And Still I Want

I was watching primary coverage last night because it amuses me to no end how Hillary Clinton can come up with a new argument each time it becomes more mathematically impossible for her to win. She’s leading in the popular vote now!*

*That is if you don’t count the caucus states, and you include Florida which everyone (including her) agreed at the beginning of the process wouldn’t count, and you include Michigan that is the same as Florida with additional bullet the Obama wasn’t even on the ballot.

Amazing. I can’t wait until she bolsters her popular vote count with Puerto Rico whose voters don’t even get a say in the general election.

The thing that really bothered me though is the Kentucky results and the West Virginia results last week. Something like 20% of the “white working class” people who voted for Clinton admitted that race was the determining factor in their vote. That’s unbelievable. Not only the fact that these racists would admit they are racist, but also the fact that you know that percentage is actually higher because most people don’t want to admit to another human being they are racist.

Clinton just panders to these assholes, touting how she connects with hard working white people. Then she has the audacity to complain about how sexism has hurt her campaign. Don’t pull that shit when you’re quietly accepting the help of racism.

The Republican’s aren’t going to get their wish. Obama is going to win. They won’t have a figurehead to hate; they’ll have to somehow combat a message of hope and positive change.

The Silence is Deafening

One of the advantages to working for a manufacturing company with like 90,000 employees is that we have staff patent attorneys. Apparently we don’t want to pay $166,000 a year for ones who are fresh out of college working for law firms to defend our intellectual property. I didn’t speak directly with one, but I spoke with an engineer I know who was contemplating becoming a patent attorney. He spoke with one who was fresh out of law school, just started at Opposite of Dog as a patent attorney. His starting wage, in 1999 was 80K. So, there’s another data point suggesting Rakhi is blowing smoke up our asses.

This must be how Barack Obama feels, having (almost certainly) defeated a woman who is out of touch with the reality of how numbers are handled on a practical basis, and who’s sense of entitlement makes her say whatever she can to win. (Maybe that was too far, but it’s so easy when you know what will set a person off.)

Anyway, back to the Gonzo Engineering, sort of. I’ll probably continue to make inappropriate remarks until the dead horse is fully beaten since it will be impossible for them not to check back and gnash their teeth.

I attended a celebration / thank you meeting at work. The D7E was shown to the public at Con-Expo this year a few months ago. It was kind of a big deal. It’s the first electric drive track-type tractor. With the Green focus nearly everyone has lately combined with the rising cost of fuel, it made a huge splash at the convention.

Why does this matter? I designed the cooling system, and air intake and exhaust system on it. The technical manager mentioned something about the fact that we are leaving a legacy by working on this machine.

It got me thinking about success (since we were talking about success and what defines it in our previous discussion), and what matters, if anything, about leaving a legacy.

In The Denial of Death, by Becker, he says that everyone has a little project they work on throughout their life in order to cheat death and leave something behind that will last. This can be their work, or their family, or some sort of conquest, or whatever. Something that will shine on after they are in the ground.

I’ve mentioned before that it doesn’t really matter what you do in life, eventually the sun will engulf the earth, and eventually all energy in the universe will be used up and it will just be this cold dark place.

It’s kind of depressing. So in a few trillion years will it really matter that I designed part of this cool dozer, not really. If you dwell on that you’ll just end up being a Nihilist though.

So what makes me successful and what’s my little legacy project.

I think number one, the big one, the most important measure of this man, is how many naked women I have tattooed on me. I’m at four! That’s eight breasts, and four vaginas. Although I’m not sure what’s going on downstairs on the mermaid. (Again, it’s just too easy.)

I’ve never really cared what I do for work. The only reason I took this job was it paid the most, and it wasn’t a company that made things that kill people (expect those bulldozers we sold to the United States government who then gave them to Israel, but I’m not a believer in guilt by association) or something stupid like garbage cans. I work to make money so I can do fun things outside of work, and now so that my kids have clothes and food.

I’m don’t think I’m going to discover anything or get a statue erected in my honor for humanitarian work or great leadership.

Although maybe when I magically have time or money I’ll be able to refine my tattoo machine.

I also think I’m passed my prime to play any better than Peoria Men’s B-league hockey, so no sports glory.

I certainly won’t have millions of dollars to pass on, unless I become a war profiteer and then have a guilty conscious and start a peace prize.

I suppose my piece of immortality and my legacy will be my two little dudes (the littlest of which is starting to get his weight up!), and any success or children they have and their success. My genes will continue on.


In the end, just like Huey P. Newton (Or what Spike Lee made Huey P. Newton say in a movie), I’m just trying to laugh at all the funny things that happen on the way to the grave.

This response deserves a whole new post.

Rakhi seems to think that people who read my blog want to hear everything she has to say. They don't, so I save them from the foaming at the mouth rants (and that's all they are Steve, don't be pensive. Just add blah blah blah you're an ass blah blah blah your petty blah blah blah) and respond to the things I think are relevant to the discussion we're having.

She didn't like that 5 different people WHO HAVE CHILDREN and a decade old study agree with my opinion, so she went and posted again in our long debate. I'll again only respond to what I find relevant.

...I make double what he does, had a higher GPA in undergrad, and got a higher ACT score. I think its ridiculous that he needs to know this information about me because he thinks they are adequate measures of intelligence, success, etc. But he does. And that makes me giggle. A lot...

So perhaps I should have left him to his own devices to reconcile his ego in view of losing an argument with, among others, a geneticist Ph.D. candidate regarding genetics, telling her what acceptable scientific data is, and then looking for validation regarding developmental biology with a mechanical engineer and people who read his blog.

The mechanical engineer I consulted has children, unlike your mechanical engineering degree and expertise with your two year old niece.

That makes me giggle. Like a little girl wearing a ballet dress I can't resist putting on due to my hormones. You may have a piece of paper saying you have a degree in mechanical engineering, but that doesn't mean a damn thing. You probably realized you'd be a half ass engineer and would be better off doing something that is a huge drag on society.

You know what else makes me giggle? How on your profile page it says you understand the design process due to your undergrad work. That's a big fucking joke. Because if you did, you'd know that the design process is driven by facts and data, and in your latest retort, you say of course I make double what he does, and had a higher GPA after getting my undergrad, and had a higher ACT score. I told you numbers. Hard cold numbers.

You'd be a shit engineer, but you must be the best fucking first year patent attorney ever because everywhere I looked:

here

here

and here for example

there's no way in hell a small law firm like the one you work for is paying you $166K right out of the box. Maybe you do make more than me, but quit lying about making double, having just finished law school in 2007 and is admitted in Illinois only. (Whatever that means? They can pay you less?)

Also, let me know what you undergrad GPA was and ACT score was, be a proud strong woman who's better than this arrogant man , or is it hard to write down lies?

Facts and data, facts and data.

Which I still have yet to see about little boys and little girls tending to gravitate towards their gender specific toys being purely social. I just keep finding more people that agree with me that actually have first hand experience with children.

I feel kind of dirty

I was in one of those online mudslinging debates with a bunch of angry feminists.

I preface this by saying my wife would identify herself as a feminist. She’s made a choice that I think these angry feminists would abhor. She’s decided to get married, have children, and stay at home with them while they are young. (The horror!) My boss at work is an intelligent, strong woman who has the respect of her piers. The validation engineer, whom I go to for advice on testing is also a woman engineer, also intelligent and well respected. When I come to her seeking advice she takes the time to have a thoughtful discussion with me, free of personal attacks and thinking every word that comes out of my mouth is an attempt to show my male dominance over her.

I share in the housework; regardless of what it’s gender roll is considered. I also take an active role in raising our children. I cook dinner every night because I like to.

It turns out I’m a closet sexist.

Why?

I made the assertion that based on observing my son, and many other young children at our Attachment Parenting functions that very young children have a hard-wired propensity to play with gender specific toys.

Carter likes trucks and cars. He doesn’t like baby dolls.

I was met with rude personal attacks on my intelligence level and claims of being an “armchair scientist” and a sexist.

I never said that girls and boys CAN’T or SHOULDN’T or WON’T EVER play with opposing genders toys. I simply said they tend to gravitate to those toys and a certain type of play.

I was initially wrong in thinking that it was due to instincts from when we were uncivilized monkey men living to survive. It turns out that it’s actually hormonal, and studies were done that supported this, although I found them in an undergrad text (how yucky and common).

They disregarded these decade old studies and sited a study not specifically looking at children’s play and propensity to toy choosing, simply on hormones creating both boy and girl behavior in both sexes. I’m sure that study is true. It still doesn’t address my point. Carter wanted to dress and carry around a doll for about 2 days after Oz was born, but he was right back to the trucks and cars after he lost interest in the baby. I guess the rampant sexism in Sesame Street has thwarted our parenting attempts to let him play with any toys he wants.

I was then told that raising kids gives you no special knowledge.

The responsibility for another human being’s life doesn’t teach you anything, or give you any special insight into the human condition.

So I thought maybe I was crazy and I spoke to my validation engineer who has 3 kids, 2 boys and a girl. She was a successful woman. Did she see the same things as sexist Lawryde?

I asked her about it cold, without prefacing her to my debate. She agreed that her boys gravitate to boy toys and a rough type of play. I asked her if she thought it was a social thing or if it was just the way they were.

She thought it was just the way they were. I said, well are you sure that television and your parents and how you treat them doesn’t affect it. She said it would have some affect, WHICH I AGREE WITH. I talked to her about those first moments when they were just starting to choose what they like (around 1.5 years and 2) and asked her if they just kind of gravitated towards gender specific toys. She agreed and agreed that social factors would be almost non-existent at that point. We have different parenting styles so now I have a sample size of two with the same results and 10-year-old research that backs me up.

I then told her about my debate with these immature (still in school or just starting their real adult lives, no kids of their own, not responsible for anyone but themselves, but experts on child development, can’t see the forest for the trees, full of advanced degrees and debt from going to school but no idea how practical things work, knowing everything about me and my typical feminist thoughts, enlarge clitoris’ and labia that look like balls due to high androgen hormone levels during gestation, not understanding respect is something that is earned not implied, mad that I was, by all standard measures, smarter than all of them in high school and now make more money than they do and I’m happy with my loving beautiful family, should be wondering if maybe it’s not that I’m facing sexism on a daily basis, but that really I’m just a big fucking jerk and a terrible excuse for a human being.) (Was that just immature of me? Fuck it. This is my corner of the internet.) girls I knew from high school who were convinced that only social factors affect toy choice in children. She said that before she had kids she had some of the same thoughts, but after having both boys and girls she sees things differently.

The angry feminist will be talking about me now, because that’s what women do. Emails and text messages and phone calls. “Oh, my God. Look what Lawryde wrote. What a sexist asshole!” “He’s so predictable and stupid and his children are going to grow up objectifying women and raping goats.” “We’re so right, and so awesome and so much smarter and better than him.” “Yay, Us!”

I’m sad, it also looks like I lost a facebook friend. (Tear)

I feel clean now.

Full Text of Debate

And I think the modern philosopher Kanye West put it best: