DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "New Orleans and Ground Zero" (with 4 Seavey articles)

One last time before fissioning into two separate, mighty entities, Jinx and the Lolita Bar Debates I host summon you (and suggest those who receive these e-mails only via the Jinx Yahoo list, with “[jinxlist]” at the start of the subject header, e-mail me to be on the henceforth separate debate e-list), especially interested Louisianans and urban explorers:

Wed., Dec. 6 (8pm), join a discussion of ruination and rebuilding in New Orleans and at Ground Zero in Manhattan, moderated by Michel Evanchik and featuring:

–Science and medical writer Marilynn Larkin on the topic of evacuation and disaster preparedness

–New Orleans native, writer, and Epicurious editor Jolene Bouchon on Katrina vs. her family

–Proof Magazine editor Stephen Davis on his vision for making Ground Zero usable again

That’s 12/6 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita Bar (free admission, cash bar), 266 Broome St. (at Allen St.) on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. Subway stop.

Those who can’t join us might still enjoy an old piece I did for Proof about Rawhide Kid, by the way:

http://www.proofmagazine.com/e01_comics.html

And check out these new articles I wrote (three with the help of the Phillips Foundation) on (1) superheroes and eugenics (and kicking the comic-collecting habit at last), (2) crazed primates, (3) the real depth of the problem of trying to limit government, (4) and — in keeping with the theme of our 12/6 event — Ground Zero and architectural good taste:

http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=485_0_2_0_M

http://radaronline.com/features/2006/11/monkey_menace.php

“Does Anybody Really Know How to Limit Government?”

http://reason.com/news/show/116813.html

You may have seen some of these if you’ve checked out the still-skeletal http://ToddSeavey.com — which will be magically transformed into the real blog it always dreamt of being by New Year’s (when 2007 ushers in more debates, real blogging, and more monthly bar gatherings — separate from and unrelated to the ones described above — at McGee’s for any interested non-left media folk not already signed up for those). In the meantime, happy Festivus and happy Chrismukkah, and by all means check out Allen Salkin’s year-old book and Gersh Kuntzman’s brand-new book (respectively) on those quasi-real holidays.

P.S. If you’re a family of avid Star Wars collectors, you are wanted for participation in an ABC primetime reality series (with actual money), so e-mail tara.fogarty[at]rdfUSA.com if you’re interested.

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

Book Selection of the Month: “Thrill of the Chaste” by Dawn Eden/“A Christmas Caroline” by Kyle Smith

ToddSeavey.com Book Selections of the Month (December 2006):

Thrill of the Chaste by Dawn Eden

Science- and econ-loving guy that I am, I wouldn’t normally plug a book (aimed at Christian women) about how to avoid premarital sex while navigating the modern dating scene, but it just so happens an ex-girlfriend of mine wrote this and devoted a section to her failed attempt to sustain a relationship with an atheist boyfriend she calls “Tom” but who is actually called “Todd Seavey” (and indeed, I suggested that she use my real name so that I can get proper credit for my work, but at least some of you now know the truth, or at least that paltry portion of it given to the mind of mortal man to know, etc., etc.). [UPDATE: Dawn was one of our January debaters at Lolita Bar, up against former Salon.com sex columnist and author of I Love You, Let's Meet, Virginia Vitzthum.]

For a decidedly more cynical and materialistic take on New York-area singles life, though, the ladies might also want to buy:

A Christmas Caroline by Kyle Smith

As far as I know, I did not inspire any of the characters in this Manhattan-centered, fashion-crazed humorous retelling of the Dickens tale, but let the record show that the joke about childbirth being like something out of the movie Alien, from Kyle’s previous novel, Love Monkey (later turned into the short-lived sitcom by the same name), was my idea (and indeed was previously used by me in the campus comedy publication called the Brown Film Bulletin, back in my college days).

Book Selection of the Month: "Natural Right and History" by Leo Strauss

Let me now unveil the first-ever ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (for November 2006), namely:

Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss

That’s right, it’s the neocons’ bible (well, not counting the Bible), and what better time for me to read it than now, when, some would argue, this book has led by a circuitous, fifty-three-year route to the defeat of conservatism at the polls?

Leo Strauss was a mid-century intellectual historian and philosopher who stressed the idea that intellectuals have a duty to shore up public morals by respecting timeless ethical principles — even when those same intellectuals, at least since Machiavelli, have been wracked by doubts about whether any rational proof can ultimately be offered for the validity of those principles. Nietzsche may have been onto something with his claims that morals are a sort of fiction that can be cast aside like other taboos, but it would be bad sociology — with decidedly non-utilitarian consequences — to go around telling people that. There might be riots in the streets, or at the very least students in our colleges who can’t see any moral reason to prefer the U.S. to totalitarian Russia or Nazi Germany.

Strauss’s admirers, sometimes called Straussians, have been described as secretive — even deceptive — in the past, since they admit the possibility of the existence of a philosophical elite who can safely discuss ideas that might be dangerous in the hands of the masses. By now, though, I think it’s safe to say that everyone who cares knows roughly what the Straussians think, so there’s no ongoing need for hushed tones or secret handshakes.

I openly admit that my own political thinking was shaped at an early stage by Straussianism, via the book The Closing of the American Mind by Strauss’s student, Allan Bloom. Condemning moral relativism on college campuses, the book seemed to me (in 1987, when it came out) like a perfect description of my experiences as a moderately conservative but fairly apolitical freshman at the Marxist/feminist/relativist morass that was Brown University, at a time when a conservative president was being raked over the coals by a Democratic Congress conducting investigations into his efforts to topple a foreign government (Nicaragua’s, to be specific, and I see that nineteen years later, Nicaraguan democracy has made Daniel Ortega president again, which does not, of course, necessarily mean it was wrong for Reagan to try toppling him when he was a communist dictator there; and if today looks just a tiny bit like 1987, it’s not a bad time for me to dip back into Straussianism, this time by reading the real deal instead of Bloom). I was a bit hesitant, though, to embrace Bloom’s condemnation of rock music as “hymns to onanism and mother-killing,” so I guess I have always been a moderate at heart (or at least a New Wave fan).

The left, in recent years, would have you believe that Strauss’s emphasis on simple moral rules, the universality and absolutism of those rules, and the appropriateness of glossing over residual doubts about those rules, led inevitably to Bush “lying us into war” in order to remake the world according to simplistic Western moral standards — neoconservatism as crusading extremism.

The truth is, as usual, much more complicated, with Strauss’s main real legacy perhaps being the introduction of sociological concerns (such as the connection between prevailing ethics and crime rates) and sociological methodology into conservative thinking, though the original batch of “neoconservatives” who promulgated these ideas in the 60s and 70s (neo because they had come to see their own former liberalism as inadequate for dealing with many moral and social issues) were also hawkish and no doubt pushed the conservative movement as a whole toward becoming a bit more comfortable with big government thinking (and social engineering schemes, albeit with a conservative flavor), something that I can only hope will now wane again. (In some ways, the early, sociological neocon writings bear less resemblance to fundamentalist or nationalist/militarist tracts than they do to pragmatic good-governance books like, say, Ted Balaker and Sam Staley’s The Road More Traveled.)

I do not mean to dismiss Strauss’s legacy as a defender of moral absolutes against the darkness and chaos of relativism, though. I love Nietzsche as much as the next guy, but — well, actually, I think one of my greatest public failures resulted in part from not loving Nietzsche as much as the next guy, one night when that next guy was author and “urban explorer” L.B. Deyo (he now runs a debate series in Austin, TX under the name the Dionysium, a name Nietzsche would appreciate). L.B. co-founded (with Lefty Leibowitz) the monthly debates I now host at Lolita Bar in Manhattan, and since L.B. loves to defend extreme positions, he never won one of the debates (according to the audience votes) until defeating me on the question of whether morality is objective or subjective. He convinced the audience it is downright unscientific to think that some mysterious, unquantifiable yet objective standard for morals can be found — even though L.B. is in many ways more conservative than I am. I argued in vain that utilitarianism, with its rootedness in real-world suffering and pleasure, is grounds for generating non-whimsical moral generalizations.

I still think L.B.’s position on this issue, if widely held, would lead to carnage in the streets (if morality is subjective whim, why not run amok when it’s convenient to do so, if you can train yourself to overcome inherited moral taboos and guilty feelings?). I will keep that fear in mind while brooding over my copy of Natural Right and History. Strauss shares my concerns, even if he isn’t America’s favorite intellectual at this point in time.

If roundabout, intellectualized moralism isn’t pure enough stuff for you, though, you could always stop listening to agnostic folk like Strauss and atheists like me and instead read the first of the two ToddSeavey.com Book Selection(s) of the Month for December.

A Brief Reflection on Congress

Let us hope America (like our December Lolita Bar debate crowd) is in a mood to talk about rebuilding and repairing — rather than vengeance — after the close and hard-fought midterm elections. The world doesn’t really need more combative ideologues.

As political scientists predicted decades ago, that approach seems to have brought us to approximately 50/50 deadlock, whether in places like the U.S. with two major parties or places like Germany with multi-party coalitions that still end up at parity. Regardless of ostensible philosophical differences, this is about what you would expect over time from competing political groups each trying to get just-slightly-more-than-half of available votes, shifting their issues and rhetoric as needed. Mundane, unidealistic observations like this one are going to have to be taken into account if we honestly hope to get past the impasse instead of just wallowing in the endless sparring, something only a tiny, twisted portion of the population finds truly fun.

The bright side of the ongoing deadlock — and specifically of the U.S.’s divided government — is that it may lead to less spending and fewer foolhardy ventures than a unified, one-party government. That would constitute something of a libertarian/fiscal-conservative victory by default. I hope there are some on the left who find it impressive, by the way, that so many conservative and libertarian writers (and voters), prior to the ’06 election, sounded so willing to see “their” candidates lose if it produced a more humble, gridlocked government. Preferring to give up power rather than see it abused is an admirable trait, and one that I wish the left and government generally would emulate.

So, as a person who has in the past identified as a libertarian and sympathized with the right (to the extent the right ostensibly favored libertarian, free-market goals such as budget cuts and tax cuts), do I consider the ’06 elections a disaster? I think the results were not so much a disaster as a final verdict on a disaster that started eleven years ago, when the ’94 Republican “Revolution” was only a year old and the impasse between Clinton and a Gingrich-led, budget-restraining Congress led to a partial government shutdown, then a Republican dip in the polls, and then the complete abandonment by the Republicans of any further attempt to limit spending or limit the accumulation of government power. Subsequent arrogance on military and religious issues, during the Bush presidency, just continued the trend away from conservative self-restraint.

Will conservatives learn anything from their losses in ’06? Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. It’s not clear that they were punished for their specific policy positions so much as for fumbling each of the major policy issues they took on. It’s not clear, as far as I can tell, that Americans have a strong position one way or the other on budget-cutting, democratizing the Middle East, using government to promulgate religious values, federalizing disaster relief, privatizing Social Security, subsidizing prescription drugs, or altering immigration — but for electoral purposes, if you take on issues that big, something decisive had better come out of it, even if it ain’t right.

On each of these issues, I fear each conservative faction can still argue that the fumble wasn’t its fault but the fault of some other faction, with few solid conclusions being drawn or lessons learned as a result. For instance, paleoconservatives were outraged at Bush’s market-oriented immigration reform plans, but given the poor performance by hardcore anti-immigrationists in the elections, it’s not clear Americans who are frustrated by immigration issues want to adopt the border-closing paleo solution. Similarly, libertarians and fiscal conservatives were so outraged over Republican spending that many didn’t vote Republican this time out — or didn’t vote at all, in the case of many stubborn/principled libertarians — but Karl Rove and others make a plausible, albeit disturbing, case that the voters want spending and that big spending usually helps Republicans win in closely-contested districts. Meanwhile, religious conservatives excoriate Republican deviations from theocratic orthodoxy, but Republicans can’t get much more religious without alienating America’s vast secularist population even further. And the prowar Republicans, even after the stinging rebuke of ’06, can argue with some plausibility that it was the U.S.’s bureaucratic (often near-socialistic) post-Saddam management of Iraq, which created time for the insurgency to gain legitimacy and kill more people, that soured Americans on the war — not the initial toppling of Saddam’s regime, nor even the vilified neoconservative philosophy ostensibly behind that effort.

Will anyone on the right (or among libertarians, to the extent they failed to get out the message on Social Security and Bush’s “Ownership Society” plans when they had the chance) actually come away from ’06 saying, “This was partly my fault, and I may need to radically rethink my whole philosophy, not just hire a better PR team?” Perhaps we deserve, at the very least, to go through the next couple years without hearing one arrogant word from any of the Bush-era conservative factions. We should see less triumphalism on the Corner, as it were, and more time standing in the corner.

How I Spent Election Night 2006

I spent the night of the ’06 elections making my way up Manhattan’s East Side, stopping by four different Republican parties — at least two that had been perfunctorily and overoptimistically billed as “victory” parties — shaking hands with losing New York state senate candidate Dan Russo, watching Jeanine Piro give her depressingly generic concession speech after her defeat in the state attorney general race by the tough and demagogic Andrew Cuomo, eating some free pasta after a nice thank-you speech to supporters by losing state senate candidate Philip Pidot (like old Justice League villains, all the partying Republican candidates that night seemed to have had names ending in an “oh” sound), and arriving at the Metropolitan Republican Club just in time to watch the last few people present react glumly to TV coverage of the election results, before finally walking a few blocks to home. It is healthy, at least, that I encountered few people engaged in the usual old Democrat-bashing boosterism and giddy praise for the home team, so I suspect the Republicans will at least be doing some serious self-examination, even if they don’t always reach the right conclusions.

One optimistic note: when I finally got home, I saw a tired and chastened-looking John McCain on CBS, quietly and forlornly repeating his conclusion that Republicans were punished in large part for straying from the reformist principles of ’94. I don’t know if that’s precisely accurate — it may have just been the public’s weariness with the war — but this comment was an early indication that McCain may run for president in 2008 on a Contract-with-America-like, budget-cutting, reformist platform. If either he or Giuliani defeat New York Sen. Hillary Clinton (or whoever it may be) in ’08 with a perceived mandate for budget-cutting, government downsizing, and tax cuts, my patience will not have been in vain. If all those issues fall by the wayside, on the other hand, it may be time to start voting party-line Libertarian in ’08, so I can at least lose with dignity in the future.

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR on "What the Election Results Mean"

Wednesday, Nov. 8, join a free-for-all discussion of “What the Election Results Mean” and what happens next, featuring (Rockefeller-Republican blogger) Jonathan Funke, (Democratic activist) Dvd Avins, and anyone from any faction who’d care to join our audience — and be heard.

(NOTE: We’re not gathering the first Wednesday of the month this time but rather the day after the midterm elections.)

11/8, 8pm at Lolita Bar, 266 Broome St. at Allen St., Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop (free admission, cash bar).

Hosted by Todd Seavey, moderated by Michel Evanchik.

AND here’s a special advance appeal for the gathering after that, on Dec. 6: we’re fissioning the Lolita Bar Debates and the Jinx Athenaeum into two separate entities, with the debates still happening once a month and covering myriad political and philosophical topics, while occasional Athenaeum gatherings will focus primarily on “urban exploration.”

BUT we’ll combine the two areas in a sort of pre-fission showdown on Dec. 6, as we hear from a panel of people who’ve explored or lived in New Orleans and people with anecdotes from, or visions for the rebuilding of, Ground Zero in NYC. If you have a NOLA or WTC story to tell, please e-mail me about being one of our speakers.

FINALLY, two items for those who can’t make it to NYC, starting (just in time for Halloween) with a brilliant rock video (pointed out to me by Boston architect David Whitney) by the guitarist Buckethead, using animated Hieronymus Bosch paintings of Hell. This proves that Satanic-looking rock videos need not be oblivious to art history (and Buckethead should know what time in Hell is like after working with Axl Rose on the infamous, perpetually-unfinished album Chinese Democracy; China may well be a democracy — and Guns N’ Roses may well have more members of Psychedelic Furs in its lineup than original G N’ R members — by the time the album comes out):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqynU83F4wM

But if visions of Hell aren’t your bag (and indeed, some of the images in the Buckethead video are almost as dreamlike and bizarre as the later Narnia novels, which are themselves like a cross between Davey and Goliath and a Salvador Dali painting, I’m realizing as I reread them), here’s a far more silly, great video of wacky kittens (best experienced with the distracting soundtrack off, which some philistines might feel is also true of Buckethead):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BHJ9eUkjWgY
(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Do Celebrities Have a Right to Privacy?"

It’s a special JINX/RLC/IHS combo-event Wed., Oct. 4 (at 8pm) as the monthly debate run by the (non-partisan) Jinx Society is hybridized with a gathering for all New York-area libertarians — and the whole thing is timed to coincide with the New York Film Festival.

It’s two levels of intellectual adventure at Lolita Bar on the northeast corner of Broome St. and Allen St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (one block south, three west of the Delancey St. subway stop), as downstairs sees a debate between actress/blogger Jill Friedman (http://meandmyredstapler.blogspot.com) and comedienne Jen Dziura (http://JenIsFamous.com) on the question “Do Celebrities Have a Right to Privacy?” (moderated by Michel Evanchik and hosted by Todd Seavey), while upstairs sees a gathering to chat about principles and pragmatism one month before the mid-term elections, organized by the Republican Liberty Caucus. Fueling it all (for those over twenty-one), the $500 worth of free alcohol (be sure to pick up your Jinx drinx tix) made possible by the support of the Institute for Humane Studies. That means IHS alums are especially welcome, including those with a special interest in media.

Indeed, people wishing to combine the film, liberty, and debate aspects of the evening might want to chew on this question: since Variety reports (http://www.variety.com/VR1117950446.html) that Angelina Jolie has now been confirmed to play the lead in a movie version of Ayn Rand’s libertarian novel Atlas Shrugged, will Jolie see the irony in playing a defender of liberty when in real life she recently encouraged press censorship in Namibia? And will she draw upon her experience as part of a torrid real-life love triangle to make the plot of Atlas seem more vibrant?

If Jolie is a hit as a laissez-faire capitalist Rand character, perhaps other A-list actors will soon want to consider playing one of these Fifteen Richest Fictional Characters, compiled by Forbes.
Speaking of Rand-influenced creative types, here, at long last, is comic book creator Frank Miller (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Give Me Liberty, Sin City) on NPR discussing how 9/11 boosted his patriotism (would that the thuggish Hugo Chavez had waved a copy of Sin City instead of Chomsky at the U.N.):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5784518

Speaking of comic books, at ACSH we could still use a cartoonist for an assignment illustrating shortcomings of radical environmentalism, if you know anyone interested.

And speaking of 9/11, here are two articles by me about two of the less-often discussed aspects of that terrible day:

Health:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1635/

Architecture (this one, made possible by the Phillips Foundation, will also appear in the December cover-dated issue of Reason magazine):

http://www.reason.com/hod/ts091106.shtml

And speaking of Reason, note that my friend Ted Balaker from the Reason Foundation has a book out about how to end traffic congestion and why you aren’t fully free if you can’t get where you want to go.

Meanwhile, Christine Whelan (who should really bring all of her friends from the group Lead 21 to the Oct. 4 event mentioned above) has a book out about Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women (as I intend to if I can find one who’s sane, finds me attractive, and definitely doesn’t want children):

http://whysmartmenmarrysmartwomen.com/

No word yet on whether Christine’s next book will broach the more taboo topic Why Really, Really Smart Men Run Up Against the Troubling Statistical Fact That High-IQ Males Are More Common Than High-IQ Females (Just as Low-IQ Males Are More Common Than Low-IQ Females, Since Female IQs Tend to Bunch Up Closer to the Average, the Male Bell Curve Having Longer “Tails” and Thus Both More Geniuses and More Idiots), Making Really Smart Women a Very, Very Hot Commodity Though You Wouldn’t Know It from the Complaining Some of Them Do, but there’s only so much she can cover in one book, and she’s already put years of research into this one, so check it out.

And if you’re a smart nerd who’s lonely and you have a lot of spare time on your hands, you might want to spend some of it reading my all-time favorite comic book miniseries, now available online. Behold the Michael Moorcock-influenced and Grant Morrison-influencing Adventures of Luther Arkwright (for less than ten bucks). Created two decades ago but still cutting-edge, it’s like Doctor Who + Crisis on Infinite Earths + David Bowie, which is to say, nearly perfect and very much the sort of comic I’d want to do myself someday if I delved back into the business.

P.S. One more thing smart people of all stripes might want to consider doing with their spare time is participating in another special Jinx event (I’m not saying it’s more special than the Oct. 4 one described above, but come to both and see what you think) taking place Nov. 8 — on that day, we’ll meet on the second Wednesday of the month instead of our traditional first Wednesday, so that a panel of politically-diverse folk can give their reactions to something that will have happened the day before, namely, the potentially epochal mid-term elections.

If you’d like to represent your political “faction” (we’ll have just one from each, as defined by me) in a panel discussion on “What Do the Election Results Mean?” — and you have the guts to wing it a bit, since of course you won’t actually know what the results are until the night before the discussion — let me know and maybe we can use you.

In the meantime: see you Oct. 4.

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Was Israel Right to Invade Lebanon?"

Jonathan Leaf and Richard Ryan debate the question “Was Israel Right to Invade Lebanon?” (with Michel “The Brain” Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at next week’s Jinx Athenaeum, Wednesday, Sept. 6 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission, cash bar, a.c.) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop. (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.)

It seems a fitting time to do a Middle East topic, with the fifth anniversary of 9/11 looming. Jacob Levy tells me that a novel has been written about irony-obsessed, thirtysomething writers and editors who went to Brown and now live in NYC coping ineptly with 9/11, so I may have to read it. Here’s the 8/27/06 NYT review.

On a somewhat related note, http://Radosh.net recently noted this fine cartoon about the conflict between science and religion:

http://thepaincomics.com/weekly041229.htm

By the way, if YOU are a cartoonist fond of science — and thus not overly fond of environmentalists — let me know, as ACSH may have some work for you illustrating a book on environmental controversies.

(And if you’re a non-leftist media/creative type who wants to be on a separate e-list for the monthly Manhattan Project bar gatherings and aren’t already, let me know — you might meet luminaries like Ryan Sager, author of Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party, out this week.)

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday good wishes earlier this month.

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Does Big Business Prefer Big Government?"

YES: Tim Carney, author of The Big Rip-Off: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money. NO: Michel “The Brain” Evanchik, of Evanchik.net. Moderator: Todd Seavey, Jinx Rational Agent and editor of HealthFactsAndFears.com.

This Wednesday, August 2 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar on the corner of Broome and Allen St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (one block south, three blocks west, of the Delancey subway stop; free admission, cash bar). After the debate and q&a, an audience vote will resolve the question once and for all. A Tim Carney book signing will follow.

(PLEASE NOTE that this Carney, the Phillips Foundation Fellow and former Robert Novak employee who wrote this book…

THE BIG RIP-OFF

…is not the same Carney seen at prior Jinx debates, nor the Carney who edits at Wall Street Journal, nor the law student Carney, but rather their brother; audience members are allowed to use crib sheets
to avoid confusion [hint: each Carney has a different haircut].)

–There will also be drinks throughout in honor of your moderator’s shocking **thirty-seventh birthday**, since I’m too lazy to organize a separate night for that (it’s enough work being moderator this time out instead of playing my usual booker/host role).

–No need to bring gifts: I will once more give stuff away for my birthday, specifically bound copies, to the first ten takers, of my recent article for the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, which, because the wheels of legal-journal publishing grind even slower than justice, contains my cautiously optimistic predictions for the second Bush term, made right after his re-election. Well, uh…maybe every birthday party should have a time capsule.

–More timeless, though, are my most-succinct-thoughts-ever on where humanity needs to go from here, recently posted on Spiked-Online along with thoughts on the topic from numerous alphabetized luminaries:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/surveys/2024_article/993/

P.S. In analyzing such issues, I try to be rational, though I suppose insight can come from dreams as well. For instance: I awoke this past July 4 morning from a dream about freedom. Specifically:

I dreamt I smoked hashish with Tony Blair on the Planet of the Apes.

I know, it sounds like a joke, but as is often the case with dreams, it all seems semi-logical when you look at it in pieces: I was part of some movie in which several people — including some older actors such as Shirley MacLaine and possibly Jack Lemon — were trapped in different lousy vacation scenarios, and I was stuck in some cell, so Dr. Zaius offered to sacrifice himself by letting _me_ shimmy out of the cell window while he held off the guards (I attribute the< appearance of Zaius in this positive role to the relatively cordial conversation he has with Charlton Heston while tied up on the beach in the penultimate scene of Planet of the Apes). As I escaped, though, it became clear that I was myself a Planet of the Apes-style chimpanzee, on the run from other apes, so I disguised myself in the (very normal early-60s) clothing of the locals, who were also chimps, and tried to blend in — but one of the humans in charge (yes, on this crazy, topsy-turvy version of the Planet of the Apes, humans were in charge) called me and another chimp over to aid in the lighting of a hooka-like hash pipe, which I did, and he was soon pretty stoned, and as I contemplated the next step in my escape it became clear he was also…Tony Blair. (Note: In real life, I don’t even use drugs, let alone hang out with apes and Tony Blair.)

P.P.S. I woke up after that, then fell back to sleep and had a dream about J.R. Taylor’s new blog (really). In the dream, he did video clips instead of blog entries, and in one he was criticizing the blogger (is there really someone specific?) who invented the practice of leaving visible strikethroughs in the erroneous parts of corrected and updated items. But J.R. was symbolically criticizing the practice as phony and pretentious by assembling shelves full of knickknacks such as ceramic figures, which do not require strikethroughs. Whatever. Anyway, here’s his actual blog, about conservative-seeming pop culture items, which is great — his first three entries were about zombies, Luke Cage, and 80s alternative rock, so he must be on the right track, and you’ll notice that the first comment on the July 28 item is from me (and is about drugs again, oddly enough):

http://RightWingTrash.com

J.R. is also the man who suggested that I see the thriller The Descent, opening nationwide August 4, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who is simply in the mood for ninety-nine minutes of “harrowing” (and if you go in knowing nothing, so much the better). No wit or subtlety or memorable dialogue to speak of, just the “harrowing,” and my apologies to anyone who spends years thereafter having terrible, terrible spelunking nightmares full of cute British women with pitons, as you well might. You were warned while there was still time to turn back.

J.R., thirdly, is also the sort of person who might show up at one of the monthly Manhattan Project non-leftist creative-folk bar gatherings I’m helping to organize, one more reason to have me put you on the e-list for those invitations if you aren’t already.

P.P.P.S. You could also see all sorts of interesting people at the August 3 (7pm) meeting of the group called the Junto, in the library at 20 W. 44th, including main speaker Bruce Ames, who I’m going to go hear because he’s a scientist who was a big influence on my thinking back in college and still is in my job at ACSH. As with the movie recommendation, though, I apologize if the Junto gives you nightmares, most likely without cute British women this time.

P.P.P.P.S. Again: no need for gifts on 8/2…unless…you wanna give by answering my (1) Mac-based, (2) dial-up-using, (3) surprisingly tech-ignorant blog-launching questions, since I’m thinking about finally starting a personal blog, in part to combat the once more upward-creeping length of these e-mails.

What? You’re surprised a man who edits a blog at work has no personal blog? And is on dial-up? Hell, I’ve got no cell phone and no cable either. Maybe I get my slowness to adapt technology — plus my internal calm, which echoes the steady rhythms of rural life — from my mother and her father, who both grew up on a farm in Norwich, CT that I, too, spent a lot of time on in my formative years, when I wasn’t playing in the woods. Mom just got e-mail, so she is for the first time reading this monthly mass-e-mail along with the rest of you. (Hi, Mom.)

Alternatively, you could commemorate my existence by buying a Todd Seavey hoodie, junior hoodie, tile, or dog t-shirt, none of which I had anything to do with creating (nor have even purchased, to be honest), conceived by my friends at http://PiecesofFlair.blogspot.com (where my picture also now pops up in the Comments section for each item):

http://www.cafepress.com/piecesofflair

Remember: me suing them doesn’t become a productive activity until they’ve made a lot of money off the stuff, so start purchasing. (I promise these are not turning into commercial e-mails — this situation is, obviously, abnormal.)

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Should Superheroes Have to Register with the Government?"

The day after the U.S. celebrates its birth, join us for a debate on a question that touches on fundamental issues of liberty and security in the aftermath of a crisis, whether the government should gaze through a scanner darkly at Superman, and whether freedom fighters should make a last stand against government even at the risk of…civil war.

Ken Silber (Scientific American Mind, Mental Floss) and Robert George (New York Post, NationalReview.com) debate the question “Should Superheroes Have to Register with the Government?” (with Michel “The Brain” Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at the next Jinx Athenaeum, Wednesday, July 5 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission, cash bar) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop. (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.)

Speaking of heroes and villains, here is evidence of an axiom worth keeping in mind: my enemies eat garbage, or at least Adam Weissman, the guy who led that rival faction of anarchists I faced a couple months ago, does (in his role as a leader of the so-called “freegan” movement, which eats from dumpsters to protest our wasteful agricultural system):

http://dumpsterdiving.meetup.com/4/members/1278801/photos/

P.S. Let me add that I don’t really see the world in terms of superheroes and supervillains, but I confess that until this month I was a comic book collector (I’ll still need to pick up Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers #1 in September, since it got delayed several months, but otherwise I’m kicking the habit just to save time and explore new hobbies).

But then, I have darker secrets than that: I really liked early Garfield, for instance, despite Roy Blount, Jr.’s view that anyone who likes Garfield should be forced to take a class called Minimal Understanding 101. I see from the Wikipedia entry on Garfield, by the way, that acclaimed comics writer Neil Gaiman (whose most renowned work can soon be purchased in a glorious hardcover Absolute Sandman collection, edited by Scott Nybakken) has praised a prankster who reprinted Garfield cartoons without Garfield’s thought balloons, turning the strips into a harrowing portrait of a lonely, possibly schizophrenic man named Jon who talks to his pets.

P.P.S. If comics aren’t your scene, though, here are some “real” books by some of my associates that sound like good summer reading:

Ethan Gutmann’s Losing the New China

Miranda Hickman’s The Geometry of Modernism

Tim Snyder’s Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine

Selene Castrovilla’s By The Sword (a picture book about Benjamin Tallmadge, Washington’s chief of spies, not to be confused with Alexander Rose’s Washington’s Spies)

not mention the short story “Alberto: A Case History” by science-minded fiction writer Diane Greco in the winter/spring 2006 issue of Fence, if you can find it, and of course:

Carly Sommerstein and Mark Montano’s Window Treatments and Slipcases for Dummies

And in the next year or two, as if I needed still more reasons to keep living, there’s Katherine Taylor’s novel Rules for Saying Goodbye, Daniel Radosh’s book about Christian pop culture, a book from the CuddleParty.com founders, and possibly a tome on transportation issues by Ted Balaker (whose name is close to mine in the acknowledgments in our ex-boss John Stossel’s awesome new book, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, I must add).

And though I don’t know Jim Davis, I see that his book Garfield Blots Out the Sun: His Forty-Third Book is due in early 2007. Really. (At least in the U.S. — in the UK, they reprint Garfield at a different rate and print the panels vertically — it’s like China over there, despite our apparent cultural similarities.)

P.P.P.S. Even though I’ve already seen Superman Returns (which was pretty good), I suppose there is at least one additional movie based on comics that I’ll have to see in my lifetime, and some of you will be excited to see that the trailer is already viewable here, nearly a year in advance:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/spider-man_3/large.html

And lest we think all this of little relevance to everyday life, remember these photos of hardworking Mexican immigrants dressed as superheroes, forwarded by Dawn Eden (co-founder of a monthly bar gathering of non-left media folk, for which I can put you on the invite list if you like and aren’t already):

http://www.sfcp.org/programs.cfm?p=Project06Pinzon

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Should the U.S. Military Intervene in Iran?"

Chris Bischof and Zahra Joudi debate the question “Should the U.S.
Military Intervene in Iran?” (with Michel “The Brain” Evanchik
moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at the next Jinx Athenaeum,
Wednesday, June 7 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission,
cash bar) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s
Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St.
subway stop. (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially
if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.)

And as entertainment for those nowhere near Manhattan:

Coverage of the April anarcho-capitalist counter-protest I led:
http://www.silverbulletcomics.com/news/story.php?a=1607

And more coverage:
http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2006-05-02/launder-anarchistfight

And a reminder why we fight: to stop thieving pseudo-superheroes like
these (pointed out to me by Caryn Solly):
http://www.sploid.com/news/2006/05/superheroes_ste.php

Finally, please let me know if you’d like to be on a separate list for
monthly gatherings (at a new venue) of the Manhattan Project,
non-leftists in media.

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Is Immigration Harming the United States?"

In between May Day and Cinco de Mayo, come to Jinx to make sense of today’s massive protests.

John Carney and Michele Carlo debate the question “Is Immigration Harming the United States?” (with Michel “The Brain” Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at the next Jinx Athenaeum, Wednesday, May 3 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission, cash bar) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop. (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.)

Meanwhile, if you’re writer or editor who’d like to be put in touch with the man who just wrote that tell-all book about working for Hustler and learning tons of dirt on icons of both left and right, JR Taylor (taylorhq[at]aol-dot-com) can put you in touch with him.

And for those who can’t make it to the debate, here’s some bonus entertainment:

With the movie of The Da Vinci Code opening in three weeks, there is controversy over inaccuracies in its depiction of religious history. Less talked about, but arguably far more important for humor purposes, is the question of whether these three videos — all produced by devout Christians — contain inaccuracies (I learned about them from Andrew Corsello, http://PiecesofFlair.blogspot.com , and http://AndrewSullivan.com , respectively — and BE WARNED that the first one contains lots of foul language, the second contains a banana and actor Kirk Cameron, and the third contains references to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s classic “Baby Got Back”):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?search=the+spirit+of+truth&v=7jIWWFBvs7A

http://www.devilducky.com/media/44860/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5267894961075966307

P.S. If you’d like to be on the invite list (and aren’t already) for an unrelated monthly bar gathering for conservatives in media (possibly at a new, more Midtownish location, and we’re open to suggestions), let me know.

P.P.S. NOTE: I’m away (in L.A. and then DC) for about a week after Wednesday’s debate, so don’t panic if I’m unresponsive to e-mail until after that.

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Should the U.S. Fund Abortions and Contraception Overseas?"

Diane Rubino (of the Population Council) and John Zmirak (of the American Conservative magazine) debate the question “Should the U.S. Subsidize Abortions and Contraception Overseas?” (with Michel “The Brain” Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at the next Jinx Athenaeum, Wednesday, April 5 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission, cash bar) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop. (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.) A function of http://JinxMagazine.com

In the meantime, it’s movie week:

I briefly sketch the sketchy history of my fellow anarchists in this morning’s (Fri. 3/17) Wall Street Journal, on the occasion of V for Vendetta’s release (not to mention St. Patrick’s Day — beware, London), and you can also read it online here [Update: in the editing process, my genuine sympathy for anarchism may have been downplayed somewhat -- I think conservatives and anarchists can learn a lot from each other]:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110008105

At the real job, see the reactions of me and my fellow American Council on Science and Health staffers to Thank You for Smoking, released today. Our comments will be up by noon, here:

http://HealthFactsAndFears.com

You can read my comparison of the archaeological secrets in the book The Buried Soul to four current movies about sexy vampires here:

http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=470_0_2_0_M

Speaking of my fellow anarchists, or perhaps sexy vampires, learn more about Michael Malice by reading his biography, Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story, in early April; meet him and his biographer, famed comic book writer Harvey Pekar, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in Manhattan on April 11 at 7pm; and read this effective interview summary of him on the Random House website:

http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/egoandhubris/malice_interview.html

In other art news, you can see fiction writer (and libertarian) Katherine Taylor read, along with Elizabeth Koch (co-host of the Sweet Fancy Moses reading competition) and others, on March 23 at 7:30pm at Happy Ending, 302 Broome St. at Forsyth:

http://www.opiummagazine.com/events.html

Some of these things happen in the future but not the distant future, so please, please mark your calendars now (especially for the Apr. 5 abortion debate!). And if you’re a conservative in media who’d like to be on the invite list for an unrelated monthly gathering at Slainte bar and aren’t already, let me know.

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Should Gun Control Be Abolished?"

Will Snyder and Richard Ryan debate the question “Should Gun Control Be Abolished?” (with Bernadette Malone moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at the next Jinx Athenaeum, Wednesday, March 1 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission, cash bar) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop. (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.)

There will be Q&A, though Cheney jokes should be limited to one per audience member.

P.S. If you’re a conservative in media and would like to be on a separate, unrelated invite list for a monthly gathering at Slainte bar (and aren’t already), let me know.

Speaking of conservatives, anyone interested will find me defending science and capitalism in a letter down at the 2/22 1:44pm slot on the new National Review blog about “crunchy conservatives” (who might also perhaps be called eco-paleos, if that’s any clearer):

http://crunchycon.nationalreview.com/

But to compensate for my defense of (aspects of) modernity, here are two new blogs by one of our February Jinx debaters, John Crouch, about shoring up the old institution of marriage:

http://www.FamilyLawReformBlog.com

http://www.FamilyLawNewsBlog.com

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Should the Law Make It Harder to Divorce?"

Lawyer John Crouch and writer-blogger Nichelle Stephens debate the question “Should the Law Make It Harder to Divorce?” (with Michel “The Brain” Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at the next Jinx Athenaeum, Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission, cash bar) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop. (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.)

Other fun:

(1) If you are a conservative of some sort in media and you aren’t already on the invite list for the monthly gatherings of such folk at Slainte bar in Manhattan (not the same as the monthly gathering described above), let me know and I should be able to add you to the list.

(2) Here’s a story about a snake and a hamster who are friends:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1518131

(3) Hey, my face is on Gawker (identified as “Glenn”), and I’m talking to DC Comics editor Scott Nybakken (who has so far survived the Infinite Crisis, albeit with slightly altered superpowers).

(4) U. of South Carolina historian Christine Caldwell Ames praises Pandora.com, which enables you, in about two seconds flat, to enter a song or artist you like and thus create an online channel of songs that resemble your pick. It’s like the bastard offspring of TiVo and iPod, so check it out.

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007. Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Do Public School Boards Have the Right to Mandate the Teaching of Intelligent Design as Science?"

John Carney and Ken Silber debate the question “Do Public School Boards Have the Right to Mandate the Teaching of Intelligent Design as Science?” (with Michel “The Brain” Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting) at the next Jinx Athenaeum, Wednesday, Jan. 4 at 8pm, downstairs at Lolita bar (free admission, cash bar) on the northeast corner of Broome and Allen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop.  (Volunteers to debate specific future topics, especially if you have a willing, serious opponent, are welcome.)

(NOTE: The above was sent as a mass e-mail in the days prior to the debate and was posted on this blog retroactively in April 2007.  Click here for other Debates at Lolita Bar.)