The Big Ugly
Fashion in San Francisco.
"Safe, Legal, And Never"
Hillary Clinton's wise position on abortion, reported by William Saletan:
"With all of this talk about freedom as the defining goal of America, let's not forget the importance of the freedom of women to make the choices that are consistent with their faith and their sense of responsibility to their family and themselves."Note the concluding words: faith, responsibility, family. This is the other side of Clinton's message: against the ugliness of state control, she wants to raise the banner of morality as well as freedom. Pro-choicers have tried this for 40 years, but they always run into a fatal objection: Abortion is so ugly that nobody who supports it can look moral. To earn real credibility, they'd have to admit it's bad. They often walk up to that line, but they always blink.
Not this time. Abortion is "a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women," said Clinton. Then she went further: "There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances."
Does not ever have to be exercised. I searched Google and Nexis for parts of that sentence tonight and got no hits. Is the press corps asleep? Hillary Clinton just endorsed a goal I've never heard a pro-choice leader endorse. Not safe, legal, and rare. Safe, legal, and never.
Once you embrace that truth—that the ideal number of abortions is zero—voters open their ears. They listen when you point out, as Clinton did, that the abortion rate fell drastically during her husband's presidency but has risen in more states than it has fallen under George W. Bush. I'm sure these trends have more to do with economics than morals, but that's the point. Once we agree that the goal is zero, we can stop asking which party yaps more about fighting abortion and start asking which party gets results.
Admit the goal is zero, and people will rethink birth control. "Seven percent of American women who do not use contraception account for 53 percent of all unintended pregnancies," Clinton said. That number drew gasps from her pro-choice audience. I bet if she translated it to abortions, it would knock folks in Ohio out of their chairs. How many abortions are you willing to endure for the sake of avoiding the word "condom"? Clinton says we can cut the abortion rate through sex education, money for family planning, and requiring health insurers to cover contraceptives. What's your plan? Ban abortion and monitor everyone's womb like Romania did? Or ban it and look the other way while the pregnancies go on and the quacks take over?
Raising Children With Brains
Nathalie Angier is one of the few non-primitive mommies out there, raising her children not to believe in anything without evidence. How sad that it's so rare for people these days to be intellectually modern. Instead, we've got a hoodoo-believing president. Even Republican cheerleader Peggy Noonan got uneasy at his relentlessly "god-drenched" inaugural address. Here's an excerpt, but here's the link to the whole thing, which is worth reading, despite the small type in the link:
I’m a science writer. I’m fond of evidence, and I’m a serious devotee of the scientific method, and the entire scientific enterprise. Let me tell you, scientists as individuals can be as petty, insecure, vain, arrogant and opinionated as the rest of us. The myth of the noble, self-sacrificing scientist should never have been allowed to grow beyond the embryonic stem cell stage, and most scientists will tell you as much. But science as a discipline weeds out most of the bluster and blarmy, because it asks for proof. “One of the first things you learn in science,” one Caltech biologist told me, “is that how you want it to be doesn’t make any difference.” This is a powerful principle, and a very good thing, even a beautiful thing. This is something we should embrace as the best part of ourselves, our willingness to see the world as it is, not as we’re told it is, nor as our confectionary fantasies might wish it to be. Science is also extraordinarily unifying. You go to a great lab or to a scientific meeting, and you will see scientists from around the world, talking to each other and forming international collaborations. This is something we should be proud of, even if we ourselves are not scientists – that our species, our collective minds, our heads knocked together, are capable of making sense of the universe. So to me, this, more than anything, is what being an atheist means, an ongoing devotion to exploration, a giving of pride of place to evidence. And much to my dismay, religion often is at odds with the evidence-based portrait of reality that science has begun, yes, only just begun, fleshing out. The biggest example of this is in the ongoing debate over evolution. This is like Rasputin, or the character from the horror movie Halloween – it refuses to die. The statistics are appalling. This year, according to the Washington Post, some 40 states are dealing with new or ongoing challenges to the teaching of evolution in the schools. Four-fifths of our states. According to a recent CBS poll, 55 percent of Americans believe that god created humans in their present form – and that includes, I’m sorry to say, 47 percent of Kerry voters. Only 13 percent of Americans say that humans evolved from ancestral species, no god involved. Only 13 percent. The evidence that humans evolved from prehominid primates, and they from earlier mammals, and so on back to the first cell on earth some 3.8 billion years ago is incontrovertible, is based on a Himalayan chain’s worth of data. The evidence for divine intervention is, to date, non-existent. Yet here we have people talking about it as though they were discussing whether they prefer chocolate praline ice cream or rocky road, as though it were a matter of taste.To me, this borders on being, well, unethical. And to me, instilling in my daughter an appreciation for the difference between evidence and opinion is a critical part of childrearing. So when I tell my daughter why I’m an atheist, I explain it is because I see no evidence for a god, a divinity, a big bearded mega-king in the sky. And you know something – she gets that. She got it way back when, and I think once you get it, it’s pretty hard to lose it. People sometimes say to me, jokingly or otherwise, just you wait. She’s going to grow up and join a cult, be a moonie or a jew for jesus. But in fact the data argue against it. The overwhelming majority of people who join cults, more than three-quarters, were raised as one or another type of Christian, including Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, the works; and no greater percentage of atheists than in the general population. I’m sure Katherine will figure out a way to drive me nuts some day, but I don’t think the Rahjneeshi route is it.
Ah, but what of values, of learning the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? What about tradition, what about ritual, what about the holidays that children love so much? How will a child learn to be good without religious training? Well, damn. Do you really need formal religion to teach a child to be good, to be honest, to try not to hurt other people’s feelings, to care about something other than yourself? These are all variants on the golden rule, and there is nothing more powerful, in my experience, than sitting down with your kid and saying, how would you feel if somebody did that to you? There is a growing body of scientific research that demonstrates we are by nature inclined to cooperate, to trust others, even strangers, to an extraordinary degree. Even strangers we can’t see, over the internet, and even strangers that we’ll never meet again. None of this owes anything to the ten commandments. Which of those commandments tell you to help a stranger who looks lost, or jump into a river to help saving a drowning kid, or donate blood, maybe even a kidney or a slice of liver? Sure, people also do terrible things, scam you, betray you, steal from you, on and on. But sheesh, Rush Limbaugh was and for all I know still is a junkie, and priests abuse choir boys, and on and on.
...I don’t know the answer to fear of death, surprise surprise. But I find it interesting that religious people, who talk ceaselessly of finding in their religion a larger sense of purpose, a meaning greater than themselves, at the same time are the ones who insist their personal, copyrighted souls, presumably with their 70-odd years of memory intact, will survive in perpetuity. Maybe that’s the real ethic of atheism. By confronting the inevitability of your personal expiration date, you know there is a meaning much grander than yourself. The river of life will go on, as it has for nearly 4 billion years on our planet, and who knows for how long and how abundantly on others. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, and we, as matter, will always matter, and the universe will forever be our home.
Fuzzy Dice
Is having a diseased child, when you know before you even try to get pregnant that you have a pretty good chance of passing on a genetic disease, "god's will" -- or a creepy act of willful, selfish parents?
Bonnie J. Rough writes in the New York Times that "god's will" is how her parents and grandparents rationalized it when they passed on "a disease for a serious disorder" to her brother Luke:
"It's called ectodermal dysplasia," I said. And then I told him everything I knew. I explained that my grandfather and my younger brother had both been born with sparse hair, missing tooth buds (which required them to wear dentures, even as children), and no sweat glands, making hot weather unbearable and even dangerous.I explained that women carry the gene and risk passing it along to their sons. So if we were to have a boy - the son, yes, of an extraordinarily gifted athlete - there would be a good chance he'd be burdened with it. It goes without saying that it's pretty hard to play basketball, or any sport at all, if you can't sweat.
...E.D. is no Down syndrome, no cerebral palsy or cystic fibrosis. It doesn't affect mental capacity or motor skills. It doesn't cap life span. The more we talk about E.D., the littler it tends to sound. My brother, after all, is healthy and strong, getting good grades in his first year of college. He seems to know the name of every kid he sees on his way to class. In poker, he beats the pants off every guy in his hall and spends his winnings on books and food and, this month, in his first suit; he's taking a smart girl with blond, curly hair to the Charity Ball.
But Luke grew up in Seattle, where the weather is kind to him nearly all year, where top prosthodontists are plentiful, and where our father has a job with decent dental benefits. Growing up, I came to see E.D. as a mere inconvenience. Sometimes it brought heavy expenses for our parents, sometimes it caused physical embarrassments for my brother. But it never seemed cataclysmic.
So I fumbled for words recently when I found myself explaining to my brother that Dan and I hope to dodge E.D. I wondered if he was thinking, What's so bad that they'd try so hard to avoid it? As I stammered, Luke interrupted me with a "duh" look. "I wouldn't want your kids to have it," he said.
No, it's not the end of the world to give birth to a kid who will go through life toothless and unable to sweat, but if you know that you have a likelihood of passing this on...maybe you could live without the conceit of squeezing out a replica of yourselves...and adopt? Nope, no dice for Bonnie and her husband. They hope to "dodge" E.D., they say. Yeah, take that chance of stacking the deck against the kid right from the start -- just as long as the toothless little bugger has daddy's beautiful eyes.
Bums And Urine
In San Francisco. Driving home in a few minutes. Will post later.
Awwww, How Sweet!
During the last major, major rainstorm we had on a Monday, I stayed home to write because I didn't want to chance geting my computer hit by the cats, dogs, and small settees that were pouring out of the sky. Ooops, it seems that I forgot that it was street cleaning day on my block (but what kind of vehicle were they planning on cleaning it from -- an ark?!)...and the nice, considerate parking enforcement person was kind enough to preserve my rainy-day parking memento for me in a Ziplock bag.
Let's Stuff Gay People In The Closet!
The government, in the person of the new secretary of "education," comes out against gay people; namely portraying them on TV in (gasp!) typical American family circumstances. Oooh, hide them away before the children immolate at the mere sight of them! (Um...on a blog comments note...anybody who posts here who has argued that the theocons are not shoving religion into government is now hereby ordered to eat their mouse pad.)
The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.The not-yet-aired episode of "Postcards From Buster" shows the title character, an animated bunny named Buster, on a trip to Vermont -- a state known for recognizing same-sex civil unions. The episode features two lesbian couples, although the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring.
A PBS spokesman said late Tuesday that the nonprofit network has decided not to distribute the episode, called "Sugartime!," to its 349 stations. She said the Education Department's objections were not a factor in that decision.
"Ultimately, our decision was based on the fact that we recognize this is a sensitive issue, and we wanted to make sure that parents had an opportunity to introduce this subject to their children in their own time," said Lea Sloan, vice president of media relations at PBS.
Yeah, right. Clearly the "education" secretary has never met any gay parents, and thus pictures them running off to the Gay Day Parade in leashes and loinclothes in their "baby-on-board" minivan, then running through the crowd half-naked...except for the babies in their backpacks. Everyone, repeat after me: "Yeah, right."
Then, read another take on what's being banned, from Suzanne C. Ryan and Mark Shanahan at the Boston Globe:
Karen Pike agreed to be a part of a children's show about families, and now she feels she's under attack.This week, the new US secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, denounced PBS for spending public funds to tape an episode of a children's program that features Pike, a lesbian, her partner, Gillian Pieper, and their 11-year-old daughter, Emma. The installment of ''Postcards From Buster," which is produced locally at WGBH-TV (Channel 2) and which had been scheduled to air March 23, was promptly dropped by PBS, which is refusing to distribute the footage to its 349 member stations.
''It makes me sick," said Pike, a 42-year-old photographer in Hinesburg, Vt., who united with Pieper in a civil union in 2001. ''I'm actually aghast at the hatred stemming from such an important person in our government. . . . Her first official act was to denounce my family, and to denounce PBS for putting on a program that shows my family as loving, moral, and committed."
FYI, if any frightened theocons are reading this blog, here's a bit of news for you: Homosexual parents are just as boring as heterosexual parents. We, who are not parents (and who are thrilled with our barrenness), tend think of them -- all parents, homo and hetero -- as post-interesting and post-stylish...at least, in part. I might support the right to marry for all people (and without the "Do you fuck 'correctly'?" test), but I still think it's a really dumb idea to sentence yourself to forever with anybody, no matter whether you're into the same or the opposite sex.
Next, on the stupidity agenda is the case of the girl journalist who's getting forced out of her high school newspaper for profiling three gay students. Now, she was not outing this trio. She interviewed them. With their permission and knowledge that the interviews would run in the paper. Joel Rubin writes in the LA Times:
Howell (deputy superintendent for the Fullerton Joint Union High School District), who wouldn't discuss Long by name, said district and school officials did not object to the story's content. She said Long, 18, was being punished for violating the ethical standards of the journalism class and a state education code that prohibits asking students about their sexuality without parental permission."We're not saying there is anything morally wrong with the article," she said. "Freedom of speech is not at issue. Confidentiality and privacy rights are the issue."
It is a position that has left Long defiant and legal experts contending that the state law applies to faculty but not students.
"I don't think I've done anything that merits me stepping down," said Long, who vowed not to surrender her position. "Perhaps I should have called the parents to interview them for the story, but I don't feel like I should have been obligated to get their permission to write it. These students chose to talk to me."
At issue is a Dec. 17 article that chronicled the decisions of three students — two 18-year-olds and a 15-year-old — to reveal their homosexuality and bisexuality to family and friends. All three spoke to Long knowing their names would be used.
According to Long, her journalism teacher, Georgette Cerrutti, worked closely with her on drafts of the article for more than a month, at one point discussing with her the impact it might have on the students' families.
Long said Cerrutti never told her she needed to get the parents' approval.
On Monday, Long said, she was summoned to D'Amelia's office, where he and Cerrutti admonished her for not seeking the parents' permission.
"He told me I either had to resign and make an example of myself for failing to do my job," Long said of D'Amelia, "or that I would be removed."
In meetings Tuesday with Long's parents, D'Amelia and Troy Principal Chuck Maruca reaffirmed the school's stance, Long and her mother said.
Maruca and Cerrutti did not return calls seeking comment.
Howell said journalism students are taught to be cautious when writing stories that address other students' private lives. She said Long had violated the section of the California education code that requires written parental permission before asking students questions about their or their parents' "personal beliefs or practices in sex, family life, morality, and religion," as the code states.
Um, excuse me, but when I was in high school journalism class, we were told that that First Amendment thingie applied...even to us. Here I am, sneaking into the LA Times editorial page, to weigh in on the issue:
Something tells me nobody's ever gotten canned for identifying a student as heterosexual.Amy Alkon
Santa Monica
Am I crazy, or does this country get increasingly less modern every day? By July, they'll be burning me at the stake. Please, somebody remind me to keep stocked up on marshmallows.
Movable Type Hell
Sorry, a few technical problems today. Still might get 500 errors, and comments aren't registering numerically, but they're there.
A Diva Awakens
Sleeping Through Sex Prevents Sexually Transmitted Diseases!
...And other idiocy brought to you by the backward fundamentalists running our government. Marti Harvey exposes the facts about keeping the facts of life from kids:
The high school health textbook Lifetime Health lists that one strategy for teens to avoid contracting a sexually transmitted disease is to get plenty of rest. Yep, that’s right. Get plenty of rest.And while abstinence is touted as the preferred preventative, the book never mentions condom use. Never. Not once.
Apparently, some on the State Board of Education believe you can tell a teen to get plenty of rest, and they won’t have sex.
Continuing pressure from conservative groups such as Advocates for Youth has forced many textbook publishers to leave out controversial or sexual information for fear their books will be rejected by increasingly conservative review boards. More and more often, publishers are offering abstinence-based texts that are likely to be accepted.As a result, three of the four new textbooks adopted by the State Board of Education last week promote abstinence and traditional marriage with almost no information about contraception, condoms and other sensitive sexual topics.
For example, Lifetime Health mentions abstinence, staying away from drugs and alcohol, respect for one’s self and choosing friends wisely as STD prevention strategies. It also says to go out as a group, get plenty of rest, and be aware of your emotions.
But it overlooks the elephant in the middle of the room — what if those things don’t work? What if a teen’s emotions get out of control? As adults who were young once, should we be surprised that teens occasionally use bad judgement?
... Most studies, including a recent one from health education professor Buzz Pruitt of Texas A&M, report that there is almost no evidence that abstinence programs work. If they did, why would Texas, which spends more in abstinence-based programs than any other state, have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country?
Listen up folks.
It’s not the religious right or the liberal left that’s getting hurt here. It’s our kids. If their health education is really the issue, we should change course and begin to equip them with the information they need to make informed decisions. However, if promoting a religious agenda is the goal, then let’s be honest about it and see if others agree.
I bet they won’t. But if they do, I better get plenty of rest.
I wouldn’t want one of those nasty STDs finding me.
A Thrifty American In Paris
That would be...me! Eric Wahlgren writes in Business Week/Europe:
The weak dollar didn't stop Amy Alkon going to Paris on a recent weeklong trip. But currency woes did force the Los Angeles resident to keep herself on a budget. She slummed it at a two-star hotel and limited herself to cheap restaurants.Her biggest privation? She nixed buying a pair of Yves Saint Laurent boots that, with the exchange rate, would have popped up as a $300 charge on her credit card, even though they were on sale.
MORE WITH LESS. "Every time I saw a sale in Paris that said things were 30% off, I realized that they were on sale for everybody but me," says Alkon, 40, a syndicated columnist whose column "The Advice Goddess" appears in more than 100 papers in the U.S. and Canada.
Tragic, simply tragic, huh?
How To Know You Are Not At The Beach
White tablecloths, fine wine, candlelight, relatively pricey gourmet entrées, other patrons wearing attire suitable for fine dining at 9pm...all very reliable clues. In other words, get your hairy arms and your ugly-ass, flip-flopped bare feet out of Rocca, buttwad!
How To Buy The Morning-After Pill
Fly to France. Walk into a pharmacy. Ask for it. Pay. Leave. Fly home.
The New York Times notes that the FDA ("F" is for...Fundamentalist-Influenced!) is still dragging its feet on approving the morning-after contraceptive pill for over-the-counter use. Why? Probably because fundamentalists don't really just want to prevent abortion, as they claim, but birth control of any kind. And because they have little, if any, respect for any books that aren't the bible (say, biology textbooks!), they don't understand why preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's uterus isn't on par with robbing a liquor store and murdering the clerk in cold blood.
Under federal guidelines, the agency was supposed to issue a decision by Friday. Instead, the F.D.A. told the manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals, that it was still conducting its review. The agency said it hoped to act soon, but set no specific date for action.Yet, by now, there is no excuse for delay. No one questions that Plan B, which contains a concentrated dose of the progestin hormone found in daily birth control pills, is safe and effective. Moreover, by proposing to limit its availability over the counter to women over 16, Barr has removed as an issue the effect on adolescents, which the agency cited as a concern last May when, bowing to political pressure, it overrode scientific research and the overwhelming recommendation of two expert advisory panels to reject making Plan B available without a prescription to all women, regardless of age.
An internal memorandum by Dr. John Jenkins, director of the agency's own Office of New Drugs, suggests that the agency failed to follow proper procedure in making the decision. The memo, which is cited in a new lawsuit challenging the agency's May ruling, notes that drawing a distinction between different age groups is a departure from the agency's usual approach to contraceptive products.
Making Plan B available over the counter would prevent thousands of unintended pregnancies and thousands of abortions annually. It's time for the F.D.A. to allow women easy access to Plan B.
It's time, and it's been time, for a long time.
The March Of Moronism
A New York Times editorial takes the Cobb County, GA, and Dover, PA, school boards to task for pandering to the science-denying fundies:
The (Cobb County) school board, to its credit, had been trying to strengthen the teaching of evolution. When the new course of study raised hackles among parents and citizens, the board sought to quiet the controversy by placing a three-sentence sticker in the textbooks: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."Although the board clearly thought this was a reasonable compromise, and many readers might think it unexceptional, it is actually an insidious effort to undermine the science curriculum. The second sentence makes it sound as though evolution is little more than a hunch, the popular understanding of the word "theory," whereas theories in science are carefully constructed frameworks for understanding a vast array of facts.
A more honest sticker would describe evolution as the dominant theory in the field and an extremely fruitful scientific tool. The sad fact is, the school board, in its zeal to be accommodating, swallowed the language of the anti-evolution crowd. A federal judge in Georgia ruled that the sticker amounted to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion because it was rooted in long-running religious challenges to evolution. In particular, the sticker's assertion that "evolution is a theory, not a fact" adopted the latest tactical language used by anti-evolutionists to dilute Darwinism, thereby putting the school board on the side of religious critics of evolution. That court decision is being appealed. Supporters of sound science education can only hope that the courts, and school districts, find a way to repel this latest assault on the most well-grounded theory in modern biology.
In the Pennsylvania case, the school board went further and became the first in the United States to require, albeit somewhat circuitously, that attention be paid in school to "intelligent design." This is the notion that some things in nature, such as the workings of the cell and intricate organs like the eye, are so complex that they could not have developed gradually through the force of Darwinian natural selection acting on genetic variations. Instead, it is argued, they must have been designed by some sort of higher intelligence.
The Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania became the first in the country to place intelligent design before its students, asserting that evolution was a theory, not a fact, that it had gaps for which there was no evidence, that intelligent design was a differing explanation of the origin of life, and that a book on intelligent design was available for interested students.
School boards and citizens need to be aware that intelligent is not a recognized field of science. There is no body of research to support its claims nor even a real plan to conduct such research. It should not be taught or even described as a scientific alternative to one of the crowning theories of modern science.
There ought to be some place in school where criticisms of evolution can be discussed, perhaps in a comparative religion class or a history or current events course. But school boards need to recognize that neither creationism nor intelligent design is an alternative to Darwinism as a scientific explanation of the evolution of life.
Movable Type Comments On This Blog
For a while, if you post a comment, you may not see it immediately. Comments are not lost -- I see them in my publishing file for my blog; they're just not appearing right away. We upgraded to MT 3.14 and it seems it's a bit buggy. This should be fixed soon. Go ahead and comment. If you receive a 500 error, just hit the back button and repost. Also, you may have to hit "link me" to comment instead of the regular comments button. We're working on it!
Sarah! Your Mom's On The Telephone (Pole)!
One In Five Statistics Is Crap
In my Tuesday night French class, somebody mentioned that they'd heard a stat on (gak!) Dr. Phil that one in five children has been propositioned by pervs on the Internet. I don't know if "propositioned" was exactly how it was put on Dr. Phil, since it was just en Français hearsay, but I do know that one in five seems awfully suspect. One in five? One in five? Well, it turns out The Wall Street Journal's new "Numbers Guy," Carl Bialik, felt as I did, and did a little investigation, to boot:
It's an alarming statistic: One in five children has been sexually solicited online.That stat is turning up on billboards and television commercials around the country, driven by an aggressive push from child-protection advocates. In the TV version, eerie music plays as a camera pans over a school playground and then shows a park. A female narrator intones: "To the list of places you might find sexual predators, add this one" -- as the image changes to a girl using a computer in her bedroom. The spot ends with the one-in-five stat. It's all part of an ad blitz that has gotten millions of dollars of free media time since its launch last year and is set to continue through 2007.
But while the motivation behind the campaign appears to be sound, the crucial statistic is misleading and could scare parents into thinking the danger is greater than it really is.
Here's a more accurate use of the statistic that we'll likely never see in an ad: Five years ago, one in five children -- ranging from fifth graders to high school seniors -- who used the Internet at least once a month said in a telephone survey that they'd received an online sexual solicitation, according to research paid for by advocates of the issue. Solicitations were broadly defined to include "unwanted" sexual talk, whether from someone they knew or a stranger, or any sexual talk with someone over 18. Only 24% of the solicitations came from people who identified themselves as adults; the bulk of the remainder came from other minors (or those purporting to be under 18).Only 3% of the children surveyed said they received an "aggressive solicitation," which includes measures like requests for an offline meeting or telephone calls. None of the solicitations led to actual sexual contact or assault. And most children successfully cut off the undesired communication themselves. (The study focused largely on "live" chats like instant-messenger exchanges; e-mail spam wasn't counted.)
...There's no question that online sex crimes are a serious problem. According to a separate University of New Hampshire study partially funded by NCMEC, law-enforcement officials made about 2,600 arrests for Internet sex crimes against minors over 12 months in 2000 and 2001. That number surely is lower than the actual number of Internet sex crimes, because many don't lead to arrests and some may not have been classified as arising from online interaction. Still, that's a long way from one of every five children.
Numbers Guy reader Kraig Eno spotted billboards carrying the stat in the Seattle area and researched its source. When he discovered it was based on a five-year-old study and hardly covered all children, he concluded in an e-mail, "The billboard's statement is so misleading as to be almost completely false, however important its warning is. ... But so what if the billboard's statement isn't true? It's propaganda, but it's the RIGHT KIND of propaganda. Nine out of 10 ad executives would surely agree!"
The stat also got attention from University of Delaware professor Joel Best, who in his book last year, "More Damned Lies and Statistics," mentioned it alongside some other published stats about children, like how many are involved in bullying and the percentage of girls abused on dates, in which researchers made methodological choices that tended to lead to bigger numbers.
Dr. Best points out that everyone involved -- advocates, researchers, journal editors and newspaper reporters and editors -- benefits from bigger numbers. And it's not coincidental that he found several examples of questionable statistics involving children. "Expressing threats in terms of dangers to our children is very emotionally powerful in our society," he says.
Unfortunately, passing off lies as statistics is quite damaging, creating what Barry Glassner called "The Culture Of Fear," and causing funding and attention to go where it isn't needed -- and leaving holes where it is:
On campus, for example, the "date rape" movement and the "Take Back the Night" marches are giant mobilizations to help young women cope with the threat of rape. Katie Roiphe has pointed out that a young woman's chances of being raped at Princeton or Mount Holyoke or Smith or the University of Minnesota are miniscule. We have massive resources going to staff rape crisis centers for privileged young women on our campuses, but women who really need the services are women in the inner city, which suffers a much higher incidence of sexual assault.
A Meatball-Head On Religion
I love these people who think they can call the utterly irrational rational and logical as if this will make it be so. This particular meatball-head is a fundamentalist film critic. Here are a few examples of his utter inability to think critically:
There is an unrequited darkness and bitterness in the soul of those who hate religion and faith. Only Jesus Christ can overcome this darkness and bitterness.Recently, two journalists (make that three journalists, hamburger brain), Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, have appeared on TV and radio talk shows speaking bitterly and falsely against people of faith, especially Christians. They think people who have faith in God and Jesus are irrational and stupid.
In reality, however, it is the atheist who must be irrational in order to believe the fantastic idea that all human science and art come from non-rational processes that are purely, only physical. As the leading atheist Antony Flew has discovered, such belief is not rational or scientific.
Unlike all other religions, Christian theology is based on logic and on historical fact. No one has successfully refuted the historical reliability of the New Testament documents, which contain journalistic investigations and historical eyewitness testimonies about the life, death and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only a rational, logical person can truly understand these texts, their historical context and their meaning.
Oh, please. Don't you know, the person with the extraordinary claim is the person who must prove it? The stuff in this book is beyond extraordinary. Eyewitnesses? Where? Crazy people who say Jesus speaks to them? (Just a suggestion, but maybe the leader of the most powerful land in the world who says he hears voices should be strapped to a bed somewhere, not led to a comfortable chair in the Oval Office?) More from the meatball-head follows:
Whenever Christians rationally study these texts, God illuminates their minds with the power of the Holy Spirit. That power is a rational power, which helps them apply the logic and reason of their own spirits or minds (mind is just another word for spirit in this article) to understand these texts. Such power is foolish to the atheist, because the atheist himself ultimately does not really understand the power of our God-given logic and reason.
Hello? If anyone were "rationally" studying these texts, or applying "logic and reason," they wouldn't be pondering what "God" or "the Holy Spirit" is doing, now would they? The atheist does understand all this bullshit doublespeak above, especially if he or she is a capitalist: It's highly necessary to keep separating willing fools and their money in order to keep the business of religion in business. More from Mr. Meatball:
God is the ultimate source of all logic and reason.
Yeah, and my toast is the source of Congress.
He uses our minds to make us whole, through the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That Gospel is empirically revealed and taught through the journalistic investigations and historical eyewitness testimonies in the New Testament about the life, death and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. These empirical investigations and testimonies are composed of logical, rational truth.Thus, having trusting faith and confidence in God and Jesus Christ is not irrational. In fact, it is one of the most rational things you can do. It is a rational faith founded on fact.
It's anything but -- no matter how many times you write or say it, chopped beef-for-brains. Since Bertrand Russell has been speaking to me (unfortunately, unlike the religious, it's only through words printed on the page, not voices in my head) I'll pull a few of Bertie's words on the topic of religion which I read today.
From various pages in the opening chapter of Why I Am Not A Christian:
There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination....Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels...and there one finds some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, He certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that.
...The early Christians really did believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was not superlatively wise.
And was Jesus really such a great guy? Bert says no!
Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly human can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation....There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, He came if happily He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever' . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.
And I think I should, too!
Thanks, LYT, for pointing out Mr. Meatball
Better Living Through Chemistry
Benedict Carey reports in The New York Times about a slight loosening by the anti-drug nannies in the magic mushrooms department:
If there's a drug for social phobia, maybe there could be one to help us relax in the company of death.Last month, the Food and Drug Administration gave the go-ahead to a Harvard University plan to study the recreational drug "ecstasy" as a treatment for anxiety in terminal cancer patients. Elsewhere, researchers in California are studying the effect of psilocybin - the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms - in similar patients. Both teams hope to learn whether the drugs, which can induce effusiveness and heightened awareness, will help people express and manage their fears in a therapeutic setting.
Although these illegal drugs are controversial, their use is a natural outgrowth of the medicalization of all emotional difficulty, from childhood shyness to adult phobias and depression. Doctors already prescribe antidepressants widely to dying patients, as well as anti-anxiety medications, like Valium, which can be emotionally numbing.The possibility of using potent consciousness-altering agents raises a question: At what point do the theological, cultural and personal significance of mortality become altered, or lost? Does going high into that good night risk mocking end-of-life customs - prompting rave flashbacks rather than life review, rude jokes rather than amends?
"I see death not only as an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of your own existence, but to offer your life as a gift to others," said the Rev. Donald Moore, a professor of theology at Fordham University. The end presents us with a time to ponder - and discuss, if possible - what life has meant and might continue to mean for others. Any drug that interferes with that experience comes at a steep cost, he said.
"If I never ponder these things," Father Moore said, "if I never face up to these questions intellectually, if I'm so spaced out it doesn't make any difference, then I think the experience is pretty empty and meaningless. In death we can become more a part of others' lives, and if I have decided simply to escape, I may have missed that opportunity."
How lovely that Reverend Moore has figured out the right way to die for the rest of us. Thanks, but I'll reflect on life while I'm alive, but as long as I'm going to be decomposing, I'll go for that "steep cost" he predicts of "going high into that good night."
A Sane Take On Summers
MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins claims she was in danger of blacking out or throwing up after hearing Harvard president Lawrence Summers speculating as to why there aren't more women in math and science. This proves what...that women, in general, are hysterical and in poor health? Not any more than Summers proved or probably even intended to even suggest that any one woman is unqualified to be a math or science prof. Jacob Sullum approaches Summers' address from a more rational point of view:
This controversy is ostensibly about the ability of women to excel in math and science. But it says more about the ability of academics to engage in rational debate when confronted by views that contradict their cherished assumptions.Speaking at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers, an economist and former treasury secretary, suggested three factors that may help account for the scarcity of women on the math, physical science, and engineering faculties of leading universities. In addition to discrimination (the explanation favored by Hopkins) and the reluctance of mothers to put in the long hours required by top math and science positions, he mentioned sex-related differences in ability.
Summers' remarks may have failed the Hopkins Nausea Test, but they hold up better when judged by more scientific standards. Decades of testing have shown that boys and men tend to do better than girls and women on tasks that require spatial reasoning (e.g., mentally rotating objects) and advanced mathematical abilities. These differences are especially pronounced at the upper end of the distribution, where future scientists and mathematicians congregate.
"It has been fashionable to insist that these differences are minimal, the consequences of variations in experience during development," wrote University of Western Ontario psychologist Doreen Kimura in a 1992 Scientific American article. "The bulk of the evidence suggests, however, that the effects of sex hormones on brain organization occur so early in life that from the start the environment is acting on differently wired brains in girls and boys."
Since then, the evidence has become stronger. "A variety of data collected throughout the 1990s show that gonadal hormones...have demonstrable effects on the cognitive abilities of women and men," wrote psychologists Diane Halpern of California State University in San Bernardino and Mary LaMay of Loma Linda University in a 2000 Educational Psychology Review article. "Converging evidence from a variety of sources supports the idea that prenatal hormone levels affect patterns of cognition in sex-typical ways."
The precise contributions of early brain structure and subsequent experience are still a matter of controversy. Halpern and LaMay, for instance, suggest initial differences in aptitude may be magnified by their impact on interest, encouragement, and self-esteem. But Summers never implied the matter was settled; to the contrary, he called for further research and debate.
His critics took it personally. A Harvard senior told the Times "it's disconcerting that the man who is supposed to have your best interest in mind and is the leader of your education community thinks less of us."
Yet average group differences in ability do not imply a judgment about any particular individual, since there is still much overlap between the sexes. Although men predominate in the upper echelons of math and science, that doesn't mean the women who make it are any less qualified. The situation could change, of course, if the demand for gender balance leads universities to select faculty members based on their sex.
Given the implications for attempts to achieve faculty "diversity" (a goal to which Summers pledges allegiance), it's not surprising that the subject of sex differences in math and science aptitude provokes strong feelings among academics. But that is not all it should provoke.
"I think if you come to participate in a research conference," Georgia State University economist Paula Stephan told the Times, "you should expect speakers to present hypotheses that you may not agree with and then discuss them on the basis of research findings." Surely that is not demanding too much of people who consider themselves scientists.
Celebrating Homosexuality
What's wrong with celebrating homosexuality? That's the question nobody bothers to ask in all the stories about the fundie nutties who are protesting the SpongeBob video for school kids. Here's an excerpt from CNN.com:
Conservative Christian groups accuse the makers of a video starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney and a host of other cartoon characters of promoting homosexuality to children.The wacky square yellow SpongeBob is one of the stars of a music video due to be sent to 61,000 U.S. schools in March. The makers -- the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation -- say the video is designed to encourage tolerance and diversity.
But at least two Christian activist groups say the innocent cartoon characters are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.
"A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association.
The video is a remake of the 1979 hit song "We Are Family" using the voices and images of SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, the Rugrats and other TV cartoon characters. It was made by a foundation set up by songwriter Nile Rodgers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in an effort to promote healing.
Christian groups however have taken exception to the tolerance pledge on the foundation's Web site, which asks people to respect the sexual identity of others along with their abilities, beliefs, culture and race.
"Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity" within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line," James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said in a statement released Thursday.
No, Dobson's the one who's crossing a moral line. One that belongs back in the Middle Ages. Dude, haven't you heard of the Age of Reason? Consider entering it.
And while we're at it, I think this would be a lovely time for another Bertrand Russell moment. Another quote from his book, Why I Am Not A Christian; this time, from page 28; a critique of the current crop of abstinence nannies and other damaging religious fanatics, then and now:
It is not only in regard to sexual behavior but also in regard to knowledge on sex subjects that the attitude of Christians is dangerous to human welfare. Every person who has taken the trouble to study the question in an unbiased spirit know that the artificial ignorance on sex subjects which orthodox Christians attempt to enforce upon the young is extremely dangerous to mental and physical health, and causes in those who pick up their knowledge by the way of "improper" talk, as most children do, an attitude that sex is in itself indecent and ridiculous. I do not think there can ever be any defense for the view that knowledge is ever undesirable. I should not put barriers in the way of the acquisition of knowledge by anybody at any age. But in the particular case of sex knowledge there are much weightier arguments in its favor than in the case of most other knowledge. A person is much less likely to act wisely when he is ignorant than when he is instructed, and it is ridiculous to give young people a sense of sin because they have a natural curiousity about an important matter.
Put Luke On Your Thong
While, if you're a hottie, Luke Thompson (of LYTrules.com) would probably like to be in your thong, on your thong might be the next best thing.
On your dog might be the next best, next best thing.
Of course, Lucy is more the jewels and feathers kind of girl, but perhaps for her boyfriend, Leroy...? Hmm, maybe I should try this Café Press thing. How hard is it, Luke, to create this stuff?
Walking The Dinosaur
Apparently, an early alternative to walking the dog, according to creationist morons, who insist man coexisted with the dinosaurs. There's loads of other such crap in the "Museum of Creation and Earth History" in Santee, where Patt ("The Hatt") Morrison recently paid a visit:
...and walked into the gift shop in time to hear a customer assuring the clerk that the Smithsonian in Washington has actual pieces of Noah's ark but won't admit it and won't let anyone near them.Keep in mind I'd just seen "proof" that the Earth is no older than about 10,000 years, that man and dinosaurs coexisted before a flood that not only created the Grand Canyon but put the final score at humans (Noah and kin) 1, dinosaurs 0. After all that, the bit about the Smithsonian nearly sent me into a faint. I needed someone to deliver a couple of "quick, snap out of it, girl" taps with a copy of Scientific American.
Santee is a long way from Los Angeles, in a lot of ways. I saw more Bush bumper stickers there in an hour than I had in all of last year in L.A. It's closer in spirit to Cobb County, Ga., where stickers applied to biology textbooks declared that evolution is a theory, not a fact. Or, they did until last week, when a federal judge told the school board to unstick them because they endorsed religious beliefs.
The Santee museum has been making the creationism argument for 33 years, with low-tech exhibits bearing the touching, dorky earnestness of middle-school science projects — plastic butterflies, blue-painted fake stalactites, piped-in music from some De Mille biblical epic. When I was there, a gaggle of schoolgirls was taking earnest notes in front of an exhibit on Noah's ark. In the artist's rendering of life below decks, the ark looked an awful lot like the dining room at Musso & Frank, except the booths were occupied by ostriches and bears.
What confronted the Georgia judge is not Santee's brand of quaint creationism but a more sophisticated, neo-creationism creep that's moving through school boards and state legislatures across the country. The forces behind it are emboldened by another four years of a president who is on the record as saying: "On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth." They're emboldened by the bogus logic that declares that wanting WMD is just as dangerous as having WMD, so wanting Genesis to be science is just as good as making it so.
The sweaty hallelujah chorus of the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial" is out of the picture. The talk now is about "Intelligent Design." ID says chance alone can't account for everything in creation, and that's where a higher intelligence — meaning God, though the ID forces may not use the word — comes in. ID is a canny tactic, a wedge into the realm of science, in which the Bible is an encoded science text. If IDers can put their argument on an equal footing with science, they figure they'll skip nimbly around the Constitution's church-state wall without having to wear themselves out trying to knock it down.
Really, it's a backhanded compliment to science that religion tries to co-opt its vocabulary. Santee's museum has its Institute of Creation Research. (Americans respect words like "institute" and "research.") ID materials show lab beakers, not Bibles. ID also takes a science word like "theory" and deliberately twists its meaning, equating the empirical research that backs up a scientific theory with any fleeting idea that finds a roost in more than one brain. Like the theory that the Smithsonian has a secret stash of ark bits.
Science and faith should always be at odds. Science starts with the smallest bits of evidence, collecting facts and data to figure out the principles that make them all work together. Faith starts with unshakable belief in itself. Cross those wires and you get oxymorons like creation science.
There was a man in the last century who practiced top-down science with harrowing consequences. His ideology came first, and science had to fit it. He denounced the important genetic studies of Mendel as the work of "enemies" — not exactly the language of science. He insisted, among other things, that wheat plants could bear rye seeds. His notions sent real scientists to exile and execution and condemned whole populations to starve. He wasn't a scientist himself but he played one at the Kremlin. His name was Trofim Lysenko, and his ideology was communism.
Amy Alkon's Bertrand Russell Reader
The following is today's excerpt from the excellent Bertrand Russell book, Why I Am Not A Christian, that I started reading on the plane home.
Page 6, Bertrand Russell writes:I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question 'Who made God?'"
Writergirl On The Go
A girl and her portable, international office:
At less than five pounds and about the size of a loaf of bread, my mobile HP deskjet (450 ci, in case you want one, too) leaves plenty of room for all the clothes I would have bought if the Euro wasn't hovering at just over the 50-cent piece!
Fundamental Illness
Religion is storming into European life, and it's an ugly business, writes Alan Riding in the IHT:
Two senior BBC executives were under police protection last week after receiving death threats. An Asian-British playwright went into hiding last month when her life was threatened. A Dutch moviemaker who ignored similar warnings was killed on an Amsterdam street in early November. The three episodes had religion in common. And in each case, the issue was blasphemy.So, have European artists been exceeding the accepted boundaries of tolerance or is religion becoming a taboo subject?
For decades, artistic freedom has seemed assured in Western Europe by a strong liberal tradition and growing secularity. Gone are the days when D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was sold under the counter here and Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" was banned as too violent. Sex, above all, has ceased to shock, whether in art or on screen, stage or television. Expletives have become common currency in books, movies and television.
At the same time, artists and audiences alike have shown little interest in religion. Monty Python's "Life of Brian," a 1979 religious satire, amused more than it offended. More recently, French Christian groups were largely ignored when they protested that posters for Milos Forman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and Costa-Gavras's "Amen" abused the cross. In brief, Europeans have tended to view a militant Christian right as an American monopoly.
"Sensation," an exhibition of works by irreverent young British artists, illustrated different attitudes. When it was shown at London's Royal Academy of Arts in 1997, complaints focused on a portrait of a notorious child murderer made out of children's handprints. But when the show traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999, it was Chris Ofili's painting of "The Holy Virgin Mary," decorated with elephant dung, that caused an outcry as sacrilegious.
Yet religion has re-entered European public life. One catalyst has been fear of Muslim fundamentalism, notably since 9/11. This and power struggles between traditional and modern currents inside different faiths have served to raise the religious stakes across the board. Today, religion in Europe is more intertwined with politics than in recent memory. And perhaps for this very reason, some artists believe it again worthy of attention.
One such artist was Theo van Gogh, a Dutch moviemaker. Working with a Somali-born Dutch legislator, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he made a short television documentary called "Submission," which used a naked body and words from the Koran to denounce violence against Muslim women. Its broadcast last fall brought cries of blasphemy and death threats. Unlike Hirsi Ali, van Gogh refused a police guard. On Nov. 2, he was slain, and a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan parentage was held.
The killing provoked outrage in the Netherlands. It also stirred intense debate about artistic freedom. Already four years earlier, "Aïsha," a Dutch opera about a strong-minded wife of Muhammad, was canceled after the Moroccan cast and composer were pressured into withdrawing by Muslim clerics. Today, many Dutch consider their liberal values to be increasingly hostage to religious intolerance.
...Perhaps artists are taking on religion precisely because it is the last taboo. On the other hand, if charges of blasphemy are accompanied by threats of violence, artists - or BBC executives - may choose to think twice before exercising their freedom on matters of faith. Either way, religious tensions have begun spilling into the cultural arena. And, for postwar Western Europe, this is new and disturbing.
Nancy Deux
Perhaps it's just me, but I did a double-take when I passed this photo opening poster, thinking it was a picture of Nancy Rommelmann.
P.S. Nancy's blogging again.
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All That Glitters
No, it isn't a camera trick. The eggs at Flore really are this golden, and they taste it, too. Probably because food in France is generally not “preserved” or otherwise altered with some chemical cousin of a Styrofoam cup. For the record, these are Gregg's eggs from this summer pictured here, but I've been eating them every day at Flore (oeufs au plat, bacon). What with the ruined dollar, my favorite, the salade landaise (goose livers, salade frisée, and a raw egg), at 15 euros plus 30% (ie, $20), is out of the fucking question!
Gaito got us this cheese, which he heated in the oven, in the balsa wood thing it came in, for seven minutes. Amazing, fantastic, marvelous, fabulous, superbe!
Even the centerpieces are golden and edible. (Those are apricots around the vase.) That was the first photo I took when I came into France, as I was walking from the RER (suburban train that runs to and from the airport) stop at Invalides. (Only dumb old LA Times travel writer Susan Spano is too dim to figure out that you don't take the RER from nightmare station and pickpocket capital of the universe, Les Halles. I guess that's why she, not Jason Stone, earns the big bucks for Paris blogging.)
Britain's Abu Ghraib
Now, Britain has a prisoner abuse scandal of its own, writes Audrey Gillan in The Guardian:
Images of British soldiers described as shocking and appalling that allegedly show the abuse of Iraqi prisoners were shown to a court martial in Germany yesterday as the long-awaited case of three members of the 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers got underway.Graphic photographs showing how squaddies forced Iraqis to strip bare and simulate oral and anal sex were put before a panel of seven officers. They also saw pictures of a grimacing Iraqi who had been strung up in a cargo net made from thick rope which had been hung from a forklift truck. Another showed a soldier, wearing just shorts and flip flops, standing on an Iraqi man who was crouched in a foetal position on the ground.
The military court in Osnabruck in Germany began hearing the evidence against Corporal Daniel Kenyon, 33, and lance corporals Darren Larkin, 30, Mark Cooley, 25, who face a total of nine charges relating to the alleged abuse of the Iraqis they had taken prisoner two weeks after the conflict was declared over in May 2003. L/Cpl Larkin has pleaded guilty to a charge of battery but has denied "disgraceful conduct of an indecent kind" after he was said have forced two "unknown males" to undress in front of others.
L/Cpl Cooley has denied two offences involving conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline for simulating punches and kicks to an Iraqi and allowing them to be photographed. He also denies disgraceful conduct of a cruel kind after he tied up an Iraqi and hung him from a forklift truck.
Cpl Kenyon denies all charges, including two of aiding and abetting a person to force two naked detainees to simulate a sex act.
If found guilty the men face prison sentences and dismissal from the army with disgrace. The case has been dubbed "Britain's Abu Ghraib", coming just one week after an US court martial sentenced one of its soldiers to 10 years for torturing Iraqis. US army specialist Charles Graner was accused of stacking naked prisoners in a human pyramid and later ordering them to masturbate while other soldiers took photographs at the prison, near Baghdad.
Yesterday's panel was presented with a collection of 22 photographs, taken from the cameras of five soldiers.
The three accused soldiers had been part of an operation to stop Iraqi looters from stealing humanitarian aid from the British-run camp Bread basket, half a mile west of Basra. The court heard that their commanding officer, Major Daniel Taylor, devised a plan, codenamed Operation Ali Baba, aimed at rounding up thieves who had become a major problem at the camp.
The fusiliers were sent out in groups of four armed with one SA80 assault rifle and camouflage poles to capture Iraqis and bring them back to the camp with the intention of "working them hard" to deter looting. The court heard such an order was illegal and was in contravention of the Geneva Convention.
Hanging CBS, But Not The Guy Who Opted Out
Kos has a good point:
With all the wingnut crowing about CBS and 60 Minutes, you'd think they blew the story that Bush had been AWOL. Fact is, CBS got one piece of evidence wrong,...
But there was a truckload of evidence that showed that George Bush was AWOL, and about that, nobody seemed to care. Truckload contents pasted in below. More at the link above:
# Upon being accepted for pilot training, Bush promised to serve with his parent (Texas) Guard unit for five years once he completed his pilot training.But Bush served as a pilot with his parent unit for just two years.
# In May 1972 Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama. According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new Guard unit in Alabama.
But Bush failed to get the authorization.
# In requesting a permanent transfer to a nonflying unit in Alabama in 1972, Bush was supposed to sign an acknowledgment that he received relocation counseling.
But no such document exists.
# He was supposed to receive a certification of satisfactory participation from his unit.
But Bush did not.
# He was supposed to sign and give a letter of resignation to his Texas unit commander.
But Bush did not.
# He was supposed to receive discharge orders from the Texas Air National Guard adjutant general.
But Bush did not.
# He was supposed to receive new assignment orders for the Air Force Reserves.
But Bush did not.
# On his transfer request Bush was asked to list his "permanent address."
But he wrote down a post office box number for the campaign he was working for on a temporary basis.
# On his transfer request Bush was asked to list his Air Force specialty code.
But Bush, an F-102 pilot, erroneously wrote the code for an F-89 or F-94 pilot. Both planes had been retired from service at the time. Bush, an officer, made this mistake more than once on the same form.
# On May 26, 1972, Lt. Col. Reese Bricken, commander of the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, informed Bush that a transfer to his nonflying unit would be unsuitable for a fully trained pilot such as he was, and that Bush would not be able to fulfill any of his remaining two years of flight obligation.
But Bush pressed on with his transfer request nonetheless.
# Bush's transfer request to the 9921st was eventually denied by the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, which meant he was still obligated to attend training sessions one weekend a month with his Texas unit in Houston.
But Bush failed to attend weekend drills in May, June, July, August and September. He also failed to request permission to make up those days at the time.
# According to Air Force regulations, "[a] member whose attendance record is poor must be closely monitored. When the unexcused absences reach one less than the maximum permitted [sic] he must be counseled and a record made of the counseling. If the member is unavailable he must be advised by personal letter."
But there is no record that Bush ever received such counseling, despite the fact that he missed drills for months on end.
# Bush's unit was obligated to report in writing to the Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base whenever a monthly review of records showed unsatisfactory participation for an officer.
But his unit never reported Bush's absenteeism to Randolph Air Force Base.
# In July 1972 Bush failed to take a mandatory Guard physical exam, which is a serious offense for a Guard pilot. The move should have prompted the formation of a Flying Evaluation Board to investigation the circumstances surrounding Bush's failure.
But no such FEB was convened.
# Once Bush was grounded for failing to take a physical, his commanders could have filed a report on why the suspension should be lifted.
But Bush's commanders made no such request.
# On Sept. 15, 1972, Bush was ordered to report to Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, the deputy commander of the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery, Ala., to participate in training on the weekends of Oct. 7-8 and Nov. 4-5, 1972.
But there's no evidence Bush ever showed up on those dates. In 2000, Turnipseed told the Boston Globe that Bush did not report for duty. (A self-professed Bush supporter, Turnipseed has since backed off from his categorical claim.)
# However, according to the White House-released pay records, which are unsigned, Bush was credited for serving in Montgomery on Oct. 28-29 and Nov. 11-14, 1972. Those makeup dates should have produced a paper trail, including Bush's formal request as well as authorization and supervision documents.
But no such documents exist, and the dates he was credited for do not match the dates when the Montgomery unit assembled for drills.
# When Guardsmen miss monthly drills, or "unit training assemblies" (UTAs), they are allowed to make them up through substitute service and earn crucial points toward their service record. Drills are worth one point on a weekday and two points on each weekend day. For Bush's substitute service on Nov. 13-14, 1972, he was awarded four points, two for each day.
But Nov. 13 and 14 were both weekdays. He should have been awarded two points.
# Bush earned six points for service on Jan. 4-6, 1973 -- a Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
But he should have earned four points, one each for Thursday and Friday, two for Saturday.
# Weekday training was the exception in the Guard. For example, from May 1968 to May 1972, when Bush was in good standing, he was not credited with attending a single weekday UTA.
But after 1972, when Bush's absenteeism accelerated, nearly half of his credited UTAs were for weekdays.
# To maintain unit cohesiveness, the parameters for substitute service are tightly controlled; drills must be made up within 15 days immediately before, or 30 days immediately after, the originally scheduled drill, according to Guard regulations at the time.
But more than half of the substitute service credits Bush received fell outside that clear time frame. In one case, he made up a drill nine weeks in advance.
# On Sept. 29, 1972, Bush was formally grounded for failing to take a flight physical. The letter, written by Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief, chief of the National Guard Bureau, ordered Bush to acknowledge in writing that he had received word of his grounding.
But no such written acknowledgment exists. In 2000, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Boston Globe that Bush couldn't remember if he'd ever been grounded.
# Bartlett also told the Boston Globe that Bush didn't undergo a physical while in Alabama because his family doctor was in Houston.
But only Air Force flight surgeons can give flight physicals to pilots.
# Guard members are required to take a physical exam every 12 months.
But Bush's last Guard physical was in May 1971. Bush was formally discharged from the service in November 1974, which means he went without a required physical for 42 months.
# Bush's unsatisfactory participation in the fall of 1972 should have prompted the Texas Air National Guard to write to his local draft board and inform the board that Bush had become eligible for the draft. Guard units across the country contacted draft boards every Sept. 15 to update them on the status of local Guard members. Bush's absenteeism should have prompted what's known as a DD Form 44, "Record of Military Status of Registrant."
But there is no record of any such document having been sent to Bush's draft board in Houston.
# Records released by the White House note that Bush received a military dental exam in Alabama on Jan. 6, 1973.
But Bush's request to serve in Alabama covered only September, October and November 1972. Why he would still be serving in Alabama months after that remains unclear.
# Each of Bush's numerous substitute service requests should have formed a lengthy paper trail consisting of AF Form 40a's, with the name of the officer who authorized the training in advance, the signature of the officer who supervised the training and Bush's own signature.
But no such documents exist.
# During his last year with the Texas Air National Guard, Bush missed nearly two-thirds of his mandatory UTAs and made up some of them with substitute service. Guard regulations allowed substitute service only in circumstances that are "beyond the control" of the Guard member.
But neither Bush nor the Texas Air National Guard has ever explained what the uncontrollable circumstances were that forced him to miss the majority of his assigned drills in his last year.
# Bush supposedly returned to his Houston unit in April 1973 and served two days.
But at the end of April, when Bush's Texas commanders had to rate him for their annual report, they wrote that they could not do so: "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report."
# On June 29, 1973, the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver instructed Bush's commanders to get additional information from his Alabama unit, where he had supposedly been training, in order to better evaluate Bush's duty. The ARPC gave Texas a deadline of Aug. 6 to get the information.
But Bush's commanders ignored the request.
# Bush was credited for attending four days of UTAs with his Texas unit July 16-19, 1973. That was good for eight crucial points.
But that's not possible. Guard units hold only two UTAs each month -- one on a Saturday and one on a Sunday. Although Bush may well have made up four days, they should not all have been counted as UTAs, since they occur just twice a month. The other days are known as "Appropriate Duty," or APDY.
# On July 30, 1973, Bush, preparing to attend Harvard Business School, signed a statement acknowledging it was his responsibility to find another unit in which to serve out the remaining nine months of his commitment.
But Bush never contacted another unit in Massachusetts in which to fulfill his obligation.
Flore Power
The fashion designer Sonia Rykiel is here, upstairs at Le Flore, my Paris office. She gave me a big smile as she came in. She’s always very warm and friendly when she sees me. I think she finds me amusing, with my zebra striped iBook and manic typing. She once told me she liked my pants –- a black and white pair with newsprint all over them that I bought for $20 at a designer resale store in LA.
It’s always interesting upstairs at Flore…occasionally, I see Deneuve here, sometimes with Yves St. Laurent (easy to play it cool around slobbo LA movie stars, but hard not to sneak a peek at La Deneuve). There’s always somebody -- Greil Marcus or various and sundry French novelists or Freud-clingers -- getting interviewed by a TV crew...in addition to the usual crowd of gray-skinned depressive intellectuals and preternaturally tanned BCBGs. (BCBG is short for Bon Chic, Bon Genre –- the 80s French term for “yuppie” –- probably as creaky in France as the term “yuppie” is for us, but it’s hard enough to learn to speak intelligibly in ordinary French without keeping up on all the “argot.”)
Although I usually spend most of my conversational time at Flore torturing French people (ie, forcing them to pick out the meaning from my attempted français), I met a very interesting British woman here yesterday -- a lawyer for a big company living in Paris for 20 years, with a pretty good French accent (at least, to me). I only learned she was British because she forgot her purse, and as she was hurrying down the stairs, I was trying to quickly collect the French to tell her: “Madame, vous avez oublié votre sac!” She came back and sat beside me for quite a while, talking about the state of things in America, the Middle East, and Europe, and asking about what I do. Like many Europeans, she's surprised (horrified?...translation from British) by the advance of religion in America.
They've got a lot of dumb policy in France (all the commie-inflected stuff), but they've got one thing right -- separation of church and state, and not just as a matter of lip service. I was talking yesterday with a French man about the principle of Laïque (secularism) in the public schools in France. When you go to a public French school, you are a little French child, not a Muslim, or Jewish, or Christian -- hence, the prohibition on religious attire like head scarves. You want to wear the trappings of religion? Attend a private fundamentalist institution. The man also told me how shocking it would be for a head of state here in France to take an oath of office by swearing on a bible, like our president does...or to talk about god in relation to matters of state. We Americans might be economically ahead, but philosophically, we have "reculé" (backed up).
By the way, my American friend Jason, who’s a Paris resident and blogger with a Harvard MBA and a degree in chemical engineering, is looking for a job, toute de suite (pronto!), befitting his serious credentials -- but, in France with an American or international company. The reader of this blog who leads him to one he lands gets a free hour telephone consultation with me on the problems of their choice –- romantic, aesthetic, or dietetic…since I am now an expert on how to lose weight while burying one’s face in a plate of bleu des Causses cheese or other equally calorie-neutral delicacies. (If you want to pack on some pounds, eat Snackwells and other calorie-reduced crap!)
Costco: The Front Line Of The War On Drugs
If you've got cold symptoms, you'd better bring them to Costco one at a time.
"Oui, Monsieur!"
Here I am at a quirky, old restaurant in the seventh arrondisement (I think, called Le Breteuil), with Mark, Emily, and Chantal, wondering whether the waiter really just offered to serve me his grandmother, sliced, on toast.
It's The Democracy, Stupid
It isn't American aid that makes the difference in Muslim countries, writes Thomas Friedman:
I believe the tensions between America and the Muslim world stem primarily from the conditions under which many Muslims live, not what America does. I believe free people, living under freely elected governments, with a free press and with economies and education systems that enable their young people to achieve their full potential, don't spend a lot of time thinking about whom to hate, whom to blame, and whom to lash out at. Free countries don't have leaders who use their media and state-owned "intellectuals" to deflect all of their people's anger away from them and onto America.Ah, you say, but the Europeans live in free-market democracies and they have become very anti-American. Yes, some of them. But for Europeans, anti-Americanism is a hobby. For too many in the Muslim world it has become a career.
I am sure that young people in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Poland and India have their views on America, but they are not an obsession. They want Americans' jobs, not Americans' lives. They live in societies that empower their young people to realize their full potential and to express any opinion - pro-American, anti-American or neutral.
So I don't want young Muslims to like America. I want them to like and respect themselves, their own countries and their own governments. I want them to have the same luxury to ignore America as Taiwan's young people have - because they are too busy focusing on improving their own lives and governance, running for office, studying anything they want or finding good jobs in their own countries.
The Bush team is certainly not fostering all this when it mismanages a war it began in order to liberate the people of Iraq. Its performance has been pathetic, and I understand anyone on the right or the left who wants to wash his hands of the whole thing. Speaking personally, though, I am still hoping that these Iraqi elections come off - out of respect for the Iraqis who have been ready to risk their lives for a chance to vote, out of contempt for the insurgents who want to prevent that and out of a deep conviction that something very important is at stake.
No, these elections won't change Iraq or the region overnight, and Thomas Jefferson is not on the ballot. But they will at least kick off what the Iraq expert Yitzhak Nakash calls "a real, Iraqi political process run by and for Iraqis."
Emily Tarr's Paris
Emily Tarr introduced me to Paris, and takes the best pictures of me in it -- or anywhere. Here I am chez Emily:
Tristement, mon petit chien est chez moi à Los Angeles, parce-qu'il fait très froid ici. (Translation: It's as cold as fuck here, so my doggie is sleeping on my couch in warm, sunny Los Angeles when she isn't playing over at my neighbors'.)
Photo by Emily Tarr...bien sur!
Fur A Good Time...
NSFPMOOBH. (Not Safe For PETA Members Or Other Bunny-Huggers.)
Thanks, Sheryl!
The White Stuff
Terrific investigative piece written by docu-maker Angus Macqueen, who spent 18 months on "the cocaine trail" across Latin America. The story is subtitled with the lines, "Here he recalls the journey that revolutionized his views and explains why he believes 'the dandruff of the Andes should be sold in (the English drugstore) Boots.'"
Rue de Sèvres at Place Léon-Paul Fargue
Wild. I'm blogging from a Paris phone booth, on Rue de Sèvres, just outside the Duroc metro, on borrowed Wifi. Took a bunch of photos, and I even got a...device, shall we say...to transfer them. Therein lies a story. But I must tell it from a more comfortable location, because the photo transfer device requires some sort of CD installation process. I still can't get over that I'm blogging from a Paris phone cabine. What a high tech world we live in!
"Religion Moderation" And Other Jokes
Astonishingly, perhaps 230 million Americans, according to polls, "believe a book that shows neither unity of style nor internal consistency was created by an omniscient deity," writes Sam Harris in Playboy. He then explores what it means to be a “religious moderate,” an oxymoronic term many Americans would use to define their level of belief:
The problem, however, is that moderation in religion is completely without intellectual or theological support. It offers us no bulwark against the threat of religious extremism and religious violence.Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person knows more about certain matters than anyone did 2000 years ago, and much of this knowledge is incompatible with scripture. Most of us, for example, no longer equate disease with demonic possession. About half of us find it impossible to take seriously the idea that the universe was created 6000 years ago. But such concessions to modernity haven't made faith compatible with reason. It's just that the utility of ignoring (or "reinterpreting") articles of faith is now overwhelming. Anyone who has flown to a distant city for heart bypass surgery must concede that we have learned a few things about physics, geography, engineering and medicine since the time of Moses.
The problem with religious moderation is that it doesn't permit anything critical to be said about religious literalism. By failing to live by the letter of the texts--while tolerating the irrationality of those who do--we betray faith and reason equally. We can't say fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief. We can't even say they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say as religious moderates is that we don't like the personal and social costs imposed on us by a full embrace of scripture.
Religious moderates have merely capitulated to a variety of all too human interests that have nothing in principle to do with God. Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance. It has no credibility, in religious terms, to put it on a par with fundamentalism. Each text is perfect in all its parts. By this light, moderation appears to be nothing more than an unwillingness to submit to the law of God. Unless the core dogmas of faith (ie:, there is a God, and we know what He wants from us) are questioned, religious moderation won't lead us out of the wilderness.
Insofar as it represents an atteot to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, such moderation closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to human happiness. Rather than bring the force of creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion and spiritual experience, moderates ask that we relax our standards of adherence to ancient superstitions while we otherwise maintain a belief system passed down from men and women whose lives were ravaged by ignorance. Not even politics suffers from such anachronisms.
Moderates don't want to kill anyone in the name of God, of course. But they do want us to keep using the word God as though we knew what we were talking about. And they don't want anything critical to be said about people who believe in the God of their fathers, because tolerance, perhaps above all else, is sacred. To speak truthfully about the state of our world--to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contains reams of life-destroying gibberish--is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it.
And, in the days after our fundamentalist-in-chief noted that he couldn’t see how anybody but a believer in god could lead this, the most powerful and scientifically advanced nation in the world, Harris’ ending remarks carry even more weight:
Nothing is more sacred than facts. Where we have reason, we don't need faith. Where we have no reason, we have lost both our connection to this world and to one another. People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our society, not in the halls of power. We should respect a person's desire for a better life in this world, not his certainty that one awaits him in the next.But religious moderates imagine that the path to peace will be paved once we learn to respect the unjustified beliefs of others. This ideal of religious tolerance now drives us to the abyss. As every fundamentalist knows, the contest between our religions is zero-sum. Religious violence is still with us because our religions are intrinsically hostile to one another.
Where they appear otherwise, it is because secular interests have restrained the most lethal improprieties of faith. It is time that moderates recognize that reason, not faith, is the glue that holds our civilization together.
Penile Stretching And Twisting
A little film capsule hilarity from LAObserved.
My Ass...
...Is in Paris, but my camera cable is at home. Sigh. Pictures as soon as I can get to Le Office Depot!
Just Another Orwellian News Cycle
Another chilling development from the Bush administration:
'Bush Plans to Screen Whole U.S. Population for Mental Illness', read the headline in the 'British Medical Journal' (BMJ) and the project, with increasingly controversial drug treatment at its core, is underway as you read this.Structures to put the scheme in place have been developed under a so-called "Federal Action Agenda," announced in Washington on Jun. 9, and include mandatory mental health screening, which the plan recommends be linked with "treatment and supports".
The plan's full details have yet to emerge as the Action Agenda still "has not been publicly released," according to A Kathryn Power, director of the Centre for Mental Health Services (CMHS), the Bush administration body spearheading the effort.
Developed by the President's New Freedom Commission On Mental Health, the effort, critics charge, is a pharmaceutical industry marketing scheme to mine customers and promote sales of the newest, most expensive psychiatric medications.
Under 'New Freedom', mental health screening of adult Americans is slated to occur during routine physical exams while that of young people will occur in the school system. Pre-school children will receive periodic "development screens."
What happens when YOU don't agree that you're mentally ill? And what is mental illness, anyway? What if you're a little wacky and it doesn't stop you from functioning? What if you're a lot gay? Until recently, homosexuality was identified as a mental illlness! in the DSM, the diagnostic manual of the mental health professions. Talk about sick!
The Ugly Squad On Patrol
patent leather shoes, is a highly effective form of abstinence.
Duh Is For Democrats
One reason the Democrats are the losingest political team around is their fondness for hiring political consultants like Joe Hansen, writes Amy Sullivan for Washington Monthly:
Hansen is part of a clique of Washington consultants who, through their insider ties, continue to get rewarded with business even after losing continually. Pollster Mark Mellman is popular among Democrats because he tells them what they so desperately want to hear: Their policies are sound, Americans really agree with them more than with Republicans, and if they just repeat their mantras loud enough, voters will eventually embrace the party. As Noam Scheiber pointed out in a New Republic article following the great Democratic debacle of '02, Mellman was, perhaps more than anyone else, the architect of that defeat. As the DSCC's recommended pollster, he advised congressional Democrats to ignore national security and Iraq in favor of an endless campaign about prescription drugs and education. After the party got its clock cleaned based on his advice, Mellman should have been exiled but was instead ... promoted. He became the lead pollster for John Kerry's presidential campaign, where he proffered eerily similar advice – stress domestic policy, stay away from attacking Bush – to much the same effect.Hansen and Mellman are joined by the poster boy of Democratic social promotion, Bob Shrum. Over his 30-year career, Shrum has worked on the campaigns of seven losing presidential candidates – from George McGovern to Bob Kerrey – capping his record with a leading role in the disaster that was the Gore campaign. Yet, instead of abiding by the "seven strikes and you're out" rule, Democrats have continued to pay top dollar for his services (sums that are supplemented by the percentage Shrum's firm, Shrum, Devine & Donilon, gets for purchasing air time for commercials). Although Shrum has never put anyone in the White House, in the bizarro world of Democratic politics, he's seen as a kingmaker – merely hiring the media strategist gives a candidate such instant credibility with big-ticket liberal funders that John Kerry and John Edwards fought a fierce battle heading into the 2004 primaries to lure Shrum to their camps. Ultimately, Shrum chose Kerry, and on Nov. 3, he extended his perfect losing record.
Since their devastating loss last fall, Democrats have cast about for reasons why their party has come up short three election cycles in a row and have debated what to do. Should they lure better candidates? Talk more about morality? Adopt a harder line on national security? But one of the most obvious and least discussed reasons Democrats continue to lose is their consultants. Every sports fan knows that if a team boasts a losing record several seasons in a row, the coach has to be replaced with someone who can win. Yet when it comes to political consultants, Democrats seem incapable of taking this basic managerial step.
A major reason for that reluctance is that Democrats simply won't talk openly about the problem. Shrum did eventually take some heat publicly during the 2004 campaign when the contrast between his losing record and his high position in the troubled Kerry campaign became too stark to ignore. But in general, a Mafia-like code of omerta operates. Few insiders dare complain about the hammerlock loser consultants have on the process – certainly neither the professional campaign operatives whom the consultants hire nor the journalists to whom the consultants feed juicy inside-the-room detail. "Everybody in town talks [privately] about Hansen and how he's held candidates hostage through the DSCC," says Chuck Todd, editor of National Journal's Political Hotline. Todd, however, is one of the few brave insiders. I interviewed two dozen Democratic Party leaders, operatives, and others for this story. Virtually no one had a good thing to say about Hansen or the rest of the oligarchy. Yet few would talk on the record. The exceptions were those who have gotten out of the business of working for political candidates such as Dan Gerstein, a former advisor to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). "If a company like General Motors had the same image problem that the Democratic Party does, they would fire the guys responsible," Gerstein told me. But not Democrats. "We don't just hire those guys," Gerstein said, "we give them bonuses."
Are You A Right Libertarian Or A Left Libertarian?
A few conflicts from within the fold.
Old Maids Rule!
"Women live longer if they throw away the ring," says an article by Adele Horin in the Sydney Morning Herald:
If women are looking for the key to long-lasting health, they should consider getting rid of their man.That is one finding of research by two Queensland universities that reveals that divorced, widowed and single women in older age appear to be healthier than their married counterparts.
A man's health, however, appears to be unaffected by his marital status.
The surprise finding may help allay fears that the burgeoning group of older single females - products of the divorce surge of the 1970s and 1980s - will place an extra burden on health budgets.
The Queensland University and Queensland University of Technology study - Marriage dissolution and health amongst the elderly: the role of social and economic resources - was based on a sample of 2300 Australians over 60 and will be published in the forthcoming issue of the journal Just Policy.
It shows that divorced, widowed and never-married elderly women reported significantly better general health than married women, challenging long-held beliefs that married people had better overall physical and mental health than non-married.
"Maybe married women are worn out from looking after their husbands," said researcher Belinda Hewitt, of the school of social science at the University of Queensland.
I'm so tired of the myth that your life simply isn't complete without a significant other. I have a boyfriend, but that's only because I accidentally met somebody very, very right for me after tossing back hundreds that came before him like sickly trout. A glamor-girl friend sent me her black-wit birthday invite today:
In honor of me turning a year older, I’m having a few folks over for cocktails this Saturday. If getting one step closer to dying old and alone isn’t a reason to drink, I don’t know what is.
Here was my response:
Oh, you glama girl, look on the bright side: dying old and alone is better than dying old and a nursemaid to some demented old coot who needs a lot of help with his diapers!
I mean, if you love somebody to pieces, sure, diaper duty comes with. But too many people are too desperate to partner up -- and why? Because they aren't interesting enough to be by themselves for any length of time! And so they'll have somebody around to wipe their drool! And in the name of "love"? Please. Live with dignity while you're young, and make enough money that you can pay somebody later in life to follow you around with a washrag and clean up your spit!
Come Out, Come Out, Where Ever You Are!
Armstrong Williams said he wasn't the only one secretly on the take from the Bush administration, writes David Corn:
"This happens all the time," he told me. "There are others." Really? I said. Other conservative commentators accept money from the Bush administration? I asked Williams for names. "I'm not going to defend myself that way," he said. The issue right now, he explained, was his own mistake. Well, I said, what if I call you up in a few weeks, after this blows over, and then ask you? No, he said.Does Williams really know something about other right-wing pundits? Or was he only trying to minimize his own screw-up with a momentary embrace of a trumped-up everybody-does-it defense? I could not tell. But if the IG at the Department of Education or any other official questions Williams, I suggest he or she ask what Williams meant by this comment. And if Williams is really sorry for this act of "bad judgment" and for besmirching the profession of right-wing punditry, shouldn't he do what he can to guarantee that those who watch pundits on the cable news networks and read political columnists receive conservative views that are independent and untainted by payoffs from the Bush administration or other political outfits?
Armstrong, please, help us all protect the independence of the conservative commentariat. If you are not alone, tell us who else has yielded to bad judgment.
Einstein Was No Idiot
Contrary to what the religious would have you believe, Einstein did not believe in god:
Just over a century ago, near the beginning of his intellectual life, the young Albert Einstein became a skeptic. He states so on the first page of his Autobiographical Notes (1949, pp. 3-5): "Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived...Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude...(w)hich has never left me..."We all know Albert Einstein as the most famous scientist of the 20th century, and many know him as a great humanist. Some have also viewed him as religious. Indeed, in Einstein'(s) writings there is well-known reference to God and discussion of religion (1949, 1954). Although Einstein stated he was religious and that he believed in God, it was in his own specialized sense that he used these terms. Many are aware that Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic. If one understands how Einstein used the terms religion, God, atheism, and agnosticism, it is clear that he was consistent in his beliefs.
Part of the popular picture of Einstein's God and religion comes from his well-known statements, such as: "God is cunning but He is not malicious."(Also: "God is subtle but he is not bloody-minded." Or: "God is slick, but he ain't mean." (1946)
"God does not play dice."(On many occasions.)
"I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."(Unknown date.)
It is easy to see how some got the idea that Einstein was expressing a close relationship with a personal god, but it is more accurate to say he was simply expressing his ideas and beliefs about the universe.
Einstein's "belief" in Spinoza's God is one of his most widely quoted statements. But quoted out of context, like so many of these statements, it is misleading at best. It all started when Boston's Cardinal O'Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory "cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism" and "befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation"(Clark, 1971, 413-414). Einstein had already experienced heavier duty attacks against his theory in the form of anti-Semitic mass meetings in Germany, and he initially ignored the Cardinal's attack. Shortly thereafter though, on April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask: "Do you believe in God?"(Sommerfeld, 1949, 103). Einstein's return message is the famous statement: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings"( 103). The Rabbi, who was intent on defending Einstein against the Cardinal, interpreted Einstein's statement in his own way when writing: "Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist. Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein's theory if carried out to its logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism. He does away with all thought of dualism or pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism. This latter thought may have caused the Cardinal to speak out. Let us call a spade a spade"(Clark, 1971, 414). Both the Rabbi and the Cardinal would have done well to note Einstein's remark, of 1921, to Archbishop Davidson in a similar context about science: "It makes no difference. It is purely abstract science"(413).
The American physicist Steven Weinberg (1992), in critiquing Einstein's "Spinoza's God" statement, noted: "But what possible difference does it make to anyone if we use the word 'God' in place of 'order' or 'harmony,' except perhaps to avoid the accusation of having no God?" Weinberg certainly has a valid point, but we should also forgive Einstein for being a product of his times, for his poetic sense, and for his cosmic religious view regarding such things as the order and harmony of the universe.
But what, at bottom, was Einstein's belief? The long answer exists in Einstein's essays on religion and science as given in his Ideas and Opinions (1954), his Autobiographical Notes (1949), and other works. What about a short answer?
In the Summer of 1945, just before the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein wrote a short letter stating his position as an atheist (Figure 1). Ensign Guy H. Raner had written Einstein from mid-Pacific requesting a clarification on the beliefs of the world famous scientist (Figure 2). Four years later Raner again wrote Einstein for further clarification and asked "Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., 'one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being'?" Einstein's response is shown in Figure 3.
Combining key elements from the first and second response from Einstein there is little doubt as to his position: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."
(P.S. Thanks, Charles [GodlessRose], for posting this in the comments on the Mencken entry. Thought it was worth an item all of its own.)
Good Morning, 1984!
It's starting. Libraries are banning books. Mississippi libraries, in particular, are banning The Daily Show book due to a humorous depiction, involving nudity, of the Supreme Court. "We're not an adult bookstore," said one librarian quoted in the article. Excuse me, but could there possibly be anything to turn anybody on in a depiction of nude Supreme Court justices? The book...
...features the faces of the nine Supreme Court justices superimposed over naked bodies.The facing page has cutouts of the justices' robes, complete with a caption asking readers to "restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her respective robe."
The book by Stewart and the writers of "The Daily Show," the Comedy Central fake-news program he hosts, was released in September. It has spent 15 weeks on The New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction, and was named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the industry trade magazine.
Former English teacher Tara Skelton of Ocean Springs said the libraries shouldn't decide what is in poor taste.
"It just really seemed kind of silly to me," she said. "I don't think the Supreme Court justices have filed any defamation of character or libel suits. It's humor."
How sweet, they're "respecting" the justices by disrespecting the Constitution (that little passage, called "The First Amendment," about the freedom of expression). And isn't it blind stupidity, if you want to prevent kids from reading something, to tell them they can't? (As a blog reader emailed me: "Applying this standard, you have to wonder if this library has also banned human sexuality textbooks.") And, contrary to what the neo-Puritans will tell you, what's horrible, terrible, and tragedy-producing about viewing a bunch of naked middle-aged and old people naked? Especially if it might get kids a little interested in politics and government!
Abu Who?
Does the right remember Abu Ghraib, asks the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum?
During the past eight months there have been many news cycles, many front-page stories, many events. There have been elections. There have been hurricanes and tidal waves. Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of things, eight months is not a very long time. In most of the world, something that happened eight months ago is considered "recent." In Washington, however, it seems that eight months ago is considered "ancient." How else to explain the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the post of attorney general of the United States?Or, more to the point: How else to explain the widespread assumption that Gonzales -- who commissioned the "torture memo" of August 2002, following a meeting in his office -- will be decisively confirmed? After all, eight months ago, much of the country -- and much of the Republican Party -- was gripped by horror and embarrassment after the publication of photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those photographs haven't gone away: As I write this, I need only click on my computer's Internet Explorer icon and there is Lynndie England, grinning and giving a thumbs-up behind a pile of naked men.
If the pictures haven't gone away, the value system that led to Abu Ghraib hasn't gone away either. Last month -- really recently -- lawsuits filed by American human rights groups forced the government to release thousands of pages of documents showing that the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base long preceded the Abu Ghraib photographs, and that abuse has continued since then too. U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have, according to the administration's own records and my colleagues' reporting, used beatings, suffocation, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and dogs during interrogations. They probably still do.
Although many people bear some responsibility for these abuses, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is among those who bear the most responsibility. It was Gonzales who led the administration's internal discussion of what qualified as torture. It was Gonzales who advised the president that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people captured in Afghanistan. It was Gonzales who helped craft some of the administration's worst domestic decisions, including the indefinite detention, without access to lawyers, of U.S. citizens Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi.
By nominating Gonzales to his Cabinet, the president has demonstrated not only that he is undisturbed by these aberrations, but that he still doesn't understand the nature of the international conflict which he says he is fighting. Like communism, radical Islam is an ideology that people will die for. To fight it, the United States needs not just to show off its fancy weapons systems but also to prove to the Islamic world that democratic values, in some moderate Islamic form, will give them better lives. The Cold War ended because Eastern Europeans were clamoring to join the West; the war on terrorism will be over when moderate Muslims abandon the radicals and join us. They will not do so if our system promotes people who support legal arguments for human rights abuse.
via Virginia Postrel
Future Crock
What can a psychic tell you about the future? Not much, writes Gene Emery:
"Given their track record, it's amazing that a psychic can tell you when the 10 O'Clock News is going to come on," he joked.
A few of the 2004 predictions?
...Terry and Linda Jamison, who are twins, said "Saddam Hussein will be killed by U.S. troops early in the year." They also predicted that "Pope John Paul II will pass away in June."Anthony Carr, billed as "the world's most documented psychic," may have some well-documented failures this year. He said nuclear weapons would accidentally detonate in North Korea and kill thousands; Saddam would be shot to death and that a woman "will be involved;" and scientists would "successfully bring the first-ever male pregnancy to term." He even predicted the gender: a boy.
Other Carr predictions were about as firm as the filling in a Boston creme pie. Carr said Osama bin Laden would be brought to New York, but he couldn't decide if the terrorist would be alive or dead. He said the Martha Stewart trial "could" send the domestic diva to prison. And he said the Hollywood area "is due" for "a colossal earthquake early in 2004." If Tinsel Town had been destroyed, he would certainly take credit for the forecast. But because it didn't, nobody can technically say he was wrong, said Emery.
Colin Powell showed up in a couple of forecasts. Carr said Powell would accept the nomination for President after twice refusing it. "Psychic" Martha Henstridge said Powell would change political parties and "trounce" Bush in the November election.
Henstridge also said 2004 would be the year an anti-gravity engine was developed and patented, and although she didn't say whether Martha Stewart would be found guilty or innocent, she did inform us that Stewart "will take the fashion world by storm with a new line of prison-themed designer clothing."
Henstridge and other psychics have already made forecasts for 2005 in the Sun. But this year the tabloid has made sure they won't be embarrassed by any inaccurate forecasts, said Emery.
Not only are the psychics' names not attached to any of the predictions, but their forecasts have been mixed in with predictions from dead people like Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, and Our Lady of Fatima.
"So a year from now," said Emery, "we won't be able to say who was responsible for predicting that a murder will take place on a shuttle flight to Mars, Osama Bin Laden will be crushed by a comet, a tidal wave will wipe out Tokyo and the Korean peninsula, and newly-discovered writings from St. Paul will reveal that eating with a fork is a sin."
Belief In Mencken
Old HL was nobody's fool. Here are a few of his quotes to prove it:
* Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
* A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable.
* We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
* Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
* Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
* The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked...
* It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.
* I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind -- that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
* Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
* Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
* The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.
* The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
* Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.
* It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.
* Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
* Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
Asleep At The Bar
It isn't just the torture malfunction. Alberto Gonzales, nominated by our "moral values" president to be our nation's chief law officer, has had a few morality malfunctions in the past, too; specifically, in the shoddy and cavalier way he memo'ed Bush on whether death row candidates might deserve clemency. The whole article is worth a read (on Salon, so there is that annoying commercial):
Consider the matter of David Wayne Stoker, who was executed for murdering convenience store clerk David Manrique in a 1986 robbery that netted $96. Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer, summarized the substantive issues in this vicious, stereotypically "pointless" crime in a grand total of 18 lines. Had Gonzales been willing to expend just a little more ink on this matter of life and death, here are some of the things he might have mentioned to the governor: For starters, he might have pointed out that a federal appellate judge concluded that the state's star witness against Stoker was just as likely the murderer. He might have noted that a key state witness recanted following Stoker's conviction, explaining that he'd been pressured by the prosecution to perjure himself. He might have mentioned that the state's star witness received a financial reward for fingering Stoker and had felony drug and weapons charges dropped the day he testified against Stoker -- raising the obvious possibility that he had had a motive for accusing Stoker.
But that's not all. Gonzales apparently didn't think his boss needed to know that this star witness and two police witnesses lied under oath at trial, that the state's expert medical witness pleaded guilty to seven felonies involving falsified evidence in capital murder trials, and that the state's expert psychiatric witness, whose testimony provided the jury with a legal basis for handing down a death sentence, never bothered to interview Stoker. By the time Gonzales was supposedly researching the case for Bush, this expert had been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for repeatedly providing unethical testimony in murder cases. Needless to say, Gonzales didn't think it was worth pointing out that the jury that had sentenced Stoker to death was ignorant of all those facts.
Would Bush have opted to execute Stoker even if Gonzales had given him all of that mitigating evidence? Probably, given all we know about his record on clemency. Nonetheless, the case raises important questions about a lawyer's moral obligation to keep his client adequately informed, as well as that lawyer's basic sense of fairness and decency. Senators might want to ask themselves if they would have been willing to execute Stoker based on Gonzales' 18-line summary. Alternatively, would they have executed him knowing the facts Gonzales failed to include? Finally, they might ponder whether Bush, relying on Gonzales, executed an innocent man.
A first-year law student preparing a brief for his client such as the one Gonzales wrote up on the Stoker case would probably be advised to consider another line of work. But not Gonzales. Bush, who would later make "character" the mantra of his first presidential campaign, was apparently more than happy with the Reader's Digest Condensed work product offered up by his lawyer. In his autobiography, Bush wrote that for every death case, the office of legal counsel would "brief me thoroughly, review the arguments made by the prosecution and defense, raise any doubts or problems or questions." Bush promoted Gonzales to the office of the Texas secretary of state, to the Texas Supreme Court and finally to White House counsel's position.
Legal ethicists may argue that the client calls the shots and that the president should have the attorney he is comfortable with. The question the Senate must now confront is whether Gonzales is the right attorney for the rest of the country.
"That Time Of The Month"?
If you live in Virginia, maybe it won't be long before you need to report it to the cops. No, the bill John Cosgrove, a Republican State Congressman in Virginia, is proposing probably isn't intended to go that far -- but, just going by the wording of it, it could. Cosgrove, who also wants specific language inserted in the Virginia state constitution that "marriage may exist only between a man and one woman," is seeking to make miscarriage a Class 1 misdemeanor unless a woman reports it to the police, and within 12 hours. The goal, says the site, DemocracyForVirginia, is "the advancement of the cause of recognizing legal 'personhood' for all products of conception." "Products of conception? Not to be too gross, but that's where the menstruation reporting could come in. And, here's the miscarriage scenario:
You are at home alone at 8:00 on a Friday night. You are 8 weeks pregnant. You are excited about the pregnancy, but being cautious, you haven’t told anyone about it yet except your partner, your best friend, your parents, and your doctor.All of a sudden, you begin to experience heavy cramping. Bleeding ensues. You realize with shock and sadness that you are probably experiencing a miscarriage. You leave a message with your doctor’s service. The on-call doctor calls back, offers sympathies, and advises taking pain medication or going to the hospital if the bleeding gets worse. She offers you the next available appointment for a follow-up exam - Monday at 3PM. You accept. You are overwhelmed with grief and surprised by the intensity of physical pain involved. You call your partner and ask him to come home from his “boys night out”, sparing him the reason over the phone. You call your best friend. She offers to come over immediately and make you cocoa. You cry.
You decide not to tell your parents yet; let them sleep through the night before delivering the terrible news. Your partner comes home and you break the sad news to him. He holds you on the couch and you both cry together. Your best friend comes over with cocoa. You cry some more. Over the next few hours, you suffer pain, cramping, and intermittent bleeding. Exhausted, you finally fall asleep in your partner’s arms around 4 AM. You sleep until noon, and then gird yourself for the difficult call to your parents, who were so eagerly anticipating their first grandchild.
Guess what? You just earned yourself up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Why? Because you failed to call the cops and report your miscarriage within 12 hours.
True? Not yet. But if Delegate John Cosgrove (R-78) has his way, HB1677 will become law in a few short months, and this scenario will be reality for many women in Virginia. (Read the rest at the Democracy For Virginia link above.)
Until the Republican party stops being the party of religious fascists and starts becoming a part of true conservatives, who act as upholders of The Constitution instead of poodles of the religious "right," it's important to acknowledge the danger of voting for Republicans. And I say this as a non-Democrat (and non-Republican) common-sense moderate who voted for Schwarzenegger.
Stern Warning About The Jack Boots Under Karl Rove's Bed
"A Student of Democracy's Collapse," The New York Times calls Fritz Stern, in a story by Chris Hedges. A Holocaust survivor, Stern sees frightening parallels in the religious right and Nazi fascism:
FRITZ STERN, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a leading scholar of European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in a speech about the danger posed in this country by the rise of the Christian right. In his address in November, just after he received a prize presented by the German foreign minister, he told his audience that Hitler saw himself as "the instrument of providence" and fused his "racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity.""Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics," he said of prewar Germany, "but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas."
Dr. Stern's speech, given during a ceremony at which he got the prize from the Leo Baeck Institute, a center focused on German Jewish history, was certainly provocative. The fascism of Nazi Germany belongs to a world so horrendous it often seems to defy the possibility of repetition or analogy. But Dr. Stern, 78, the author of books like "The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology" and university professor emeritus at Columbia University, has devoted a lifetime to analyzing how the Nazi barbarity became possible. He stops short of calling the Christian right fascist but his decision to draw parallels, especially in the uses of propaganda, was controversial.
"When I saw the speech my eyes lit up," said John R. MacArthur, whose book "Second Front" examines wartime propaganda. "The comparison between the propagandistic manipulation and uses of Christianity, then and now, is hidden in plain sight. No one will talk about it. No one wants to look at it."
..."There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name was ever invented," he said. "There was a longing for a new authoritarianism with some kind of religious orientation and above all a greater communal belongingness. There are some similarities in the mood then and the mood now, although also significant differences."
HE warns of the danger in an open society of "mass manipulation of public opinion, often mixed with mendacity and forms of intimidation." He is a passionate defender of liberalism as "manifested in the spirit of the Enlightenment and the early years of the American republic."
"The radical right and the radical left see liberalism's appeal to reason and tolerance as the denial of their uniform ideology," he said. "Every democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and spirit, for this alone gives democracy the chance for self-correction and reform. Without it, the survival of democracy is at risk. Every genuine conservative knows this."
..."The Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Russian Revolution," he said, "but it ended badly for them. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian right is less easily understood. I can imagine a similarly disillusioning outcome."
Save The Advice Goddess In Ithaca
If you read my column in Ithaca, and are a fan, here's some bad news: The publisher wants to drop it after getting complaints about a line I wrote -- "Sex isn't special." Here it is in the context of the column (entire text of the column here):
Where you go wrong is thinking sex is special. It isn’t. Monkeys have it, and not because somebody gave them flowers and expensive jewelry. But consider this: while your girlfriend was the antithesis of selective about the men she slept with (apparently, not only sowing her wild oats, but a soybean crop equivalent to that of mainland China’s), she appears quite picky about the man she relationships with.
Now, I have no problem with people writing in to say I'm wrong or immoral. In fact, I welcome dissent. Papers should, too. Instead, daily newspapers tend to bend over the moment three old ladies (or some church group) complains. I work very hard to tell the truth and present data-based answers in my column instead of taking the easy way out: simply rubberstamping the status quo. Sadly, many papers would rather foster docile readers than spirited discussion.
If you live in Ithaca (ONLY if you live in Ithaca and read me -- this has to be an honest reflection of reader opinion), and if you like my column and want to continue to see it in the paper, please call the publisher:
Jim Fogler, President/Publisher (607) 274-9252 jfogler@ithaca.gannett.com
Apparently, a lot of people are calling the features editor to complain, but when they ask people to call the publisher, they all get intimidated and hang up. There's probably some church group or organized group of neo-Puritans campaigning to get me out of the paper. Only if there's a campaign on some commensurate level, favoring free expression, might this have a chance. Jeez, it's hard earning a living without selling out and giving them what they want. Not that I could do that, but the thought that that's what it takes to get a column to really take hold in papers is really depressing.
**IF YOU DON'T LIVE IN ITHACA, BUT KNOW ANY BLOGGERS THERE, PLEASE PASS THIS LINK ON! I've put a call in to the publisher to plead my case, but have yet to talk to him.
Here's the email the features editor wrote me:
Hi Amy, Thanks for your note and phone call earlier today. Unfortunately, I probably didn't give as complete an explanation as I should have as to why we've dropped your column. While I personally have liked running it our weekly arts section, both my editor and publisher have been wanting me to keep moving the content in a different, fresher direction. We've been running your column for quite a while, and had been thinking about discontinuing it as part of our ongoing process of reassessing our publication. The particular column that aroused reader controversy recently just served to spur the final decision.Also, I wasn't aware that my editor had already notified Creators Syndicate about discontinuing the column, which also has led to some of the confusion on the part of myself and my assistant in providing appropriate notice to our readers and you about our decision.
While I'm sure the blog posting will result in my publisher getting barraged with calls and emails, at this point I don't think it will help the cause. We've had a good run with your column, but it's one that's come to an end.
Thanks,
Jim Catalano
Here's what I wrote back:
Thanks for your note -- but actually, it doesn't go through Creators; it comes directly from me, so notification of cancellation needed to come to me. I'm really disappointed at your decision, because I know I have a lot of fans there -- especially college students -- who read it. That it has run for a while seems a weird reason to drop something. My column appeals to men like no other does -- and women as well. I would still like to talk to your managing editor and the publisher. You don't say my column is bad or weak or unfunny -- just that there was a controversy and you're dropping it. This is most disappointing, both personally and in terms of my idealistic view of what papers should do -- not foster docile readers but foster discussion. Sad. Pardon me, but what content is "fresher" than what I write? I challenge the status quo every week -- I go to anthropology conferences and read the same journals shrinks and scientists do. I'm desperate every week, not just to rubberstamp the status quo, but to reexamine how things are done and see if they still make sense, and figure out what makes the most sense, vis a vis a rational, libertarian perspective. Albert Ellis, the 90-year-old father of Rational Behavior Therapy is a fan of my work -- as are a number of other eminent people in psychology and science. Plus, I write humor. I'm reminded of the Dave Barry quote from a week or two ago, on how few editors would have had the guts to run him if he'd started writing now. If you think my column sucks, I can respect that as a reason to let it go. If it's just that it isn't namby pamby enough...well, no wonder dailies are losing younger readers right and left. -Amy Alkon
ANOTHER THOUGHT: If I were an editor, I would see a controversy about something in a column or article as an opportunity. Maybe let a reader write a counterpoint to my column, or run a whole page of points and counterpoints. Imagine that, a daily newspaper starting a discussion instead of trying to silence one. Well, you'll have to imagine that, because so few are willing to make that their m.o. That's why my column runs mostly in alt weeklies, where they aren't afraid of a little debate -- and even see creating it as part of their job.
In The Blame Of The Father
God believers are performing all matter of mind contortions to rationalize their irrational belief in god with the massive death wake of the tsunami. A few words on that from Ron Rosenbaum, who first quotes Arts&LettersDaily's Dennis Dutton on the general idiocy of believers' thinking:
"If God is God, he’s not good. If God is good, he’s not God. You can’t have it both ways, especially after the Indian Ocean catastrophe."
And then Ron gets into one of the specifics I, too, find particularly annoying:
This is something I find particularly annoying: a God who can intervene to save a handful out of a hundred thousand and gets credit for all the goodness displayed in the aftermath of the havoc He wrought."Why this need to defend God?" someone (that would be me) finally posted on the Beliefnet comment board in response to the multiple alibis for God that others were posting. All so eager to rush forward and exonerate their version of God from any connection to the slaughter. It began to smack of "they doth protest too much": The disaster somehow gets transformed into a display of God’s wonderfulness. In a way, doesn’t this sort of thinking suggest a kind of Stockholm syndrome? He’s the only God we’ve got, He’s got us imprisoned in this hell of a world—so, after a while, we worship Him.
One of the most glaring instances of this sort can be found in a quote in a story the Post carried on Jan. 2.
It was the heartwarming story of a baby boy born prematurely while his mother fled upland from the waves as they hit the coast of India.
Yes, it was the heartwarming "MIRACLE OF LIFE" that the Post headline had it.
But then I have to admit that I cringed when I read the words of the baby’s father (who had given him the name "Tsunami"—I’m sure the parents of those who lost babies will think this is really cute).
But the thing that made me cringe was this quote from the father of Baby Tsunami: "It’s all God’s grace!" he said.
I can’t really blame the guy for saying whatever he says at a moment like that. He’s got his baby. But think of the implications. Either he believes that his family has special grace, and that the tens of thousands of other families who lost children suffered the torment of a lost child because they deserved it, because they lacked "God’s grace." Or he believes that God looked down and saw tens of thousands of imperiled children and decided that this one deserved the special intervention of his "grace" and the others didn’t.
If you believe that God intervened to save this one little life, you have to believe that He chose not to intervene to save the lives of all the other children. He wanted them dead.
Yes, all those evil little babies are being punished for the cars they might steal for joyrides when they're 15. Oh, but they have "original sin." Now there's a clever concept. You simply have to join the church because, before you've so much as teethed, you're an evil motherfucker.
Heidi Klum to Wed Seal After Mountaintop Proposal
You'd think the girl could at least score herself a sea lion or a dolphin.
Pay For Me Because I'm Blond And Mean
A dominatrix will let you pay her bills...and more! But first, you have to send her a "tribute."
Wal-Fare
What we pay for Wal-Mart Employees' health care, from a New York Review Of Books analysis of books and documents by Simon Head:
One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.[9]
This isn't capitalism. This is the corporation as welfare mother.
Mystery Call
I got a nasty attempt at an anonymous phone call this afternoon from some genius who forgot to block his number. It was a man -- sounded between 25-55, I'd guess -- probably in his mid-forties. The guy said, "Amy?" "Yes," I responded. Then he said, "You are a vicious..." ("bitch," or something like that -- I've already forgotten). Anyway, my caller ID read:
Zane Greene, 310-573-4309
Thinking to check my Caller ID, I quickly got in a friendly "Zane!" before the guy hung up. I called the number, and it's a fax machine. Maybe I'll try later. Google comes up with some phone company business under this name, and the Reverse Directory says it's a Verizon number, in Santa Monica, CA, but may have moved due to number portability. I just tried to fax the person the following, but they stopped the fax:
310-573-4309, Zane GreeneIf you have some problem with me, you might avoid the fourth-grade approach of playing hangup, and instead write me at adviceamy@aol.com.
Now, this person seems to know me, but if they really did, wouldn't they know how irritating I get around a mystery?! Anybody out there heard of this Zane Greene? Anybody try the number -- now, or, perhaps...later! -- and have any luck getting anybody on the other end to pick up?
Plugging The Dyke
When I read the obits for Susan Sontag in The New York Times and LA Times, I surmised that she must have split up with photographer Annie Leibovitz, her longtime girlfriend. I mean, it's 2005, people, can't we say "lesbian"? Repeat after me: "Lesbian! Lesbian! Lesbian!" Now, you haven't been struck with a mysterious urge to visit Henrietta Hudson (a lesbian bar in New York) or The Cockpit (a gay bar nowhere, but isn't that a good name for one?), now have you? Author Patrick Moore rightfully slaps The Gray Lady and The Aspiring Gray Lady for omitting any reference to Sontag's sexuality or love life...as if it's somehow shameful. And it is. Shame on them.
In a 1995 New Yorker profile, Sontag outed herself as bisexual, familiar code for "gay." Yet she remained quasi-closeted, speaking to interviewers in detail about her ex-husband without mentioning her long liaisons with some of America's most fascinating female artists.An unauthorized biography written by Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock and published by W.W. Norton in 2000, reports that Sontag was, for seven years, the companion of the great American playwright Maria Irene Fornes (in Sontag's introduction to the collected works of Fornes, she writes about them living together). She also had a relationship with the renowned choreographer Lucinda Childs. And, most recently, Sontag lived, on and off, with Leibovitz.
Sontag's reticence is surely part of why the two Timeses neglected this part of her life. But she didn't deny these relationships. And given that obituaries typically cite their subjects' important relationships, shouldn't the two best newspapers in the country have reported at least her most recent one, with Leibovitz, as well as her marriage, which ended in 1958?
Some will ask why revealing Sontag's sexuality is relevant. As Charles McGrath wrote in his appreciation of Sontag in the New York Times, "Part of her appeal was her own glamour — the black outfits, the sultry voice, the trademark white stripe parting her long dark hair." Sontag was well aware of herself as a sexual being and used her image to transform herself from just another intellectual into a cultural icon. She may well have felt that her true sexuality would limit her impact in the male-dominated intellectual elite, while an omnisexual charisma opened doors.
More important, though, Sontag's lesbian relationships surely affected her work and our understanding of it. Two of Sontag's most famous essays dealt with issues associated with homosexuality: "Notes on Camp" and "AIDS and Its Metaphors."
The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times found ample room to discuss Sontag's cancer and subsequent mastectomy, which were not seen as lurid details but as necessary information in understanding the work of the author of "Illness as Metaphor." The papers also included extensive discussions of Sontag's schooling, her early family life, how she met her ex-husband, even her thoughts on driving in Los Angeles. However, her relationships with women and how they shaped her thoughts on gay culture and the larger world of outsiders and outlaws (a Sontag fascination) were omitted.
There is, of course, a larger issue here: Continued silence about lesbians in American culture amounts to bias. Gay men seem to have settled into the role of finger-snapping designer/decorator/entertainers in the mass media. Meanwhile, most lesbians who achieve widespread fame — Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge and Rosie O'Donnell — have to remain in the closet until they have gained enough power to weather the coming-out storm. This model victimizes those who are out and proud from the very beginning.
The obituaries, remembrances and appreciations in New York and Los Angeles do anything but honor Sontag. They form a record that is, at best, incomplete and, at worst, knowingly false. But don't look for corrections, clarifications or apologies.
The New York writer and activist Sarah Schulman has been, ironically, described as "the lesbian Susan Sontag." Schulman told me recently that Sontag "never applied her massive intellectual gifts toward understanding her own condition as a lesbian, because to do so publicly would have subjected her to marginalization and dismissal."
The Godless Harlot's Top Ten List
Check out The Secular Ten Commandments, from the fantastic site, waronfaith.com, written and manned by a former Marine and current "Texas Peace Officer":
The Secular Ten CommandmentsRule 1 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 2 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 3 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 4 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 5 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 6 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 7 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 8 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 9 - Do anything that makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
Rule 10 - When in doubt, refer to Rule 1.
Writer's Lifeboat
I'm on The Writer's Lifeline e-mailing list for their one-a-day quotes. Here's Sunday's:
"There are NO aesthetic emergencies." -Ken Atchity
My response?
I would say Britney Spears is an aesthetic emergency with legs.
But, forget Britney for a moment. The best way to do that is to head over to Britney's Web site, "Britney's Guide To Semiconductor Physics" (and no I am not kidding), and then, get Hedy. Hint: To be thematically correct, get Hedy on your cell phone if you can.
Sex With Ron Jeremy
Don't get excited. (Or hurl.) Ron Jeremy simply held the door for me as we were coming out of Musso & Frank's late Saturday night. I didn't know who he was, but Gregg recognized Jeremy -- the porn star Wikipedia reports is known as "The Hedgehog," "due to his hirsute and overweight body, and because he can orally stimulate himself (contorting himself the way a real hedgehog does when rolling into a ball, and owing to his 9¾-inch-long penis)." While I do commend Mr. Jeremy on his good manners in door-holding, seeing what he looks like left me with a burning question: WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD HAVE SEX WITH THIS MAN...OR EVEN LET HIM TOUCH THEM!?
P.S. Let's just say the Wikipedia photo in the link above is a very flattering representation!
A Moss Gathers Some Rolls
Look here for a livin' lard Kate Moss, and other real-life lanky-lebrities, Photoshopped into Fattyland!
Bitch Like Me
This bloggergirl is a bitchin' read!
via Gawker
With This Pen, I Thee Register
All people in this country should have access to all rights (including the right to marry the person of their choice), regardless of color, sex, how they like to have sex, and with which consenting adult. That said, as a person who doesn't believe in marriage or "marriage-privileging" (granting special rights only to married people), next on the agenda is rights for unmarried but committed partners of both heteros and homos, like those granted by filing a PACS (Pacte Civile De Solidarité), in France. For example, as Peter Tatchell writes:
Far more useful to most gay couples would be an Unmarried Partners Act, giving automatic legal rights to all unwed lovers, gay and straight. These rights could include acknowledgement as next-of-kin in emergencies like arrest or accident; joint guardianship of any children; life insurance pay-outs and inheritance of property on the death of a partner; and entitlement to company benefits that extend to employee's spouses, such as pension and health-care cover.It is these practical rights - not marriage - that most lesbian and gay partners want. Providing such rights as a matter of course, without couples having to endure a state-approved ceremony to get them, would help vastly more same-sex lovers than gay marriage or registered partnerships.
One great virtue of an Unmarried Partners Act is its flexibility. The rights are automatic, but they have to be claimed. This 'opt in' system, allows partners to 'pic 'n' mix'. They can claim all of the rights, some of the rights, or none of the rights, depending on their needs. In contrast, couples in gay marriages and registered partnerships get lumbered with a full set of rights (and duties), whether they want them or not.
Under an Unmarried Partners Act, couples in a relationship of at least 12 months standing would be entitled to claim partnership rights (the one year qualifying period being advisable to prevent short-term, opportunistic lovers claiming their partner's property). Proof of eligibility would be a simple Letter of Partnership, signed by the couple and a person of professional standing (such as a lawyer or doctor), confirming that they had been partners for a year or more. This Letter of Partnership could be revoked at any time by either partner signing a Letter of Annulment witnessed by a professional.
In the event of one partner becoming mentally incapacitated or dying without having signed a Letter of Partnership, the other partner could still make a claim. However, to prevent people claiming to be partners when they are not, the relationship would have to be confirmed by two professionals and be backed up with documentary evidence.
There may be some people who, for whatever reason, do not want their lover to claim partnership rights, such as inheritance. They would be able to 'opt out' of any (or all) of the rights by specifying this in a will or affidavit, which would have legal precedence.
This Unmarried Partners Act is a modern, democratic form of partnership recognition: simple, egalitarian and flexible. Ensuring legal rights for all unwed couples, gay and straight, such legislation may not be as 'respectable' as gay marriage and registered partnerships, but it would be infinitely more beneficial.
Who Thanks "God" For Tsunamis And Dead People?
Who else?! Religious fanatics. Here's a link to some sick, sick shit from the Westboro Baptist pervo who has made a career out of worrying about how other people have sex. The headline?
Thank God for Tsunami & 2,000 Dead Swedes! How many dead Swedes are fags & dykes? vacationing on their fat expendable incomes without kids to bother with and spend money on. (the sick shit continues at the link)
In a way, it's better when hate-mongers like Westboro Baptist's Fred Phelps are "out of the closet" about their vile thinking. It's easier for the average person to give a pass to the George Bushes and Dick Cheneys of the world who use such polite language about why gays should be denied rights...but aren't they all really coming from the exact same place?
Balance the voices of the gay-haters (more or less diplomatic) against the "think globally, not just locally" voice of Princess Margrethe of Denmark from the following CNN.com report.
It is thought around 20,000 Swedes had travelled to Thailand this holiday season, to escape the harsh winter of northern Europe.While only 59 Swedes have so far been confirmed dead, authorities are fearing this tragedy may well become the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.
With a population of only 9 million, Sweden's expected loss of life proportionately matches that of Indonesia, and is exceeded only by Sri Lanka.
Along with Sweden, other Nordic countries have been hard hit by the tsunamis' impact in Thailand.
In neighboring Denmark, Queen Margrethe started her annual televised New Year's speech by addressing the tsunami disaster that has killed seven Danes and left 466 missing.
"We are just happy tourists seeking a warmer sun and a sea that is more blue than our coasts," the monarch said in her speech aired live on major television and radio channels.
"Let us not only just think of our losses but also of the many thousand people who now must see their whole existence broken into pieces."
Royalty might be a backward concept, but this royal, at least on the issue of sexuality, is sounding a lot more forward than the people we have in office, and the people who back the sort of gay-hating agenda, tacit or overt, that they do. Here's how being gay works in Sweden, a place gays have full rights, same as any other citizen, including gay marriage, which is a legislated right "equal with straight marriage" :
Compared to virtually any other country on the planet, being born gay, lesbian or bi in Sweden is a stroke of good genetic luck. The issue of alternative sexuality that evokes hysteria, hatred and bigotry in so many other cultures is, in Sweden, a non-issue. Homosexual behavior was legalized in 1944. and the first LGBT organization started in 1950--a time when the rest of the world hardly knew that homosexuality existed. Today, of course, Sweden has some of the most progressive laws and leadership regarding LGBT affairs. (See story #1 below.) This is not to say that all Swedes have smooth-sailing on this; there is ignorance everywhere in the world and rural Sweden is no exception. And not every gay youth flies out of the closet fully self-identified. (See stories #2 and #3 below) But once out, he or she is well protected by the law and is surrounded by a wide variety of rainbow organizations. Gay loving and living is mostly relaxed and safe here--about as good as it gets anywhere.
What a shame we're stuck with all these religious primitives over here; an unfortunately large number of which seem to be running the show at the moment.
Religion Kills, Science Saves
Or would have, writes Dawkins, in a letter to the editor, if the energy, funds, and attention devoted to primitive religious belief had been put into science instead:
The Bishop of Lincoln (Letters, December 29) asks to be preserved from religious people who try to explain the tsunami disaster. As well he might. Religious explanations for such tragedies range from loopy (it's payback for original sin) through vicious (disasters are sent to try our faith) to violent (after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, heretics were hanged for provoking God's wrath). But I'd rather be preserved from religious people who give up on trying to explain, yet remain religious.In the same batch of letters, Dan Rickman says "science provides an explanation of the mechanism of the tsunami but it cannot say why this occurred any more than religion can". There, in one sentence, we have the religious mind displayed before us in all its absurdity. In what sense of the word "why", does plate tectonics not provide the answer?
Not only does science know why the tsunami happened, it can give precious hours of warning. If a small fraction of the tax breaks handed out to churches, mosques and synagogues had been diverted into an early warning system, tens of thousands of people, now dead, would have been moved to safety.
Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.
Richard Dawkins
Oxford
Other People's Dead Relatives
Patti Davis bitchslaps George and Laura for choosing religion over science -- and, in turn, death over life for a whole lot of people:
I wonder if President Bush could look into the eyes of Christopher Reeve’s family and tell them that it’s because he values life so deeply that he is preserving clusters of cells in freezers—cells that resulted from in-vitro fertilization and could be used for embryonic stem cell treatment—despite the fact that more people will die as a result of his decision. I wonder if he could stare into their grief and defend the fact that he has released only a few lines of stem cells—lines that are basically useless because they have been contaminated. Or brazenly point out that he has authorized funding for adult stem cells—which do not hold the same miraculous potential as embryonic stem cells.The sad fact is, the president probably could. After all, Laura Bush went on national television during the week of my father’s funeral and spoke out against embryonic stem cell research, pointing out that where Alzheimer’s is concerned, we don’t have proof that stem-cell treatment would be effective. It wasn’t too long after that interview that she gave a speech in which she chided people for offering “false hope” to the families of Alzheimer’s patients. In a sweetly patronizing tone, she said it’s terribly unfair to all of those who are vulnerable and in pain to suggest that a cure is just around the corner.
Memo to Mrs. Bush: I am one of those poor, vulnerable souls who you think has been misled. I speak for many others when I say that none of us believe a cure is just around the corner. We believe it’s around a very wide bend, which we can’t get around because your husband has put up a barrier to further research. And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope—nothing else.
What's your prediction? How many years will it take before people look at this sort of thing and say, "Gee, how primitive!"?