In Drogyny: I’ve actually wanted to talk to you about this phenomenon, it’s something a colleague of mine and I were talking about. There seems to be a real trend towards male heroes being replaced by women.
Superman: Yeah, one of our strange little, secrets not exactly the right word, but something people don’t usually talk about it.
Plastic Man brought it up some time ago in the Watchtower, actually. Of course, he squeezed himself out from between two Leaguers (it might have been Hawkgirl and Canary) and said, “In the future, there will be boobs.” Lordy, I know that look- I’ve just given you the title for this piece… [Note: He was nearly right.] Anyway, he launched into a very Seinfeldian rant about how heroines were constantly popping up in the stead of male heroes. Jade. Batwoman. The female Question, Fate, Dr. Mid-Nite, Stargirl, Wildcat, Robin, Doctor Light, Hawk and Dove- though in that instance I guess it was Dove and then Hawk, Miss Martian, Speedy, Natasha Irons. He theorized that soon enough, all of us, regardless of desire, would be captured by a new villain, probably calling himself the “Inbreastigator,” who would use a combination of the Dark Arts, plastic surgery and Martian technology to give us all breast implants.
Being him, he turned the entire thing into a commentary on heroine’s self-esteem. I’ll paraphrase: Ladies, you’re good enough to hero under your own symbol, without standing in the shadow of male heroes. But if your low self-esteem won’t allow for that, Plastic Man’s got a use for your stiletto and fishnet fetishes.
And it was Hawkgirl, because, well, the rant hit a nerve, and she tried to mace him.
ID: You mean
S: Yeah, she tried to hit him with her mace. And it was Dinah, because she screamed, and it messed with Plas long enough for Hawkgirl to get in a good, solid bash to the face. They walloped him pretty good, but of course he’s Plastic Man, so after he stopped being stunned he squeezed out from under them and said, “Ladies, please, I prefer to be on top.”
ID: So you’re saying Plastic Man is borderline the office sexual predator?
S: It’s not to that level, and I don’t think it will ever get to that point. Plastic Man is just a big kid, and he flirts at the fourth grade level. I think if he ever took it too far, Diana would wrap him in her lasso and make him tell stories about his insecurities- and fear of that, if nothing else, keeps his libido to a manageable pace. And I hate to sound stereotypical about this, but I think the women in the League, generally, enjoy it. Because it’s playful, and harmless. And I think, to an extent, that with the fate of the world sometimes hanging off our shoulders, sometimes that innocent playfulness really lets us heave a sigh of relief. I could be completely wrong, but I sincerely hope that I’m not. Honestly. If any Leaguers, past or present, have ever felt uncomfortable, please, tell me, um, actually, tell Bruce. He does a better bad cop.
ID: Okay. Well, the less funny aspect of this subject is that most of those women have subsequently been killed, injured or replaced in their respective roles, by men.
S: Yes- but I would like to inject that they often were initially taking over for deceased men, as well.
ID: Okay, but do you think that’s due to any kind of bias, or… ?
S: I’m not sure what you mean. I suppose you could say, God, or whatever kind of cosmic editor you might believe in seems to have some issues with gender equality that he’s unfortunately working out within the female heroing community; this certainly goes beyond even the women in costume to cover the women who surround us. There’s been a lot of innocent people hurt over the years, perhaps a disproportionate percent of them women.
ID: So do you think there’s something to that?
S: I’m not sure I know what you’re asking. If you mean that this is the superhero equivalent of telling a doctor your wife “fell” down the stairs- no. Unequivocally, no. We’ve all had our dark moments in the community, and I know spousal abuse can and has taken place, but there’s no institutionalized understanding about violence towards women. It’s a crime, and just like any other crime, it’s one myself and the League seek full justice for under the law.
ID: Okay. I’m, I think I might be putting this wrong, I don’t want to sound accusatory, but it seems like there’s a disconnect here. More bad things happen to women, and that doesn’t seem
S: The tragedy is, more bad things do happen to women. But it’s not just in our circles, it’s all over. 80% of sexual assault victims are women. 60% of domestic violence victims are women.
If you’re saying there might be subtle biases that might make us, say, save a male over a female, then I think you’re off target. I can’t speak for everyone in our community, but by and large, we have a fairly conservative group of people, traditional, I mean, in the way we were taught to deal with the world. And in that mindset, you protect those who need it. If that means stepping between Diana and a nuclear weapon, or between Bruce and buckshot- you protect the people who need it. I’m reluctant to say what I think you might be angling for, because especially in the League it’s not strictly true, but classically women are the weaker sex- from a purely physical standpoint. That breaks down in the Watchtower, because Bruce is purely human, whereas Hawkgirl and Diana aren’t. Dinah could probably stomp all of the Robins; Batgirl certainly could. And Ollie might be stronger than Speedy, but if there’s a stick of dynamite in the room I need to save them both- but not necessarily Jesse Quick. What I’m trying to say is I sincerely do not believe that high female casualty rates can be blamed on us not wanting to save them, or even on subtle biases; if anything, our biases would push us in the opposite direction.
But if you’re asking if people like Luthor, like the Joker, have historically sought out women, going after perceived weak links, where we might be most vulnerable, where the pain might be the most severe- I think that may have happened in the past. It’s part of why we did what we did.
ID: The honeypot, right.
S: Yes. We wanted to make a better world. But like I said, a lot of us, myself included, we’re old-fashioned. Maybe I’m just being selfish, and I wanted to see that my wife was as safe as I could, or maybe it’s that my mom raised me to stand up for them, but we wanted to make a safer world for women. Because they just might be the ones who inherit the Earth.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Fathers
Inescapable Dadhood: Have you watched that new show [editor’s note: at least new to Hulu] Defying Gravity?
Superman: Yeah, I’ve seen a few episodes. I’ve actually been a little concerned they’re going to pan over to “beta” and its going to resemble J’onn.
ID: That’s right. J’onn’s native Martian form, when he isn’t shapeshifting it to be more humanoid, is a little more, um, insect-like, I guess, craggier and elongated and perhaps a little scarier.
S: So is that what we’re going to talk about?
ID: Not exactly, it just got me contemplating, something I think I remember hearing you talk about in an interview somewhere, that your dad was actually a bit of a rocketry enthusiast growing up.
S: Yeah, my dad was young enough during the Apollo missions that he kind of dreamed of going into space. And when he was a kid he was a pretty big sci fi geek, especially H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
My mom used to tell about the first week after my parents found me, and my dad was just freaked out. He was convinced I couldn’t be a child, that my species just had to look like children, or worse, be shapechangers who were hiding our true, hideous form until the moment was right to strike. He barely slept that week, and once, mom actually caught him trying to sneeze on me- you know, like in War of the Worlds, just to see if I had even that vulnerability.
And, you know, I actually did get a little cold. And that changed everything. I think he’d been worried, you know, because I was an alien, and, at least potentially, I could have caused significant damage to their reputation- even destroyed their home. But after that, he stopped seeing me as something else- something other- and started seeing me as an infant, a child desperately in need of protection.
He stayed with me the entire time I was sick- wouldn’t even let mom in the room, you know, because anytime I’d cough, anything not nailed down would go flying. It was dangerous.
About midway through, he was trying to feed me, and I got this lump of phlegm in my throat and I hacked really hard, and his hand, the one that had been holding the bowl near my mouth, shot back against the wall, and the bowl shattered. He cut himself pretty bad, and of course, I’m just a baby, so all I know is there’s blood and that I don’t like that so I’m crying, and he picked me up out of my crib and just held me- didn’t even worry about his cut hand. After a couple of minutes I’d quieted down, and mom came in to check, saw the blood, and he said, “It’s mine, Martha, just a little scratch on my hand,” and winced as he added, “and we broke one of your bowls.” She took him upstairs and put in, well, she says it was eight stitches, he insists it was 28, so knowing them he’s trying to grow his legend and she was trying to keep him humble, so the truth’s probably somewhere between. But that’s really when he became my dad.
ID: One follow-up: do you think your dad gave you the cold?
S: I don’t. I’d only been exposed to a little bit of solar radiation, so I wasn’t quite as durable as I might have been. I’m sure the crash only further weakened my immune system. It could have been any number of things, really.
ID: Do you think you’re equivocating?
S: Of course. He’s my dad. It’s almost impossible to think the worst of him.
ID: But that’s something your adopted father and your birth one have in common, a passion for extraplanetary exploration.
S: Yeah. My biodad, wow, just using the term makes me feel really old, was always really passionate about space. He loved Krypton, he did, but I think there was something in him that wanted to look beyond our planet, at the future of the species. I think he believed that Krypton, while it was our home, was an anchor- chaining us to less productive parts of our past.
And I ended up being very fortunate. My father eventually planned for us to be able to move vast swaths of the population, and resources, in massive, basically interstellar zeppelins, but he had his miniature working prototype ready when Krypton became unstable. Had he not been forced to do his research underground, without access to normal routes of funding, not to mention assistants and staff- it’s frustrating to think that an entire world died for lack of proper caution.
ID: And I want to play devil’s advocate for a moment- largely because I enjoy inconveniencing you, but what was your mother, um, Lara, is it, up to at the time?
S: If you’re asking of my mother was his lab assistant, or if she was the Kryptonian equivalent of a housewife? No. Mom came from a high-powered political family. My father’s family had a rich history, but we had never really been particularly liked or respected, despite many contributions. My mom came from basically Krypton’s equivalent of the Kennedy or maybe Bush family. She spent most of her time agitating politically. But, rather than marry within higher-powered circles, she married my father for love, which, somewhat tragically, is why she didn’t have the power to popularize my father’s findings about Krypton’s fate.
ID: To tear us slightly adrift of topic, have you ever thought about becoming a father? And of course, there’s the converse, have you ever worried about knocking a woman up with an unabortable fetus?
S: It’s something Lois and I talked about. I think, eventually, we might have given it the old college try- but there are certainly more inherent physical dangers involved. Two humans procreating introduces risks to both the mother and child, but throwing a Kryptonian into the mix- that complicates it further. As to accidentally being a father of an unterminatable pregnancy- I think I had a few odd nightmares in college, but never anything serious or conscious.
But I think I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be a dad. I think it’s only natural, have two really great, caring, attentive fathers, to not want to be able to be that for someone else. I guess I always figured I was working for a better world, and waiting for that before I decided to bring a new life into it. And I think there’s a lot of that sentiment in our community- I think that’s where you get all the protégés we have. But it looks like that isn't going to happen. But I'm not mad, or sad- I don't have any regrets about it. I'm glad I've lived the life I have, the way I have- I wouldn't trade any friendship or life I saved, not even my failures or humiliations. I'd have liked things to have been different, but I'm thankful at least for the way things were.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: Yeah, I’ve seen a few episodes. I’ve actually been a little concerned they’re going to pan over to “beta” and its going to resemble J’onn.
ID: That’s right. J’onn’s native Martian form, when he isn’t shapeshifting it to be more humanoid, is a little more, um, insect-like, I guess, craggier and elongated and perhaps a little scarier.
S: So is that what we’re going to talk about?
ID: Not exactly, it just got me contemplating, something I think I remember hearing you talk about in an interview somewhere, that your dad was actually a bit of a rocketry enthusiast growing up.
S: Yeah, my dad was young enough during the Apollo missions that he kind of dreamed of going into space. And when he was a kid he was a pretty big sci fi geek, especially H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
My mom used to tell about the first week after my parents found me, and my dad was just freaked out. He was convinced I couldn’t be a child, that my species just had to look like children, or worse, be shapechangers who were hiding our true, hideous form until the moment was right to strike. He barely slept that week, and once, mom actually caught him trying to sneeze on me- you know, like in War of the Worlds, just to see if I had even that vulnerability.
And, you know, I actually did get a little cold. And that changed everything. I think he’d been worried, you know, because I was an alien, and, at least potentially, I could have caused significant damage to their reputation- even destroyed their home. But after that, he stopped seeing me as something else- something other- and started seeing me as an infant, a child desperately in need of protection.
He stayed with me the entire time I was sick- wouldn’t even let mom in the room, you know, because anytime I’d cough, anything not nailed down would go flying. It was dangerous.
About midway through, he was trying to feed me, and I got this lump of phlegm in my throat and I hacked really hard, and his hand, the one that had been holding the bowl near my mouth, shot back against the wall, and the bowl shattered. He cut himself pretty bad, and of course, I’m just a baby, so all I know is there’s blood and that I don’t like that so I’m crying, and he picked me up out of my crib and just held me- didn’t even worry about his cut hand. After a couple of minutes I’d quieted down, and mom came in to check, saw the blood, and he said, “It’s mine, Martha, just a little scratch on my hand,” and winced as he added, “and we broke one of your bowls.” She took him upstairs and put in, well, she says it was eight stitches, he insists it was 28, so knowing them he’s trying to grow his legend and she was trying to keep him humble, so the truth’s probably somewhere between. But that’s really when he became my dad.
ID: One follow-up: do you think your dad gave you the cold?
S: I don’t. I’d only been exposed to a little bit of solar radiation, so I wasn’t quite as durable as I might have been. I’m sure the crash only further weakened my immune system. It could have been any number of things, really.
ID: Do you think you’re equivocating?
S: Of course. He’s my dad. It’s almost impossible to think the worst of him.
ID: But that’s something your adopted father and your birth one have in common, a passion for extraplanetary exploration.
S: Yeah. My biodad, wow, just using the term makes me feel really old, was always really passionate about space. He loved Krypton, he did, but I think there was something in him that wanted to look beyond our planet, at the future of the species. I think he believed that Krypton, while it was our home, was an anchor- chaining us to less productive parts of our past.
And I ended up being very fortunate. My father eventually planned for us to be able to move vast swaths of the population, and resources, in massive, basically interstellar zeppelins, but he had his miniature working prototype ready when Krypton became unstable. Had he not been forced to do his research underground, without access to normal routes of funding, not to mention assistants and staff- it’s frustrating to think that an entire world died for lack of proper caution.
ID: And I want to play devil’s advocate for a moment- largely because I enjoy inconveniencing you, but what was your mother, um, Lara, is it, up to at the time?
S: If you’re asking of my mother was his lab assistant, or if she was the Kryptonian equivalent of a housewife? No. Mom came from a high-powered political family. My father’s family had a rich history, but we had never really been particularly liked or respected, despite many contributions. My mom came from basically Krypton’s equivalent of the Kennedy or maybe Bush family. She spent most of her time agitating politically. But, rather than marry within higher-powered circles, she married my father for love, which, somewhat tragically, is why she didn’t have the power to popularize my father’s findings about Krypton’s fate.
ID: To tear us slightly adrift of topic, have you ever thought about becoming a father? And of course, there’s the converse, have you ever worried about knocking a woman up with an unabortable fetus?
S: It’s something Lois and I talked about. I think, eventually, we might have given it the old college try- but there are certainly more inherent physical dangers involved. Two humans procreating introduces risks to both the mother and child, but throwing a Kryptonian into the mix- that complicates it further. As to accidentally being a father of an unterminatable pregnancy- I think I had a few odd nightmares in college, but never anything serious or conscious.
But I think I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be a dad. I think it’s only natural, have two really great, caring, attentive fathers, to not want to be able to be that for someone else. I guess I always figured I was working for a better world, and waiting for that before I decided to bring a new life into it. And I think there’s a lot of that sentiment in our community- I think that’s where you get all the protégés we have. But it looks like that isn't going to happen. But I'm not mad, or sad- I don't have any regrets about it. I'm glad I've lived the life I have, the way I have- I wouldn't trade any friendship or life I saved, not even my failures or humiliations. I'd have liked things to have been different, but I'm thankful at least for the way things were.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Strange Visitors From Other Planets
Intellectual Dinosaur: I came to a realization last week of something, something kind of cool yet wholly mundane: I’m talking to an alien.
Superman: Yeah.
ID: I remember that sense of, of wonder, watching things like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T.. This is… you know, we take it for granted, today, but it’s something special. I think one reason it’s become so much less, um, fantastical, I guess, is how every day it is, now. I mean, it isn’t just you, but a whole heaping helping of other heroes are aliens, too. Um, I hope I’m not spilling any unopened beans, here, but there’s the obvious ones, like Martian Manhunter and Starfire. There’s the slightly less obvious ones (at least once you realize that their wings are actually just strapped onto their backs) Hawks. Then there’s the “I’m not sure it’s not just another Look at Me stunt” variety, like Guy Gardner.
S: Yeah, that was an odd thing to find out. But… and I shouldn’t say this, but his part-alien heritage apparently didn’t give him the ability to withstand one punch from Batman.
ID: I thought that was an urban legend.
S: Nope. And sad to say, it was not the last time Bruce put Guy out with one punch.
ID: And the New Gods- I always forget that. I mean Barda, well, for an alien, she really looked quite good in those charity calendars that came out a few years ago. I mean, that bathing suit left little to the imagination, and from what I could see, there aren’t any noticeable differences in New God physiology.
S: I’ll assume you meant that as a combination compliment and gushing, “Gee we’re not so different” sentiment, and not the creepy, creepy thing it became.
But yes, point taken. There’s a bit less variety in the explored universe than many would have guessed. A less skeptic person might see a designer’s hand behind that, but I prefer to think that even entropy is entropic- that sometimes chaos despite its chaotic nature assembles things in a way that seems ordered.
ID: Sure. But then there’s the flipside, of course, that for every beneficial alien we have in our midst, we’ve got a dozen White Martians, an army of Parademons, and the sometimes hostile Rannian and Thanagarian races. And then you’ve got some of the really seriously Big Bads, like Doomsday, Darksied, Mongul, and Mageddon. I mean, we’re talking ever one in four, giving you the benefit of the doubt, is beneficial. So why do you think the public warmed so quickly to having aliens in our midst?
S: Hmm. That’s a fair question. I think, and I could be wrong, because you’re kind of asking me to read everyone’s minds, but I think that it has a lot of factors. But first and foremost, I think it had to do with our timing. I didn’t just show up one day proclaiming to be “SuperAlien” here to save mankind from its troubles. It was a while, in fact, before Lex Luthor tried to “out” me as an alien. By that point, people had taken a shine to me, and they really gave me the benefit of the doubt as you put it. Still, had Lois not been willing to lend me her reporting credibility, and give me that chance to set the record straight, I think Lex’s xenophobic ploy might well have worked.
ID: So you think, in your case, at least, it had to do with being candid with the public, building on the good will you’d already amassed. But what about some others, other people you know who’ve faced some hardships or even faced the opposite.
S: J’onn comes most readily to mind. He’s actually been on Earth longer than I have, but he initially used his shapeshifting abilities to hide his green skin, and to appear more human. I think that was probably smart; especially at the time, when race relations were so volatile, I think being a green man would have made life unbearable for him. But that doesn’t mean J’onn was hiding- because I don’t think he ever was. I think J’onn is exactly who he’s always been, and that that’s why when he got here he got a job as a detective- he wanted to be as helpful as he could. I think J’onn did what he did as much to ease our minds as to fit in.
ID: But you think fitting in played a role?
S: Of course. The main reason J’onn came here was that there were no Green Martians left. His family had been killed in the civil war- and while there were still White Martians, those that survived were war criminals in suspended animation- not exactly start a new civilization material. J’onn was looking to belong, absolutely, but he was also looking to contribute, to be a part of something larger than just himself- maybe to recreate a little bit of that family he’d lost.
ID: How about in Starfire’s case?
S: Well, she’s a Tammaranean princess with a zest for life
ID: And a skimpy costume.
S: Yes. And one of her first contacts on planet was the Titans. The combination means that she seemed fun and exciting, while still being in the company of established and trusted people. I can’t speak specifically for her experiences, but from what I’ve heard, she’s mostly experienced the better side of humanity.
ID: I think it might have helped, too, in her case, that she was here by choice. It wasn’t her and her entourage, or worse, a large contingent from her planet, just her, visiting. Kind of an interstellar tourist on a long-term visa. You and J’onn, your stories are a bit more unique, because you’re both the last of your respective races, or at least were, for all intents and purposes, when you arrived. So that has an iconic feel to it, harkening back to America the refuge of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. I think there’s something very American about that- and I don’t mean that in a way that’s at all cynical, my usually cynical nature to the contrary.
S: Yeah, that’s something I’ve always been aware of. It’s a part of why I love this country- because there’s a camaraderie in all of us being immigrants.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: Yeah.
ID: I remember that sense of, of wonder, watching things like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T.. This is… you know, we take it for granted, today, but it’s something special. I think one reason it’s become so much less, um, fantastical, I guess, is how every day it is, now. I mean, it isn’t just you, but a whole heaping helping of other heroes are aliens, too. Um, I hope I’m not spilling any unopened beans, here, but there’s the obvious ones, like Martian Manhunter and Starfire. There’s the slightly less obvious ones (at least once you realize that their wings are actually just strapped onto their backs) Hawks. Then there’s the “I’m not sure it’s not just another Look at Me stunt” variety, like Guy Gardner.
S: Yeah, that was an odd thing to find out. But… and I shouldn’t say this, but his part-alien heritage apparently didn’t give him the ability to withstand one punch from Batman.
ID: I thought that was an urban legend.
S: Nope. And sad to say, it was not the last time Bruce put Guy out with one punch.
ID: And the New Gods- I always forget that. I mean Barda, well, for an alien, she really looked quite good in those charity calendars that came out a few years ago. I mean, that bathing suit left little to the imagination, and from what I could see, there aren’t any noticeable differences in New God physiology.
S: I’ll assume you meant that as a combination compliment and gushing, “Gee we’re not so different” sentiment, and not the creepy, creepy thing it became.
But yes, point taken. There’s a bit less variety in the explored universe than many would have guessed. A less skeptic person might see a designer’s hand behind that, but I prefer to think that even entropy is entropic- that sometimes chaos despite its chaotic nature assembles things in a way that seems ordered.
ID: Sure. But then there’s the flipside, of course, that for every beneficial alien we have in our midst, we’ve got a dozen White Martians, an army of Parademons, and the sometimes hostile Rannian and Thanagarian races. And then you’ve got some of the really seriously Big Bads, like Doomsday, Darksied, Mongul, and Mageddon. I mean, we’re talking ever one in four, giving you the benefit of the doubt, is beneficial. So why do you think the public warmed so quickly to having aliens in our midst?
S: Hmm. That’s a fair question. I think, and I could be wrong, because you’re kind of asking me to read everyone’s minds, but I think that it has a lot of factors. But first and foremost, I think it had to do with our timing. I didn’t just show up one day proclaiming to be “SuperAlien” here to save mankind from its troubles. It was a while, in fact, before Lex Luthor tried to “out” me as an alien. By that point, people had taken a shine to me, and they really gave me the benefit of the doubt as you put it. Still, had Lois not been willing to lend me her reporting credibility, and give me that chance to set the record straight, I think Lex’s xenophobic ploy might well have worked.
ID: So you think, in your case, at least, it had to do with being candid with the public, building on the good will you’d already amassed. But what about some others, other people you know who’ve faced some hardships or even faced the opposite.
S: J’onn comes most readily to mind. He’s actually been on Earth longer than I have, but he initially used his shapeshifting abilities to hide his green skin, and to appear more human. I think that was probably smart; especially at the time, when race relations were so volatile, I think being a green man would have made life unbearable for him. But that doesn’t mean J’onn was hiding- because I don’t think he ever was. I think J’onn is exactly who he’s always been, and that that’s why when he got here he got a job as a detective- he wanted to be as helpful as he could. I think J’onn did what he did as much to ease our minds as to fit in.
ID: But you think fitting in played a role?
S: Of course. The main reason J’onn came here was that there were no Green Martians left. His family had been killed in the civil war- and while there were still White Martians, those that survived were war criminals in suspended animation- not exactly start a new civilization material. J’onn was looking to belong, absolutely, but he was also looking to contribute, to be a part of something larger than just himself- maybe to recreate a little bit of that family he’d lost.
ID: How about in Starfire’s case?
S: Well, she’s a Tammaranean princess with a zest for life
ID: And a skimpy costume.
S: Yes. And one of her first contacts on planet was the Titans. The combination means that she seemed fun and exciting, while still being in the company of established and trusted people. I can’t speak specifically for her experiences, but from what I’ve heard, she’s mostly experienced the better side of humanity.
ID: I think it might have helped, too, in her case, that she was here by choice. It wasn’t her and her entourage, or worse, a large contingent from her planet, just her, visiting. Kind of an interstellar tourist on a long-term visa. You and J’onn, your stories are a bit more unique, because you’re both the last of your respective races, or at least were, for all intents and purposes, when you arrived. So that has an iconic feel to it, harkening back to America the refuge of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. I think there’s something very American about that- and I don’t mean that in a way that’s at all cynical, my usually cynical nature to the contrary.
S: Yeah, that’s something I’ve always been aware of. It’s a part of why I love this country- because there’s a camaraderie in all of us being immigrants.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Presidential Power
Irascible Democrat: There’s something I’ve been dying to ask you, since your view of the current President has softened, while down-home vitriol at him seems to be ever-increasing. Plus, there was his Superman joke during the campaign. So what's your take on his presidency so far?
Superman: I’m a reporter, first and foremost, so I have to take umbrage a bit with your phrasing. There are people who are angry with the President, and some of them even have a point, but if you’re specifically bringing up the Tea Parties, or the people shouting at politicians who try to speak about health care or climate change- they’re in an obstructionist minority.
But again, some of them do have a point. A wide majority of people favor health care reform. When you ask them about any specific plan on any specific timeline, support drops to a little below half. I think the problem, particularly with health care, is that the public like their health circumstances today, and they're scared of things changing. But the reality is their circumstances are constantly changing, evolving. If current trends continue, without reform costs will continue to rise, and that will mean that some people will have to change to cheaper insurance, others will lose coverage entirely. So people want to freeze their insurance as it stands today- but that isn't really possible. The public is just scared, right now, which I think is largely the fault of that obstructionist minority I mentioned, but the administration hasn't effectively countered it, either.
ID: But overall, how do you rate the President?
S: I’m not going to give him a grade, or a thumbs up or down. But I’ll say one thing for the man and the administration he's built, that I think encompasses most of my feelings on the subject: he’s trying. Whatever your political feelings on what he’s attempting to do, whatever your favorite hobby horse, he’s attempting to do something about it. That was always the most damning charge against Bush, and Luthor after him, that they were terribly passive. They wanted to let the market sort things out, let someone else figure out a way to profit when things went wrong, rather than getting in with the resources at their disposal to help. And Obama, and the congressional leadership, they’re trying. They’re fighting the good fight.
Sometimes, with all the pies they have their hands in, things get necessarily back-burnered, but I think it’s unreasonable to think even a great president would be able to address every standing question in the nation at the same time.
Take Darfur. The League came out in a joint statement with President Bush's administration, declaring our belief that what was taking place in Darfur amounted to genocide. We also filed an amicus brief of our research efforts for the ICC. Now under international law, Bush was supposed to act to stop the genocide in Darfur once it was determined to be occurring. But Bush, and Luthor after him, seemed content with that, assuming someone else would deal with it effectively.
ID: Given your own non-interventionist approach, isn't that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?
S: The difference is slight, I'll grant you, but huge. First, the League is a collection of people from different nationalities, and are not signatories nor parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The CPPCG actually states in part that signatory nations have a responsibility to act against a genocide. Where the League lacks the mandate and the infrastructure, the U.S. does not. The U.S. under either Bush or Luthor could have assembled another coalition. Hell, the US could have devoted no resources whatsoever, and just called in Captain Atom, one of the few Captains in our circles who actually holds the rank legitimately- in the Air Force, specifically.
ID: Okay, so what's the difference then in current policy?
S: Admittedly, part of the change is that now there's a UN force in place, there's a warrant for genocide-related crimes out for [Sudanese President Omar al] Bashir from the ICC. But despite the fact that Darfur is at least in the process of making progress, he's still talking about it. And he's dispatched specific envoys tasked with aiding the situation. I think he could do more. I think, in private at least, he should mention Captain Atom, and the fact that one single air raid through the country could destroy upwards of 80% of the military infrastructure, and probably deliver Bashir into the waiting hands of the ICC. I think maybe Obama doesn't want to push that too hard, where he's using fear and threats as a proxy for diplomacy, and I think Darfur is one of those things that has been back-burnered in favor of pressing domestic concerns- but I think it's on his to-do list, whereas with Luthor and Bush I don't think it even registered as something they should think about acting on.
ID: Okay, what about GM?
S: I think, given the lousy set of circumstances, he’s done well enough. After all, it was the previous administration that first loaned GM billions of dollars. So when it came to choosing between letting that “investment” die- and letting all those jobs disappear- or sinking more capital into the company, I don’t think there was a good choice- so I think they tried to be practical.
ID: What about people upset about the lack of movement on “Don't ask, don't tell.”
S: I think it's still on the President's radar- it's just a difficult policy to replace with other things on the table. I think, also, he's a bit gunshy because of what happened to Clinton that originally led to the compromise that is “Don't ask.” I think it's again Obama choosing some priorities over others.
ID: Are you an apologist for the President?
S: I'm not an apologist for anyone, except occasionally myself- and even then, only when I feel I've genuinely erred. Besides which, these are your questions, which means either you were wanting me to fall the way I did, the other way, or, I suppose if you're that rare kind of genuinely curious reporter, then you were just interested in which way I eventually would fall.
ID: Okay, but if the next election were tomorrow, would you vote to reelect him?
S: I don't know- that depends on my options. If all the Republicans are offering is Palin, Romney, Huckabee, then I'd take anyone else with a pulse and a synapse or two- which would definitely include the President. If Al Gore decides to challenge as the father of a new independent party, running on a platform of genuine environmental revolution- things like mandating recyclable containers for all food products- then I don't know. I always really liked the title “man of tomorrow,” so if there were an election then, I hope I'd be looking towards the future, and who was going to get us to the best one possible.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: I’m a reporter, first and foremost, so I have to take umbrage a bit with your phrasing. There are people who are angry with the President, and some of them even have a point, but if you’re specifically bringing up the Tea Parties, or the people shouting at politicians who try to speak about health care or climate change- they’re in an obstructionist minority.
But again, some of them do have a point. A wide majority of people favor health care reform. When you ask them about any specific plan on any specific timeline, support drops to a little below half. I think the problem, particularly with health care, is that the public like their health circumstances today, and they're scared of things changing. But the reality is their circumstances are constantly changing, evolving. If current trends continue, without reform costs will continue to rise, and that will mean that some people will have to change to cheaper insurance, others will lose coverage entirely. So people want to freeze their insurance as it stands today- but that isn't really possible. The public is just scared, right now, which I think is largely the fault of that obstructionist minority I mentioned, but the administration hasn't effectively countered it, either.
ID: But overall, how do you rate the President?
S: I’m not going to give him a grade, or a thumbs up or down. But I’ll say one thing for the man and the administration he's built, that I think encompasses most of my feelings on the subject: he’s trying. Whatever your political feelings on what he’s attempting to do, whatever your favorite hobby horse, he’s attempting to do something about it. That was always the most damning charge against Bush, and Luthor after him, that they were terribly passive. They wanted to let the market sort things out, let someone else figure out a way to profit when things went wrong, rather than getting in with the resources at their disposal to help. And Obama, and the congressional leadership, they’re trying. They’re fighting the good fight.
Sometimes, with all the pies they have their hands in, things get necessarily back-burnered, but I think it’s unreasonable to think even a great president would be able to address every standing question in the nation at the same time.
Take Darfur. The League came out in a joint statement with President Bush's administration, declaring our belief that what was taking place in Darfur amounted to genocide. We also filed an amicus brief of our research efforts for the ICC. Now under international law, Bush was supposed to act to stop the genocide in Darfur once it was determined to be occurring. But Bush, and Luthor after him, seemed content with that, assuming someone else would deal with it effectively.
ID: Given your own non-interventionist approach, isn't that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?
S: The difference is slight, I'll grant you, but huge. First, the League is a collection of people from different nationalities, and are not signatories nor parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The CPPCG actually states in part that signatory nations have a responsibility to act against a genocide. Where the League lacks the mandate and the infrastructure, the U.S. does not. The U.S. under either Bush or Luthor could have assembled another coalition. Hell, the US could have devoted no resources whatsoever, and just called in Captain Atom, one of the few Captains in our circles who actually holds the rank legitimately- in the Air Force, specifically.
ID: Okay, so what's the difference then in current policy?
S: Admittedly, part of the change is that now there's a UN force in place, there's a warrant for genocide-related crimes out for [Sudanese President Omar al] Bashir from the ICC. But despite the fact that Darfur is at least in the process of making progress, he's still talking about it. And he's dispatched specific envoys tasked with aiding the situation. I think he could do more. I think, in private at least, he should mention Captain Atom, and the fact that one single air raid through the country could destroy upwards of 80% of the military infrastructure, and probably deliver Bashir into the waiting hands of the ICC. I think maybe Obama doesn't want to push that too hard, where he's using fear and threats as a proxy for diplomacy, and I think Darfur is one of those things that has been back-burnered in favor of pressing domestic concerns- but I think it's on his to-do list, whereas with Luthor and Bush I don't think it even registered as something they should think about acting on.
ID: Okay, what about GM?
S: I think, given the lousy set of circumstances, he’s done well enough. After all, it was the previous administration that first loaned GM billions of dollars. So when it came to choosing between letting that “investment” die- and letting all those jobs disappear- or sinking more capital into the company, I don’t think there was a good choice- so I think they tried to be practical.
ID: What about people upset about the lack of movement on “Don't ask, don't tell.”
S: I think it's still on the President's radar- it's just a difficult policy to replace with other things on the table. I think, also, he's a bit gunshy because of what happened to Clinton that originally led to the compromise that is “Don't ask.” I think it's again Obama choosing some priorities over others.
ID: Are you an apologist for the President?
S: I'm not an apologist for anyone, except occasionally myself- and even then, only when I feel I've genuinely erred. Besides which, these are your questions, which means either you were wanting me to fall the way I did, the other way, or, I suppose if you're that rare kind of genuinely curious reporter, then you were just interested in which way I eventually would fall.
ID: Okay, but if the next election were tomorrow, would you vote to reelect him?
S: I don't know- that depends on my options. If all the Republicans are offering is Palin, Romney, Huckabee, then I'd take anyone else with a pulse and a synapse or two- which would definitely include the President. If Al Gore decides to challenge as the father of a new independent party, running on a platform of genuine environmental revolution- things like mandating recyclable containers for all food products- then I don't know. I always really liked the title “man of tomorrow,” so if there were an election then, I hope I'd be looking towards the future, and who was going to get us to the best one possible.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Kryptonian Medicine
Iguana Don: All right, for those of you joining us at home, the office, or wherever you read your internet interviews, this is part deux of our discussion of health care- which began with a “one thing you could fix” kind of question. We spoke for a moment off the record- full disclosure: through a bathroom door, and I’ve learned to never have burritos before an interview- but I’d like you to nutshell everything we talked about.
Superman: I suppose, and I don’t know that I was clear enough, that what I was getting at was putting science into our application of medicine. Science goes into developing all kinds of new understandings and treatments, but for whatever reason, science doesn’t seem to be applied to the administration of medicine. We don’t have good, hard data on what forms of treatment work best, and under what circumstances. For just about any ailment there’s a number of different treatments, and, with the exception of generics, it really isn’t a po-tay-to po-tah-to difference between them.
ID: Let me be clear: are you saying that maybe people aren’t worth what we spend on medication?
S: I’m saying that if a name brand pill will cure a patient in three days instead of four, but costs twice as much, it would be worth asking as a nation if our money’s better spent saving twice as many people a little more slowly. And even that’s probably a bit of a mischaracterization, because most generics are just as effective.
The main issue I see, and the waters are further muddied by lobbying and direct-market advertising of medications, but there’s a whole ocean of pills, and we test them to make sure they’re effective at what they’re aiming to do, and we monitor and label them for side effects. But what we haven’t done previously is comparative studies. Sure, atorvastatin might carry some negative side effects like headache, weakness and chest pain, but if it has twice as good an outcome as another drug, that’s what could make a huge difference. And it isn’t just in savings in unused medicine and procedures, but by getting things right the first time, by getting people the best possible care early, we’re preventing more expensive procedures, like a bypass, later on, and likely helping people live longer, happier lives
ID: Okay, time for you to be a bastard. You’ve told me all the “if I were God of health care,” pie in the sky changes you could bring about, but what’s the one hardest thing about health care?
S: It’s a resource, and no resource is unlimited. There can, should, and must be some form of limits on how we utilize health care. I think effectiveness studies are a good first step- though I can’t honestly believe that the insurance industry hasn’t been doing this all along as a cost-effectiveness measure- that in and of itself is proof of a poorly competitive industry. But I think there are likely tough questions ahead. I think rationing is something that insurers currently do, and who amongst us haven’t heard horror stories of after-the-fact denial of claims? But we may be butting up against the glass ceiling of what we can afford to pay for health insurance.
Premiums have virtually doubled since 2000; they’re predicted to double again by 2020. The average American premiums cost $7900; most people never see that cost, because a lot of that tab is picked up by their employers- and I’m going to ballpark this, since the figure I have is actually for a family- but in the last ten years workers picked up an extra $600 more on their premiums. Most employers say they’re tapped out, so if costs do double by 2020 to $15800 per person, then that whole $7900 increase will fall on the workers.
To put it another way, world per capita GDP per day is about $20. The American premiums per person per day amounts to $21.65- we’re already spending more on our health care than many people in the world have to live on every day- so there’s already rationing- just right now, it’s being rationed to the US and other wealthy nations. And I don’t mean to be playing the fear card, here, but as the US faces more competition from emerging economies like India and China, and if health care costs continue to rise- how much longer do you think we or anybody will be able to afford health care?
To bring back up prevention and healthy diet for just a moment, obesity-related disease costs the American health system about $90 billion dollars a year, of which about half is already covered by Medicare and Medicaid- in part because obesity is more prevalent in the poor and elderly. So if we were able to curb that, we’d be nearly halfway to paying for the admittedly modest reform efforts Obama is pursuing. Closely related to obesity is diabetes. Diabetes costs about $116 billion per year, again, about half of which is covered by the existing government programs. It’s true, diabetes is a bit stickier- since there are other factors including genetics at play, but if we could eliminate a significant portion of new diabetes cases through better diet counseling, just between those two preventative health efforts, we could pay for the Obama plan. And that’s ignoring that diabetes is credited with the loss of $56 billion in lost productivity due to increased usage of sick days- that’s money that would be helping the economy, a portion of which would return to the government in the form of taxes.
Sorry about the barrage of figures- I’ve obviously been researching for a story Perry has me writing. But what I’m trying to illustrate, and hopefully the science geek love of numbers my father gave me doesn’t obscure it too much, is that there has to be some limit. It might come down to the fact that we’ll be forced to decide between paying for a heart transplant for a 40 year old patient versus a 90 year old- but that’s a decision forced on us by higher costs- it’s the same decision private insurers would be forced to make, as well- though personally I think the decision is always best left in the hands of doctors whenever possible. But there is a line- there has to be. The difference is, I’d like to make that decision, since I’ve no profit motive at all, and no ulterior motive save for seeing the people I care about protected. Failing that, I think I’d prefer a nonprofit motive to a profit one, when it comes to making this hard decision.
ID: How much of your stance here is affected by your cancer?
S: That’s a very fair question- though of course I’m sure you know it’s the old journalistic ethics question: how biased are you? And of course, the honest answer to that question is I don’t know. You can never be sure, because it suffers from the observer effect as much as anything, but yes, absolutely, dying makes me realize that, particularly the slow, ponderous death from cancer is not something I’d wish on even my bitterest enemy. I think we can fix our health care system, but I do think the clock is ticking- and even if my prognosis is wrong systemically, the clock is ticking for people out there, whose lives could be saved or made drastically better.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: I suppose, and I don’t know that I was clear enough, that what I was getting at was putting science into our application of medicine. Science goes into developing all kinds of new understandings and treatments, but for whatever reason, science doesn’t seem to be applied to the administration of medicine. We don’t have good, hard data on what forms of treatment work best, and under what circumstances. For just about any ailment there’s a number of different treatments, and, with the exception of generics, it really isn’t a po-tay-to po-tah-to difference between them.
ID: Let me be clear: are you saying that maybe people aren’t worth what we spend on medication?
S: I’m saying that if a name brand pill will cure a patient in three days instead of four, but costs twice as much, it would be worth asking as a nation if our money’s better spent saving twice as many people a little more slowly. And even that’s probably a bit of a mischaracterization, because most generics are just as effective.
The main issue I see, and the waters are further muddied by lobbying and direct-market advertising of medications, but there’s a whole ocean of pills, and we test them to make sure they’re effective at what they’re aiming to do, and we monitor and label them for side effects. But what we haven’t done previously is comparative studies. Sure, atorvastatin might carry some negative side effects like headache, weakness and chest pain, but if it has twice as good an outcome as another drug, that’s what could make a huge difference. And it isn’t just in savings in unused medicine and procedures, but by getting things right the first time, by getting people the best possible care early, we’re preventing more expensive procedures, like a bypass, later on, and likely helping people live longer, happier lives
ID: Okay, time for you to be a bastard. You’ve told me all the “if I were God of health care,” pie in the sky changes you could bring about, but what’s the one hardest thing about health care?
S: It’s a resource, and no resource is unlimited. There can, should, and must be some form of limits on how we utilize health care. I think effectiveness studies are a good first step- though I can’t honestly believe that the insurance industry hasn’t been doing this all along as a cost-effectiveness measure- that in and of itself is proof of a poorly competitive industry. But I think there are likely tough questions ahead. I think rationing is something that insurers currently do, and who amongst us haven’t heard horror stories of after-the-fact denial of claims? But we may be butting up against the glass ceiling of what we can afford to pay for health insurance.
Premiums have virtually doubled since 2000; they’re predicted to double again by 2020. The average American premiums cost $7900; most people never see that cost, because a lot of that tab is picked up by their employers- and I’m going to ballpark this, since the figure I have is actually for a family- but in the last ten years workers picked up an extra $600 more on their premiums. Most employers say they’re tapped out, so if costs do double by 2020 to $15800 per person, then that whole $7900 increase will fall on the workers.
To put it another way, world per capita GDP per day is about $20. The American premiums per person per day amounts to $21.65- we’re already spending more on our health care than many people in the world have to live on every day- so there’s already rationing- just right now, it’s being rationed to the US and other wealthy nations. And I don’t mean to be playing the fear card, here, but as the US faces more competition from emerging economies like India and China, and if health care costs continue to rise- how much longer do you think we or anybody will be able to afford health care?
To bring back up prevention and healthy diet for just a moment, obesity-related disease costs the American health system about $90 billion dollars a year, of which about half is already covered by Medicare and Medicaid- in part because obesity is more prevalent in the poor and elderly. So if we were able to curb that, we’d be nearly halfway to paying for the admittedly modest reform efforts Obama is pursuing. Closely related to obesity is diabetes. Diabetes costs about $116 billion per year, again, about half of which is covered by the existing government programs. It’s true, diabetes is a bit stickier- since there are other factors including genetics at play, but if we could eliminate a significant portion of new diabetes cases through better diet counseling, just between those two preventative health efforts, we could pay for the Obama plan. And that’s ignoring that diabetes is credited with the loss of $56 billion in lost productivity due to increased usage of sick days- that’s money that would be helping the economy, a portion of which would return to the government in the form of taxes.
Sorry about the barrage of figures- I’ve obviously been researching for a story Perry has me writing. But what I’m trying to illustrate, and hopefully the science geek love of numbers my father gave me doesn’t obscure it too much, is that there has to be some limit. It might come down to the fact that we’ll be forced to decide between paying for a heart transplant for a 40 year old patient versus a 90 year old- but that’s a decision forced on us by higher costs- it’s the same decision private insurers would be forced to make, as well- though personally I think the decision is always best left in the hands of doctors whenever possible. But there is a line- there has to be. The difference is, I’d like to make that decision, since I’ve no profit motive at all, and no ulterior motive save for seeing the people I care about protected. Failing that, I think I’d prefer a nonprofit motive to a profit one, when it comes to making this hard decision.
ID: How much of your stance here is affected by your cancer?
S: That’s a very fair question- though of course I’m sure you know it’s the old journalistic ethics question: how biased are you? And of course, the honest answer to that question is I don’t know. You can never be sure, because it suffers from the observer effect as much as anything, but yes, absolutely, dying makes me realize that, particularly the slow, ponderous death from cancer is not something I’d wish on even my bitterest enemy. I think we can fix our health care system, but I do think the clock is ticking- and even if my prognosis is wrong systemically, the clock is ticking for people out there, whose lives could be saved or made drastically better.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Dr. Kent
Icky Dick: I want to bounce off of our discussion last week of the TED conference, and ask you a silly question. If you didn’t have the amazing abilities you have now, but had the ability to fix one thing in the world, big or small, what would it be?
Superman: Hmm. That is a silly question, though it’s kind of TEDish in its myopic grandiosity… but it’s also a sly attempt to keep me within the realm of fickle politics. Do you play chess? You should try playing Bruce sometime…
ID: I’ve been known to lose at chess on more than one occasion. But I’d be happy to play chess with Bruce, so long as our conversation was on the record.
S: I don’t know that I’d hold my breath on that- even if I don’t really technically need to breath.
But to answer your question… I’m tempted to stymie you and say “farm equipment,” which would only partially be a joke. There is something almost spiritual about using your hands to fix something that will help feed people- there’s an uncommon nobility to that, and I think it would send you scrambling for further topics to this discussion. But I have trouble accepting the smallness of that- it would be too selfish, too personally rewarding while bearing limited good for everyone else, the fed people notwithstanding. And I like to think I’m a practical person- a pragmatist. So the real question, then, is what’s the most important problem in the world right now- or perhaps, rather than importance, the one problem in the world that has the best chance of being addressed.
There are a lot of problems mankind’s butting up against: war, pollution, famine, poverty, clean water, disease- to name just a few. So maybe my answer is simply cheating, since it touches on all of them, but I suppose, while we may not often think of it in these terms, it is a pretty basic necessity, and that’s health.
ID: Hmm. So what do you think of Obama’s plan, then?
S: I wasn’t done- but I’ll indulge you for a moment. I think, like most of the public, I can agree that one, our health care system doesn’t work like it should, and two, I have no idea what the impact of Obama’s plan is going to be. I think the truth of it is that neither can he- what he’s doing is tackling the mammoth industry in this country, and the one where all of us stand to lose or gain depending on the outcome. Health reform is necessary and worth attempting- I just hope that politics and the necessary uncertainty of change don’t get too much in the way.
But American health care is really too small- and that’s not to disparage my countrymen, merely pointing out that we’re less than 5% of the world’s population, and not everything revolves around us. Though, I suppose, at the center of this is the fact that Americans are disproportionately disadvantaged as Western nations go, so health reform would disproportionately advantage us, too.
But let me explain first what I mean about health tying into everything. Solid health reform would focus on the really easy things to fix first. As an example, more than enough food is produced in the modern world to feed the population, but it is used in such a way that food produced is more costly, less healthy, and spread less efficiently than it should be. Health reform would include better nutrituional planning in terms of what we put into our bodies and how we get it there. Health reform should also include access to clean drinking water, and some form of sewage system. These are really just part of the foundation of good health reform- and the most basic kind of preventative medicine.
And to bring back TED for a moment, providing research into cheaper eyewear, to the end of eventually supplying eyeglasses to that billion people without them- imagine how many geniuses we might be missing out on simply because they cannot see. Germany at the start of World War Two had about 80 million people, but Hitler’s policies ended up driving out some of the world’s greatest minds, Einstein, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Hans Bethe, and physicists including what would eventually become the core of the Manhattan Project. Imagine if that figure held, that once in every eighty million we got an Einstein, a Bloch and a Born- now imagine there’s a one in six chance that they wouldn’t be able to see well enough to change the world. That’s basic visual care- a pair of eyeglasses, for God’s sake, and the benefits could be incalculable.
Sorry, I was getting tangential for a moment, there. Anyway, I’ve never been one to argue green technology from a karmic standpoint, or even from a global warming one. I remember a conversation I sort of stumbled into between Bruce [Wayne] and Ted Kord, and while they were both arguing the practical and economic reasoning, I just said, “It’s poison- industry is making the planet a little more hostile to human life every single day.” Ironically enough I followed that with, “I don’t know about the two of you, but I plan on living a very long life, and it would be nice if the planet were still pretty and teeming with life for the duration.” And I don’t take any credit, in fact, if anything, I think they were both just trying to figure out how to implement green strategies, but Kord and Wayne Industries are two of the greenest companies on the planet- and just maybe pollution isn’t causing more asthma and other breathing related diseases, but it’s still several birds with one very self-serving stone.
The connection to poverty’s admittedly a little shakier, and I don’t think that health reform will fix bad economies, or even resuscitate good economies going through a bad streak, but it will help. Health costs are strangling virtually every first world nation, and lead to rationing in others. And it’s also possible we could eliminate some of that poverty by spreading out production into other nations where production costs would be lower, which would create some better paying jobs in poorer countries, and as an added side-effect, the carbon-footprint of medicines and equipment would shrink as well.
Conflict- war, violence- is one of the biggest problems on the planet, but what does conflict tie into? Disparity and inequality. Someone believes someone else has something they should, so they’re willing to fight for it- that’s in a nutshell. Of course, that dynamic is distorted by the fact that most of the time the people benefiting in a conflict are no longer those in the line of fire, so there’s really not the same cost-benefit at play. The people who fight wars in the last fifty years have usually been the poor and disadvantaged.
But in a world where people are going to live 70 years, and they’re going to be healthy and relatively happy, that comes into consideration. If I’m twenty and have AIDS in a country I can't find work let alone afford antiretrovirals then I’m more likely to make poorer, rasher decisions than someone looking at another 50 years of life and prosperity. War doesn’t end, but the pool of proxy soldiers available for pennies or vulnerable to idealogic posturing gets shallower- and you start seeing those greedy people who try to manipulate others into fighting for their benefit actually having to risk for what they’re trying to take- it becomes a different game.
The thing is, if you add up the amount of people who are suffering because of war, or even poverty, even if you could address the underlying social and economic issues, you’ll only help them incrementally, because this one issue looms so large- because the cost of healthcare and its subsequent rationing in poorer countries distorts everything else. Even if you increased global wealth per capita to the level of the American middle class, you’d still have a health crisis. But if you can drive down costs- then healthcare becomes cheaper for everyone- and as industrializing nations’ economies develop, they’ll be grandfathered into a more efficient health care system.
ID: Wow, you’ve gotten knee-deep into this and we’re already through our allotted time. Um, we’re going to keep recording, but I’m going to stop it here so I can start transcribing, and we can try and get this thing out sort of on time (since regular on time isn’t in my otherwise robust vocabulary).
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: Hmm. That is a silly question, though it’s kind of TEDish in its myopic grandiosity… but it’s also a sly attempt to keep me within the realm of fickle politics. Do you play chess? You should try playing Bruce sometime…
ID: I’ve been known to lose at chess on more than one occasion. But I’d be happy to play chess with Bruce, so long as our conversation was on the record.
S: I don’t know that I’d hold my breath on that- even if I don’t really technically need to breath.
But to answer your question… I’m tempted to stymie you and say “farm equipment,” which would only partially be a joke. There is something almost spiritual about using your hands to fix something that will help feed people- there’s an uncommon nobility to that, and I think it would send you scrambling for further topics to this discussion. But I have trouble accepting the smallness of that- it would be too selfish, too personally rewarding while bearing limited good for everyone else, the fed people notwithstanding. And I like to think I’m a practical person- a pragmatist. So the real question, then, is what’s the most important problem in the world right now- or perhaps, rather than importance, the one problem in the world that has the best chance of being addressed.
There are a lot of problems mankind’s butting up against: war, pollution, famine, poverty, clean water, disease- to name just a few. So maybe my answer is simply cheating, since it touches on all of them, but I suppose, while we may not often think of it in these terms, it is a pretty basic necessity, and that’s health.
ID: Hmm. So what do you think of Obama’s plan, then?
S: I wasn’t done- but I’ll indulge you for a moment. I think, like most of the public, I can agree that one, our health care system doesn’t work like it should, and two, I have no idea what the impact of Obama’s plan is going to be. I think the truth of it is that neither can he- what he’s doing is tackling the mammoth industry in this country, and the one where all of us stand to lose or gain depending on the outcome. Health reform is necessary and worth attempting- I just hope that politics and the necessary uncertainty of change don’t get too much in the way.
But American health care is really too small- and that’s not to disparage my countrymen, merely pointing out that we’re less than 5% of the world’s population, and not everything revolves around us. Though, I suppose, at the center of this is the fact that Americans are disproportionately disadvantaged as Western nations go, so health reform would disproportionately advantage us, too.
But let me explain first what I mean about health tying into everything. Solid health reform would focus on the really easy things to fix first. As an example, more than enough food is produced in the modern world to feed the population, but it is used in such a way that food produced is more costly, less healthy, and spread less efficiently than it should be. Health reform would include better nutrituional planning in terms of what we put into our bodies and how we get it there. Health reform should also include access to clean drinking water, and some form of sewage system. These are really just part of the foundation of good health reform- and the most basic kind of preventative medicine.
And to bring back TED for a moment, providing research into cheaper eyewear, to the end of eventually supplying eyeglasses to that billion people without them- imagine how many geniuses we might be missing out on simply because they cannot see. Germany at the start of World War Two had about 80 million people, but Hitler’s policies ended up driving out some of the world’s greatest minds, Einstein, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Hans Bethe, and physicists including what would eventually become the core of the Manhattan Project. Imagine if that figure held, that once in every eighty million we got an Einstein, a Bloch and a Born- now imagine there’s a one in six chance that they wouldn’t be able to see well enough to change the world. That’s basic visual care- a pair of eyeglasses, for God’s sake, and the benefits could be incalculable.
Sorry, I was getting tangential for a moment, there. Anyway, I’ve never been one to argue green technology from a karmic standpoint, or even from a global warming one. I remember a conversation I sort of stumbled into between Bruce [Wayne] and Ted Kord, and while they were both arguing the practical and economic reasoning, I just said, “It’s poison- industry is making the planet a little more hostile to human life every single day.” Ironically enough I followed that with, “I don’t know about the two of you, but I plan on living a very long life, and it would be nice if the planet were still pretty and teeming with life for the duration.” And I don’t take any credit, in fact, if anything, I think they were both just trying to figure out how to implement green strategies, but Kord and Wayne Industries are two of the greenest companies on the planet- and just maybe pollution isn’t causing more asthma and other breathing related diseases, but it’s still several birds with one very self-serving stone.
The connection to poverty’s admittedly a little shakier, and I don’t think that health reform will fix bad economies, or even resuscitate good economies going through a bad streak, but it will help. Health costs are strangling virtually every first world nation, and lead to rationing in others. And it’s also possible we could eliminate some of that poverty by spreading out production into other nations where production costs would be lower, which would create some better paying jobs in poorer countries, and as an added side-effect, the carbon-footprint of medicines and equipment would shrink as well.
Conflict- war, violence- is one of the biggest problems on the planet, but what does conflict tie into? Disparity and inequality. Someone believes someone else has something they should, so they’re willing to fight for it- that’s in a nutshell. Of course, that dynamic is distorted by the fact that most of the time the people benefiting in a conflict are no longer those in the line of fire, so there’s really not the same cost-benefit at play. The people who fight wars in the last fifty years have usually been the poor and disadvantaged.
But in a world where people are going to live 70 years, and they’re going to be healthy and relatively happy, that comes into consideration. If I’m twenty and have AIDS in a country I can't find work let alone afford antiretrovirals then I’m more likely to make poorer, rasher decisions than someone looking at another 50 years of life and prosperity. War doesn’t end, but the pool of proxy soldiers available for pennies or vulnerable to idealogic posturing gets shallower- and you start seeing those greedy people who try to manipulate others into fighting for their benefit actually having to risk for what they’re trying to take- it becomes a different game.
The thing is, if you add up the amount of people who are suffering because of war, or even poverty, even if you could address the underlying social and economic issues, you’ll only help them incrementally, because this one issue looms so large- because the cost of healthcare and its subsequent rationing in poorer countries distorts everything else. Even if you increased global wealth per capita to the level of the American middle class, you’d still have a health crisis. But if you can drive down costs- then healthcare becomes cheaper for everyone- and as industrializing nations’ economies develop, they’ll be grandfathered into a more efficient health care system.
ID: Wow, you’ve gotten knee-deep into this and we’re already through our allotted time. Um, we’re going to keep recording, but I’m going to stop it here so I can start transcribing, and we can try and get this thing out sort of on time (since regular on time isn’t in my otherwise robust vocabulary).
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Man of Tomorrow
Igor Decision: I got a message you wanted to talk to me about Ted. I presume you meant Ted Kord, CEO of Kord Industries, and, I don’t think I’m shoving him out of the closet as the Blue Beetle and a member of your Justice League.
S: Actually, I was talking about the TED conference, Technology, Entertainment, Design- though Ted is usually one of the most eagerly anticipated speakers at every TED.
ID: You did that deliberately to hurt my head, didn’t you?
S: Maybe a little.
ID: So what’s TED?
S: TED is where the future starts, or, to use their own advertising line, it’s the home of “Ideas worth spreading.”
ID: So exactly how much have TED paid you to plug them?
S: Nothing. I wouldn’t accept a penny from them- they’re doing important work, because what the conference is doing is creating a fertile soil for ideas to grow. Aside from the conference itself, which actually took place last week, they put all of the lectures up online for free.
ID: I think I read something about that on the BBC. Wasn’t this TEDGlobal?
S: Yeah, it’s the international companion to the TED conference, and was held this year in Oxford. And it’s run by the nonprofit Sapling Foundation.
ID: It’s sort of rare to see you this excited by something.
S: Rare for you, maybe, but these are the kinds of things I can get passionate about. I’m usually relegated to helping people one at a time with my hands, but I watch people like Ted Kord get up on stage every year- this year he was showing a version of his flying Bug car that runs on 95 percent solar power- the other 5 percent is still jet fuel, but still, it moves at nearly the speed of sound on 95 percent solar power. It’s not just the future of personal conveyance, but shipping and transport- you know, once he figures out how to get the cost of production a bit below 2 billion. But at TED people like Ted (sorry, couldn’t help myself) get to stand up and talk about designs and innovations that will touch thousands if not millions of lives- and not some time off in the near and distant future, but as soon as tomorrow.
ID: Okay. I’m going to take a flying leap and say you weren’t able to see most of the talks live and in person, that you’re probably one of those people downloading the videos and watching when you can, but since it’s been a week, give us your highlights.
S: There were quite a few, but for starters, there was Dan Pink’s talk about incentives, and how incentives are great for mechanical work, but the moment even rudimentary cognitive skills are involved, incentives lead to worse outcomes. Magnus Larsson talked about a way to stop desertification- the fact that the world’s deserts are slowly increasing in size, decreasing the arable land in the world- by using bacteria to turn sand dunes into stone- and the possibility of using the stone dunes for housing. And there was Eric Giler’s WiTricity, which allows wireless electrical transmission.
ID: This is normally the part where I’d interrupt to tease you about being “the Man of Tomorrow,” but honestly, it’s refreshing to see you geeking out this hard over something. But for those of us who aren’t regular TEDites
S: TEDsters.
ID: Whatever, since you’re a reporter, I imagine you’ve got some things scrawled in a notebook, so give us a favorite quote.
S: Uh, I think my favorite quote of the conference was, “The problem with stereotypes isn’t that they’re untrue, it’s that they are incomplete and make one story the only story.” That was from Nigerian storyteller Chimamanda Adichie. It also actually echoes something Alain de Botton said, which, when out of context, parallels Adichie, “A snob is someone who takes a small part of you and uses that to paint a complete picture of who you are.”
ID: Hmm… I think I’m going to interrupt you, there, and turn the conversation from stereotyping to profiling. Obama, who you seem to broadly approve of, seems to have stepped into a cowpie over his comments related to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, a professor of African American studies at Harvard. Just for those who aren’t Daily Planet RSS feed fiends, Gates was arrested while trying to unjam his front door after proving that it was indeed his home- reportedly for disorderly conduct. The incident was at least partially racially charged, if only because Gates brought it up at the time. As someone who has been an outsider, and someone who really wants to see America live up to its potential, and because I want to, like the President, completely destroy your point for a moment by going off topic onto a racial issue, what’s your take on it?
S: You know, like yourself, I’m a bit of a news junky. I’ve been following Sarah Palin and the Gates affair far more closely than I’d like to admit. But honestly, I think it’s all been blown out of proportion. I think it would be ridiculous not to admit that racial politics come into play whenever a white officer confronts an African American- that’s just a part of the culture and social history of the country. The degree to which it played a role is arguable, but is in this case, at least, unimportant. The officer probably did act stupidly- so did Gates. It’s never a good idea to be confrontational with police officers. And I’m not saying a white officer is never justified in arresting a black man for disorderly conduct- I’m saying the police should have been more careful in their application of the law, because I don’t think the described behavior amounts to disorderly conduct under Massachusetts law. And when the President learned that his friend was arrested by a white officer under less than perfect circumstances, he felt the same sting and stigmas that African Americans have felt going back decades at least; in responding to that understandable personal feeling publicly, in stating that the officer acted stupidly, even though I think it’s pretty clear he did, the President himself acted stupidly. So really, you have three men acting stupidly, and unfortunately it happened in public- but they’re all people, and I think that’s where the story begins and ends.
ID: Okay, unlike the President, I’ll let you finish off on-topic; what was the most important part of the TED conference for you?
S: Thanks, I guess. But I think, for me, the most biggest moment came in the talk by Josh Silver, and for that one I was actually lucky enough to be in attendance, albeit in my more mild-mannered reporting persona. Silver asked the audience how many of us were wearing some kind of corrective lenses- glasses or contacts, and most of the audience raised their hands- including me, since as Clark Kent, and I still do it out of habit, I wear glasses.
And it’s not particularly surprising that most of our hands went up, since 60 percent of the world needs some sort of vision correction, but then he mentioned that, while we at the conference were fortunate enough to have the lenses we need, that a full 1 billion of people in the world don’t. A full billion people in the world can’t see as well as they should be able to- if that doesn’t strike you, then I- I just don’t know. Silver pioneered a pair of $19 eyeglasses that can be assembled by anyone anywhere in the world- but the catch, of course, is that many of the target users are surviving on $1 or less a day- so the price is still a bit steep.
And I remember the first time I ran into one of these issues, granted, not quite on this scale; it might have been antiretrovirals for a country in crisis, something like that, but I flew right to Bruce’s home and told him it was a simple problem he could solve with only a few hundred million dollars. And what struck me was he was aware of the problem, quoted me the figures I’d just found out about, that I’d been so excited to share, and then told me about the depth of the same problem in the country bordering it to the west, and then the same in the country bordering it to the east. “I could help,” he said, “but if I spend the money today, then I can’t put that money towards research and reform, where it will reap ten times the benefits in a few years’ time.”
And I’ll never forget what he said to me: “I envy, you, Clark. All that power, and you can’t fix the world, you can’t even really start. But me- I could solve a dozen problems- but there will always be more. So I can do the most good by damning millions of people to suffer in the short term.” It’s the only time I remember his voice cracking, when he said, “I truly envy your powerlessness.”
I found out later that he managed to help the country secure a loan through some contacts he has at the World Bank, and helped provide some generic antiretrovirals at what was almost certainly below cost. But he was right, and that’s why I wanted to talk about TED. Doing what I do, I could never really save the world. But people, ideas, innovation- that’s how the world changes.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
S: Actually, I was talking about the TED conference, Technology, Entertainment, Design- though Ted is usually one of the most eagerly anticipated speakers at every TED.
ID: You did that deliberately to hurt my head, didn’t you?
S: Maybe a little.
ID: So what’s TED?
S: TED is where the future starts, or, to use their own advertising line, it’s the home of “Ideas worth spreading.”
ID: So exactly how much have TED paid you to plug them?
S: Nothing. I wouldn’t accept a penny from them- they’re doing important work, because what the conference is doing is creating a fertile soil for ideas to grow. Aside from the conference itself, which actually took place last week, they put all of the lectures up online for free.
ID: I think I read something about that on the BBC. Wasn’t this TEDGlobal?
S: Yeah, it’s the international companion to the TED conference, and was held this year in Oxford. And it’s run by the nonprofit Sapling Foundation.
ID: It’s sort of rare to see you this excited by something.
S: Rare for you, maybe, but these are the kinds of things I can get passionate about. I’m usually relegated to helping people one at a time with my hands, but I watch people like Ted Kord get up on stage every year- this year he was showing a version of his flying Bug car that runs on 95 percent solar power- the other 5 percent is still jet fuel, but still, it moves at nearly the speed of sound on 95 percent solar power. It’s not just the future of personal conveyance, but shipping and transport- you know, once he figures out how to get the cost of production a bit below 2 billion. But at TED people like Ted (sorry, couldn’t help myself) get to stand up and talk about designs and innovations that will touch thousands if not millions of lives- and not some time off in the near and distant future, but as soon as tomorrow.
ID: Okay. I’m going to take a flying leap and say you weren’t able to see most of the talks live and in person, that you’re probably one of those people downloading the videos and watching when you can, but since it’s been a week, give us your highlights.
S: There were quite a few, but for starters, there was Dan Pink’s talk about incentives, and how incentives are great for mechanical work, but the moment even rudimentary cognitive skills are involved, incentives lead to worse outcomes. Magnus Larsson talked about a way to stop desertification- the fact that the world’s deserts are slowly increasing in size, decreasing the arable land in the world- by using bacteria to turn sand dunes into stone- and the possibility of using the stone dunes for housing. And there was Eric Giler’s WiTricity, which allows wireless electrical transmission.
ID: This is normally the part where I’d interrupt to tease you about being “the Man of Tomorrow,” but honestly, it’s refreshing to see you geeking out this hard over something. But for those of us who aren’t regular TEDites
S: TEDsters.
ID: Whatever, since you’re a reporter, I imagine you’ve got some things scrawled in a notebook, so give us a favorite quote.
S: Uh, I think my favorite quote of the conference was, “The problem with stereotypes isn’t that they’re untrue, it’s that they are incomplete and make one story the only story.” That was from Nigerian storyteller Chimamanda Adichie. It also actually echoes something Alain de Botton said, which, when out of context, parallels Adichie, “A snob is someone who takes a small part of you and uses that to paint a complete picture of who you are.”
ID: Hmm… I think I’m going to interrupt you, there, and turn the conversation from stereotyping to profiling. Obama, who you seem to broadly approve of, seems to have stepped into a cowpie over his comments related to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, a professor of African American studies at Harvard. Just for those who aren’t Daily Planet RSS feed fiends, Gates was arrested while trying to unjam his front door after proving that it was indeed his home- reportedly for disorderly conduct. The incident was at least partially racially charged, if only because Gates brought it up at the time. As someone who has been an outsider, and someone who really wants to see America live up to its potential, and because I want to, like the President, completely destroy your point for a moment by going off topic onto a racial issue, what’s your take on it?
S: You know, like yourself, I’m a bit of a news junky. I’ve been following Sarah Palin and the Gates affair far more closely than I’d like to admit. But honestly, I think it’s all been blown out of proportion. I think it would be ridiculous not to admit that racial politics come into play whenever a white officer confronts an African American- that’s just a part of the culture and social history of the country. The degree to which it played a role is arguable, but is in this case, at least, unimportant. The officer probably did act stupidly- so did Gates. It’s never a good idea to be confrontational with police officers. And I’m not saying a white officer is never justified in arresting a black man for disorderly conduct- I’m saying the police should have been more careful in their application of the law, because I don’t think the described behavior amounts to disorderly conduct under Massachusetts law. And when the President learned that his friend was arrested by a white officer under less than perfect circumstances, he felt the same sting and stigmas that African Americans have felt going back decades at least; in responding to that understandable personal feeling publicly, in stating that the officer acted stupidly, even though I think it’s pretty clear he did, the President himself acted stupidly. So really, you have three men acting stupidly, and unfortunately it happened in public- but they’re all people, and I think that’s where the story begins and ends.
ID: Okay, unlike the President, I’ll let you finish off on-topic; what was the most important part of the TED conference for you?
S: Thanks, I guess. But I think, for me, the most biggest moment came in the talk by Josh Silver, and for that one I was actually lucky enough to be in attendance, albeit in my more mild-mannered reporting persona. Silver asked the audience how many of us were wearing some kind of corrective lenses- glasses or contacts, and most of the audience raised their hands- including me, since as Clark Kent, and I still do it out of habit, I wear glasses.
And it’s not particularly surprising that most of our hands went up, since 60 percent of the world needs some sort of vision correction, but then he mentioned that, while we at the conference were fortunate enough to have the lenses we need, that a full 1 billion of people in the world don’t. A full billion people in the world can’t see as well as they should be able to- if that doesn’t strike you, then I- I just don’t know. Silver pioneered a pair of $19 eyeglasses that can be assembled by anyone anywhere in the world- but the catch, of course, is that many of the target users are surviving on $1 or less a day- so the price is still a bit steep.
And I remember the first time I ran into one of these issues, granted, not quite on this scale; it might have been antiretrovirals for a country in crisis, something like that, but I flew right to Bruce’s home and told him it was a simple problem he could solve with only a few hundred million dollars. And what struck me was he was aware of the problem, quoted me the figures I’d just found out about, that I’d been so excited to share, and then told me about the depth of the same problem in the country bordering it to the west, and then the same in the country bordering it to the east. “I could help,” he said, “but if I spend the money today, then I can’t put that money towards research and reform, where it will reap ten times the benefits in a few years’ time.”
And I’ll never forget what he said to me: “I envy, you, Clark. All that power, and you can’t fix the world, you can’t even really start. But me- I could solve a dozen problems- but there will always be more. So I can do the most good by damning millions of people to suffer in the short term.” It’s the only time I remember his voice cracking, when he said, “I truly envy your powerlessness.”
I found out later that he managed to help the country secure a loan through some contacts he has at the World Bank, and helped provide some generic antiretrovirals at what was almost certainly below cost. But he was right, and that’s why I wanted to talk about TED. Doing what I do, I could never really save the world. But people, ideas, innovation- that’s how the world changes.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
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