Reading this preview of Perfect Dark Zero, I can’t help but be excited. Perfect Dark was one of my favorite games of all time, and I’ve got really high hopes for this sequel. Especially if it keeps stats for all players (which was one of the best of the little things about the original Perfect Dark — if I wanted to know anything from how many virtual miles I’d walked to how many bullets I’d fired (and my hit/miss ratio), Perfect Dark could tell me.

Will this new installment in the series be a worthy successor to GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark ? That remains to be seen, but Rare has a good reputation in my little circle of friends, and I’ve got high hopes for this one.

The wage gap between women and men is common knowledge, right? Women, on average, earn more money than men.

Now, I suspect that the data related to this wage gap isn’t entirely reliable. Capitalists are greedy, greedy people, and if they can get two people to do the same job and pay one of those people $0.76 for every $1 that the other person receives, they’re going to hire the cheaper person. That may not be true for every employer — there are still sexists just like there are still racists — but I can’t believe that sexism is widespread enough that it alone explains the gap*.

The Gazette argues in an editorial today that one of the issues with President Bush’s Social Security reformation plan (which isn’t so much a plan as the broad outline of one, but I digress…) is that it takes away the “offset” that Social Security uses to fix this gap:

Women earn an average of 76 cents for every $1 that men are paid, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Also, they often miss some years of employment, first to care for children and later to care for aging relatives. Thus their pensions are skimpy.

Social Security makes up for some of this gap with its progressive benefit formula — which pays 54 percent of average lifetime earnings to low-income women, compared to 41 percent for males. In a privatized system, there would be no such effort to help disadvantaged females, the national women’s group said.

The basis for the Social Security program is that you pay in now, and based on what you pay in, you get money out of the system when you get old. The Gazette is arguing that people who pay less (either because they earned less or because they didn’t work as long) should get more just because… well, because… um… they’re women?

Let’s imagine two people the same age:

Person A works a full time job from the ages of 24 to 65, earning a total of $X over those 41 years. Person A sacrifices a lot of time with his children so that he can better provide for their physical needs and wants.

Person B works a full time job from the ages of 24 to 26, at which point person B takes a few years off to help raise his children. At 29, he gets another job, but it’s only part-time, because he needs the flexible schedule to care for his kids. At 30, he takes another full-time job, but because he’s out the 4 years of experience that Person A earned between the ages of 26 and 30, he’s earning less money than Person A. From 30-65, his raises are, proportionally, equivalent to those that Person B gets, but at the age of 65, he’s only earned 75% of $X in his lifetime.

Both person A and person B paid a percentage of their incomes into the Social Security program, and their Social Security payments at retirement are calculated with respect to how much they’d paid in. Person A, therefore, gets more back than Person B.

As long as persons A and B are both male, the Gazette apparently has no problem with that. If person B is female, though, it is apparently unconscionable that person A should earn more money than person B. This is absurd and, worse, sexist.

If it is the position of the Gazette’s editorial staff that the government should return the same amount of money to retirees regardless of what they’ve earned over the course of their lives, then they should say so. It seems to me that if a woman who paid 75% of what I did into the system should get the same Social Security check that I do, then I should get the same Social Security check as someone who earns 133% of what I’ve earned, and a man who made 56% of what I did should get the same Social Security check that I do. (He, after all, earned 75% of what the woman in my first example did, and if he’s getting the same check that she does, then he gets the same one I do, right?)

If the Gazette supports a system in which every worker is taxed and then paid exactly the same amount after retirement, then they should come out and admit that they’re supporting a shockingly communist-esque policy. On the other hand, if they believe that it’s perfectly fair that one gets back from the government a Social Security check that is dependent on what one paid in, then arguing that Bush’s suggestions are wrong because it is dependent on what one pays in is disingenuous.

*If women who put in the same number of hours and perform the same jobs as men are being shafted on the paycheck systematically, then I absolutely agree that we do need to examine things to see what can be done. If the problem is not systematic, but rather exclusive to certain employers, we should instead publicize that employer’s shortcomings and encourage workers and customers alike to go elsewhere — unless the problem is systematic, it should not be not a governmental concern. Simply comparing pay rates isn’t sufficient to determine how bad the problem is.

Haven’t been on the internet the last few days — my modem got fried in a recent thunderstorm, and I’ve been struggling with the new one to get it to work. Seems to be okay now, but time will tell.

A cousin of mine works just a block or so from me, and we occasionally have lunch together. We go to various places, but it seems that, most often, we find ourselves in the “Picnic Place”, the food court at the Charleston Town Center Mall. Occasionally (experience says that they’re there on Fridays), a group of protesters gather outside the Town Center Mall and hold up a large sign that lists those killed in the “invasion of occupation of Iraq.” Usually, as we walk by, I threaten to confront these protesters, and my cousin begs me not to. Out of respect for his desire not to cause a scene, I don’t.

Friday, I started out to lunch, and though I hadn’t intended it when I started out of the office, I ended up heading to the mall. Since my cousin wasn’t there, I decided to stop and talk to one of the protesters. I stopped and examined the list of names, and he eventually spoke up. “Too many names.” The following is a summary of my discussion with him, as I remember it. My memory, unfortunately, is notoriously unreliable, so please remember that while reading.

While his facial expressions made his opinions on various things clear, I’d like to tip my hat to this gentleman, whose name I failed to get. He was unfailingly polite, and he was much more prepared to answer questions than I imagined that any of these people would be. Judging by the scowl I was getting from the woman next to him, I imagine that the results would have been different if I’d stopped to talk to someone else.

The Polite Protester: “Too many names.”

One Stack Mind: “Yeah. So, what do you know about these people?”

TPP: “They’re dead.” (chuckles, pauses) “Sorry. It’s not funny. They’re people who died in the war. We try to get as much information about them as we can, but mostly, we just know what you see. When they died, their home town…”

OSM: “So, they all died in Iraq?”

TPP: “Yes.”

OSM: “And you’re here holding up their names because… what? You’re protesting the war, right? So, do you think they’re all criminals? You want to honor their noble sacrifice while they were fighting for a good cause?”

TPP: “We don’t really have an opinion on the nobility of the cause. We’re just presenting the information. They all died in a war that was started in violation of the democratic process.” [Ed. note: I'm sorry I didn't jump on this. I'd like to know what the alleged violation of the democratic process was.]

OSM: “You don’t know why they were there — if they believed that the cause was just, they were proud to be there doing what they believed to be the right thing, isn’t using their name for this kind of disrespectful?”

TPP: “Of course, some of them were there because they thought they were doing the right thing. Some of them were there because they had no choice [Ed. note: Apparently, we reinstated the draft and no one told me.]. Some of them were there even if they didn’t want to be because they were doing the duty they’d signed up to do…”

OSM: “So, you’re just here holding the sign so we can see the cost of this war and make our own decisions on whether it was worth it?”

TPP: “Yes.”

OSM: “Fair enough. Thank you.”

Though I wanted to, I didn’t ask if calling our actions in Iraq an “Invasion and Occupation” didn’t constitute a judgement call on Iraq. I mean, there’s definitely some bad connotations with those two things, right? Personally, I would’ve chosen “Liberation and Democratization”.

I really enjoyed talking to this guy and hearing what he had to say, even if I remain convinced that he and I were coming from completely different points of view regarding the Iraqi war. He was very polite, and never seemed to consider my questions to be offensive, despite the fact that (I thought) they revealed my own pro-war bias.

If I do it again, I’ll try to have a camera and a notepad for more accurate reporting.