything right, why is he still doing this? Doesn’t he love us?

And I could say: “Well, it’s complicated, but basically in people who are genetically predisposed, some sort of precipitating factor, which can be anything from a disruption in circadian rhythm to a stressful event that increases levels of cortisol to anything that activates the immune system into a pro-inflammatory mode, is going to trigger a bunch of different changes along metabolic pathways that shifts all of them into a different attractor state. This can involve the release of cytokines which cause neuroinflammation which shifts the balance between kynurinins and serotonin in the tryptophan pathway, or a decrease in secretion of brain-derived neutrotrophic factor which inhibits hippocampal neurogenesis, and for some reason all of this also seems to elevate serotonin in the raphe nuclei but decrease it in the hippocampus, and probably other monoamines like dopamine and norepinephrine are involved as well, and of course we can’t forget the hypothalamopituitaryadrenocortical axis, although for all I know this is all total bunk and the real culprit is some other system that has downstream effects on all of these or just…”

Or I could say: “Fuck you, it’s a chemical imbalance.”

Last time I talked about the definition of disease I said that people want diseases to “be caused by the sorts of thing you study in biology: proteins, bacteria, ions, viruses, genes.”

I don’t think I could actually get away with telling a patient’s family “it’s caused by, you know, biology stuff” without them asking if I really went to medical school. I don’t think I’d use the term “chemical imbalance” precisely; too likely to trigger a knee-jerk reaction from people reading exactly these articles I’m responding to. But I think I would say something alone those lines. “We don’t know exactly, but it probably involves problems with brain structure and brain chemicals,” maybe. That covers about the same ground as “biology stuff” while also sounding like I’m at least trying to answer their question.

So if what I’m actually saying with that is “depression is caused by complicated biology stuff you don’t understand, and not by things like your son not really loving you, or being lazy,” am I sure that’s right?

I won’t say all depression is 100% caused by internal failures of biology in the same way that for example cystic fibrosis is caused 100% by internal failures of biology. I am happy to admit that some depressions can be caused by being in a crappy social situation, being abused as a child, being stuck in an unhappy marriage, being worried about problems at work, stuff like that.

But it’s far from obvious that being stuck in an unhappy marriage should drain your energy, drain your concentration, make you stop enjoying your hobbies, and finally drive you to suicide. We can imagine another person, or another way of designing a person, where someone says “I hate my husband, so I try to stay away from him as much as I can by working extra hard and spending my free time playing frisbee with my dog in the park.” But instead, someone hates their husband, and it drives all the joy out of their life to the point where they can’t go to work, they can’t play with their dog, they just sit around wishing they were dead.

And is that the fault of “biology stuff”? That’s a harder question than it sounds. What would it mean to say ‘no’? If we are strict materialists who don’t believe in some kind of division of labor between the brain and the soul, then yes, if it’s a feeling you’re having, it’s based in biology.

I’ve previously said we use talk of disease and biology to distinguish between things we can expect to respond to rational choice and social incentives and things that don’t. If I’m lying in bed because I’m sleepy, then yelling at me to get up will solve the problem, so we call sleepiness a natural state. If I’m lying in bed because I’m paralyzed, then yelling at me to get up won’t change anything, so we call paralysis a disease state. Talk of biology tells people to shut off their normal intuitive ways of modeling the world. Intuitively, if my son is refusing to go to work, it means I didn’t raise him very well and he doesn’t love me enough to help support the family. If I say “depression is a chemical imbalance”, well, that means that the problem is some sort of complicated science thing and I should stop using my “mirror neurons” and my social skills module to figure out where I went wrong or where he went wrong.

In other words, everything we do is caused by brain chemicals, but usually we think about them on the human terms, like “He went to the diner because he was hungry” and not “He went to the diner because the level of dopamine in the appetite center of his hypothalamus reached a critical level which caused it to fire messages at the complex planning center which told his motor cortex to move his legs to…” – even though both are correct. Very occasionally, some things happen that we can’t think about on the human terms, like a seizure – we can’t explain in terms of desires or emotions or goals an epileptic person is flailing their limbs, so we have to go down to the lower-level brain chemical explanation.

What “chemical imbalance” does for depression is try to force it down to this lower level, tell people to stop trying to use rational and emotional explanations for why their friend or family member is acting this way. It’s not a claim that nothing caused the chemical imbalance – maybe a recent breakup did – but if you try to use your normal social intuitions to determine why your friend or family member is behaving the way they are after the breakup, you’re going to get screwy results.

(in much the same way, if I just saw you take a giant handful of amphetamines, I pretty much know why you’re having a seizure, but I still can’t rationally / intuitively model the experience of why you’re “choosing” to move your limbs the way that you are.)

(though it’s important for me to temper this by mentioning that many people diagnosed with depression don’t have it)

There’s still one more question, which is: are you sure that depression patients’ experience is so incommensurable with healthy people’s experiences that it’s better to model their behavior as based on mysterious brain chemicals rather than on rational choice?

And part of what I’m going on is the stated experience of depressed people themselves. As for the rest, I can only plead consistency. I think people’s political opinions are highly genetically loaded and appear to be related to the structure of the insula and amygdala. I think large-scale variations in crime rate are mostly attributable to environmental levels of lead and probably other chemicals. It would be really weird if depression were the one area where we could always count on the inside view not to lead us astray.

So this is my answer to the accusation that psychiatry erred in promoting the idea of a “chemical imbalance”. The idea that depression is a drop-dead simple serotonin deficiency was never taken seriously by mainstream psychiatry. The idea that depression was a complicated pattern of derangement in several different brain chemicals that may well be interacting with or downstream from other causes has always been taken seriously, and continues to be pretty plausible. Whatever depression is, it’s very likely it will involve chemicals in some way, and it’s useful to emphasize that fact in order to convince people to take depression seriously as something that is beyond the intuitively-modeled “free will” of the people suffering it. “Chemical imbalance” is probably no longer the best phrase for that because of the baggage it’s taken on, but the best phrase will probably be one that captures a lot of the same idea.

If you've been hanging out on (certain parts of) twitter in the last two weeks, you probably had a sense of what was coming in this year's Hugo nominations.  The rumor storm has been brewing furiously, and yet even those dark hints were not quite enough to prepare us for just how dismal this year's nominees would be.  The organized right-wing voting campaign that last year gave us Vox Day, Hugo

I’m awake too early to leave for the airport but too late to go back to sleep, so as long as I’m up, some additional thoughts on the recent Hugo-related drama.

* I’m feeling increasingly sorry for the nominees on the Hugo award ballot who showed up on either Puppy slate but who aren’t card-carrying Puppies themselves, since they are having to deal with an immense amount of splashback not of their own making. And to this you may say, well, but the Puppies maintain that everyone on their slate was notified, so they knew what they were getting into. But as it turns out, we know that at least some of the people on the Puppy slates weren’t contacted before the nominations came out — see Andromeda Spaceways In-flight Magazine on this — so this is not a 100% sure thing.

Also, let me suggest that when Brad Torgersen (or whomever) went off notifying people of their presence on the slate, he probably did not lead with “Hi, would you like to be part of a slate of nominees whose organizers whine darkly and incessantly about the nefarious conspiracies of the evil social justice warriors to infiltrate all levels of science fiction, and which will also implictly tie you and your work to at least one completely bigoted shitmagnet of a human being?” Rather more likely he played up the “we’re trying to get stuff on the ballot we think is cool that doesn’t usually get on it” angle and downplayed, you know, that other stuff.

And you might think, well, how can you miss that other stuff? The short answer to that is that, as difficult as it might seem, not everyone actually spends a lot of time following the Hugo and the controversies therein. It was, until very recently, kind of an insider sport. So it’s possible to have missed this stuff and/or not fully grasped the implications of it until after the awards came out. Not for me, clearly, and possibly not for you. But it is possible.

It’s difficult to miss them now, of course. But this increases my sympathy for these nominees. The whole reason the Puppies are so transparently covetous of the Hugos is that they are a big deal in a (relatively) small community. So imagine being part of this community, being told that you’ve gotten a Hugo nomination, and then finding out that there’s this metric load of toxicity around it, manufactured by the people who got you the ballot — or at least claim that they did.

It’s easy to say, well, they should just withdraw. Speaking as a past Hugo nominee, I’m here to tell you that the emotions around that decision are likely not to be that simple, especially because at least some of that work and some of those people are (in my opinion) deserving of the sort of recognition the Hugos offer.

Thus the irony of this being an excellent year not to be on the Hugo ballot, because you get to pass on the entire shitshow around it. To be clear, some of the nominees affirmatively signed up for a shitshow, hoped for a shitshow and are now reveling in the shitshow that’s happening. That’s their karma. Give some thought to the ones who didn’t sign on for it, or might have not fully realized that it was coming. I think of them as the human shields of the Puppy campaigns. Personally, I’m cutting them a bit of slack.

* Matthew Foster, husband of the late and missed Eugie Foster, has a nice two-part recap of the Puppies situation (1, 2) and the personalities involved on the Puppies lists, and makes a cogent observation about the Puppy assertion of a SJW cabal, which is that it’s complete nonsense:

Eugie and I were acquainted with, or friends with most of the people the Puppies point out as leftist leaders. We were both directors at Dragon Con, just about the biggest genre convention around, and know the organizers of many other conventions. Eugie was a Nebula winner, female, and Asian American. Trust me Puppies, if there was an organized society or just a clique working against you, we’d have been in it.

Yes, this. The entire paranoid theory of a social justice warrior cabal is predicated on the rather narcissistic hypothesis the Puppies have that those they see having opposing political and social view spend countless hours thinking of ways to thwart politically conservative writers and keep them off award ballots, for reasons.

Speaking as someone who the Puppies have a rather disturbing hate-boner for (yeah, I know, think how I feel about it) and who is certainly a high poobah of whatever cabal they imagine: Honestly, who has time for that? I’m busy enough! Thwarting the careers of people I don’t know or care about is not actually high on my list of things to do, be they conservative or otherwise. The idea I am going to take any time out of my schedule to do that is ridiculous. I barely have time for people I like.

But look at these statistics that show — show! — that Scalzi and Charles Stross gamed the Hugos! (Yes, this is an actual thing.) Dudes. You give me soooooo much more credit for personal industry, and also, you don’t know how to read the numbers. I mean, I get it: When you want to do something obnoxious in furtherance of your own personal agenda, you want to be able to say other people did it first; when you want to front a slate of nominations with an explicit sociopolitical goal, you want to assert that you’re just doing what other people have already done. You want to posit bad behavior to rationalize your own, as if other people being assholes excuses you being one, too. But there is no SJW cabal, and this is on you.

Saying there’s no cabal is just what a cabal member would say! Well, yes.

* Continuing the personal aspect of this, it’s been noted by several that the Puppies have a rather unseemly interest in me: I’m accused of creating my own slates (I didn’t), of gaming the Hugos in some manner (I haven’t) and Redshirts is used as an example of how the SJW cabal is secretly controlling the Hugo voting, because how else could a bestselling, widely-liked book by a well-known author who had nine previous Hugo nominations and a Campbell Award possibly have taken an award in a popular contest? It beggars the mind, people. The idea that this particular book, by a straight white male, that might not even pass the Bechdel Test, is somehow the perfect vehicle for an SJW cabal Hugo win is its own case study in just how poorly constructed the logical underpinnings of the “SJW Cabal” hypothesis really are.

These accusations are generally accompanied by a rather lot of spittle, enough so that people are beginning to mock the Puppies for it; the best joke of this I’ve seen comes here, in a comment on a File 770 post (the post, appropriately enough, speaking of paranoid hypotheses having no relation to reality, about a Puppy assertion that Terry Pratchett never being nominated for a Hugo shows how the system is gamed being undermined by Pratchett turning down a Hugo nod in 2005):

Q: How many Sad Puppies does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100, one to change the bulb and 99 to say, “Gosh, I hope this makes Scalzi’s head explode!”

I think it’s pretty evident why I’m a poster boy for Puppy hate: The primary drivers of the Puppies (Beale, Correia and Torgerson) don’t think warmly of me for their own personal reasons, I have politics and social positions they oppose, and I strongly suspect the fact I have a successful career in science fiction confounds them, which is, among other things, why they and other Puppy partisans spend so much time trying to assert that I don’t actually sell any books, and so on.

I’m a useful target for them, in other words, and someone they can use to whip up their partisans: Scalzi’s the problem! There’s no way Scalzi could be successful without a shadowy conspiracy! He’s been doing what we’re doing all along! A victory for the Puppies will make Scalzi weep salty tears! And off they and their lackeys go, to the comment threads and to Twitter, to use me as justification, in so many ways, for the stupid and tiresome things they do. Not just me and not just my work, mind you. The Puppies have a full enemies list. But on that list, I’m top five, easy.

I have no control over this, although I do find the Puppy version of me interesting. He appears to simultaneously live in a volcano lair, evilly stroking a cat whilst planning the next SJW pogrom against the valiant writers of pure and true science fiction, and also lives on the streets, giving handjobs for a nickel and raving how he used to be somebody. I should like to meet this John Scalzi; I would give him a hot cup of soup and a warm jacket, and then ask him if I could borrow his laser cannon.

Be aware that me writing about their obsession about me will be viewed as proof that it is really me that has the obsession, hah ha! I’m also aware that some people think this is a thing where the Puppies and I are two sides of a coin. Again, not much I can do about that, except to say I didn’t make the coin or be asked to be put on a side. If I’m on the enemies list, fine. Just ask why it is I’m on the list, and for what reasons. And ask what that says about the Puppies.

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

—Martha Graham, as cited by Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany in today’s NY Times.

 

So as you all know, the Hugo noms are out. My first reaction was relief.

As reactions go, it was selfish even by my standards. I wasn’t on the ballot, and I wasn’t expecting to be: I expected to be crushed by better works in a year that was full of them. Gibson’s first SF novel since the turn of the century. Leckie’s much-praised followup to last year’s home run. Scalzi. Liu. Walton. Weir, if they ever figured out the eligibility thing.

Vandermeer. Dear sweet Jesus, Vandermeer: I can’t remember the last time something exploded across the landscape like that.

There was no way I was going to make it against those guys. Hell, Blindsight wasn’t up against that kind of a slate back in ’07, and it came in dead last even then. So I knew Echopraxia wouldn’t come close; and further, that it didn’t deserve to.

And then a funny thing happened; with Leckie as the lone exception, none of those other contenders made it to the finals either. Something to do with this Sad Puppies campaign I’d caught the occasional whiff of, but never really paid attention to. A bunch of right-wing Baen types, apparently, campaigning for a return to good ol’fashioned meat-and-potatoes SF in a world where all the awards were apparently going to noodly boring literary crap. I’m not sure I buy the puppies’ analysis— a Harry Potter novel won a Hugo not so long ago, and you’d be hard-pressed to describe that as “literary”— but whatever.

The outcry was immediate and deafening. My Facebook feed continues to erupt with outrage and despair (Twitter too, I’m told, although I don’t twit). Essays and post-mortems sprout like mushrooms across the blogosphere. The Hugos are all about politics now. The Hugos have lost all credibility. The barbarians are at the gate.

And yet, like I say: relief. It’s one thing to know that you washed out because you flubbed the jump— but that ache of inadequacy vanishes like morning mist when even the superstars miss the same bar. The Sad Puppies have neutered the Hugos, turned them into the genre version of CBC’s Bookies: awards, sort of, but hardly meritorious. I beat out Emily St. John Mandel for one of those; Caitlin beat Margaret Atwood. Does anyone think that actually means anything?

(On the up side, Leckie must be feeling pretty smug now; she’s all-but-guaranteed another Best Novel rocket. And it’s grand to see Mixon make the finals for Best Fan Writer on the strength of her RequiresHate takedown, especially since that particular troll is already spawning a new brood of brain-dead minions only too happy to outsource their critical faculties to L4.)

And yet, the more lamentations I read, the more I start to wonder if people doth protest too much. Have the sad puppies really done anything that hordes of authors don’t do as a matter of routine, albeit on a smaller scale? Are we talking a change of kind, or merely of degree?

We all know the needy guy who opens every con panel he sits on by arranging copies of his books on the table before him, urging the audience to the merch room. During awards season it sometimes seems as if the only way to escape an endless barrage of FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF THE HUGO COMMITTEE and !!!THESE ARE MY ELIGIBLE STORIES!!! and ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT TO VOTE FOR ME! is to rip your modem out of the goddamn wall. If you’ve taken a creative-writing night course taught by some hard-up midlister, you might even have come across an Aurora nomination form on your desk at the start of your last class, while your teacher smiles disingenuously and murmurs Technically I’m not supposed to do this but… Such incidents are legion, and every one of them reflects an attempt to get friends, fans, and strangers to vote for a work whether or not those folks have actually read it.

The thing is, we’re encouraged to act this way. We’re expected to: by agents, by publicists, by publishers who can no longer be bothered promoting their own authors. I know of one case where an agent explicitly refused to represent an author simply because that author wasn’t pimping herself on Twitter. It’s now considered unprofessional to eschew constant tub-thumping. Nobody takes you seriously if you don’t stand out from the crowd— and the only way to do that, apparently, is by doing exactly what everybody else is doing, only louder. Which is how someone who markets herself as a Fearless Progressive Speaker of Truth to Power can beg off boycotting an event over a clear matter of principle by saying “Nah, I’ve got a book to hustle” with a completely straight face.

Pimpage comes first, ethics run a distant second, and the Sad Puppies are not the only gang to run under that flag.

In fact, if you squint a certain way you can almost see how the Sad Puppies’ campaign is actually more honorable than the relentless self-promotion that’s somehow come to be regarded as de rigeur in this business. Put their reactionary motives aside for the moment; at least the puppies were, for the most part, advocating for people other than themselves. All other things being equal, whose opinion generally comes seasoned with less conflict-of-interest: the foodie who raves about the little hole-in-the-wall she discovered last Friday, or the chef who praises his own bouillabaisse to the heavens?

Which is not to say, of course, that self-promotion doesn’t work. It obviously does. (I don’t know if anyone in the genre has won more awards than Rob Sawyer, and offhand I can’t think of a more relentless self-promoter.) Then again, no one’s really questioning the effectiveness of the strategy that’s riled up the current teapot. It’s the underlying ethics that seems to be at issue.

So, sure. If you’re an end-justifies-the-means sorta person, then by all means decry the block who stacked the deck and got-out-the-vote in pursuit of their antique right-wing agenda; praise the more progressive folks who try to get you to eschew straight cis white male writers for a year. But if the road matters to you as well as the destination, don’t lose sleep over the fact that the bad guys played a better game this time around.

Give a thought to the rules that promote such strategies in the first place.

(Warning: some links lead to to triggery ranting. As James D. Nicoll warns: "memetic prophylactic recommended".)

By now, everybody who cares knows that the nominations for the 2015 Hugo Awards reflect the preferences of a bloc-voting slate with an agenda—and their culture wars allies. But, interestingly, a new Hugo-related record has been set: for a Finnish publisher few people have ever heard of is responsible for no fewer than nine nominated works.

Castalia House was (per wikipedia) founded by Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) in early 2014 in Kouvola, Finland. As their website explains:

Castalia House is a Finland-based publisher that has a great appreciation for the golden age of science fiction and fantasy literature. The books that we publish honor the traditions and intellectual authenticity exemplified by writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert E. Howard, G.K. Chesterton, and Hermann Hesse. We are consciously providing an alternative to readers who increasingly feel alienated from the nihilistic, dogmatic science fiction and fantasy being published today. We seek nothing less than a Campbellian revolution in genre literature.

Total culture wars, very gamergate, much fail, wow. But the screaming question I feel the need to ask, is: why Finland? Could there be a connection between the white supremacist Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party), the overtly racist Sweden Democrats, the Dark Enlightenment/neoreactionary movement, and Vox Day's peculiarly toxic sect of Christian Dominionist theology?

Vox Day writes:

It's time for the church leaders and the heads of Christian families to start learning from #GamerGate, to start learning from Sad Puppies, and start leading. Start banding together and stop accommodating the secular world in any way. Don't hire those who hate you. Don't buy from those who wish to destroy you. Don't work with those who denigrate your faith, your traditions, your morals, and your God. Don't tolerate or respect what passes for their morals and values.

Over a period of years, he's built an international coalition, finding common cause with the European neo-nazi fringe. Now they've attempted to turn the Hugo Awards into a battlefield in their (American) culture wars. But this clearly isn't the end game they have in mind: it's only a beginning. (The Hugos, by their very nature, are an award anyone can vote in for a small fee: it is interesting to speculate on how deep Vox Day's pockets are.) But the real burning question is, "what will he attack next?"

My guess: the Hugo awards are not remotely as diverse and interesting as the SFWAs Nebula Awards—an organization from which Vox Day became only the second person ever to be expelled. I believe he bears SFWA (and former SFWA President John Scalzi) no love, and the qualification for SFWA membership (which confers Nebula voting rights) is to have professionally published three short stories or a novel. Castalia House is a publishing entity with a short story anthology series. Is the real game plan "Hugos today: Nebulas tomorrow?"

The previous post in this series, “Functioning Labels 101: What’s The Big Deal?” can be found here. Once I’ve established that I actually will write a regular series of these posts and not just abandon the idea, I’ll create a tag.

Today, 2nd April, is the UN’s annual World Autism Awareness Day; by extension, the whole of April is Autism Awareness Month – or, as you may have heard it being called by autistic activists and our allies, Autism Acceptance Month. You may also have noticed that many autistic people have reacted against certain “Autism Awareness” campaigns. So, what are the problems with Autism Awareness Month as it currently stands? Why “acceptance”? What can you do this April to help autistic people in a meaningful way? Welcome to Autism Acceptance 101.

Surely more autism awareness can only be a good thing?
Not if the only things being brought to public awareness are misinformation, stereotypes, and fear. Many autism awareness campaigns and events, notably the popular Light It Up Blue, are run by Autism Speaks, a hate group that sees autism as a tragic epidemic that takes away the “real” (read: neurotypical) children, and carry out research to eradicate us. Here is a well-known masterpost by Tumblr’s Goldenheartedrose outlining the ways in which Autism Speaks harms autistic people. There are many. Yet Autism Speaks continues to be the most popular autism organisation in the USA if not the world, which means April often serves only as extra amplification for their hatred, sometimes dreaded by autistic people ourselves.

But the criticism of autism awareness campaigns isn’t just limited to Autism Speaks – why is that?
Basically, April amplifies the autism campaigns and narratives that happen normally – the good and the bad. Things to avoid include cure-based rhetoric, equating “autism” to “a burden placed on neurotypical people who are forced to deal with autistic people”, harmful compliance-based therapies, functioning labels, that sort of thing. There’s also the issue that many autism awareness campaigns focus exclusively on children, or more specifically on young white boys, alienating everybody else. Finally, consider accessibility; if your autism awareness event passively excludes autistic people by not taking into account issues like sensory differences, we’re going to wonder who it really benefits.

Why is your immediate reaction to the innocuous “like and share for autism awareness” Facebook pictures just eye-rolling?
Here I’m referring to the picture memes which contain no actual information whatsoever, just “like and share for autism awareness” or “like and share if you know/love someone with autism” (because everyone knows there are no actual autistic people on Facebook… /sarcasm). They seem pretty harmless – at least they’re not spreading misinformation. But the former is basically “hey everyone, autism exists!” which doesn’t solve anything if the majority of information immediately available to those who see it and want to know more is Autism Speaks or similar, and the latter is basically “look everyone, I know one of these people, I’m so great!” which just feeds into the “burden on neurotypicals who have to deal with us” narrative. Mainly, this sort of thing (with no additional information around it) is just self-congratulatory neurotypicals who click “like” and “share” and then expect an ally cookie whilst they then go about the rest of their day participating in the ableist world without a second thought.

Why “acceptance”? What’s the difference?
In recent years, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and other autistic-led organisations have set up Autism Acceptance Month in order to directly combat the harmful “awareness” campaigns. This includes events designed to specifically counter Light It Up Blue, such as the #WalkInRed campaign. These campaigns use “Autism Acceptance” to signify that they do not view autism as a tragic burden to be eradicated, but a neurotype and a group of people who want to be accepted for who we are, as opposed to “awareness” which has so often just been amplified misinformation. It’s a way of explicitly distancing these campaigns from the “awareness” brand which many autistic people are now wary of.

But how can people accept something if they’re not even aware of it yet?
Probably more easily than accepting something if they’ve already developed strong but false beliefs about it, to be honest.

So should I reject everything with the “awareness” label?
Not necessarily – many autistic people and allies (often in addition to supporting autism acceptance campaigns) are preferring to reclaim autism awareness, especially by dispelling myths and misconceptions and spreading acceptance guides via autism awareness hashtags on Twitter, so that they’re seen by the wider audience “autism awareness” brings. In particular, I want to draw your attention to Quarridors‘ tweets today under #WAAD2015, providing some simple but important ways to make the world more accessible to autistic people.

What can I do this April to actually help autistic people?

• Listen to us! We exist, we can communicate for ourselves (in whatever form that takes) and many of us are happy to answer questions and dispel myths.
• Take the time to educate yourself on autism through actually autistic people – some really good places to start are Amythest Schaber’s “Ask an Autistic” video series, blogs such as Musings Of An Aspie, Emma’s Hope Book, Autistic Hoya, Unstrange Mind and Just Stimming (this is a really tiny list and I feel like I’ve missed loads of people, so please recommend more and/or promote yourselves in the comments!) and the resources on the Autism Acceptance Month website.
• Support autistic-led organisations such as ASAN or Autism Women’s Network, or other self-advocacy organisations local to you. In particular, Aromaleigh Cosmetics is donating 50% of the sales of “Enigma” eyeshadow to ASAN.
• Have a read through ASAN’s #AcceptanceIs hashtag (another great way of finding more autistic voices to listen to!)
• Support the Walk In Red campaign and other campaigns directly combating Autism Speaks’ dominant hateful narrative
• Educate others, particularly on the problems with Autism Speaks as they are supported by a LOT of well-meaning people, including high-profile celebrities and companies, that aren’t aware of the harm they’re causing.

Sadly, as with all articles about my political beliefs these days, this has degenerated into a rambling mess. This is why I write, let alone publish, so few blog posts these days. Nonetheless, I’ve decided to publish and be damned this time, which in turn might explain why I’m quite so all over the place.

Reading articles by your past, more idealistic self is a little cringe-making, and this Comment is Free article written by me at the height of Cleggmania in April 2010 is no exception. Back then, despite previously agreeing to a vote swap with my wife in which I voted Labour in the General Election in exchange for her voting Lib Dem in the locals, I ended up casting a big, positive vote for the Lib Dems. The result was a Tory MP with a majority of 106 over the Labour and an unfortunate tendency to compare same sex marriage to incest. As for the locals, the Lib Dems were beaten into third place. So much for that.

This year, I’m going to cast the least ideological vote of my life, and will be voting Labour. I will be doing so knowing that the man I’ll be supporting, Andrew Dismore, is exactly the sort of cynical Blairite that I spent most of my time as a Lib Dem activist fighting against. To be fair, he’s a genuinely conscientious community campaigner, but really the best thing I can say about him is that he isn’t Matthew Offord.

I’m lucky that my choice is so stark and so simple this time around; if I were in a constituency with a larger majority or a less loathsome Tory MP, I might have a harder decision to make. I’m extremely grateful that happenstance has left me in a situation where I don’t really have to think much about my vote this time round.

But this all rather begs the question, what do I believe in these days? Most people who have left the Lib Dems stalked off over some firm, principled objection to something they had done. In my case, it was simply that I was burnt out, feeling responsible for everything and yet not able to change anything. I’ve never advocated people following me into the wilderness, and I simply can’t fathom why so many of my former colleagues have ended up joining Labour, where the ability to actually influence anything must surely be even more limited.

At my heart, I’m still a left-leaning liberal, and by most measures I should still be a supporter. As I’ve said before however, for me it boils down to the fact that the Lib Dems don’t have a vision of the economy at their heart. I’m just not convinced that it is enough to be a “liberal” party these days. All the mainstream parties have liberalism at their heart, merely existing along a spectrum of in terms of to what extent they focus on negative or positive freedoms. You can happily be a classical liberal in the Conservative Party, or a social liberal in the Labour Party.

What should, and manifestly doesn’t, mark the Lib Dems out as different is their economic policies. I could get on board for a party with a clear vision for actually tackling the massive privatisation of our common wealth, even if that was tempered by pragmatic policies about how to get there. What we get instead is a couple of piecemeal, populist sops to a “mansion tax” – carefully designed to offend the least number of people and thus ending up not being able to raise that much money. That, aside from more austerity and pain, is all the Lib Dems have to offer about the economy, and that isn’t enough for me.

With all that said, I have a sneaking admiration for my old party. Say what you like about this government, but the fact that it has managed to last five years is a fantastic, game-changing achievement. Past experience suggested that it would have been lucky to last two years; the fact that it confounded these expectations in an age of Twitter is all the more remarkable.

I confess, there isn’t an awful lot I can put my finger on and point to as massive Lib Dem achievements that they can be proud of. There are some. Steve Webb’s pension reforms. Jo Swinson’s work on shared parental leave. I still support raising personal allowance in principle (although I don’t like the way it has been done). But at the same time, I have seen almost weekly examples of the Lib Dems blocking Tory policies that would have been dreadful.

I confess, that feels like small beer, and I can also name many Tory politics they did let through, which I find fairly hard to forgive (especially when it comes to benefit cuts and reforms). There are also things that they seemed to have been actively complicit in, rather than merely passively letting the Tories run with, most notably in the case of the Lobbying Act which has caused me to really doubt the Lib Dem top brass’s commitment to democracy.

Overall, I think the fact that they’re taking a knock in this election is justified. Despite predicting it however, I don’t think they deserve to take the beating that they look set to get. I see an awful lot of competent, smart people losing their seats regardless of their personal qualities, and that sucks.

What is most unedifying is seeing the Lib Dems getting the blame for the wrong things. Despite the “broken promise”, the resulting policy on HE funding is by all measures fairer than what came before it; indeed, it’s biggest flaw is that I suspect it will quickly be deemed unsustainable by whoever forms the next government (I’ll laugh, albeit ruefully, when we subsequently see the NUS rushing to defend the status quo then). Meanwhile, we have the monumental screw up that was the NHS restructure, which only happened because Clegg personally supported Lansley on the issue (it certainly wasn’t Lib Dem policy). If he should be crucified for anything, it is this. It is weird that our politics are such that the media is preoccupied by “broken promises” yet lacks the analytical skills to adequately assess things like competence and whether a policy is likely to actually work.

I’m even in two minds about Clegg. On the one hand, he’s pretty much everything I hate about modern politics. He stood for leadership of the Lib Dems on a false prospectus, lead the 2010 election campaign on a false prospectus and negotiated the coalition agreement on the basis of his own priorities rather than the parties (which is why tuition fees, health reform and free schools were all “conceded”; these were all Clegg policies). On the other hand, to have managed to survive five years having so much ordure poured over his head, is quite remarkable. I hesitate to admit that I like him more than I did five years ago, but I do (but let’s not get carried away).

Ultimately, the thing that completely alienates me from the Lib Dems however is the internal culture. I couldn’t bear it even 10 years before I finally left, ducking out of Glee Clubs and party rallies whenever I could. I might dislike Clegg, but I had a growing problem with how Lib Dems campaigned long before he was leader. The Lib Dems simultaneously like to think that they have a monopoly on community politics, and that it can be reduced to an election-winning strategy. Neither are true, which is why it will always result in cynical campaigns and ever decreasing circles.

I had a problem with the man behind the modern Lib Dem campaign strategy Chris Rennard, long before the allegations of sexual impropriety emerged. The way the party ultimately welcomed him back under the fold, and threw the women who made the – to quote the official report – “credible” claims against him under a bus, is utterly shameful. The allegations about Cyril Smith’s conduct are clearly more serious than the ones made against Rennard, but the pattern is the same: studied incuriosity and scrupulous hand washing after the event. This is a party with a serious problem when it comes to how it deals with allegations of a sexual nature made against its own senior party figures, and we have seen nothing that suggests this culture is likely to change significantly in the future.

I have to admit that, for me, it’s personal. If I was still a party member and this hadn’t happened to personal friends of mine, I might be more inclined to shuffle my feet and shrug in the way that the vast majority of Lib Dem MPs and members have. I can’t shrug off the perception that this is linked in with the party’s wider failure to improve its record on gender balance and Clegg’s now largely forgotten decision to include a pledge to grant people accused of rape with anonymity in the coalition agreement. When it comes to sex and gender, the Lib Dems find themselves on the wrong side of the argument far too often, and it can’t begin to renew itself until they can credibly claim to have changed that.

So I’m torn. On the one hand, I’m grateful to the Lib Dems for proving that coalition government can work and stopping the Tories’ worst excesses over the last five years. On the other hand, I’m very conscious of deep cultural and philosophical shortcomings of the party. It deserves a hit in the polls, but I’m highly ambivalent about the fact that many of the wrong people will end up being at the sharp end. The pragmatist in me thinks I should get back involved and try and change it from the inside, the idealist in me is repelled by the idea of being tainted by all that again. Fortunately for my idealist side, there’s also my mental health to consider, so it is largely academic.

I’m hopeful that a new party can emerge from the ashes on 7 May. But if it ever wants my vote again it will need to have a much stronger commitment to social justice, wealth distribution and feminism at its core*.

The Greens

* Inevitably, I’m going to get asked why I’m not turning to the Greens. I have to admit that I’m increasingly struggling to come up with a good answer to that. The simplest answer is that a) I’m happy voting tactically this time and b) staying away from political activism for the foreseeable future. But as someone who was rather preoccupied with the Lib Dems’ (subsequently dropped) 1992 pledge for a citizen’s income when he first joined the party, I can’t deny that the party has its appeal. I’m not yet convinced that, if I ever do get off the bench, my time wouldn’t be better spent organising inside a party with a national infrastructure than inside a party which has yet to demonstrate that it has one. It remains to be seen how many of these new members the Greens have purportedly recruited will go on to organise themselves outside of election time and turn their handful of potential target seats into something more ambitious. If they can prove they are a sustainable force, things might be different.

I have a cold. It’s not a particularly bad cold, but you know how it is – when you have a cold you never look or feel your best and so I was hoping for some kind of very attractive option, perhaps a revolutionary new, easy to use oral spray that would form a protective barrier in my mouth to help shield me against the common cold. It was fortunate then that I happened to spot an advertisement for ColdZyme:The copy is very carefully worded to avoid saying anything. It’s a work of art, really.

ColdZyme can help shorten your cold if used at the first signs.

They aren’t saying ColdZyme will cure your cold, only shorten it, although it won’t actually shorten it, it will help to shorten it. But it’s not even guaranteed to help shorten it; they’re not saying that it will help shorten your cold, just that it can help to shorten your cold. Even then it can help to shorten your cold only if used at the first signs.

The statistic about Sweden is carefully worded too. They’ve used Sweden because Enzymatica, the company that produces ColdZyme is Swedish, although Professor Jon Bragi Bjarnason, the scientist who discovered the active ingredient was from Iceland:

In the 1970s, Professor Jon Bragi Bjarnason, an Icelandic scientist, noticed that employees of a fish-cleaning plant had unusually soft and undamaged hands. Considering that they cleaned fish all day, it seemed as if their hands should have shown cracks and cuts instead. Was there something in the fish that had a healing effect? The answer was yes. The research team was able to show that certain cold-adapted marine organisms contained an enzyme with good healing properties. The research and development process eventually led to a global patent on the marine enzyme – cold-adapted trypsin – that is extracted naturally as a by-product of cod processing and thus does not put a load on the marine ecosystem.

But you’ll note that they aren’t saying that they’ve sold 8.5million bottles, only 8.5million doses. According to the patient information leaflets on the Boots website, a 20ml bottle contains enough ColdZyme for 55 doses, whereas a 7ml bottle contains enough for 18 doses. I’m not sure of the split between 7ml and 20ml bottles in terms of sales (and Enzymatica’s financial reports are only available in Swedish) but it would suggest that in Sweden they sold somewhere between 154,546 and 472,223 bottles in total.

Of course, it’s too late for me now. In order to maximise my chances of ColdZyme helping to shorten my cold, I would have needed to use it at the first signs. I missed that window of opportunity. As the patient information leaflet states, you should start to use ColdZyme “as soon as possible after noticing symptoms of a cold” and “continue to use it until the symptoms are relieved”. You’re supposed to take one dose every two hours during the day, and then another dose just before going to bed. That’s about nine doses a day, or half a 7ml bottle (a fiver’s worth). “If the symptoms are not better within 10 days of starting the treatment, consult your doctor or health care provider” the leaflet says. That would be after ninety doses (2 x 20ml bottles – £31.98). I think colds generally go away by themselves within ten days or so, don’t they? I’ve had my cold for a few days now, I’ve already saved myself fifteen quid.

These comics represent the first phase of a Derridean deconstruction of the Star Wars saga. They also have a lot of very cool fight scenes.

• Han Solo tries to stomp Darth Vader with a Walker.
• Darth Vader encounters Jabba the Hutt.
• Artoo and some Jawas try to fix the Millennium Falcon.
• Luke Skywalker intercepts Princess Leia's shuttle in an X-Wing.
• Leia is inexplicably moved by a painting of Amidala on Naboo.
• Luke confronts Vader with his lightsaber (and gets creamed).

The People’s Flag is purple now

It’s to Farage that they kowtow

Now Labour’s values are unknown

Except the mugs with ‘Send them home’

The People’s Flag has changed its spots

For fear of UKIP’s ballot box

Those mugs keep lowering the tone

Their banner reading ‘Send them home’

I like to think that I’d instinctively be a Liberal and not a racist opportunist even if I wasn’t the son of an immigrant. After all, Ed Miliband’s the son of an immigrant too, so there doesn’t seem to be any correlation.

Thanks to Nick Barlow for eternal vigilance and #whynotjointhelabourparty, and to Richard Flowers for everything, always, but this time in particular for kicking off the lyrics. And a damned good kicking is in order (even from Labour MPs).

It’s finally come: the official end of the 2010 Parliament, and the official start of the campaign (“Not ’til now?” said Tegan, dismayed). And though you might think Doctor Who is all about the Liberal philosophy and not pounding the streets with Focus leaflets, I’ve found evidence of one of the Doctor’s companions standing for election is just the way Lib Dems do.

By chance, the Doctor Who story starting today on the Horror Channel is Snakedance. And there’s a photo-op from that story that shows exactly what I’m talking about. The Doctor tends to be a bit rough and ready in sorting out the big problems and then leaving before he has to do the clearing-up, but Nyssa, one of his friends from the time, was raised in a tradition of public service and proper tidying up (Cleaning up the Mara’s Mess! After Cleaning up the Melkur’s Mess! A Record of Sweeping, A Promise of More!).

We don’t see the TARDIS leave at the end of Snakedance, but you can bet the Doctor goes and hides in it while Nyssa takes over doing her thing. Or, at least, campaigning to be put in charge in the proper #LibDemsPointing way.


RELEASE: IMMEDIATE

What Have the Federation Ever Done For Us?

Nyssa of Traken [pictured, pointing] is standing for Market Ward, Manussa, and campaigning for a new deal for the Scrampus System.

“The Federation have been in charge round here for five hundred years – today! And what have they done since ridding Manussa of the Mara? Nothing but lounged around fondling suggestive antiques on expenses. Market taxpayers have had enough.

“It’s time for a change. We can start by cleaning up this unsightly graffiti that’s all over Manussa’s ancient monuments.”

/ENDS

Thursday: Not-debate Night


The election campaign sort of kicked off with an interview-and-question-time session each for the Prime Monster and his opposite Wonk. I fell asleep towards the end of Mr Balloon and woke up a few minutes into Mr Milipede. And it took me a while to realise that they'd changed over!

Which says a lot about the sort of choice facing the voter!

I am, though, nursing a particular annoyance at Mr Milipede once again rewriting history to cast himself as "standing up to Obama, Cameron and Clegg" over military intervention in Syria.

That's simply not what happened.

Generally, Mr Milipede was dreadful in front of the audience, but better in the one-to-one interview with Paxo. Milipede has a number of verbal tics or tells: "and I'll tell you why" or "of course it was hard", which he uses repeatedly and after a while start to make him sound like a robot that doesn't really understand how real people talk. The question the audience really wanted an answer on was: "Why did you knife your brother". His reply was a total non-answer: "I think I am the right man for the job." Why, Ed, why are you the right man for the job? Why are you so right for the job that you stabbed Brother David in the back to get it?

(There is a way to answer to this: David was foreign secretary, deeply complicit in the Blair and Brown governments and too associated with New Labour to allow the clean break with the past that election defeat showed they needed. And – and this is the important bit – if Ed could say that he'd tried to talk David out of standing on these ground, and that David hadn't listened… the needs of the country came first…
But… it means saying that he put "ideology" ahead of "family". And that's deeply antithetical to "small c" conservative voters, or whom his Labour tribe contains a LOT, not to mention massively hypocritical after five years of calling the Coalition "ideologically driven".)

He managed to land a real wallop on Mr Paxman at the end, though, ticking him right off for prejudging the election result. And, since it's about time someone took Paxo down a peg, that no doubt won the Labour leader a few points with some viewers. And, of course, let Mr Milipede off the question of having to say how he would negotiate with the SNP in a hung Parliament.

("How dare you prejudge the electorate!" thus translates as a new variation on the traditional cliché: "we are campaigning for a majority". It's probably the most important question of the election and we get yet another politicians' non-answer.)

For Mr Balloon it was the other way around. As an assured – even arrogant – public speaker he was easily able to handle the audience, especially when the format did not allow the questioner to press him for an answer if he dodged or changed the question (the usual politicians' tricks). But the interview was more difficult for him for exactly the same reasons. Paxo derailed the PM with an opening question about food banks, and Mr Balloon looked very shifty for a minute, not answering. Once he got himself together he gave a better performance.

This happened several times, in fact. His eventual answer on zero hours contracts, for example: "No I couldn't live on one, and that's why the coalition outlawed exclusive zero hours contracts, because they're not meant for people to live on!" was good; but he'd waffled first in order properly to frame his answer and so when he delivered an actual direct response it was lost. Mr Paxman's not interested if they answer; it's showing up politicians by hunting down their evasions that he lives for.

Mind you, we thought that Paxman was a bit harder on Mr Balloon than on Mr Milipede: the questions to the Prime Monster went to substance – numbers on food banks, borrowing, immigration – all areas where there's a substantive answer and Mr Balloon has to hem and haw to explain why it's complicated; the questions to Milipede went to character – the apologies for New Labour, the guff on "the wrong brother", and then the nonsense on "toughness" – all soft serves for answers that are only going to be hand-wringing and the feelz.

The question of "toughness" was particularly egregious, even before we get to the gung-ho "Hell yeah" of Mr Milipede's answer.

Do we really want a leader who is "tough"? Haven't we just had five years of "tough"; isn't it time for a bit of compassion, and listening, and co-operation (especially if there's going to be – as seems very, very likely – another coalition)?

LOOKING "tough" is actually WEAKNESS.

Looking "tough" is what has gotten Labour politicians like Rachel the Reever cravenly following the right-wing agenda of punishing the young and the out of work for being on benefits. Looking "tough" is what has gotten both Labservative Parties boxed into inflexible positions on raising taxes. Looking "tough" has led to everyone ruling out coalitions with everyone else as though this is anything other than a complete derogation of duty. Maggie Thatcher was "tough". And also mad as a box of frogs. "Tough" in other words is the exact opposite of good government and frankly we could do with a good deal LESS of it.

But then there's Milipede's answer: I'm tough enough to stand up to Putin because I was tough enough to stand in a room with Mr Balloon and Cap'n Clegg and say no to Barry O.

That is a… creative recollection of events in 2013.

Milipede has cultivated this popular myth that it was Labour, indeed he personally, who brought a halt to the rush to Western intervention in the Syrian civil war. It stems from a vote in the House of Commons, when – unexpectedly – the government lost a motion that would have prepared the way for British military deployment.

The government proposed a motion, with a caveat that there would have to be another vote before any action was taken (on Cap'n Clegg's insistence, having very strongly made the case for United Nations involvement before any United Kingdom action); Labour proposed a VERY SLIGHTLY different amendment (basically tightening up the conditions before action could be taken, but nothing that wasn't implicit in the government motion).

The Labour amendment got voted down – exactly as the Labour front bench intended so that they could look justified in voting against the government motion. In other words, the usual way that these votes are treated as a "game", a typical example of the debate club way that Miliband "plays" politics: letting him oppose the government on a technicality while still being able to claim that substantively he is tough on murderous gas attacks, tough on the causes of murderous gas attacks (and check with David whether we sold gas weapons to Assad while Labour were in power, Ed). (See also the "we never voted against Lords Reform" blocking of the paving motion that prevented Lords Reform, and more recently the reward for rich bankers "cut" in tuition fees.)

Only they didn't count on a Tory and Lib Dem backbenchers rebelling and the government motion falling too (24 out of 57 Lib Dems not voting for the government).

It was absolutely NOT Labour's intention or policy to block intervention in Syria. It was however the mood of the country, and on the conscience of those Lib Dem and Tory rebels, and to be fair to him it was Mr Balloon who stood up and said that.

So I rather think is STINKS when Miliband goes around claiming credit and saying that he was "tough". He was playing silly political games, and a serendipitous cock-up enabled the doves to beat the hawks.


Here are the government motion and the Labour amendment.

In this diary:

Mr Balloon the Prime Monster is David Cameron, balloon-faced Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Mr Milipede the Wonk is Ed Miliband, creepy-crawly Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.
Mr Paxo (the Ego Booster) is Jeremy Paxman, veteran television interviewer famous for his aggressive interrogation and high opinion of himself.

Also appearing:
Cap'n Clegg is Nick Clegg, the not-appearing in this farce Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Other Party of Government, the Liberal Democrats.
Rachel the Reever is Rachel Reeves, soon to be contender for doomed Milipede's job.

PS:

Dan Hodges writes in the Telegraph. Dan is famously no friend of Mr Milipede, which I suspect will undercut the strength of his words here. His account of the history leading up to the Syria vote agrees with my recollection too.

#864, 8th July 2000

Never has the “early, funny stuff” cliche held such weight in pop: we’re at a stage now where the new stars coming through are still heavyweights now, and the sclerotic Marshall Mathers of the mid-10s haunts this swaggering, sparkling kid. But “The Real Slim Shady” is still an Eminem who knows how to tell a joke – though how much he’s joking is open to question – and he’s the most technically audacious and exciting rapper to have hit number one yet. By a considerable distance – take the “Now there’s a million of us…” climax, thirty-seven staccato monosyllables from “just like me” to “not quite me”, a pattern of triple stresses reeled out and back like a man casually doing tricks on a yo-yo. Or the animals – cannibals – canteloupes – antelopes – can’t elope rhyme set, as bravura in its wordplay as anything you’d find on an underground mixtape. Or the entire first verse (”Act like you never seen a white person before…”) and its teetering jenga of internal rhymes. Or the single’s best gag, delivered barely as rap, just as a great one-liner: “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss on his raps to sell records / Well I do / So fuck him and fuck you too”

And then you might take a step back. That sumptuous rhyme set builds to a homophobic punchline, that first verse is the most technically superlative domestic violence gag you’ll ever hear, and Will Smith, like Britney and Christina and Fred Durst and boy bands, is a very, very soft target, even in 2000.

Your response to that might be “so what?” – Eminem’s command of his track is so total, and his presence so strong, that introducing my own sense of morality or discomfort to proceedings can feel a little like cheating. The man is selective in the taboos he breaks, but breaking them is part of his deal. That was certainly the appeal of Eminem on his breakthrough single. “Hi… My Name Is”, where the Shady persona felt like pure id, a mix of horrorcore tropes, grand guignol shock tactics, a real and festering resentment at a shitty childhood poking through… and an odd, self-deprecating streak where Shady is half-pathetic and very much part of a fucked-up world, not simply a response to it.

“The Real Slim Shady” comes on as a sequel, the second in a series of straight-to-video shockers: Slim Shady Goes To Hollywood, maybe. But that’s the problem with horror franchises – the monster is what people pay to see, and the longer the series runs, the more he becomes the hero. In “The Real Slim Shady” his enemies now stop being the world and himself and start being more specific parts of pop culture. Which is where the “soft targets” problem comes in. Eminem is announcing his arrival as a pop fixture – and the success of his first album had made that inevitable – by taking on the weakest of imaginable enemies. He knows his tribe, and their prejudices well, but this stuff is the opposite of shocking. He’s consciously consolidating the audience he’s found. But the arrival of Slim Shady in the real world loses something. In the twisted universe of “My Name Is” he’s a force of chaos, a self-destructive trickster. Here he presents himself as just another cultural commentator, needling away at the entertainment biz’ foibles and hypocrisies. What’s his actual critique of those “little girl and boy groups”? They annoy him, and maybe Christina Aguilera slept her way to the top. It’s less Loki, more Perez Hilton.

That’s not to say he’s insincere about his distaste for pop – and certainly much of his audience, his crowd of mini-Shadys, also felt it for real. It’s not even to say he’s unsympathetic – in Popular terms, the allure of “The Real Slim Shady” is much boosted by the relative lulls on either side of it: however gross or lazy this single is in places, it gets points just for sounding alive and motivated. Pop fans – obviously I am one – can be as brittle as anyone about slights to their chosen music, which is often corny, distasteful, exploitative or just idiotic. Nothing could be more shrill and misguided than insisting everyone like that stuff. And in the case of 13- or 14-year old Eminem fans, you might as well ask them to stop watching slasher movies, or trying to score pot off their older brothers. Or wanking. “The Real Slim Shady” is as pure, as toxic and as well-made a shot of teenage exploitation as “Born To Make You Happy” was.

But there’s something else that’s changed since “My Name Is”, too. The point of Slim Shady is that he’s a nihilist, he doesn’t give a fuck what you think. But strip away the cartwheeling delivery and the Dre production – whose simple, jolly bounce is a hook in its own right, and a great example of how Eminem used sound effects to establish and bolster his comic persona – and what do you have left? Behind the jokes, “The Real Slim Shady” is a surprisingly defensive single, giving rather a lot of fucks, and mostly concerned not just with taking down pop’s star system but with establishing Eminem’s counter-arguments and get-out clauses.

These run along familiar lines – real life is just as fucked up as Shady’s raps, and lots of people are thinking or saying privately what he has the balls to say out loud. (He saves the question of whether any great responsibility goes along with this great power for his next number one.) This is a third role for Shady – not psychopathic id, or biz outsider, but a kind of frustrated everytroll, speaking for a silenced mass who express themselves mainly by buying his records. It’s a persona that’s halfway between the political outsider – Slim Farage – and the shock-tactic comedian – Andrew Dice Shady. And not knowing which way it might tip – into comedy or cultural politics or, in Eminem’s case, something more nihilist and personal – is part of the appeal.

It’s an appeal with parallels – you can look forward to Anonymous but also backwards to punk, and this – plus stardom and proficiency – was why Eminem was such critical catnip. “Half of you critics can’t even stomach me” – but the other half adored him, for his volatility, and the sense that here, at last, was a story we hadn’t seen before, one whose ending we didn’t know. Well, we know it now: not just for Eminem, whose peak and slow decline I’ll have to write about in depth, but for Shady, whose blend of psychopath, critic and everyman once seemed dangerously new and now feels exhaustingly, inescapably, familiar.

“Now there’s a million of us just like me who cuss like me who just don’t give a fuck like me who dress like me walk talk and act like me it just might be the next best thing but not quite me!” Fifteen years on, this seems just as true but far less funny. Eminem didn’t invent trolling, or stay good at it for long, but his signature brand of it has thrived in the Internet century. Wreathed in lulz, self-righteous if challenged, somehow bitter about a culture it has a box seat in, vengeful against mothers, lovers, women who have the gall to speak or fuck or simply be noticed. The real Slim Shadys haunt Twitter mentions tabs, newspaper comments boxes, subreddits, social media from YouTube to YikYak, anywhere axes can be ground. Marshall Mathers no more caused our culture than Elvis caused the sexual revolution, but like Elvis he could feel some crackle in the air and he knew how to draw that lightning down through himself. He was hard to ignore, he has become hard to enjoy.

Yesterday I was talking about being in a good mood. Today, I want to talk about something that never fails to make me cry: a story about train that wants to sing in a choir. This is an adjusted version of something I wrote on the old blog almost three years ago.

Not very long ago, in the top left hand corner of Wales, there was a railway. It wasn’t a very long railway or a very important railway, but it was called the The Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited; and it was all there was. And in a shed, in a siding, at the end of the railway lived the locomotive of The Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, which was a long name for a little engine, so his friends just called him Ivor.

Some of you might be unfamiliar with Ivor, the little green locomotive belonging to the Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited. He’s the title character for the first production of Smallfilms, the collaboration between Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin whose later works included Noggin the Nog, Bagpuss and The Clangers. The series began as a series of black-and-white hand-crafted animations for ITV, which was then later made into a series of hand-crafted colour animations for the BBC.

As a child, I knew none of this. In fact, at the time I first encountered Ivor, I don’t think we even had a television. I used to spend all my free time reading and listening to story tapes. One of my favourites was a two-tape box, a double-bill of Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog.

The tapes are no longer around – my mum gave ours to a charity shop, I think, and the best substitute I’ve been able to find is what appears to be a rip of the first story, which can be heard here. The story is a condensed version of the first 6 episodes of the black-and-white BBC series. (until recently, the rest were thought lost, until someone found them in a barn somewhere). It’s about Ivor’s quest to sing with the Grumbley and District Choral Society, after hearing them one evening from the hill overlooking the town singing Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah (my favourite hymn, to this day). There’s a moment when Postgate, with his wonderful resonant voice, is speaking over a beautiful rendition of the song. I find it so profoundly affecting I weep every time I hear it.

Then he heard the singing. Oh! it was lovely singing. It was the Grumbley and District Choral Society, practising in the congregational hall. Ivor listened, and it seemed to him as if the hills and the valleys, the streams and the trees and the gasworks were all singing together, singing their praises to the golden evening sun.

Everything about the stories seems suffused with the ever-so-dreamlike quality that memories of childhood (or, at least, my memories of childhood) seem to possess. There’s no question of realism – you don’t really care that there’s a sentient railway engine, or a dragon called Idris. When they take Ivor to Pontypool Roads to see why he’s not pulling right, after checking for and finding no mechanical defects the chief engineer asks whether they’d “spoken harshly to him, or accused him of something he didn’t do”, and it’s the most natural thing in the world.

It has the rare charm of something made wholly by hand, by people who put something of themselves into the endeavour. Bill Watterson once said of Calvin and Hobbes that he took a particular pride in knowing he’d drawn every little detail and lettered every speech bubble, and I’m fairly sure it’s the same with the Smallfilms team here. Everything from the hand-drawn and animated characters of Jones the Steam, Dai Station and Evans the Song to the chuff-chuff sound that Ivor makes was made by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, and it really couldn’t be any other way.

I remember watching, as a young teenager, the children’s TV episode of arch-cynic Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, and learning of the death of Oliver Postgate. When I listened to the enormous affection with which he talked about all of the Smallfilms productions, I realised they affected him in exactly the same way as they affected me. There’s something about Ivor the Engine which cuts through all the accumulated emotional deadening of years, bypasses my inner critic. Even Doctor Who, my favourite television programme, something I’ve loved for about as long as I can remember, can’t do that. I think it can evince no cynicism because it contains no cynicism – it’s genuine, enthusiastic and lovely from top to bottom, an uncommonly pure viewing experience. There is something special about it. Something magical. They are simple stories about a railway engine who lives in the top-left-hand-corner of Wales. I guarantee it’ll brighten your day. Go, now, listen or watch.

I’m afraid I’ve finally succumbed to The Open Letter. I was originally going to write a post aimed at the people who have spent the last few days trolling the NUS Women’s Conference hashtag, its organisers and participants, or just generally laughing loudly all over the internet, because they (like all NUS conferences have for years) requested the use of British Sign Language applause (“jazz hands”) rather than clapping, due to the impact sudden loud noises can have on people who have anxiety disorders, who are autistic and/or have other sensory processing issues, who are hard of hearing, the list goes on. I was going to write something about how all this mockery is massively ableist and horrible and should not continue. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few days, it’s that there’s little point trying to reason with the aforementioned ableist douchecanoes (some of whom have sadly been fellow disabled people; I’ll get to that later) – most of them are just trolling for the fun of it, quite a few of them seem to just hate activists/students/feminists/women and have taken the opportunity to be awful towards us without giving much thought to why, and all of them are a lot like the horrible school bullies I’m sure you’ll be all too familiar with. I didn’t fancy feeling like I was banging my head against a brick wall anymore, so instead I’m writing to you; disabled people who, this week or otherwise, have been subjected to that sort of treatment for requesting an accommodation abled people aren’t necessarily aware of – so most disabled people, I would imagine.

Bullies (let’s just call them what they are), especially in large numbers, can plant seeds of doubt in our minds and make us question ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I constantly find myself asking close friends for validation against those people. “Am I ridiculous, over-reacting, childish, selfish? Does the fact that I even need to ask you these things just demonstrate that they’re true? You’re nice to my face, but are you all laughing behind my back? Would you laugh at me if one of the adjustments you make for me was instead presented to you out of context on Twitter?” I’m sure I’m not the only one, so I thought I’d try to offer some of that validation to the rest of you.

So: your disability accommodations are valid. You’re not ridiculous or selfish for simply wanting the same level of access and comfort as abled people already get all the time, because the world is designed to meet their needs already. Sure, maybe you’re in a position where you can do without it if and when you have to, but at what cost to you? Abled people don’t have to just deal with it, and neither should we. Anyway, surely making your life easier in a way that doesn’t harm anyone else at all can only be a good thing? Remember that the only reason there’s been such a big fuss in the first place is because abled people are so insistent and and relentless in refusing to even allow a conference they’re not at to make a minor change in hand movement that harms nobody – they are the ones over-reacting. Please keep that in mind; just because they’re so numerous and vocal doesn’t mean that they’re right.

“How do you expect to survive in the real world?”, they might tell you. “You just need to work on your difficulties!” What they don’t know (or wilfully ignore) is that you already are doing that work, more than they could ever know. Society or the “real world” (which, let’s not forget, is a human construct so shouldn’t be accepted as a given) is inaccessible and harmful in a multitude of ways. It is designed to exclude people like us, and even though it often goes un-noticed, you are working your socks off to live and to thrive in it anyway – and again, abled people don’t have to deal with that stuff at all. Most of them genuinely don’t realise this privilege, so it doesn’t occur to them that maybe they could move some of the way towards you. With apologies to Muse, they like to give an inch whilst you give them infinity. It is absolutely not selfish to more evenly distribute some of that load.

To disabled women: I’ve been saddened to see a lot of this ableism and bullying coming from abled feminists, who think that improving accessibility at the NUS Women’s Conference “trivialises feminism” or “makes women look weak”. I’m really sorry about them. I can’t believe this even needs saying, but you are not letting your gender down just by existing. You didn’t create a society which sees women as lesser – men did that. I think feminists really need to work on this ableist (and sexist!) idea that women have to be completely invulnerable, with no concept of emotions or physical or mental health or self-care, just to “earn” the respect that men automatically receive. You’re not trivialising feminism; in fact, by acting like you don’t exist and by holding women to an invincible-machine standard, it’s feminism that’s trivialising you. For what it’s worth, given that you’re facing patriarchy and ableism, and maybe some other oppressions as well, yet you’re still here trying to make a change, I think that if anything, you’re making women look amazing.

Going back to all genders now, I’m also really shocked by how many disabled people are willing to join in, say “but I have *relevant disability* and I don’t need this, they’re being ridiculous” and throw other disabled people under the bus; though maybe I shouldn’t have been, because a few years ago I probably would have been one of those people. Internalised ableism is something I’m still working on. Anyway: your access needs do not make other disabled people “look bad” – that’s based on the assumption that accommodations are a bad thing in the first place, and that assumption comes from abled people, not you. In addition, you are not the reason abled people don’t take disabled people seriously; abled people are the reason that abled people don’t take disabled people seriously. Your disability and related adjustments are not silly, cutesy or made-up just because they don’t match somebody else’s.

Having said that, it’s important to remember that the reverse is also true; other disabilities are not silly, cutesy or made-up just because they don’t match your own. I know it’s tempting to take out your frustrations on other disabled people with access needs you personally have never heard of before, to blame them for “making us look bad” whilst also potentially making yourself seem more “reasonable” and more likely to be taken seriously by abled people (“Look, you can’t call me ableist because this person agrees with me!”) – like I said, I’ve been there too. But the truth is, it’s a lot easier to attack each other than to confront abled people, because of the privilege structures involved. Think about where the structural power lies; it’s abled people and an ableist society that deny and/or ridicule your accommodations, not other disabled people.

Lastly, if it helps, something else I’ve learned this week is that the online trolls are not representative of humanity at large. It may be true that the dominant reaction of abled people to stories like this is confusion and maybe an initial “that’s ridiculous”, but most of the time, it isn’t out of malice but out of genuine ignorance, and that is something that can be changed. In amongst the awfulness of the past few days, I have been pleasantly surprised by how many of my friends took an interest in this, and were willing to listen and learn. Also, whilst it’s sad that this is the case, it seems that most people tend to be more accepting of people they know and interact with offline than of people they just find out about online, if that’s any comfort regarding the “Are my friends laughing at me behind my back?” question. Playground bullies do seem to grow up and follow us out into the world beyond the school gates, but please remember that being powerful doesn’t mean they’re right about you, or that they’re impossible to overcome.

So keep your heads up, keep fighting the good fight however you can… and then, just because it seems to annoy abled people so very much, might I suggest we celebrate with jazz hands?

Tagged: ableism, accommodations, disability, feminism, nus

I took a break from my busy schedule of learning all the reasons you shouldn’t eat bats to attend another local Psychiatry Conference.

This conference consisted of a series of talks about all the most important issues of the day, like ‘The Menace Of Psychologists Being Allowed To Prescribe Medication’, ‘How To Be An Advocate For Important Issues Affecting Your Patients Such As The Possibility That Psychologists Might Be Allowed To Prescribe Them Medication’, and ‘Protecting Members Of Disadvantaged Communities From Psychologists Prescribing Them Medication’.

As somebody who’s noticed that the average waiting list for a desperately ill person to see a psychiatrist is approaching the twelve month mark in some places, I was pretty okay with psychologists prescribing medication. The scare stories about how psychologists might prescribe medications unsafely didn’t have much effect on me, since I continue to believe that putting antidepressants in a vending machine would be a more safety-conscious system than what we have now (a vending machine would at least limit antidepressants to people who have $1.25 in change; the average primary care doctor is nowhere near that selective). Annnnnyway, this made me kind of uncomfortable at the conference and I Struck A Courageous Blow Against The Cartelization Of Medicine by sneaking out without putting my name on their mailing list.

But before I did, I managed to take some notes about what’s going on in the wider psychiatric world, including:

– The newest breakthrough in ensuring schizophrenic people take their medication (a hard problem!) is bundling the pills with an ingestable computer chip that transmits data from the patient’s stomach. It’s a bold plan, somewhat complicated by the fact that one of the most common symptoms of schizophrenia is the paranoid fear that somebody has implanted a chip in your body to monitor you. Can you imagine being a schizophrenic guy who has to explain to your new doctor that your old doctor put computer chips in your pills to monitor you? Yikes. If they go through with this, I hope they publish the results in the form of a sequel to The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

– The same team is working on a smartphone app to detect schizophrenic relapses. The system uses GPS to monitor location, accelerometer to detect movements, and microphone to check tone of voice and speaking pattern, then throws it into a machine learning system that tries to differentiate psychotic from normal behavior (for example, psychotic people might speak faster, or rock back and forth a lot). Again, interesting idea. But again, one of the most common paranoid schizophrenic delusions is that their electronic devices are monitoring everything they do. If you make every one of a psychotic person’s delusions come true, such that they no longer have any beliefs that do not correspond to reality, does that technically mean you’ve cured them? I don’t know, but I’m glad we have people investigating this important issue.

– I’ll come out and say it: cluster randomization is really sketchy. Today I got to hear about a multi-center trial which randomized by location – half of their hospitals were the control group, the other half were the experimental group. Problem is, the patients in each hospital were given group-appropriate consent forms – either “We will be treating you as usual, but monitoring you more closely for a study” or “We will be giving you extra experimental treatment”. Not only does that break blinding, but it implies a different population of patients in each group – the ones willing to consent to monitoring versus the ones willing to consent to treatment? Might sicker people be more willing to sign the treatment consent, since they don’t want to deal with monitoring but treatment offers the chance for personal gain? Might paranoid people be more willing to sign the control consent, since they’re not being used as guinea pigs? I don’t know. But I checked those pre-intervention inter-group comparisons they have to show, and there were big differences between the two groups (for example, I think one – I can’t remember which – had like twice as many black people). Either randomize peopple properly or at least keep people blind to condition.

– On the other hand, I’m quickly losing my prejudice that RCTs always beat naturalistic studies. I’ll write more about this later, but today’s showcase was long-acting injectable versus oral antipsychotics. Conventional wisdom is that long-acting antipsychotics, in the right patient population, decrease relapse because they remove the option of not taking the medication. The best randomized controlled trials don’t find that. The best naturalistic epidemiological studies do. The expert who spoke today theorized – and I agree – that the naturalistic studies are right. He argued that one feature of RCTs is very close monitoring, which means the patients in them comply with their medication at an unnaturally high rate – thus removing the long-acting drugs’ one advantage. The studies conducted in the real world of patients not taking their medications regularly are more relevant.

– They say psychotic people don’t take their meds because they hate the side effects, or because they’re too crazy to know better, or because they just can’t be bothered. But one of the doctors today raised a novel hypothesis: are antipsychotics anti-addictive? After all, some of the most addictive drugs are those that raise dopamine levels – cocaine, meth, and MDMA are all either dopamine releasing agents or dopamine reuptake inhibitors. Antipsychotics have pretty much the opposite effect as those, lowering dopamine in the brain. Suspicious. But I have a feeling this isn’t true. Dopamine is more complicated than that. Levodopa-carbidopa, which is one step short of pure dopamine and is given to dopamine-deficient Parksinson’s patients, is as far as I know not addictive at all. It’s also very clearly antagonistic to antipsychotics. Probably antipsychotics are the opposite of non-addictive levodopa, not the opposite of cocaine or anything. I don’t know how to phrase it more rigorously than that. Still, I like the way that person thinks.

– Ever since Indiana’s legislature debated a bill that implied pi = 4, Midwestern states have had a reputation for trying to legislate science. Maybe this had something to do with the claim by one psychiatry lobbyist that Kansas’ legislature is trying to ban the DSM. I can’t find anything on it online and it sounds like an urban legend to me. Tangentially related silly clickbait: Arizona lawmakers say horses aren’t animals.

– Unintentional puns are some of my favorite puns. I still remember fondly when the head of a psychiatric hospital where I used to work said that if Obamacare passed there would be too many patients and the place would “turn into a madhouse”. I collected another good one today when an activist was talking about gun rights for psychiatric patients: “Taking guns from psychiatric patients isn’t going to be a panacea for violence – would anyone like to take a stab at why?”

– Clozapine really is the best antipsychotic, hands down, and the evidence isn’t even subtle. It’s also the most dangerous, and the rules say that you should only prescribe it to a patient after you’ve tried and failed with two other antipsychotics. One of the speakers was a researcher who’s trying to get a grant to prove that it’s actually more effective to try clozapine after only one failed antipsychotic, but the NIMH rejected his proposal because “even if you proved that, no one would listen”. They’re probably right. A lot of psychiatrists hate clozapine because it’s messy, scary, and requires a lot of paperwork and monitoring. The speaker presented survey after survey of psychiatrists making lame excuses like “My patients wouldn’t want it”, and then survey after survey of those psychiatrists’ patients saying they do so want it but nobody asked them. Clozapine is messy and scary and requires lots of paperwork, but if you’re a good doctor you’ll give your patient the drug that will help them anyway.

– The APA representative says that 95% of candidates supported by the APA’s PAC get elected. I think it was supposed to be a boast, like “look how effective we are”, but that’s a bit much. Either the APA single-handedly controls all American politics, or else they’re very careful to always back the winning side. Properly understood, that number should probably be taken as a measure of exactly how cynical they are.

– Not that they didn’t admit their cynicism straight out. Our Political Activism Consultant explained that state legislators are all sorta new and confused and inexperienced all the time because of term limits. And if you put on a nice suit and a tie and tell them “Hey, I’m a doctor from your district, here’s how you need to do health care policy…” you have a pretty good chance of getting them to nod along and assume you know what you’re doing. I didn’t realize how easy this was, and I hope I never use this power for evil.

– This is basically how the Eternal War Against Psychologists Being Allowed To Prescribe Medications is being fought, but the psychologists have caught on and now they have nice suits and ties too. Also, it turns out senators have a hard time differentiating the APA (American Psychiatric Association, fighting tooth and claw against psychologist prescribers) from the APA (American Psychological Association, fighting tooth and claw for psychologist prescribers) and they end up freaking out and trying to figure out why the same people are lobbying for both sides and whether this is some kind of weird shrink mind game thing.

– Drug companies were giving out stress brains! Like stress balls, only they’re shaped like brains and have little sulci and gyri on them! If in ten years I’m one of those people who never prescribes clozapine, it’ll because I’m prescribing the drug by the company that gave me a stress brain instead.

After all, they’re a modern, progressive and liberal party, the party of the metropolitan elite, the one with all the forward-thinking ideas. A truly internationalist party you might say, one that looks outward to the world and has a positive attitude towards it…

They’re also the party that will sell you this:

I wonder how many Ed Miliband’s bought for his family?

This is possibly my favourite trailer for anything ever. It still makes me quite excited to watch, even today. Though I haven’t seen it since it was first broadcast, I can still remember all the words perfectly. Ghosts from the past, aliens from the future…

Doctor Who (2005-) first aired 10 years ago. I was 11, which meant that I got to have actual childish excitement. Having been introduced to Doctor Who by way of a CD of Genesis of the Daleks several years earlier and consumed all the novels in the local library system and all the Big Finish audios I could persuade my parents to get me, its return was pretty much the most exciting thing I could possibly imagine. A friend’s mother was concerned that I might be crushed by disappointment if it wasn’t good.

But it was good. Very good. It bore little immediate resemblance to what had preceded it, of course – but then it had to be different. And yet, in some ways it wasn’t all that dissimilar to what had gone before. The obvious point that I guess every columnist must have made at the time: a show which has at its core a character who has the ability to renew himself, altering appearance, mannerisms, aspects of personality, while remaining the same, had pulled the same trick itself. Change, my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon.

Comrade Josef has written about how new Doctor Who isn’t actually Doctor Who – I’ve said as much myself, on occasion – and I’ve tried to write things in the recent past, reaching toward some kind of Grand Unified Theory of Doctor Who. Really, though, I think that’s missing the point. Doctor Who is vast, and can encompass almost anything. Trying to define too narrowly what it is or should be fails to acknowledge that. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. New Doctor Who has been both¹, but for all that, I think, more good than bad (even taking into account that damn fez).

I’d still say, ultimately, that Doctor Who is my favourite show (and fictional universe), with relatively few caveats. It’s a shambolic mess of ideas and a mishmash patchwork of sensibilities built up over its 50 years on and off air, but it can still bring joy to my heart like few other things. For all the time I’ve spent over the last 10 years laying into it, I still love it. It’s still the trip of a lifetime.

Oh, also, on April 3^rd I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). You can find out more here.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).