The evolving lomtick.com

Even though I am still changing the site daily, trying to get it to look the way I want, I figure I can still post something "meaningful." After all, Movable Type will still preserve all my entries despite their cosmetic alterations.

I was sent a link a few weeks ago to a Valentine's Day gallery on the San Francisco Chronicle website.

There was one picture there that completely struck me. There is such joy, something verbally inexpressible in these guys' faces. Take a close look, see what so many Americans are missing, and take action (for free!) at the ACLU website.

Socks

In casual dress, need socks match?

I ask because I was given flak yesterday about wearing navy blue socks with dark gray pants and a black shirt. My take on this is that few people ever see your socks, so it doesn't matter much if they match. Plus, blue and gray isn't exactly a jolting color combination.

Then again, maybe it's that you either have to match your socks, or they have to be garishly uncoordinated with the rest of your outfit. I guess I was in the awkward middle of that?

(Today I'm wearing khaki socks with blue jeans and black shoes, and I'm told this is better than the blue-gray combo?! Dear jebus, I'll never catch on!)

Analysis and freaky sensitivity...

Today is not a good day.

Everything I've worked on in the lab (I am a PhD student in chemical engineering) for the past month has failed miserably. At least, that's how things feel.

How hard it is to make, manipulate, and analyze things that you cannot see. How discouraging at times to work for hours, days, weeks and end up with a tiny vial full of what looks like plain water. And this is when things go right. When they go wrong, that vial is full of some molecule, the fruits of your hard labor; and yet, due to a few misplaced carbon, oxygen, or nitrogen atoms, it is utterly worthless.

I don't think most people realize what scientific labwork is really like: constructing a gothic cathedral blindfolded, or conducting an orchestra without hearing the instruments. Maybe you get to see some of the players' fingers move, just to make sure they are on the right track. But you can't really tell how you've done until you hear the applause (or lack thereof) afterwards.

For something that is viewed as so concrete, scientific fact certainly undergoes a very shaky birth.

Why can't we all just get along?

Last Thursday (March 25th), on NPR's Morning Edition, I heard the first *almost* convincing argument against gay marriage.

The commentary was by Peter Sprigg, a former Baptist minister, now director of the Family Research Council Center for Marriage and Family Studies. His argument went something like this:

Marriage is a unique institution that facilitates the reproduction of the human race. While there are, nowadays, many exceptions to this (single parents, etc.), the definition of marriage as such is based on the rule rather than any such exceptions. Indeed, departure from this "rule," in which childbearing and childrearing have become separated from marriage as a whole, is a relatively recent development. And this departure has had uniformly negative consequences. For example, there are higher rates of poverty for children raised by single parents.

Thus, saying that marriage has nothing to do with procreation is harmful to how we raise children. Gay marriage, then, being perhaps the ultimate statement that marriage has nothing to do with procreation, is especially harmful to the institution of marriage.

Furthermore, if marriage and procreation were not so intimately linked, the government would have no reason to be involved in marriage. Instead, the government has a vested interest in promoting the growth of its population and thus takes the granting of marriage licenses, as well as divorces, upon itself. The only reason the government has a hand in marriage at all is its interest in childbearing. That being said, gay marriage has no legal basis in government.

Coming out of the horse's mouth, these arguments seemed to make sense to me. But now that I think more about them, they seem to be a pretty weak rationalization for denying equality to a substantial portion of the American population. Firstly, there is nothing that says that gay marriage cannot be about childrearing; childbirth, maybe not. But the world has seen a vast number of successful families with same-sex parents. Any argument here against gay marriage should center around adoption, not childbirth. In any case, gay marriage in no way undermines the coherence of family, long-term commitment of parents to one another, child rearing, any of that.

On the second point, the government surely has reasons other than procreation to invest itself in the institution of marriage. Family units possess economic and social advantages that are purely secular. These non-religious considerations are, and should be, under the jurisdiction of government.

It seems that the only true argument against gay marriage is that people are scared of it, don't want it because something of their being cannot accept anything so joltingly different. That's just not good enough. Let equality fall where it was intended.