so, i've decided to start blogging again, but not just about poker. poker's going great - after an extremely mediocre start to the year the last three months have been great and 2008 is almost back up to 2007's pace.

but i mainly want to start blogging about politics and some other stuff, since i think i'm wearing out my welcome on my friends' and family's inbox with links and pithy remarks.

something that caught my eye today was in an article by jim webb, a leading candidate to be the democratic vp. he wrote in a 1979 article with the unfortunate title "women can't fight":

When the layerings of centuries of societal development are stripped away, a basic human truth remains: Man must be more aggressive in order to perpetuate the human race. Women don't rape men, and it has nothing to do, obviously, with socially induced differences. As Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin observe in The Psychology of Sex of Differences, man's greater aggressiveness "is one of the best established, and most pervasive of all psychological sex differences." [emphasis added]

i think the section that i italicized would make a pretty powerful attack ad, mostly aimed at female voters who had supported hillary, but for the most part the article was not as bad as i feared it would be after seeing it described. the whole article is kind of like your grandfather saying borderline things and you averting your eyes, but there's nothing too repugnant. not exactly what i'm looking for in a VP candidate, but i'd take him over hillary. it was almost 30 years ago, although i've read that he's said some kind of similar stuff more recently.

probably the most damaging sound bite is this description of a residence after the naval academy went coed: "[I]t is no secret that sex is commonplace in Bancroft Hall. The Hall, which houses 4,000 males and 300 females, is a horny woman's dream." it's a kind of bizarre thing to say, and i'd think it would sound unprofessional even in 1979. i'd be curious if the editors of the magazine tried to get him to take that out.