Will’s Best of 2011!

Good year for music. Make sure to check the comments for the link.

81. The Rubbish Zoo – More Ink than an Octopus

80. Wolf Gang – Pyramid Song. Hard to cover Radiohead, but these guys do it pretty well. 

79. Prasant Rhadakrishnan – Bhairavi Ragam. Prasant plays in one my favorite jazz groups, Vidya; this track features his carnatic saxaphone accompanied by a sitar. Very meditative.

78. Fitz and the Tantrums – Don’t Gotta Work It Out

77. My Morning Jacket – First Light. Matt this is for you. 

76. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Ffunny Ffriends.

75. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

74. Lil Wayne – Dear Anne. When Lil Wayne actually tries to come up with an interesting flow, dude can rap.

73. Black Books – The Big Idea.

72. St. Lucia – The Old House is Gone.

71. Toro y Moi – Intro/Chi Chi. Tape loops always get me. 

70. Moonbell – Figurine. Psychedelic SF. Gotta include that.

69. e-dubble feat. Komplex – My Last Dream.

68. Cali Swag District – Teach Me How To Dougie. Not a whole lot of pop on this list, but man this song was hella catchy.

67. Olaf Arnalds – Fyrsta. Part of a week-long live series where Arnalds composed a new piece every day in his living room.

66. Man/Miracle – Valleys. Was expecting a little more from Man/Miracle’s new EP considering that their 2010 LP, The Shape of Things, was really, really good. Valleys has a more moody vibe and isn’t quite as exuberant, but it works. Local band go check them out some time.

65. Smith Westerns – End of the Night.

64. The Horrors – Still Life. Eh, shoulda been lower.

63. Cashier No. 9 – Oh Pity. Sounds like it should be in a James Bond movie.

62. Icona Pop – Manners.

61. Dominant Legs – Clawing Out at the Walls. Great guitar riff. This one didn’t make their album, don’t know why.

60. Zola Jesus – Vessel. Zola Jesus is pretty weird.

59. Emil & Friends – Short Order Cooks.

58. Big Tree – This Fall. Starts off slowly and builds into a really nice plateau at the end. Great vocals and lead guitar.

57. Alexander – Truth. Love the way Alex Ebert modulates his voice in this. 

56. Cut Copy – Need You Know. A lot of bands did the 80′s throwback this year; this one rose above.

55. White Denim – River to Consider.

54. Gangsta – Tune-Yards. Man, you gotta watch Merrill Garbus perform live. Youtube it. Shit is crazy.

53. Gorilla Warfare Tactics – Dream Green.

52. Cyhi Da Prynce – Woopty Doo feat. Big Sean

51. Yellow Ostrich – WHALE. This song was about 100x better than the rest of their album, for what it’s worth.

50. James Blake – Limit to Your Love. Really grew on me. Is this dubstep? What is dubstep? Does anyone actually know what dubstep is?

49. Black Keys – Little Black Submarines

48. Real Estate – All the Same. I was a little disappointed by Real Estate’s album this year, but I guess I also didn’t really like their first album. The singles off those albums, however, continue to be mostly awesome. 

47. Lovecraft – Malcolm Xes.

46. Vacationer – Trip. Lighthearted and fun.

45. Maffew Ragazino – Yowzers!. Love this beat.

44. Kurt Vile – Jesus Fever.

43. Chico Mann – Harmonía.

42. Jangula – Genji Glove. I was all about this song earlier in the year. Not as sure why now.

41. Black Lips – Bicentennial Man. Fun tune. Gotta see these guys live some time.

40. The Kills – DNA.

39. Washed Out – Eyes Be Closed

38. Foster the People – Houdini. Not sure if this was on their LP, but it was on their EP that came out last January. I read somewhere that the only real complaint you can make about Foster the People is that they are just too catchy. 

37. Lana Del Rey – Blue Jeans. Really expressive voice.

36. The Antlers – Rolled Together (Daytrotter Sessions). This song really stood out to me when I heard this live version. Haunting.

35. B. Hamilton – Everything I Own Is Broken.

34. Thievery Corporation – Web of Deception.

33. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – Morning Thought. Cheerful, earnest song. I like it.

32. Friends – I’m His Girl. Probably doesn’t deserve to be ranked this high, but that bassline! 

31. Jay-Z and Kanye West – Otis.

30. Ty Segall – I Am With You. Finally saw him live last July and it was fucking incredible. Couldn’t hear properly for days. Plus Stickle and I rearranged a restaurant letterboard to say that they served farts.

29. Hindershot – The Mark. Small band from Colorado has a few really solid tunes. Saw them last summer in SF and fooled Stickle with the old “look closely at the intricate design on the frosting of this cake” with a boob cake that one of the band member’s girlfriend had brought him for his birthday. Subsequently got chased around the bar by Stickle with a handful of cake; subsequently subsequently got kicked out of the bar. This was after we drank Tecates with Hindershot’s lead singer, Manual Hindershot, in their tour van, which still said “First Korean Baptist Church” or some crap. It was a pretty great night.

28. Al Lover – Natural Child – White Man’s Burden. Al Lover takes local indie records and remixes them with instrument hip-hop in mind. Somehow it totally works.

27. Thee Oh Sees – The Dream. SF band’s 7 minute freakout. It gets weird. Love it.

26. Lil’ B – Base For Your Face. The Based God lays it down. Great sample. 

25. Beastie Boys – Make Some Noise. Great old skool Beasties beat. 

24. Son of Rams – Black Widow. I love this dude. He’s put out 3 great, free records in the last year or so, all good. Just got the vinyl LP of his first one in the mail, straight up from him, for $8, shipping included. Not having a record player anymore has slightly crimped plans to listen to said vinyl LP, but whatevs. I am definitely happy that I own that item.

23. Bon Iver – Holocene. Hard to pick a favorite from a record that is meant to be listened to all together.

22. Toro y Moi – New Beat. Mellow fun from a super forward-looking artist.

21. Sic Alps – Battery Townsley. SF group, just kinda got into them. Need to get more into them. Excellent tune.

20. Lovecraft and Sleepwalk – Discount Magic Carpet. I don’t always listen to electronic music, but when I do, I prefer Lovecraft.

19. Girls – Alex. Love the drums on this one. And obviously Christopher Owens’ songwriting. Everything he writes is perfect. Not too poppy, not too out-there. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is one of the best through-and-through albums I’ve heard in a really long time.

18. Twin Sister – Bad Street. Fun song.

17. Radiohead – Giving Up the Ghost (live on Jimmy Fallon’s show, whichever one that is). I liked this song, but hearing the stripped-down live version really did it for me. Everything about it is perfect. Jonny Greenwood’s backing guitar is mesmerizing.

16. Death Songs – Ophelia. Small group out of Portland. Song starts strong and builds.

15. White Denim – Cat City. White Denim’s D, which came out this year, is one of my favorite records of the past 5 years, and I probably listened to it as the aforementioned Girls album. Cat City isn’t even off D; dudes put out another excellent EP later in the year. If you want to hear more about the huge boner I have for White Denim, just ask Matt O’Hearn, who will sigh.

14. Kreayshawn – Gucci Gucci. Best beat of the year, and girl can rap. Bay Arrreaaaa!!

13. Mike Simoneti – The Third of the Storms. Great, long, peaceful, flowing track. Don’t know much about this guy, but this track is excellent.

12. Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks. Too catchy!

11. little brothers – old shows. Can’t remember where I found this one. This guys are pretty small, but are obviously having an incredibly fun time playing in a band together. old shows is lighthearted but propulsive, and also really funny. I would love to see this group live. 

10. The Dodos – Good. I love the Dodos. Take 2 excellent musicians who have really distinctive styles on their respective instruments (drums and mostly acoustic guitar), give them plus songwriting ability and hella charisma, and you get a pretty swell end product. Check out the video for this one, and see them live if you can.

9. Mikal Cronin – Apathy. First record from a guy in SF who plays a lot with Ty Segall. Great guitar-driven SF-style garage rock. Love the weird sax at the end of the song. It’ll be fun to see where Mikal Cronin goes in the next few years, and I’m sure his live show is fantastic.

8. The Pieces of Shit – Lay & Love. The Pieces of Shit are David Byrne writing music, Bonnie “Prince” Billy writing lyrics, and Irish singer Michael Brunnock on vocals. This track is a cover of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Lay & Love, but it’s different enough from the original to make it wonderful in it’s own right. Great vocals, perfect, subtle guitars. 

7. The Black Keys – Lonely Boy. This is all you need to know about this song. You may want to avoid playing it early in the week, because the longer you have to wait to throw back 10 PBRs (or 1/2 of 1 PBR if you happened to be named Sam C.) and attempt to dance like the dude in the video, the more painful. 

6. White Denim – Keys. Closer from the album D. White Denim had a great year. 

5. Bill Callahan – Baby’s Breath. This was the first time I heard Bill Callahan and actually thought he was good. His poetic delivery on Baby’s Breath is outstanding, and his band backs him up perfectly. The spare guitar figure that starts the track (not to mention his audible sigh) and continues throughout conveys his message perfectly.

4. tUnE-YarDs – Bizness. Full-throated and passionate, but somehow accepting and fun at the same time. Another really well put together song by Merrill Garbus. Shouts “I’m a victim, yeah,” but in defiance and solidarity, rather than sadness or hurt.

3. B. Hamilton – On Borrowed Time. B. Hamilton is a band out of Oakland that released an incredibly good record, Everything I Own Is Broken in October. The songwriting is really high caliber, and the band really knows how to cut loose. On Borrowed Time is my favorite from the record; it’s haunting and melodic and really well-done. Looking forward to what more these guys have to offer. 

2. Girls – Die. Unexpectedly heavy song off a nearly perfect album. I’m amazed that Christopher Owens can write so many different types of songs so well, and have them all go together on one album without leaving the listener feeling confused or scattered. See Girls live. You will not regret it.

1. Battles – Ice Cream (feat. Matias Aguayo). This song is incredibly fun to listen to. Starts slow but quickly builds up into an awesome jam with multiple awesome riffs. 

Links are in the comments!

Muni operators operate on your wallet

This isn’t exactly a shocker:

Muni operators resoundingly rejected on Tuesday a package of negotiated labor concessions intended to save nearly $15 million in operating expenses over two years – money intended to stop a proposed increase in discounted passes for seniors, youth and the disabled and to blunt service cuts, according to the agency’s top official.

The always colorful sfgate.com comments at the bottom of the page are a melange of 50X thumbs-upped “boycott!”; “let’s see what they do with NO revenue!!!”, etc. And that certainly resonates: here’s MUNI, on the verge of raising the cost of passes, even for seniors and youths, and cutting service on almost every single line, even during rush hour; and here’s the MUNI operators union, who are rejecting a delay of their normal every-year raise and contribution to their pension fund that could have prevented or eased the huge service-slashing, old-person and young-person crunching changes.

But as much as I want to flip off the driver of the next bus I board, it’s not their fault. By rejecting the change to their previously negotiated contract, the operators are being perfectly rational. After all, their current contract, which mandates that their pay be tied to the the average of the two highest-paid transit agencies in the nation, is pretty frickin’ sweet. And unlike some of those other times that you’ve heard of a union taking a tax cut (think: airline pilots unions), MUNI operators don’t have to worry about their company folding if they don’t dock their salaries: the existence of MUNI is stipulated (wisely) in SF’s city charter, and won’t go bankrupt unless San Francisco does (not the case for United, Delta, etc.). If MUNI fares go way up, a few people might stop riding. But most San Franciscans who ride MUNI don’t do it because it’s easier or more fun than driving or biking, but because they don’t have a car, can’t pay for parking if they do, have a job that doesn’t mix with showing up sweaty after a bike ride, etc. So the riders will get screwed and pay more, and the drivers will not care, because they still have the 1.5th highest paying transit operator job in the nation. And why should they? Would you look that gift horse in the mouth? Everybody wants more money, and the MUNI operators are in a good position because they have a really good government contract. Walking away from that contract doesn’t mean fewer layoffs, or more money in the future because their company avoided bankruptcy. It’s perfectly rational for these guys, callous as it may seem, to stick it to the old farts and the under-18 set.

But let’s not forget that while it’s a no-brainer not to walk away from guaranteed raises, the citizens of San Francisco are the people who approved the guaranteed raises when we approved the amendments to the city charter included in Prop A in 2007 (h/t sf.streetsblog.org), and in our democratic form of government, we’re the ones that the MUNI drivers are eventually accountable to. Supervisor Sean Elsbernd is trying to put a measure on the June ballot that eliminates the raises guaranteed by Prop A, and I think it’s a good idea. We should pay our city employees well, but in a recession, local governments can’t afford to automatically disburse fat raises to all employees of a given agency. Driving MUNI buses is a hard job, but I can’t imagine that even with slightly curtailed benefits, you’d have any problem recruiting new drivers or keeping old ones around, which is all that we, as San Franciscans, need to care about. I know it seems crass and capitalistic, but if the MUNI operators get to seem crass and capitalistic, so can we.

That new sex ed study

A new study in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that 12 year-olds enrolled in an “abstinence only” sex-ed program delayed the onset of sexual activity for at least two years (and was subsequently written up in the mainstream media). This is a good thing: the age of onset of sexual activity and use of contraception/STI control measures have been repeatedly shown to be strongly correllated, so delaying the so-called “sexual debut” will therefore increase the likelihood of safe sex at the debut and beyond.

In this case it’s important to realize that the “abstinence only” program tested in this study is not of the over-churched, Jesus-will-hate-you-if-you-have-sex-before-you-get-married variety; the authors of the study were examining instead a secular, health-based just-don’t-have-sex-yet program. The point was not to try to get teens to feel morally shamed into waiting until marriage to have sex, but rather give them the confidence to say, “no, I’m not ready yet,” give them the facts about STI’s, and non-specifically delay the age of onset of sexual activity. As mentioned above, delaying the sexual debut leads to better eventual use of condoms and other protection. And obviously a secular program is something that everyone can feel comfortable about; religious programs by virtue can’t be as effective for people who aren’t a partisan of that religion.

That said, this particular study was not able to come to any conclusions about whether the kids who put off having sex for a while due to the abstinence message program actually engaged in safer sex practices when they did eventually have sex. For this study to really be informative, you’d need to make a connection between the kids who delay and better use of contraception; if you just cause them to put off sex for a bit but then not have safe sex, you really can’t say that the abstinence program “worked” or had much of a positive effect.

Palin’s Tea Party Speech

Haven’t read too much about it, but it seems scary. Joan Walsh:

I know journalists aren’t supposed to use words like mean and dumb, but I can’t help it. Palin is one of the meanest people on the public stage today. She wallows in it. She loves it! Also? Possibly one of the dumbest. But mean works, and so does dumb. And so do lies, and there were many mean, dumb lies in her speech.

More later.

Vampire Weekend cool acoustic set in some house in France

I like their new album a lot. The melodies, while still taut and heavily seasoned with afropop style, seem a little more developed than on their first record, and the songs have a bit more variety. This is a sweet little acoustic set they did in some room in France for a French TV show or something?

< Goddamit can’t get the thing to embed. Check it out here, though. California English, without the autotune, is great. >

Ezra Koenig has gotta be my one of my favorite singers. He pulls off that falsetto/not falsetto, quiet/loud thing on the vocals just perfectly. Love that dude’s voice. So cool that in the video he’s not even using a mike, but rather just singing out to the audience.

Trying terrorism suspects in Federal courtrooms yields superior outcomes

A great article by the Center for American Progress on why we should definitely try terrorism suspects in the United States criminal justice system, rather than in military tribunals. The authors contend that not only are criminal trials more in line with the legal principles of the United States, but they are more effective for obtaining convictions and encouraging cooperation and intelligence gathering from suspects.

The extensive record of criminal courts in successfully prosecuting terrorists stands in stark contrast with the shockingly poor military commissions system. Since 2001—the same period in which military commissions have convicted just three terrorists—criminal courts have convicted more than 200 individuals on terrorism charges, or 65 times more than military commissions. Criminal courts racked up these convictions with none of the uncertainty that still plagues the military commissions system.

A military commission has never handled a case remotely like Abdulmutallab’s—attempted murder and a specific act of terrorism. But a criminal court obtained a conviction in an identical case: Richard Reid’s failed bombing of a transatlantic airliner in December 2001. Reid was also sent on his suicide mission by an Al Qaeda affiliate using explosives concealed in his clothing, only the explosives were in his shoes and not his underwear. Reid even used pentaerythritol, the same explosive material as Abdulmutallab. He is currently serving a life sentence at the Supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

The article goes on to blow up some of the mythology surrounding suspects’ access to attorneys military v. criminal courts, namely that the

Military Commissions Act[s of 2006 and 2009] require providing defense counsel to detainees facing charges before a military commission. Military commissions also have procedures prohibiting self-incrimination and ensuring that statements from the defendant are made voluntarily. There is virtually no difference between military commissions and criminal courts in the provision and availability of defense counsel.

The whole thing is worth reading.

The Hon. Prof. Jenny B. McCarthy, DDS, MD, PhD is gonna be pissed!

At long last, the highly regarded British medical journal The Lancet has officially retracted “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitic, and pervasive developmental disorder in children,” by Wakefield et al., aka the famous study “linked” autism (“pervasive developmental disorder”) with receipt of a MMR

Obviously Jenny McCarthy knows more about science than a bunch of stupid scientists!

(Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine in children. The retraction was prompted by Britain’s General Medical Council’s admonishment of Wakefield for unprofessional and unethical practices in regard to the recruitment (he apparently paid children at his son’s birthday party $8 to donate blood) and study procedures (the study involved performing highly invasive techniques such as sedation, MRI scanning, colonoscopy on developmentally-challenged children) involved in the Lancet paper.

Upon actually reading the study, I was incredibly surprised that the Lancet ever allowed it to be published in the first place. Only 12 participants (an absurdly low number for a scientific study) were studied, and all of them had the digestive ailments that Wakefield was looking at. Inconceivably, there was no control group. And out of 12 participants, only 8 had symptoms of autism-spectrum disorders, which were ever-reliably self-reported by parents (or physician-reported; we don’t know the breakdown) as having first become symptomatic within a few months of receiving an MMR vaccine (what a controlled, tight window!). None of the actual science that Wakefield actually presents in the paper has anything to do with a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism – his “results” section is all about the findings of the colonoscopies, MRIs, and other tests, without any scientific or statistical analysis of the presence of autism symptoms in his (selection-biased, small, and uncontrolled) population. Yet this did not prevent Wakefield, or the editors of Lancet, from boldly claiming the the final graf of the paper that “in most cases, onset of [chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction] was after measles, mumps, and rubella

Dr. Andrew Wakefield, author of the oft-discredited and now officially retracted paper. May his car get egged and shoe fall upon dog shit.

immunisation,” even though the lack of any sort of scientific evidence for this made him admit that “we did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described” several earlier in the paper. So essentially, Wakefield opens with a titillating hypothesis about vaccines and autism, is forced to admit that his shitty study design cannot possibly shed any light on whether the hypothesis is correct or not, and then closes by restating his hypothesis as if he’s done some actual science to advance it, which he has not.

And somehow the Lancet published that crap, and only took 12 years and an independent inquiry for them to decide that it was, indeed, crap. So thumbs down to the Lancet. And although I already have mad thumbs down to Jenny McCarthy and the unreasonable crew of idiots blabbing on anti-vaccine messageboards, I’m throwing even more their way for the reckless ignorance of using this terrible study as a touchstone. These people have put thousands and thousands of children at risk for serious morbidity and mortality from measles, mumps and rubella for absolutely no good reason.

P.S. I should note that the Lancet’s official retraction comes after lots and lots of studies discrediting Wakefield’s hypothesis

P.P.S. This article goes into how much of a creep this dude is, e.g. getting a patent on a singular measles vaccine right when he was trumpeting the danger of the MMR vaccine.

Republican authoritarianism

Yesterday, when I was writing about Mitch McConnell’s comments about trying terrorism suspects, I didn’t really focus on his complaints regarding the handling of underwear bomber Umar Adbulmutallab. McConnell claimed that “Larry King would have a more thorough interrogation of one of his witnesses than the Christmas bomber had by the Justice Department,” and other Republicans have gone on about how Abdulmutallab didn’t talk after he was read his Miranda rights, which, as we all know, is absolutely legal in this country. It’s legal even before someone reminds you that the Constitution protects you from testifying against yourself. The GOP, it seems, is perfectly amenable to throwing out not only the 5th amendment, but the years of careful precedent in criminal justice that (once) allowed the United States to legitimately claim the moral high ground on the international stage, a high ground we used to inspire democratic revolts all over the world, and to pressure authoritarian dictatorships into reform, or collapse. Ever since the nebulous “War on Terror” began, Republicans have eagerly embraced those same detestable principles that we as Americans have always stood against, such as torture, indefinite detention, and no guarantee of a fair trial. Yglesias captures it well:

For all the “tea party” talk of freedom, and the right’s general blather about “limited government,” unrestricted violence by the agents of the state is a core priority for the right-wing. The view is that ideally you just detain people indefinitely. If forced, they get a military commission. If you have to have a civilian court, the accused shouldn’t have any rights. People should be tortured as a routine investigative technique. Wars should be routinely against foreign countries that haven’t attacked us. It’s a worldview soaked in violence and authoritarianism, and the relatively narrow question of what venue you try terrorism suspects in is just a small part of it.

Mitch McConnell has a simple mind

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly points out a conversation between CNN anchor John King and Sen. Mitch McConnell on State of the Union this past weekend:

KING: If you ask the White House about this, it highlights — they say it’s not just the president, it’s not just Attorney General Holder, that General David Petraeus says he believes a public trial at a federal courthouse is the best way to do it so that it’s not an al Qaeda recruiting tool.

That Secretary Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration at the Defense Department, also they believes a trial in the federal court system is preferable to a closed trial in the military commission. And that the CIA operatives leading the fight against these guys in Yemen, in Somalia, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, also believe that if you did it in a closed setting in a military commission it would be a powerful recruiting tool.

If General Petraeus, Secretary Gates, and the intelligence leaders say, do it in court, why do you say that’s a bad idea?

MCCONNELL: I simply disagree and so do the American people.

I’ve got two problems with this statement. First of all, this is not a simple issue. As King makes clear in his question, many people involved in prosecution of the nation’s laws (and wars) – he cites our experts in that field as an example – believe that trying terrorists for their crimes here in the US is the right thing to do. Moreover, if you’ve ever read the Constitution, or if you believe in due process (one of the major foundations of this great country), you would know that at the very least, the case for prosecuting these criminals in civilian courts is compelling, firmly rooted judicial precedent, and definitely procedurally possible. But McConnell, as is typical of Republican obstructionists, just “simply disagrees.” He does continue opening and closing his mouth after this statement, but the words that come out (“blah blah we need to interrogate them, because no criminals ever got caught or provided information to law enforcement before Bush was in office and allowed infinite detention and torture, OMG you GUYS!! they might EsCApE!!!1! ) don’t address why we should violate due process and appropriate precedent, i.e. don’t answer King’s question.

This leads me to my second issue with Senator McConnell’s proclamation: namely, that because the “American people” don’t want terrorist trials in the US, they must be right and he must not think about the issue any more. But the “American people” Sen. McConnell is most likely referring to are regular old office workers, plumbers, store clerks, whatever, and not Senators of the United States of America. While some random Joe Shmoe from Frankfurt might not know about the historical and Constitutional importance of due process and a fair trial when one has been accused of breaking Federal law, the Senate Minority Leader should be able to at the very least, give a coherent argument against it if that’s going to be his official position. McConnell presumably isn’t so empty headed to know that this is a multifaceted and complex issue, but his head is so full of his job security and the Republican insistence that US politics is a zero-sum game that he can’t bring himself to articulate a response to a very direct question. The vast, vast majority of every Congressional delegate’s constituency are not very knowledgeable about the intricacies of politics and law; that’s exactly why we elect representatives who can take the time to inform themselves and make good decisions with that information. McConnell, along with many other politicians on the right and the left, seem to conflate this basic premise of representational democracy with the idea that because your constituents don’t think too much about policy, you shouldn’t think too much about policy either.

Destroying another homophobic lie

Rob Tisinai blows up the old “gay men are molesters” trope. As is typical of the homophobic, anti-equality crowd, their argument is based not on fact or objective reality, but rather on faith: be it faith in hearsay and thoughtless aping of old biases (like the one above), or faith in antiquated religious dicta. The pro-equality side, on the other hand, puts together cogent, coherent arguments like Tisinai’s (which basically boils down to using published studies on pedophilia to show that you really cannot deduce anything from the proclaimed orientation of a pedophile; their senses of sexual attraction are less straight or gay than seriously pathological in general) using facts and reason.

h/t Sullivan.