The Advice Goddess On XM Tonight - Playboy Radio
Sorry, boys, while I will be doing the show in a thong and pasties, there will be no video. But you can hear me, if you subscribe to Playboy Radio on XM, between the hours of 4pm and 7pm PST, tonight, June 30. If somebody can tape it (because, believe it or not, they may not be able to at Playboy Radio!), I'd really appreciate it.
Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw!
Time for a little self-loathing for Justice Souter?
Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land.Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.
On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home.
Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.
The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."
Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.
"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."
You go, Clem!
How Stella Found Out She'd Gotten Taken For A Major Ride
Author Terry McMillan is firing her muse:
(She) has filed for divorce from the man who inspired the 1996 novel "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," which chronicled the romantic adventures of a 40-something woman who falls for a guy half her age.In papers filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court, McMillan, 53, says she decided to end her 6 1/2-year marriage to Jonathan Plummer, 30, after learning he is gay.
The revelation led her to conclude Plummer married only to get his U.S. citizenship, she said. McMillan met Plummer at a Jamaican resort a decade ago.
"It was devastating to discover that a relationship I had publicized to the world as life-affirming and built on mutual love was actually based on deceit," she said in court papers. "I was humiliated."
In response, Plummer maintained McMillan treated him with "homophobic" scorn bordering on harassment since he came out to her as gay just before Christmas.
Something tells me the lady isn't "phobic" of homos, just a bit pissed that the guy she married happened to be one. Yeah, he came out at 30. Came out of the closet and announced he was an asshole.
Curb Your Religion
Larry David on confabbing with an Imaginary Friend:
God talks to Bush all the time. I don’t care if you’re President, if you say God talks to you, you’re a schizophrenic and a menace to society. You should be on drugs in a mental institution, like the Son of Sam. What’s the difference between God or a dog talking to you? It’s still a voice in your head. That means you’re certifiably fucking crazy!
Laden, Osama B.
Just about anybody can get a passport these days. Eric Lipton writes in The New York Times that the screening process leaves something to be desired:
The names of more than 30 fugitives, including 9 murder suspects and one person on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-wanted list, did not trigger any warnings in a test of the nation's passport processing system, federal auditors have found.Insufficient oversight by the State Department allows criminals, illegal immigrants and suspected terrorists to fraudulently obtain a United States passport far too easily, according to a report on the test by the Government Accountability Office to be released Wednesday.
The lapses occurred because passport applications are not routinely checked against comprehensive lists of wanted criminals and suspected terrorists, according to the report, which was provided to The New York Times by an official critical of the State Department who had access to it in advance. For example, one of the 67 suspects included in the test managed to get a passport 17 months after he was first placed on an F.B.I. wanted list, the report said.
The State Department also too often fails to aggressively pursue leads that could allow the government to catch black-market sellers of fake identification documents essential to getting a fraudulent passport, said Michael Johnson, a former State Department security official.
Once issued, a passport typically becomes a critical tool for illegal immigrants who are seeking work or who want to travel internationally, as well as for people involved in drug smuggling, money laundering, Social Security fraud and even terrorism, the federal auditors said.
"A fraudulent passport can enable a holder to conceal his true identity and his citizenship," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "These are exactly the kinds of problems that allowed the terrorists to attack our country."
The security committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the subject of passport fraud on Wednesday.
State Department officials said they were already moving to expand the crosschecking of passport applications against more complete lists of suspected criminals and terrorists. But they disputed reports that the department had been lax in its investigation of suspected fraud.
Really? They disputed the reports on what grounds, that "lax" was mean, and hurt their feelings?
Moron Spurlock Starts A New Show
Actual name, "Morgan Spurlock," I know. His new show, 30 Days, is featuring the episode, "Inside An American Muslim Familiy," next Wednesday, writes Detroiter Debbie Schlussel in The Wall Street Journal:
While Mr. Spurlock is often referred to as a journalist, and touts "30 Days" as a "documentary," the outcome of the show was decided before production began. A show summary sent to me before taping said: "This process aims to deconstruct common misconceptions and stereotypes. . . . Our character will learn firsthand about Islam and the daily issues that . . . Muslims in America face today. The viewers will witness our character emerge from the immersion situation with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the Muslim-American experience. . . . The potential is great for this program to enlighten a national television audience about the Muslim American experience and increase their compassion, understanding and support."
Oh, eat me. Right after you read the lying, hate-spewing Arab rags in Detroit. Absolutely frightening. I know, because my parents have sent me copies. I was stunned at the stuff they print. "The Protocols of The Elders Of Zion"/the "news" division, you could call them.
Schlussel meets David Stacy, a childhood friend of Spurlock who's featured in this episode, and finds him clueless about all of it:
This new "expert" on Islam never heard of Wahhabism--the extremist Sunni strain of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia and informs the terrorist-breeding madrassa schools throughout Arab and other Muslim lands. He was unfamiliar with groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. He did not believe me when I told him that Hezbollah had murdered hundreds of U.S. Marines and civilians in Beirut and elsewhere. He seemed mystified to learn that President Bush shut down American Islamic charities, like the Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, for funding Hamas and al Qaeda.In Mr. Stacy, it is clear, Mr. Spurlock had found the perfect tabula rasa. He had also found the perfect "experts" and "key members" of Detroit's Islamic community to educate him. One such was Muqtedar Khan, a professor at Adrian College whose occasional columns in the Detroit News and elsewhere have urged us to understand how devout Muslims can be driven to commit terrorism because of the West's economic alliances.
Mr. Stacy was also taught by Imam Hassan Qazwini of Dearborn's Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America. In November 1998, Mr. Qazwini's mosque hosted Louis Farrakhan, who was introduced as "our dear brother" and "a freedom fighter." I was there and watched Mr. Qazwini cheer on Mr. Farrakhan's attacks on America and his descriptions of Jews as "evil" and "forces of Satan."
When I told Mr. Spurlock's executive producer that I felt David Stacy was, well, a moron, she replied that Imam Husham Al-Husainy, a prominent Dearborn Shia cleric, "said the same thing" and refused to continue teaching him about Islam for the show. The biggest morons, though, will be not Mr. Stacy but the critics and viewers who fall for this supersized phony "documentary."
Stem Cells For Dummies
Wired's Kristen Philipkoski helps some of the world's biggest idiots understand simple scientific fact:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay recently called embryonic stem-cell research the "dismemberment of living, distinct human beings."Such statements are like fingernails on a chalkboard to stem-cell researchers like Leonard Zon, president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, which is trying to get the message across that embryos are a microscopic mass of several hundred cells, and no body parts to dismember.
Sorry, the scientific truth doesn't make such a great way for the likes of Mister DeLay to stir up the god mob, but surely the congregants are still recovering from the truth about the lies about Schiavo.
Sorry, Did We Forget To Declare War?
It turns out we (and the British) waged a secret war against Iraq long before the official war was ever declared. Yoohoo, Congress? Perhaps you should be reading The London Times; specifically this article by Michael Smith:
THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.
The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations” for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.
If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally.
More here, at The Raw Story.
Lights, Action, Cash Flow
Heather Havrilesky feels for The Runaway Bride:
The Runaway Bride doesn't want to be known as the Runaway Bride! She'd prefer to be seen as a human being, you know, albeit a confused one, with feelings and emotions and stuff.Here's the thing, though, little lady: When you get your 15 minutes of fame, and you want to extend it to 30 or 40 minutes or even a full hour of fame, and maybe you'd like to get a big fat paycheck out of it, too? Well, then you have to take whatever it is you got famous for, and you have to ride that pony basically until it dies -- or you die. Whichever comes first.
That's how lame former contestants on "The Real World" like Trishelle get paid to speak at colleges, or just to romp around in a hot tub on "The Surreal Life." That's how Amber Frey got her own made-for-TV movie and her own book deal. That's how Stephen Glass and Michael Jackson's accuser and so on manage to have such an extended half-life in the public eye. You get money, and we get "That Slut From 'The Real World'" or "That Chick Who Slept With Scott Peterson Then Helped Turn Him In" or "That Liar Whose Lies Were Published."
You got a book deal, buttercup, because you promised to serve up the Runaway Bride, and she only exists because you're reasonably attractive and ran like a chicken and lied with impunity about the whole thing. We love overwhelmed, freaked-out, attractive, self-destructive liars like you. We want to hear all about what a lying rat you are, so we can hate you even more for making your poor parents lose sleep and wring their hands and weep on national TV.
That said, I sort of felt sorry for the little perfectionist in her interview with Katie Couric on NBC. She reminds me of a lot of the repressed, cheery Southern types of girls I grew up with, really nice women with nothing but pure intentions who didn't have anywhere to put the occasional negative thought, because Southern girls aren't supposed to have negative thoughts, even the smart, driven, slightly quirky girls like Jennifer Wilbanks. So all those negative thoughts pile up as they smile through the pain, and eventually they end up shoplifting $38 worth of crap from Wal-Mart (like Jennifer did) or they run away with the plumber or kill themselves or just die slowly inside while driving the kids back and forth from soccer practice.
That fiancé of hers is pretty wooden, too. I'm not convinced that his repressive notions, including the one that they shouldn't have sex until they're married, isn't a big part of the problem there. We all admire him for standing by his woman, but ... I'm guessing that she sort of wishes he'd bail. Dumping him outright would be an admission of failure, something she's said is nearly impossible for her.
So, fine! I have empathy for the stupid Runaway Bride! I see her as a human being, not just some sad chump meant to solicit our spite, Jerry Springer-style! This kind of empathy for small-time criminals and media one-hit wonders is obviously just another step on the pathway to total insignificance, culturally, but what can we do? The beauty of the small screen is that it manipulates us into investing our emotions and thoughts in people who clearly don't -- and shouldn't -- matter to us at all.
Administer Beatings
Great idea in the Wall Street Journal about how to get the butts back into the movie theater seats:
Ultimately, though, the worst thing that ever happened to movies happened when audiences began treating theaters like their living rooms. Their chatter destroyed the essential thrill of sitting in the dark sampling the Zeitgeist with hundreds of other people.So here's a message to Hollywood: You want us back? Bring back the usher. Not clueless, giggling teenagers but real ones, scary ones, like the chap in the picture above. The meaner the better, too, with full powers to evict talkers and other noisemakers. With an army of ushers, who will need roadblocks?
Two twenty-ish girls were seated near us at the movies this weekend. Not only did they talk through the credits and beginning of the movie, they had their cell phones open (and lit), which was quite disconcerting. I thought one girl's gigantic Coke would have been the perfect place for her phone, but because I was with Gregg, I merely resorted to some light shushing. Gregg's rule: I can behave as anti-socially as my little heart desires, as long as he's not right next to me at the time...but he'll always be right behind me to post my bail.
P.S. This photo is actually very movie-appropriate, because it was taken (by Gregg) in Athens, NY, where some of War Of The Worlds was shot, and where we stayed when we went to my friend David Wallis' wedding. A girl at the hotel said Tom Cruise brought his wacky-meter with him, and kept it and a bunch of cult of Scientology pamphlets in his room. No word as to whether he got busy substituting for the town shrink.
Amy Is Undercharmed
We accidentally saw Bewitched this weekend, an extremely long movie trailer pretending to be a movie, when we got to the theater either far too late or far too early to see anything else.
I can often enjoy myself even at a sucky movie if an actor or a location provides me with enough diversion; for example, À Tout De Suite, a totally implausible story of a bourgeois French art student who runs around Paris, then away to Morocco, with a bank robber.
Bewitched played like a movie that had major machete-ing done after shooting -- loose ends flying around everywhere, and too much diversion of just the wrong kind: Every time Nicole Kidman speaks, she sounds like she's unsure whether to channel Judy Holliday or Marilyn Monroe. Her role seems written to make it appear as if she's had her brain extracted and replaced with a can of Fancy Feast. Shirley MacLaine was cast as the sacrificial hambone (playing Endora, but with nothing of even the remotest impotance to do). I was so embarrassed for her every time she came on screen that I was tempted to cover my eyes. Will Farrell, poor dear, was cast as Darren, the Hollyweasel version. Almost as hard to watch as Miss MacLaine. Finally, there's the inexplicable next door neighbor role and script girl role -- Kidman's kinda sorta sidekicks -- stuck in there but never developed. The best thing in the movie was Michael Caine as the Jolly Green Giant on a tin can.
Bewitched, indeed. I wish somebody had cast a spell on me and immobilized me at home.
And Then They Went Into Iraq
Contrary to what that liar Karl Rove would have you believe, liberals weren't all opposed to going after Osama after 9-11, writes Joe Conason:
As a New Yorker who stood on my street and watched the Twin Towers fall, I take strong personal exception to Rove's ugly slander against "liberals." According to him, liberals "saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." That broad-brush smear is false, and Rove knows it.The truth is that liberal New York -- and the vast majority of American liberals and progressives -- stood with the president in his decision to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban. On the day of the attacks, I wrote a column that endorsed "hunting down and punishing" those responsible because the dead deserved justice -- and noted that when the culpability of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban was established, the United States "is fully capable of dealing with them."
Six weeks after 9/11 and two weeks after the United States started bombing the terrorist camps in Afghanistan, I appeared on CBS's "Early Show" to support the Bush administration's actions. Correspondent Lisa Birnbach made the point that liberals and Democrats who had once opposed the war in Vietnam were standing shoulder to shoulder with a president they didn't much like (and, although she didn't mention it, whose legitimacy they continued to doubt).
Noting the ubiquitous presence of American flags as we walked around the very liberal neighborhood where I live, Birnbach said, "This old lefty [Conason] is suddenly siding with the White House."
Responding to her question about the U.S. war against al-Qaida and the Taliban, I told Birnbach: "I'm not going to say I agree with every policy this administration will pursue, but so far, so good." Although she sounded surprised, the fact is that I was scarcely alone on the liberal left in expressing those sentiments.
When somebody robs a bank, it's best that you go after the actual bank robber, not the guy's next door neighbor, no matter what a sonofabitch that guy may be.
Jew-Hating Bible Thumper
That would be Billy Graham, blogs Stupid Evil Bastard. Of course, Stupid Evil concedes that Graham could just be a lying asshole. No, make that a hateful, lying, money-grubbing asshole. (I guess you'd call Graham a recipient of Christian charity.)
Link via Ken Layne's Sploid.com
Get The Mofos!
A Swedish hostage held in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to go after his captors:
"I invested about $50,000 so far and we will get them one by one."via Tim Blair
Cruise Controlled
A look under the hood of Scientology. Prepare to spend hours. Fascinating stuff. Or, just read the abridged version -- a 1991 Time Magazine story by Richard Behar. Courageous guy, considering the creepy stuff that happens to anyone who says or writes anything critical of Scientology:
Strange things seem to happen to people who write about Scientology. Journalist Paulette Cooper wrote a critical book on the cult in 1971. This led to a Scientology plot (called Operation Freak-Out) whose goal, according to church documents, was "to get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." It almost worked: by impersonating Cooper, Scientologists got her indicted in 1973 for threatening to bomb the church. Cooper, who also endured 19 lawsuits by the church, was finally exonerated in 1977 after FBI raids on the church offices in Los Angeles and Washington uncovered documents from the bomb scheme. No Scientologists were ever tried in the matter.For the TIME story, at least 10 attorneys and six private detectives were unleashed by Scientology and its followers in an effort to threaten, harass and discredit me. Last Oct. 12, not long after I began this assignment, I planned to lunch with Eugene Ingram, the church's leading private eye and a former cop. Ingram, who was tossed off the Los Angeles police force In 1981 for alleged ties to prostitutes and drug dealers, had told me that he might be able to arrange a meeting with church boss David Miscavige. Just hours before the lunch, the church's "national trial counsel," Earle Cooley, called to inform me that I would be eating alone.
Alone, perhaps, but not forgotten. By day's end, I later learned, a copy of my personal credit report -- with detailed information about my bank accounts, home mortgage, credit-card payments, home address and Social Security number -- had been illegally retrieved from a national credit bureau called Trans Union. The sham company that received it, "Educational Funding Services" of Los Angeles, gave as its address a mail drop a few blocks from Scientology's headquarters. The owner of the mail drop is a private eye named Fred Wolfson, who admits that an Ingram associate retained him to retrieve credit reports on several individuals. Wolfson says he was told that Scientology's attorneys "had judgments against these people and were trying to collect on them." He says now, "These are vicious people. These are vipers." Ingram, through a lawyer, denies any involvement in the scam.
During the past five months, private investigators have been contacting acquaintances of mine, ranging from neighbors to a former colleague, to inquire about subjects such as my health (like my credit rating, it's excellent) and whether I've ever had trouble with the IRS (unlike Scientology, I haven't). One neighbor was greeted at dawn outside my Manhattan apartment building by two men who wanted to know whether I lived there. I finally called Cooley to demand that Scientology stop the nonsense. He promised to look into it.
After that, however, an attorney subpoenaed me, while another falsely suggested that I might own shares in a company I was reporting about that had been taken over by Scientologists (he also threatened to contact the Securities and Exchange Commission). A close friend in Los Angeles received a disturbing telephone call from a Scientology staff member seeking data about me -- an indication that the cult may have illegally obtained my personal phone records. Two detectives contacted me, posing as a friend and a relative of a so-called cult victim, to elicit negative statements from me about Scientology. Some of my conversations with them were taped, transcribed and presented by the church in affidavits to TIME's lawyers as "proof" of my bias against Scientology.
Among the comments I made to one of the detectives, who represented himself as "Harry Baxter," a friend of the victim's family, was that "the church trains people to lie." Baxter and his colleagues are hardly in a position to dispute that observation. His real name is Barry Silvers, and he is a former investigator for the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force. (RB)
The most amazing thing to me was the story behind Scientology. Read it for yourself, and the comment below should will make a lot of sense to you:
What? You thought it was a stupid story?Well so do we. However, this story is the core belief in the religion known as Scientology.* If people knew about this story then most people would never get involved in it. This story is told to you when you reach one of their secret levels called OT III. After that you are supposed to telepathically communicate with these body thetans to make them go away. You have to pay a lot of money to get to this level and do this (or you have to work very hard for the organisation on extremely low pay for many years).
We are telling you this story as a warning. If you become involved with Scientology then we would like you to do so with your eyes open and fully aware of the sort of material it contains.
OT3 in Hubbard's handwriting Most of the Scientologists who work in their Dianetics* centres and so called "Churches" of Scientology do not know this story since they are not allowed to hear it until they reach the secret "upper" levels of Scientology. It may take them many years before they reach this level if they ever do. The ones who do know it are forced to keep it a secret and not tell it to those people who are joining Scientology.
When One Boob Exits, Another Reappears In His Place
In Ashcroft's wake, a parting of the taxpayer-funded $8000 blue curtains, baring the boob of Justice yet again. (Quite frankly, a little exposed titty in the halls of government was just the thing I needed to cheer me up today, what with our freedoms disappearing like donut holes at a bulimia convention.)
The Today Show Wack-Script
From Drudge. The more I read or hear from Cruise, the more convinced I am that he had his brain sucked out and replaced with L. Ron Hubbard's pickled pancreas or something.
What I Love About Venice, California
I was at the Rose Café in Venice yesterday; one of the few cafés where you can get a glass of Chardonnay in the afternoon with your coffee and pastry (dumb American liquor laws!). A bearded crazy old dude wearing a blanket and carrying a staff leaned in the front door (not the idiot from the Hab, Lena). The guy barked like a seal. Loudly. My friend Koz, across the café, looked up for a moment and went back to his work on his computer. The guy barked again. Nobody looked up, nobody cared. The guy barked again. One of the counter guys barked back. Nobody looked up, nobody cared. The guy turned and left. Business as usual, Venice, CA. And there’s something kind of comforting about that. In fact, when I go places where nobody with a wild beard comes in wearing a blanket, carrying a staff, and barking -- I start to itch.
Santa Monica Homeless People Are More Enterprising
Stef Willen saw these two signs displayed by Santa Monica homeless people:
My goal today: $1000Every time you tell me to get a job, $2
Cleverest homeless person's sign you've ever seen? (Well, this wasn't a sign, but Marlowe, my former Advice Lady partner, once saw a bum in New York sitting in a doorway with all his worldly stuff, reading Architectural Digest.)
The Wall Street Journal vs. Scientific Consensus
The Wall Street Journal "has chosen to yet again distort the science behind human-caused climate change and global warming in their recent editorial 'Kyoto By Degrees' (6/21/05)" (subscription required), write the climate scientists blogging at Real Climate:
Last week, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and 10 other leading world bodies expressed the consensus view that "there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring" and that "It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities". And just last week, USA Today editorialized that "not only is the science in, it is also overwhelming".It is puzzling then that the WSJ editors could claim that "the scientific case....looks weaker all the time".
While we resist commenting on policy matters (e.g. the relative merits of the Kyoto Protocol or the various bills before the US Senate), we will staunchly defend the science against distortions and misrepresentations, be they intentional or not. In this spirit, we respond here to the scientifically inaccurate or incorrect assertions made in the editorial.
Since that Byrd-Hagel vote eight years ago, the case for linking fossil fuels to global warming has, if anything, become even more doubtful.This statement stands in stark opposition to the actual findings of the world scientific community (e.g. the various National Academies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)), and the vast majority of actual peer-reviewed scientific studies.
The Earth currently does seem to be in a warming period, though how warm and for how long no one knows.If we interpret to "know" as "is judged to be the case based on the available evidence", the statement is patently false. As detailed in previous discussions at RealClimate (see here and here and here) it is the concensus of the scientific community, based on more than a dozen independent studies using both empirical data and theoretical models (including the most recent studies in Nature and Science), that average surface temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere during the past few decades appear to be unprecedented in a very long term context, probably over at least the past 2000 years.
In particular, no one knows whether this is unusual or merely something that happens periodically for natural reasons.This is incorrect. The natural causes of past climate variations are increasingly well-understood, and they cannot explain the recent global warming. As discussed elsewhere on this site, modeling studies indicate that the modest cooling of hemispheric or global mean temperatures during the 15th-19th centuries (relative to the warmer temperatures of the 11th-14th centuries) appears to have been associated with a combination of lowered solar irradiance and a particularly intense period of explosive volcanic activity. When these same models are forced with only natural radiative forcing during the 20th century [see e.g. Crowley (2000)] they actually exhibit a modest cooling trend. In other words, the same natural forcings that appear responsible for the modest large-scale cooling of the "Little Ice Age" should have lead to a cooling trend during the 20th century (some warming during the early 20th century arises from a modest apparent increase in solar irradiance at that time, but the increase in volcanism during the late 20th century leads to a net negative 20th century trend in natural radiative forcing). In short, given natural forcing factors alone, we should have basically remained in the "Little Ice Age". The only way to explain the upturn in temperatures during the 20th century, as shown by Crowley (2000) and many others, is indeed through the additional impact of anthropogenic (i.e., human) factors, on top of the natural factors.
Most global warming alarms are based on computer simulations that are largely speculative and depend on a multitude of debatable assumptions.This is not correct. Concern about global warming is not based primarily on models, but rather on an understanding of the basic physics of the greenhouse effect and on observed data. We know from data that we have caused the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to rise sharply during the past century: it is now much higher than any time during the past 650,000 years (which is as far back as reliable ice core data exist). And we know that this rise in CO2-concentration changes the radiation balance of the planet and leads to a warming of global surface temperature. This is scientifically undisputed and well-established physics, which has been known since in the year 1896 the Swedish Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius calculated the climatic effect of a rise in CO2.
Since there is a continued increase in emissions of (in particular) CO2, continued greenhouse warming is highly likely to continue. The models serve merely to quantify these basic facts more accurately, calculate the regional climate response, and compute effects (such as the expected increase in ocean heat content or sea level) which can be tested against observed data from the real world.
There's much more at the Real Climate link above.
Irrationality Kills
So, is religion harmless? Tell that to this nun. Well, if you could, but you can't, because she's dead:
The whispers started in April in the mind of the 23-year-old nun. In the heart of an Orthodox convent in Romania's impoverished northeast, doctors say, Maricica Irina Cornici believed she heard the devil talking to her, telling her she was sinful. She was treated for schizophrenia, but when she relapsed, a monk and four nuns tried a different method: exorcism.Last week, Cornici was bound to a cross, gagged with a towel and left in a dank room at the convent for three days without food - where she died of suffocation and dehydration.
I wonder how Tom Cruise suggest treating schizophrenia...by thinking happy thoughts?
War Of The Morons
Boy, Pat Kingsley must be howling with laughter louder every day. For those who don't find out the Hollywood goings on whether they like it or not (like, because they live in a cement industry town), Kingsley is Cruise's fired former PR handler. She was replaced by his sister, Lee Ann DeVette, who's mangling things just marvelously, by letting Cruise nut on about Scientology every time there's a camera and a mike in front of his face.
Tom Cruise most recently spoke out against Ritalin, among other things, in an interview with Matt Lauer:
"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do," Cruise said.The interview became more heated when Lauer, who said he knew people who had been helped by the attention-deficit disorder drug Ritalin, asked Cruise about the effects of the drug.
"Matt, Matt, you don't even -- you're glib," Cruise responded. "You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, OK. That's what I've done."
Wanna know what I've done, Tom? I've written without Ritalin, and I've written with Ritalin. And you know what? With Ritalin, I write better.
I have ADHD -- diagnosed by a doctor, not a movie star, thank you, which makes my mind seem like it's doubling as a superball at times. Ritalin slows it down and helps me focus. Yes, it is an amphetamine -- but for people like me, who have the brain chemistry of ADHD, it has a calming, focusing effect.
I do have one wish: that somebody had diagnosed me with ADHD when I was still in high school, not when I was in my mid-30s, so I could have been helped by Ritalin years before.
These days, I refer to it as my "Concentration Vitamin"...or, here's a new one: "Better Living Through Avoiding Paying Any Attention To Moronic Cult-Washed Movie Stars."
Place your bets here on whether Tom's career will tank, when, and how far!
The High Cost Of Sticking It To Other Taxpayers
(At least in Massachusetts.) Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is considering penalties for residents who choose not to obtain health insurance -- tax penalties and even the garnishing of their wages, writes Scott S. Greenberger in the Boston Globe:
Romney's plan would require all residents in Massachusetts to have some form of health insurance or agree to pay their medical bills out of their own pockets. No other state has such a requirement, and if Romney manages to make it law, it would be a compelling accomplishment he could point to if he runs for president.Currently, people without health insurance often go to hospitals and receive care they never pay for, because the hospital and the state pick up the tab. Under Romney's proposal, uninsured Massachusetts residents would be asked to enroll in a plan when they seek care.
If they refuse, the state could recoup the medical costs in several ways, Romney said yesterday: The state might cancel the personal tax exemption on their state income taxes, which is worth about $175. It could withhold some or all of their state income tax refund and deposit it in what Romney called a ''personal healthcare spending account." Or, it might take money out of the person's paycheck, as it does now to collect child support.
''No more 'free riding,' if you will, where an individual says: 'I'm not going to pay, even though I can afford it. I'm not going to get insurance, even though I can afford it. I'm instead going to just show up and make the taxpayers pay for me,' " Romney told reporters after a healthcare speech at the John F. Kennedy Library.
The guy has a head-start on my vote! I've thought, for a long time, that the non-destitute should be required to have health insurance. Also, while we're on not sticking it to the public, I have no problem with anybody who wants to ride a motorcyle without a helmet, or walk on a tightrope between two skyscrapers -- providing they have either some special health insurance premium or a card in their wallets saying that when their brains become huevos rancheros on the sidewalk, they stay huevos rancheros on the sidewalk.
Remember Freedom Of Speech?
You won't for long. The government can't stop it entirely just yet, but they can regulate it out of business -- in the name of protecting the children, of course!
The United States Goverment is looking to stamp out pornography, starting at midnight tonight. While sitting in church, people think it's fine to say "I abhor porn", but most men still look at it. It makes a nice safe political platform. If a politican stands up and says "Lets stop pornography", not too many people will argue with him.I'm arguing right now. Leave my pornography alone. If I want to watch consenting adults having intercourse, that's my own business. It doesn't matter if I see it in a magazine, on Cinemax late at night, or on the Internet.
The U.S. Goverment has passed "18 U.S.C. § 2257", which effectively shuts down every American owned or operated adult industry where there may be a photograph or video. It requires more paperwork than even the most adept accountant could possibly keep up with. The punishment for even a single offense if $25,000 and/or 5 years in jail. Having even two pictures of adults in intimate situations would double those fines.
There's an example at the link above. And look, even Internet personals are affected. And then there's this:
Editor: I felt it necessary to reply to the following comment:You do realize that 18 U.S.C. § 2257 was passed in the 1980s, right? To prevent child pornography after Traci Lords started making videos as an underage teen lying about her age.
The laws have done absolutely nothing to stop what Traci Lords did. They require a virtually impossible paper trail to be created. Tracy Lords had a real drivers license, obtained through illegal methods. The drivers license had the wrong name, the wrong birthdate, but her photograph. Even with all the new laws, what does this do to stop the 15 year old Traci Lords from performing? Absolutely nothing
As for the fact that every webmaster already has this paper trail, that is false. They may have the model releases already on file, but now they're required to create a new paper trail to every instance of the photograph anywhere it may be shown, which in most cases is impossible. The new paper trail, retroactive to every photo shot since 1969, makes it impossible ffor any American adult entertainment company work. In addition, providers of DVD's, in brick and mortor stores, or on the Internet, must have the full paper trail for every video they provide. In the past, they've simply referenced the people who do have the records.
What Will They Seize Next?
Yesterday, it was your property; today it's dollar bills stuffed in your bra -- with no proof, only the suspicion, that they were drug money. Shelley Murphy writes in the Boston Globe:
A Quincy woman who tried to board a plane at Logan International Airport in February with $46,950 stuffed inside her bra says she was heading to Texas for plastic surgery on her buttocks and breast.But, in a lawsuit filed yesterday, Ileana Valdez said a male Drug Enforcement Administration agent told her she had a ''nice body" and didn't need any surgery -- then seized the cash, claiming it was drug money.
Valdez, 26, a single mother who was born in the Dominican Republic and is a US citizen, is petitioning to get the cash back in the suit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston against the DEA. Her suit says she has no criminal record.
''How can you make a determination that people don't need cosmetic surgery?" said Boston lawyer Tony V. Blaize, who filed the suit on behalf of Valdez. ''I can't tell Michael Jackson he doesn't need more plastic surgery, even though I don't think he does."
via Obscure Store
More On The Kelo Case
(Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that local governments have "more or less unlimited authority to seize homes and businesses"), from the Wall Street Journal's Opinion page:
In his clarifying dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas exposes this logic for the government land grab that it is. He accuses the majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment's "Public Use Clause" with a very different "public purpose" test: "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use.'"And in a separate dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested that the use of this power in a reverse Robin Hood fashion--take from the poor, give to the rich--would become the norm, not the exception: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
That prospect helps explain the unusual coalition supporting the property owners in the case, ranging from the libertarian Institute for Justice (the lead lawyers) to the NAACP, AARP and the late Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The latter three groups signed an amicus brief arguing that eminent domain has often been used against politically weak communities with high concentrations of minorities and elderly. Justice Thomas's opinion cites a wealth of data to that effect.
And it's not just the "public use" requirement of the Fifth Amendment that's undermined by Kelo. So too is the guarantee of "just compensation." Why? Because there is no need to invoke eminent domain if developers are willing to pay what owners themselves consider just compensation.
Just compensation may differ substantially from so-called fair market value given the sentimental and other values many of us attach to our homes and other property. Even eager sellers will be hurt by Kelo, since developers will have every incentive to lowball their bids now that they can freely threaten to invoke eminent domain.
So, in just two weeks, the Supreme Court has rendered two major decisions on the limits of government. In Raich v. Gonzales the Court said there are effectively no limits on what the federal government can do using the Commerce Clause as a justification. In Kelo, it's now ruled that there are effectively no limits on the predations of local governments against private property.
These kinds of judicial encroachments on liberty are precisely why Supreme Court nominations have become such high-stakes battles. If President Bush is truly the "strict constructionist" he professes to be, he will take note of the need to check this disturbing trend should he be presented with a High Court vacancy.
Fire Up The Congress-Weenies!
Patt "The Hat" Morrison on flag-burning:
"Summer is a-comin’ in, loud sing, cuckoo!’’ wrote the anonymous Middle English poet. The Capitol Hill cuckoo chorus is in full throat once again, voting massively that ``Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.’’ Summer 2005 now joins summer 2000, summer 1997, summer 1995, summer 1990, and summer 1989 –- that was the year the Supreme Court ruled that you can no more ban burning the flag than you can burning charcoal briquets, although one act represents free speech and the other represents man’s eternal fascination with scorched facial hair.It’s your bog-standard solution in search of a problem. There is no epidemic of flag-burning here. There is an epidemic of weeny Congressmen who, having accomplished virtually nothing of note, can now start running for reelection on the strength of voting for a flag-burning ban, and bellowing, ``Can my honorable opponent say [s]he would do the same?’’
I wonder how this would play in Iraq, where they’re still waiting for the constitutional amendment to ban sending soldiers to war with armored equipment not much stronger than a Lurex tank top. GI Joe was better kitted out than some of these folks.
What delights me about this amendment is that it always arrives just about the same time as the catalogues selling everything you need to celebrate the Fourth of July and the rest of the patriotic summer.
Check the catalogues, sign on to eBay –- what isn’t being hawked with a flag on it? Doormats, handkerchiefs, cocktail napkins, pocket knives, sheets, wastebaskets, dog shirts, chip-and-dip sets, bras, toilet seat covers. You can blow your nose on the flag, sop up your booze with it, sleep on it, stab someone with it, dress your dog in it, dump your trash in it, flush away under it and wipe your feet on it – but don’t even think about setting fire to it.
And what about the guy getting an all-American boner in his Old Glory swim trunks? Let’s run that up his flagpole and see whether Congress salutes.
Home Sweet Lady Footlocker
Remember the days of government "by the people, for the people"? Well, now it's by the legislators and courts-cum-lobbyists, for big business. Don't get too attached to the old homestead, because the Supreme Court ruled today that local goverments can seize people's homes and businesses for private economic development:
It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.
As a result, cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue.
Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.
"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for "public use."
Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Connecticut, filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.
New London officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.
Unfortunately, according to Volokh.com, there are rumors of her impending retirement.
Should You Freeze Your Credit?
Our government is way too busy protecting the "rights" of one bedridden vegetable in the name of Jesus to worry about the ordinary person's credit. Where's the Schiavo-style outcry in government about something very real -- identity theft? Well, the non-theocrats seem interested in the problem:
If it were not for California's pioneering law requiring notice to affected consumers, the rest of America might not have even heard warnings of how their assets and identities are increasingly at risk. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, is proposing a national requirement for consumer notification, with civil damages for negligent companies. Her bill is a good start in conjunction with a comprehensive measure by Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Bill Nelson of Florida, both Democrats, to begin regulating data merchants by requiring registration with the Federal Trade Commission. It would adopt stronger safeguards and help identity theft victims regain their fiscal balance.Credit-card companies and information brokers - not consumers and merchants - bear prime responsibility for the ravages of data thieves.
Until somebody makes them take that responsibility, perhaps freezing your credit makes sense -- if your state even allows it. Your government...working for...brain-dead bodies in beds!
Me And My Purple Caddy-Lac
Sports explained, by Tiger Woods:
Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.
A Look Into The Future In America
No worries about fundamentalism in America? Here are a few sweet thoughts from a bunch of the church-over-state-ists about their kind of America. And here's how it played out in Turkey:
Turkey has tried to rid itself of fundamentalist Islam twice - and failed twice. In the 16th century, the Turks built observatories, translated European scientific texts and sent embassies abroad to study medicine and technology. But these advances never matured since their libraries were forbidden to stock books "filled with lies" (history, astronomy, philosophy). In the 19th century Shariah law was curtailed, the Koran reinterpreted to fit with parliamentary democracy and books on chemistry and biology translated. Again it didn't last.
My Other Car Pool Is A Gene Pool?
Or, "My naked ape will kick your naked ape's ass!"?
What does it say on your back end?
(photo taken at the Human Behavior & Evolution Society Conference, Austin, TX, in early June. Some more photos of the conference here. NSFW. Hah. Just kidding.)
The Dwight Stuff
President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex:
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Dun By Law
A London lawyer goes after a secretary at his firm over a £4 dry cleaning fee. (Classy!):
An e-mail exchange between a law firm executive and a secretary over a ketchup stain has set London's legal world buzzing.The details were forwarded across the city after Richard Phillips, a senior associate at Baker & McKenzie, sent a message to secretary Jenny Amner.
The exchange appears to refer to her spilling ketchup on Phillips' trousers and who should pay the cleaning bill, UK's Press Association reported.
The first e-mail, which Phillips sent on May 25, said: "Hi Jenny. I went to a dry cleaners at lunch and they said it would cost £4 to remove the ketchup stains. If you cd let me have the cash today, that wd be much appreciated."
On June 3, Amner replied: "With reference to the e-mail below, I must apologize for not getting back to you straight away but due to my mother's sudden illness, death and funeral I have had more pressing issues than your £4.
"I apologize again for accidentally getting a few splashes of ketchup on your trousers. Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary."
She wrote that she had told various partners, lawyers and trainees about his e-mail and they had offered to "do a collection" to raise the cash.
"I however declined their kind offer but should you feel the urgent need for the £4, it will be on my desk this afternoon."
The Foxes Minding The Henhouse
The lobbyists pop into government jobs, thanks to the Bush administration, to continue their work handing out the environment, etc., to big business, complains a New York Times editorial:
It is no surprise that Philip Cooney, who resigned last week as chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, will soon take a job at Exxon Mobil. His yeoman work in fighting against limits on greenhouse gas emissions, first as a lawyer for the oil industry's main lobbying group and then at the White House, where he sanitized reports to play down the link between emissions and global warming, clearly earned the reward of a cushy job with Exxon, a leading opponent of emissions curbs. Yet it is surely a cause for dismay that the Bush administration has seen fit to embed so many former lobbyists in key policy or regulatory jobs where they can carry out their industry's agenda from within....A slightly different, but equally worrisome, kind of conflict emerged last week when the Justice Department prematurely scuttled much of its own case in a civil racketeering trial against the tobacco industry. The late-stage decision to reduce the money demanded of the industry from an expected $130 billion to a mere $10 billion was made by Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. over the strenuous objections of the career lawyers running the case.
McCallum, a close friend of Bush from their days at Yale, had not been a tobacco lobbyist, but he was a partner in a law firm that did legal work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, and his own legal work included medical malpractice defense. The career lawyers complained in a memo that McCallum had made a preliminary decision without even reviewing their evidence. They suggested that the department's cave-in stemmed from "sticker shock" over the amount the industry might have to pay.
The "revolving door" in which people shuttle back and forth between jobs in government and industry is a sad fixture of Washington life. There are rules, albeit weak ones, that seek to limit what government officials can do when they first return to the private sector. But the public has little protection against the machinations of lobbyists who are invited into government and given the levers of power. In an administration that saw fit to put Vice President Dick Cheney, a former oil industry executive, in charge of drafting its closed-door energy policy, there is little prospect for reining in the special interests. The public will be the loser.
(IS the loser.)
Moron Hatch On Flag Burning
Here it is from a USA Today story by Andrea Stone...incredibly, on right wing idiots in the Senate who are trying to ban flag burning:
Still, "it's important that we venerate the national symbol of our country," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the amendment's chief sponsor. "Burning, urinating, defecating on the flag — this is not speech. This is offensive conduct."
No, you dangerous idiot, it's essential that we protect the First Amendment. Symbols aren't important; actual rights are -- and flag burning is speech. What, you think people are burning it because they ran out of fire wood for their s'mores? They're enraged at the government -- and rightfully so, considering you and all your primitive-thinking cronies running it these days. You're Thomas Jefferson's worst nightmare.
Reality Baste
The lady had a wise granny -- one who didn't promote the lie of "fat acceptance":
In 1978, I was 10 years old and visiting my grandmother in Florida for the summer. Nothing made me happier. We shopped at the Bal Harbour mall, swam in the condo pool, saw a movie every week. Each morning, she smothered me with kisses. And each afternoon, we'd weigh ourselves. ''Girls have to be thin and beautiful,'' Grandma said, always linking the two adjectives together.I wasn't fat -- I was a muscular gymnast -- but food was certainly a passion, and my grandmother worried that one day I'd ''blow up like an elephant.'' This was the worst fate possible. It didn't matter that Grandma was a college graduate, a teacher of ''intellectually gifted'' students, a single mother when few women were and utterly devoted to her family. My mother and her brother adored her, and so did I. For her, beauty was paramount -- and fat was decidedly not beautiful. But I didn't worry. I would never get fat.
Then puberty hit, and I gained 20 pounds in less than a year. I hadn't seen my grandmother in almost as long when she came to visit us in Boston. As usual, she looked wonderful, her nails newly manicured, her clothes freshly pressed. She kissed me hesitantly, her hands kneading the strange new flesh on my shoulders and back. She could barely look my way. Later, I overheard her telling my mother that I'd become ''tremendous.'' At dinner, I reached for a second slice of bread, and my grandmother slapped my hand away. ''You don't need another,'' she said. ''How can you let yourself go like this? You've got such a gorgeous face -- don't you want boys to like you?''
Then came a warning: ''You need to lose 10 pounds or else you can't come to Florida this year.''
''But why?'' I asked. ''Who cares what I weigh?''
''Because the world judges on first appearances,'' Grandma snapped.
And that's simply the truth, like it or not.
Another Day In The Life Of A Corporate Tool
The photo below is Lucy with Andy Singer in the background. Talented cartoonist, but, tragically, petting zoo-poor.
I'm at the alternative newspaper convention, where I've shamelessly toted my dog to lure all but the most heartless to my table. In case people passing by for coffee don't see her, I call to them, "Hey, wanna pet my dog?" Only three people have said no, and one girl had allergies.
Some of the cartoonists were grumbling a bit about Lucy's presence, threatening to bring babies as sales tools next year (i.e., they're jealous I thought of it first). Dan Savage made fun of me as he presented the editorial awards (he knows I love it), briefly wearing a small stuffed animal on his shoulder the way I wear Lucy on mine.
"Bee a dear and run Amy's column? I'm a clothes whore, and getups like this are pricey."
It's exhausting being adored all day.
The Biology Of Common Sense
The daughter of the head of Harvard's math department has a little something to say about the Summers flap:
My family is saturated with complete and total gender equality. When I was still too young to read, my father often read fairy tales and Greek myths to me, but would change the male hero into a heroine, such as Jacqueline and the Beanstalk, Herculina, etc., enough to make the most hardcore feminist blush. When I entered grade school, my father would come into my classroom once a month for "enrichment math and science," and he was every little girl's advocate and motivator toward these subjects. If anyone tried to tell me I wasn't good enough at math or science, my father would fly into a rage and march right down to my school system, to my ultimate embarassment.My father is now currently the chair of the Harvard math department, and this is why I laugh at Ms. Paur's accusations of sexism. I grew up roaming the halls of that department, spitting off the balconies and scribbling on the blackboards, and let me tell you, there just isn't any sexism. At all. The professers are the sweetest, kindest, craziest bunch of -- mostly -- men that I have met, and their goal is to show everyone to love math the way they do, regardless of gender. I would like to pose this question to all those who are outraged by President Summers' opinions on male presdisposition: why fight it? The pure fact of the matter is, the people who are doing the most interesting, fascinating, intriguing, boundary-pushing, out-there mathematics are men. Period. Why is this? Well, it certainly isn't because Harvard discriminates against women. Perhaps, just perhaps -- just let down your gaurd for an instant, feminists -- perhaps men are biologically predisposed towards mathematics. So what? That's the way humans are wired, so stop trashing poor Harvard President Lawrence Summers for just pointing out hard, cold scientific evidence. Take it from me, the daughter of an extreme feminist and the Harvard math chair who is going into science herself -- Harvard isn't to blame -- and women, just face it and get over it: human biology is sexist.
So what if there aren't female mathematicians -- or physicists. Why does that matter? Why should every group be represented in every profession? And if that's going to be the standard: Why aren't we worried that there aren't more female construction workers? Or trash collectors? And when are we going to establish quotas in female-dominated fields like psychology -- not for women -- but to force more men into the field -- despite women's biological edge in verbal-emotional communication? (This is not just my opinion. Look at a female brain. A woman's corpus callosum, the connecting cables between the hemispheres, is like a cable modem compared to a man's dialup. Just to name one example.)
Corporate Tool
That would be my little Attention Hound, Lucy.
I'm at the alternative newspaper conference in San Diego. Drove down in the little hybrid to whore my, uh...promote my column.
As somebody who started out self-syndicated, I've always been a little less dignified (read: more apparently desperate) than a regular syndication rep. Of course, I wear high heels and inappropriately tight clothing -- just like I do when I'm not trying to sell my work.
But, in the trade show, I've always had a tendency to call out to people passing by to get them to come to my booth or chase them around the continental breakfast buffet on some pretense ("Cream...need cream...can't find the cream...'Why, hello there! I've been looking for you [translation: hunting you down like a dog]'").
Well, now I've got it all worked out. Here's Lucy, sitting dead center in my booth.
All I do is call to people, "Hey, wanna pet my dog?" And they practically run over. Then, the only problem is defocusing their attention on Lucy so I can blather about my column.
The Fundamentalist Who Wouldn't Let Go
Governor and ideological snake-oil salesman Jeb Bush is still clinging to the pretense that he had any motivation but promotion of his primitive religious beliefs in the Schiavo affair. Jackie Hallifax writes for The Associated Press:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911.Bush said his request for the probe was not meant to suggest wrongdoing by Michael Schiavo.
"It's a significant question that during this ordeal was never brought up," Bush told reporters.
Michael Schiavo's attorney has said his client called for help right away.
In a letter faxed to Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, the governor said Michael Schiavo testified in a 1992 medical malpractice trial that he found his wife collapsed at 5 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1990, and he said in a 2003 television interview that he found her about 4:30 a.m. He called 911 at 5:40 a.m.
"Between 40 and 70 minutes elapsed before the call was made, and I am aware of no explanation for the delay," Bush wrote. "In light of this new information, I urge you to take a fresh look at this case without any preconceptions as to the outcome."
McCabe was out of state Friday and couldn't immediately be reached for comment, but Bush said McCabe has agreed to his request.
Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment from The Associated Press. But on Wednesday he said his client didn't wait to call for help and has conceded that he confuses dates and times.
Felos has said that if Michael Schiavo had not called 911 immediately, as Bush and others allege, Terri Schiavo would have died that day.
"There is no hour gap or other gap to the point Michael heard Terri fall and called 911," Felos said. "We've seen the baseless allegations in this case fall by the wayside one by one ... That's what I would call it, a baseless claim to perpetuate a controversy that in fact doesn't exist."
That, and a way to deflect all the negative attention from the campaigns of lies of Jeb Bush, George Bush, Bill Frist, and all the other theocons.
A Persistent Politically Opportunistic State
That's what Bill Frist was in, all the while he was promoting Terry Schiavo as somebody clearly just moments from leaping out of bed and going out to pick limes. (Au contraire, sleazebag!) So, once again, says science -- real science, not rumored science -- the stuff right-wing blogs were overflowing with during l'affaire Schiavo.
Ms. Schiavo is profoundly disabled and cannot communicate with words at this time.But she knows. She feels. There’s expression in those eyes. Just one look at her in a video with her mother and everyone except the Scarecrow on his way to Oz knows it, too.
(Just look at the MRI, asshole, which is slightly more reliable than the opinion of a bunch of Wizard Of Oz-watching religious fanatics.)
And now, take a look at the autopsy. Her brain, says the autopsy, was severely shriveled and about half the weight of a normal adult's. According to a David Brown and William Branigin story in the Washington Post:
The damage to it "was irrecoverable, and no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed" it, said pathologist Jon R. Thogmartin, who is the chief medical examiner for Florida's sixth judicial district.The damage was especially severe in the region responsible for vision, making her functionally blind, he said at a news conference in Florida.
Schiavo died March 31 at age 41 in a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., 13 days after a feeding tube was removed from her stomach under a court order. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, had waged a seven-year legal battle against her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, to have the tube removed on grounds that his wife would not have wanted to be kept alive by such means. The Schindlers, backed by anti-abortion and right-to-life groups, rejected that argument and asserted that their daughter was responsive to them, wanted to live and could improve.
The autopsy essentially supported Michael Schiavo's contention that his wife's brain damage was irreversible and that she had no cognitive ability. It also refuted claims by some of his harsher critics that he had abused her.
Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, later told reporters, "Mr. Schiavo was pleased to hear the hard science and evidence of those findings."
Felos said Michael Schiavo intends to release certain autopsy photos of Terri Schiavo's brain "in the near future" in hopes of putting to rest any lingering doubts about her mental capacity. He said the photos would allow the public to "see the profound atrophy that was mentioned in the report."
In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the autopsy report did not change President Bush's view of the Schiavo case, in which he and Congress had tried to intervene with the aim of restoring her feeding tube and prolonging her life.
"No . . . it doesn't," McClellan said. "Our thoughts and prayers remain with her family and friends. The president was deeply saddened by this case."
A lawyer for the Schindlers, David Gibbs III, said today his clients continue to believe that before her death, their daughter "was demonstrating a will to live."
And tragically, a whole lot of greasy politicians ran with this -- as far as it could take them and their right wing goals.
right-wing blog link via Metafilter
Breakfast Of Chump-ions
Global Intransigence
George Bush on global warming, according to The New York Times:
President George W. Bush has been running from the issue of global warming for four years, but the walls are closing in. Scientists throughout the world are telling him that the rise in atmospheric temperature justifies aggressive action. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and other prominent Republicans are telling him to get off the dime. His corporate allies are deserting him. And the Senate is inching closer to endorsing a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
A result is that Bush seems increasingly isolated and his rhetoric of denial increasingly irrational. Last week, a whistleblower asserted that a senior White House official, formerly an oil lobbyist, had changed scientific reports to minimize the climate problem. The official, Philip Cooney, resigned last Friday, although the White House insisted that the embarrassing disclosures had nothing to do with his departure. Whatever the truth, this was hardly the first time Bush officials cooked the books for political ends.
Out in the real world, hardly anyone denies the importance of the issue anymore. Just over a week ago, Schwarzenegger pledged to slow, stop and ultimately reverse California's greenhouse gas emissions by requiring big improvements in automobile efficiency and pushing for energy sources other than fossil fuels. "The debate is over," the governor said. "We know the science, we see the threat, and we know the time for action is now."
As if on cue, the National Academy of Sciences and 10 of its counterparts around the world declared that the science of global warming is clear enough to warrant prompt reductions in greenhouse gases. Mainstream scientists have long accepted the link between warming and human activity. What made this statement exceptional was its tone and its timing, coming a month before Bush and other leaders from the Group of 8 industrialized nations are to meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, where Prime Minister Tony Blair will put climate change near the top of the agenda.
Inherit The Windmill
In England, people -- and not just those living on some country commune -- can opt to have their electricity from wind power. Nothing doing for most people over here in the States. How dumb -- especially here in California, where we've got plenty of natural wind, plus more than our fair share of blowhards. Here's an excerpt from an editorial about wind power in Denmark from the Boston Globe:
In the early 1970s, before Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, before anyone was worried about climate change, the Danes decided to harness the wind, and not the atom, to generate much of their electricity. Today, the design and production of state-of-the-art windmills is this small country's biggest industry. As most of the rest of the world seeks to slow down or reverse the production of greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel power plants, Denmark provides an example of one way to make electricity without emitting carbon dioxide.
In the United States, electricity generation accounts for about 40 percent of all greenhouse gases. That share will increase if plans in the next decade for 100 new coal-burning plants are not revised. China and India also plan to build hundreds of new plants burning coal, which produces more carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels. The resulting increase in CO² will greatly exceed the reductions in greenhouse emissions planned by the countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol.
Wind, the world's fastest-growing form of electricity production, deserves consideration in the United States and elsewhere as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuel power.
Look how easy it is to not just consider it, but sign up for it, in the UK.
Bubble Trouble
My old prof, Jesse Kornbluth, aka Uptown Swami, looks at the economics of irrationality:
It's my view that we're experiencing not one, but two bubbles: Real Estate and God. Both have made fortunes for those canny enough to offer, in the case of real estate, seminars on amassing fortunes through no-money-down real estate and, in the case of God, books, movies, music and iconography that proclaim the kingdom of an exceedingly white version of Jesus Christ.Like the Real Estate Bubble, the God Bubble has been growing so steadily that many believe it's real--that the mega-churches and religious PACs and public meetings called to get Judy Blume and Kurt Vonnegut out of schools testify to a change in bedrock American values. And no doubt there are many who do place their faith above all else and are delighted that their religion is--at last--big news. But as in any movement, there are people who join a cause just because it looks like a winner.
If I were a betting man, I'd wager that a lot of people have jumped onto God's crusade to purify America as a kind of career move--a self-betterment program that helps you do well as you do good. Some guys make deals on the golf courses of exclusive clubs, others over Krispy Kremes at the mega-church's coffee hour. You use what you've got to get where you want to go.
For all the preaching about forsaking pleasure on earth for good in heaven, I'd also wager that people of faith live like so many of us--from paycheck to paycheck, credit cards maxed out. (For all we know, some people who tithe are paying 18% for the privilege.) But I suspect there's a difference between these Christians and those of us who don't believe in a God who shines His light only on the faithful. We feel we're on our own if bad times hit--and the deeply devout, always eager to see God's hand in their lives, regard an economic downturn as a test they can pass with God's active help. Haven't they been told--and haven't we been warned--that God looks out for His own?
If the housing bubble bursts and craters the consumer economy, it would be the first test of the faith-based community. Will those who believe tack a cross on their door and be spared foreclosure? Will God take only the houses of Jews and heathens? And will Christians who still have share with Christians who suddenly don't?
Recently, Lena mentioned to me some priest who goes around protesting -- for the poor, imagine that! It's amazing, the selectivity of a lot of Christians, these days, railing against homosexuality and naked ladies as the bible's raison d'etre, and skipping all that throw your worldly goods away and feed the poor parts. No, no...I know...god spoke to you and told you to buy the really big Hummer.
National Handout Radio
How do you know whether somebody knows me very well? Well, if they do, they don't send me petitions like this:
On NPR's Morning Edition, Nina Tottenberg announced that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it will, in effect, be the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Public Broadcasting System (PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and streamline their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile.This message is for anyone who thinks NPR/PBS is a worthwhile expenditure of $1.12/year of their taxes.
The only way that our representatives can be aware of the base of support for PBS and funding for these types of programs is by making our voices heard.
Please add your name to this list and forward it to friends who believe in what this stands for. This list will be forwarded to the President and the Vice President of the United States. This petition is being passed around the Internet. Please add your name to it so that funding can be maintained for NPR, PBS, NEA.
I know this may shock some of you, but I don't understand why we have government-supported media. Sure, I like NPR programming -- but not everybody does -- and maybe supporting NPR should be a choice, much like Sirius or XM, not an auto-deduction. Or, if we're going to keep National Public Radio, maybe our tax dollars should also go to National Public Howard Stern.
Canadians Losing Wait
I'm all for poor people having preventive care; especially since it's not just humane, but fiscally smarter than denying it to them, then paying for emergency room visits and hospitalization once their guts start falling out. I am not, however, for universal health care. Here's how it works -- or rather, doesn't -- in Canada, from a piece in the Wall Street Journal:
Call it the hip that changed health-care history. When George Zeliotis of Quebec was told in 1997 that he would have to wait a year for a replacement for his painful, arthritic hip, he did what every Canadian who's been put on a waiting list does: He got mad. He got even madder when he learned it was against the law to pay for a replacement privately. But instead of heading south to a hospital in Boston or Cleveland, as many Canadians already do, he teamed up to file a lawsuit with Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal doctor. The duo lost in two provincial courts before their win last week.The court's decision strikes down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance and is bound to upend similar laws in other provinces. Canada is the only nation other than Cuba and North Korea that bans private health insurance, according to Sally Pipes, head of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and author of a recent book on Canada's health-care system.
"Access to a waiting list is not access to health care," wrote Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin for the 4-3 Court last week. Canadians wait an average of 17.9 weeks for surgery and other therapeutic treatments, according the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. The waits would be even longer if Canadians didn't have access to the U.S. as a medical-care safety valve. Or, in the case of fortunate elites such as Prime Minister Paul Martin, if they didn't have access to a small private market in some non-core medical services. Mr. Martin's use of a private clinic for his annual checkup set off a political firestorm last year.
The ruling stops short of declaring the national health-care system unconstitutional; only three of the seven judges wanted to go all the way.
But it does say in effect: Deliver better care or permit the development of a private system. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance might be constitutional in circumstances where health-care services are reasonable as to both quality and timeliness," the ruling reads, but it "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services." The Justices who sit on Canada's Supreme Court, by the way, aren't a bunch of Scalias of the North. This is the same court that last year unanimously declared gay marriage constitutional.
A lucky thing none of them were waiting for hip replacements while they were hearing the case.
Too Bad There's No Such Thing As FDA-Block
As I've written before, if you could block out the FDA, you could block out the wrinkliest, most cancer-causing rays of sun -- and without the additional cost of a trip to Paris.
Laurel Naversen Geraghty writes, in The New York Times, about Anthelios XL 60, my sunblock of choice, with the most protective ingredient on the market, Mexoryl:
So far the Food and Drug Administration has approved only three ingredients protective against UVA: zinc oxide, titanium dioxide and avobenzone (trade name Parsol 1789).But Mexoryl seems more effective than any of these at protecting against UVA light. In 2000, Canadian and French researchers slathered six brands of sunscreen and sunblock on the backs of volunteers and exposed their skin to a UV sunlamp for 15 minutes. The product containing Mexoryl (along with avobenzone, titanium dioxide and other ingredients) was more than twice as effective in protecting against UVA light as any of the others. The study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
...The difference between UVA and UVB light is a matter of wavelength. UVA rays come in longer wavelengths (320 to 400 nanometers), so they pass through the outer layer of skin, rather than burning it as do the shorter UVB rays (290 to 320 nanometers). UVA rays penetrate deep into the dermis, or lower layer of skin, where they can break down collagen and other proteins that keep the skin plump and firm.
"That deeper penetration and deeper damage is what we think is really associated with premature aging in the skin," said Dr. Clay J. Cockerell, a Dallas dermatologist, who is president of the American Academy of Dermatology.
The UVA rays can also damage cells and DNA in the dermis, decrease the skin's immunity and generate harmful free radicals. Though the exact mechanisms remain unclear, doctors assume these actions explain why UVA exposure is also associated with skin cancer.
Unlike UVB light, prevalent only when the sun is high in the sky - between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. during summer - UVA light is virtually inescapable. "It's present in the same amount from sunup to sundown, 365 days a year, totally independent of climate conditions," said Dr. Katie Rodan, an associate clinical dermatologist at Stanford University.
That means it not only penetrates car windows and T-shirts, but it also reaches the skin during fog, rain and even blizzards.
...It is hard to tell whether Mexoryl will make it to the United States market anytime soon. A L'Oréal spokeswoman would say only that the company has "initiated a process of discussion with the F.D.A. regarding Mexoryl and is continuing to work closely with the F.D.A."
Luckily, Botox is perfectly legal. Unfortunately, it tends to stymie all but the most Stepfordlike facial expressions.
iChat If You Want Work
People are getting jobs by leaving little advertisements for their availability on their iChat, writes Cyrus Farivar, on Wired:
Instead of displaying simple "away from my computer" messages, Hollywood buddy lists now overflow with come-ons, from "need work" to "wrapping up shoot." Producers hiring for a new production can tell at a glance who's available now, who's not and who might be free in the near future."Ninety percent of my work is given to me through a pop-up (chat window) on my desktop," said Simon Foster, 32, a freelance production coordinator living in Santa Monica, California.
So popular is this new form of recruiting, many say that they've seen an increase in the use of Apple Computer's IM client, iChat AV over the last several months -- at least in the production of television commercials. Hollywood is a Mac town, of course.
They add that many people in their corner of Hollywood are chatting away on a regular basis to hire temporary employees or to find work for themselves.
Foster said he uses these IM status messages two or three times a month to find new work.
"When you see that I put up there that I'm ending my job, that's when I'll get little windows popping up," he said. "Honestly, since iChat's been around, the workload for me has been greater."
First Place!
...in the LA Press Club awards in the "signed commentary" (newspapers over 100,000 circ category) for my syndicated advice column.
I was up against Howard Blume (LA Weekly), Thomas Elias (syndicated), Michael Kinsley (LA Times, but previously, founder of Slate), and Chris Weinkopf (LA Daily News). Judging was by a number of out-of-town press clubs.
I also came in second for my column in "signed commentary" (under 100,000 circ) -- beaten by my good friend, Independent staff writer and author Andrew Gumbel. I also came in second in the headline category (under 100,000 circ). The headline was "Love is a Paddle Field," about two parents who were worried their kid would find out about their predilection for S&M.
And, no, my column still doesn't run in my hometown papers!
photo by Gregg Sutter
Fathers Aren't The Only Ones Lacking Rights
Susan Dominus wrote about the struggle for fathers' rights in the May 8 New York Times Magazine:
For most of American legal history, the laws required judges to consider sex the most significant factor when making custody decisions, although which sex had the advantage changed over time. Until the mid-1800's, under common law, a father's right to custody in the event of a divorce was so strong that it practically functioned as a property right. Toward the end of that century, this principle was reversed by the ''tender years'' doctrine -- the presumption that young children need to be with their mothers -- which lasted in a handful of jurisdictions into the early 80's. For the most part, however, by the late 70's, the ''tender years'' doctrine had given way to the less prejudiced, but also less clear, directive that judges base their decisions on the so-called best interest of the child. Today many fathers' rights advocates -- particularly those who filed the 40-some class-action lawsuits demanding a 50-50 split of custody -- would like to usher in a new paradigm: one that values parental rights as highly as the child's best interest.Michael Newdow is one of the fathers who have been trying to make that case. He is best known as the California emergency-room doctor who represented himself last year in a case before the Supreme Court, arguing that the words ''under God'' in the Pledge of Allegiance violated the establishment clause of the United States Constitution. Newdow, an atheist, brought the suit on the grounds that the pledge forced the government's spiritual views onto his daughter, impeding her freedom of religious choice. The Supreme Court ruled that Newdow, given the particulars of his case and his custody issues, didn't have the standing to bring the suit. For five years leading up to his appearance before the Supreme Court, Newdow had two driving passions in his life: fighting for more custody of his daughter and fighting to eliminate ''under God'' from the pledge. When the court dismissed his case, the two passions collided and combusted, the destruction of one cause taking the other down with it.
...He talked for close to two hours about his troubles -- the custody battles he endured with his daughter's mother (whom he never married); the impassioned exchanges that alienated the family-court judge; the injustices he feels he suffered at the hands of foolish mediators; the court appearances over all manner of arcane disputes, including whether he could take his daughter out hunting for frogs one night (no) and whether he could take her to hear him argue before the Supreme Court (again, no). Although the courts deprived him of final decision-making power over his daughter, who is now 10, he does spend about 30 percent of the time with her, a relatively generous arrangement. Nonetheless, Newdow, who has spent half a million dollars on legal fees, the lion's share of those incurred by his child's mother, claims that the family-court system has ruined his life. He's a second-class parent, he said; he can't do the things he'd like to do with his daughter. The system allows his daughter's mother to stifle his freedom to care for his child the way he'd like. ''It's as bad as slavery,'' he said.
But what about children's rights -- not to have their lives wrenched apart because, say, mommy's not having the greatest sex of her life? Here's a letter from this week's New York Times Magazine:
The Fathers' CrusadeReading the letters (May 22) on Susan Dominus's article (May 8) prompted me to describe how my daughter and her husband handled the custody problem when they divorced. Their two boys, in their early teens, remained in the big Vermont farmhouse where they had always lived, and the parents alternated living with them, two weeks at a time. Thus, the boys were not uprooted from their home, separated from friends and school or made to feel their lives were secondary in importance. And the parents were largely freed of feelings of guilt. It worked.
Joan D. Ensor
West Redding, Conn.
Wow. What if the parents, not the kids, were the ones who got uprooted in divorce?
I may have rather "progressive" views on relationships compared to most people's (I don't believe in marriage; I think living together kills your sex life and your relationship), but when it comes to kids, I'm slightly to the right of Doctor Laura. You're a mother and you aren't having satisfying sex? Too bad. If your relationship isn't violent and combative, maybe you should stay exactly where you are. Your kids didn't ask to be born to some idiot who lives on whims. So don't be one. As I wrote in the column linked above (see mommy/hot sex):
Dropping everything to run off in search of some really hot sex -- oh, I’m sorry, I mean TRUE LOVE -- is the province of people like me, who recognize that they’re self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and impulsive, and thus unfit to be parents. Unfortunately, parenthood is too often the province of people like you, who are also self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and impulsive, but refuse to let that stop them from accessorizing with a baby.
Speaking of which, here's part of a letter I got yesterday:
...My dilemma is now that we have been back together now for the last almost nine months and things were great at first for the first maybe 5 months. Now he is going back to the same old person he was right before I left him two years ago. My kids will be devastated again if we separate. I am so torn between what to do, I don’t want to live unhappy, for another 20 years. I think I am so worthy of unlimited happiness, but my kids are in need of there father. When or if we do separated he takes it out on the kids and sees them when its convenient for him, I don’t think I can deal with the night crying from our five year old again. Cause she misses daddy, that tears me up. Help Amy what can I do?Sincerely,
TRYING AGAIN.
And here's part of my reply:
...How sad that you, with children, aren't a little more careful about subjecting them to these ups and downs. I can be an irresponsible asshole living at whim, because I have an exceptionally portable dog as the only creature who's counting on me to take care of it. You can't. Well, you do, but you shouldn't, and wouldn't, if you had any sense of responsibility to your kids, who did not ask to be born to people who see them as second to their desire for "happiness." How sad that people are horrified that gays want to become parents, not at parents like you.
My Kinda Kids' Store!
George Bush Admit He's Made A Mistake?
Not gonna happen. But George McGovern and his son are still right:
We were early opponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nonetheless, once American forces were committed, we hoped that our concerns would be proved wrong. That has not been the case.
The United States must now begin an orderly withdrawal of American forces from this mistaken foreign venture.
The justification for the war was based on false or falsified information. What had been initially characterized by the Bush administration as an uncomplicated military operation has turned into a violent quagmire. America's leaders underestimated not only the insurgency, but also the deep-rooted ethnic divisions in Iraqi society.
There are no clear answers from the administration or Congress on how long U.S. forces will need to stay in Iraq, what the anticipated costs in human life and treasure will be, or even what would constitute success.
Instead, many U.S. policy makers seem resigned to an open-ended occupation. The former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz has told Congress that America will be there for at least another 10 years. It is common to hear even some who voted against the war say, "Now that we're there, we have no choice but to stay."
We very much disagree. Calls to maintain the status quo echo the same rationale used to keep American forces in Vietnam. To those who contend that America would weaken its credibility if it withdrew, we say that the standing of the United States would greatly improve if it demonstrated the good judgment to terminate an unwise course.
The continuing U.S. presence in Iraq feeds the insurgency and gives the insurgents a certain legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world. Americans know from their own history that armies of occupation are seldom welcome.
There have been elections in Iraq, and yet it remains unclear whether the different political, ethnic, and religious factions want to work together.
One thing, however, is clear: Washington cannot determine Iraq's destiny. It doesn't matter how many times Condoleezza Rice or Donald Rumsfeld visit. It doesn't matter how many soldiers America deploys. Iraq's myriad factions themselves must display the political will to demand a system of government that respects the country's diversity.
There are no easy answers in Iraq. But we are convinced that the United States should now set a dramatically different course - one that anticipates U.S. military withdrawal sooner rather than later. America should begin the discussions now as to how it can bring its troops home.
The United States should accelerate and pay for the training of Iraqi security forces with the help of Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab allies. America can begin drawing down its forces to coincide with the number of trained Iraqi forces. By that measure, 30,000 U.S. troops should be brought home now.
My opinion, like many people's, is that we broke it, we have to stay and fix it. But, how will it be "better" if we stay?
Cool-Looking Men Riding Segways
Do not exist. You ever seen one? Me neither.
photo by Gregg Sutter, in Austin, TX
Moron Friends Can Kill Your Sex Life
From today's mail:
Hey there Amy.Ok. So here's the story. Last Halloween my boyfriend and I went to a party. He was dressed like a football player. I went as a little girl going to a birthday party-anklets, MaryJanes, a pretty little dress and pinnafore, pink and white rhumba panties, pigtails with big ribbons....you get the idea...Anyway...I was the hit of the party and won first place.
When we got home that night, we got playful and he threw me over his knee and scolded me like the bad little girl I was being....and then we had really hot, intense sex. I'm talking intense.
OK. So...flashforward to now and my "little girl" wardrobe has grown to include 2 school uniforms, plenty of white cotton panties with cute little designs on them, saddle shoes and the like.
I usually wear my hair in pigtails and I have become quite the actress. NOW...Before you think this is all my boyfriend's idea, I have to admit that I enjoy letting my inner child out. I love the cute clothes, especially those adorable little underpants and anklets- and I am turned on by having someone take control. Even the spankings are fun-always over his knee-but never too hard...it's not about the pain.
The problem is that while discussing my adventures with some girlfriends over lunch, someone suggested that my boyfriend is a child molester and that there is something wrong with me. That I must have been molested at one time-I wasn't. And my boyfriend would never touch a child-I know that-
It's just that now I'm feeling a little guilty-if that's the right word-about how we "play." Is this fantasy? Is this a fetish? Is this wrong? We're kinda of at a standstill right now-no role-playing in other words-and the sex is just ok-
I need some help.
Any advice? Thanks....
My response:
Oh, please. (That's to the self-proclaimed child sexual abuse expert.) This is one of the most garden variety fantasies there is. My advice: Stay away from the girl who told you that, because she's a moron, and you'd do better to associate with intelligent, rational people (ie, those who base their contentions on actual evidence, not [forgive me] lint they pulled out of their ass). Go put on your mary janes and have some fun.
To The Twit-Boy With The Econ Book Shouting Into The Cell Phone Directly Behind Me
(I don't have the card with me, so I'll put it up here for you to read.) And, no, I don't care that you're talking to your mother, the woman who apparently had a lot more on her plate than teaching you to be considerate of others. Sadly, the volume on my iTunes isn't enough to drown you out, so this is for you:
IF YOU CAN READ THIS CARD YOU ARE TOO LOUD
Just because you have a self doesn't mean you should express it. Apparently, you are under the impression that the world will be a better place once you broadcast the news that you've changed laxatives or forgotten to floss. Perhaps you call this "freedom of speech." I call it "bad breeding." Kindly save your loud, dull conversations for the privacy of your home. Thank you!
And yes, I am "a bitch." And yes, there is "a set of rigid rules" I expect people to go by. They're called "manners" -- an artifact of a time when people used to exhibit concern for others instead of raging self-absorption.
(Do I have a sign on my back this week that reads, "Assholes, Right This Way?") Yesterday, traffic was mad on Robertson, and I was careful not to block the intersection so other drivers might be able to cross. Naturally, some old man saw this as his cue to drive around me and block the road, as did three other drivers who followed right behind him. A female driver hoping to cross Robertson looked on in frustration at the wall of cars impeding her passage. When, after the light turned, I slipped ahead of the old guy and the other cutters (thanks to the fact that I drive a microbe of a car, small enough to sneak along the space they'd all left on the left), I looked in my rear-view mirror, and yes...sure enough...he was shaking his fist at me for cutting in front of him!
Welcome To My Museum Of Buttwads Behind The Wheel
For our first exhibition, meet Venice Chick, in her black Jetta, first encountered holding up traffic while waiting to turn left from Marine onto Lincoln.
There's plenty of space in front of her, but she is too busy making a call to move up.
I can’t move up or get around her, so traffic’s backing up behind me…a long line of cars and SUVs and delivery vans unable to take advantage of the nice green light. I honk. She glances in the mirror. She just sits there for a moment or two (passive-aggressive bitch), then crawls forward. The rest of us move up just in time to catch the red.
She turns left onto Lincoln; I’m behind her. She’s driving very slowly, still on the phone, clearly not paying attention, so I give her some space. Light’s nice and green at Rose, but she inexplicably slows to a crawl and practically stops in the middle of the road. Must be one fascinating conversation.
Horn time again. She gives me the finger, but does give her car a little gas. Hoping to make the light, I speed up a little -- just in time for her to slam on her brakes; apparently, her cute idea of revenge. My crime? Wanting to get home before sundown despite her need to turn her car into a very slow-moving phone booth. My saving grace: I drive like a granny -- in that I'm careful, not that I'm experiencing signs of premature senility, thank you.
Now, I’m pissed. You can give me the finger all you want, but don’t get me rear-ended. I pull up beside her to say something. (Yeah, I'm immature, and no, I wouldn't have done it except she looked too dimwitted to have any idea of how to fire a gun.) She’s laughing and giving me the finger again. Yeah, moron, it’s hilarious, potentially causing a big traffic pileup because you’re too stupid and self-absorbed to get off the phone and drive.
Some people lose all ability to reason when they encounter an assclown like this. I just go for my digital camera -- just a little too late, in this case, to get a nice full-face shot of her giving me the finger. Nevertheless, I did find it immensely satisfying when she noticed I was photographing her and tried hard to hide her face.
No, even that didn’t make her get off the phone. Now, I wasn’t about to go out of my way to follow her, but as it happened, she was going my way, and she was in front of me! Oops, you picked a live one, Gertie! (Really, though, can you tangle anybody less menacing than a girl in a 1900 lb. hybrid with a tiny Yorkie with a pink bow sitting in her lap?)
Hoping to lose me, she swerved right into my neighorhood -- the home streets I know very, very well. I followed behind her for a few blocks, but kids were coming home from school, and I didn’t want my picture on the news next to that of some dead six-year-old, so I let her slip away.
Do you know this woman? (Brown hair, below the shoulder, a dolphin on the rear-view mirror of her Jetta, might live somewhere around Superba or Venezia in Venice.) Because somebody should call her mommy, and after bitching the lady out for raising such a cur of a daughter, they should tell her to take her little girl’s telephone privileges away before some innocent person gets hurt. At the very least, if you know this chick, let her know her assholishness has been immortalized on my blog -- the first of a series, I'm sure.
When They Say Birth Control, They Mean Birth Control
The state of Virginia makes a man wait 30 days to have a vasectomy...by state law!
I don't normally post stuff about myself on the blog, but this has me so pissed off that I simply cannot help myself.My wife and I have been married for over four years and long ago decided that we do not want to have children. As such, we decided that it was wise for me to get a vasectomy. I was more than willing to do so and, after getting a referral from my doctor, made an appointment for a consultation with a urologist/surgeon who is going to perform the procedure.
All went well until the end, when I was informed that under Virginia law, I was required to wait one month to have the vasectomy because I did not already have children and then had to sign a waiver stating that I was now aware that I could not have the procedure for at least 30 days.
...It is not like my wife and I made this decision on a whim, so why does the state of Virginia feel it has any right to force me to wait one month in order to rethink our decision not to have children?
He connects it to the religious nutwads. Speculation on his part, yes. But, read this crap he linked to by Al Mohler, who's convinced he knows the way for the rest of us:
The church should insist that the biblical formula calls for adulthood to mean marriage and marriage to mean children. This reminds us of our responsibility to raise boys to be husbands and fathers and girls to be wives and mothers. God's glory is seen in this, for the family is a critical arena where the glory of God is either displayed or denied. It is just as simple as that.The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion. To demand that marriage means sex--but not children--is to defraud the creator of His joy and pleasure in seeing the saints raising His children. That is just the way it is. No kidding.
If you don't think this and other such hog slop is the goal of a number -- perhaps a large number -- of the Republicans in Congress, you're deluding yourself.
Big Tobacco, Miniscule Fine
The government goes for $10 billion instead of $130 billion, writes Carol D. Leonnig, in the Washington Post:
As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.Before it was cut, the cessation program was the most significant financial penalty still available to the government as part of its litigation, which had been the largest civil racketeering and conspiracy case in U.S. history. The government contended that six tobacco companies engaged in a 50-year conspiracy to defraud and addict smokers and then conceal the dangers of cigarettes.
No! Really?
Sources and government officials close to the case said the trial lawyers wanted to request $130 billion for smoking-cessation programs but were pressured by leaders in the attorney general's office, particularly McCallum, to make the cut. Arguments within the Justice Department continued behind the scenes through yesterday morning, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the controversy over the matter.When the case began in 2004, the government sought to force the tobacco industry to pay $280 billion in allegedly ill-gotten profits. But in February, a federal appeals court ruled that the administration could not seek that penalty.
Michael Fiore, the government expert who recommended $130 billion for cessation programs, is a medical professor and director of a tobacco research center who chaired the subcommittee on tobacco cessation in the Department of Health and Human Services' Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health.
...The strength of the government's case hinged on a large collection of internal tobacco company documents, many of which were never before made public. The government began its case in September by showing on an oversize projection screen the written memos of tobacco executives and scientists as they described their plans to keep customers in the dark about whether their habit was addictive or dangerous and to encourage young people to smoke.
...Lead government attorney Sharon Eubanks had summed up the trial early yesterday, saying the government had proved the industry engaged in a "decades-long pattern of . . . misrepresentations, half-truths, deceptions and lies that continue to this day."
Tobacco company executives should be jailed, not just fined, and the companies should be run into the ground to pay the cost of everything from emphysema to lung cancer, including big bucks for pain and suffering. What do you want to bet this is the most costly public health issue of our time?
via Metafilter
Oops! I Guess It Was God's Day Off.
...or, all you believers out there...was this "god's will"? Can't have it both ways, now can you? I particularly love the one -- and I believe Goddyss pointed it out to me -- where the little Florida girl who got raped and buried thanked god for not letting her die. Well, if that's god's doing, he's kind of a nasty mofo, huh? "Okay on the rape...nix on the snuffing. Next!"
(In case you can't read the sign, it says: "Butch, My Intelligent, Happy Boy. Do You Like Your New Life In Heaven? At Least, There Nobody Can Poison You Twice. We Miss You, Butch!")
And That's Snot All
Along with the hundreds of requests for love advice I get every week, I get a few requests for information on becoming an advice columnist:
Hi Amy my name is Kizzy, and I am interested in information on becoming a advice columnist, something like Ask Kizzy, what do I do to get started, is it a entrprneur thing or a small business thing and how do you go about getting paid for it, I need and information possible, thanks in advance.
My response:
You need wisdom first. Sorry, but other than that, I don't give advice on becoming an advice columnist. My priority is answering letters requesting love advice. Hope you understand.
Naturally, she doesn't:
first off you didnt have to be so rude, i know you dont want the fear of competition, and that was not my intent, i just wanted some basic advice, but looks like youre not good at that either...
Sigh. Bad idea:
Clearly, I was right that you lack the requisite wisdom, as your response to my polite reply that I devote myself to answering letters for love advice was to make a crack that I'm "not good" at what I do. You should read Krishnamurti's Freedom From The Known, so you learn a little more about what it means to behave with such hostility.Again, I repeat my suggestion that gaining wisdom should be tops on your list. Also, you might watch the unsupported allegations, such as my being afraid of competition, as this reflects irrationality and immaturity on your part. I don't want to help the competition -- why should I? -- but let's just say as a snotty, hostile, ungrateful teenager, you're not it.
PS The correct response to my response would have been "thanks anyway." And maybe even a "best wishes." Moreover, your letter was lazily written and lacks attention to proper spelling and grammar, which further reflects the lack of generosity of spirit, sense of entitlement, and lack of etiquette I see in both your emails.
Yes, like Kizzy, I'm also somewhat lacking in maturity, wisdom, and restraint, but, occasionally, I do like to revel in that.
Well, That Should Do It!
Ronald McDonald is promoting fitness for kids...which is kind of like using god to promote rationality for adults.
God'll take decaf, thank you.
In this week's mail, a guy writes:
"My minister said God said to wait until you get married to have sex..."
Oh, did god drop by your minister's place for a cigarette and an espresso? What else did he whisper in your minister's ear? Was there anything truly useful, like next week's winning lottery numbers, or maybe some news on whether the housing bubble will burst, and, if so, when?
Are You Well-Hung?
Of course, that's a matter that's between you and...airport security? Well, it will be very soon, it seems, according to Joe Sharkey's business travel column in The New York Times:
I am looking at a copy of an ad that ran in the back of comic books in the 1950s and early 1960s. "X-Ray Specs! See Thru Clothing!" blares the copy, which is illustrated with a cartoon of a drooling geek wearing the amazing toy goggles and leering at a shapely woman.
Now, any kid with half a brain knew that X-Ray Specs were a novelty gag that didn't really work. But time marches on and technology makes the impossible possible. Stand by, air travelers, because the U.S. Homeland Security Department is preparing to install and test high-tech machines at airport checkpoints that will, as the comic-book ads promised, "See Thru Clothing!"
Get ready for electronic portals known as backscatters, expected to be tested at a handful of airports this year, that use X-ray imaging technology to allow a screener to scan a body. And yes, the body image is detailed. Let's not be coy here, ladies and gentlemen:
"Well, you'll see basically everything," said Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate and technology consultant. "It shows nipples. It shows the clear outline of genitals."
The only thing it can't spot, according to one security expert, is weapons people hide between rolls of flab. Oops! I guess that's something the Homeland Security geniuses shoulda thunk of before they invested in a pile of expensive machinery! (Then again, it's only taxpayer expense we're talking about.)
I'm sorry to say I can't be even a tiny bit optimistic about the TSA getting smarter or more efficient. At this point, they can't even get it together to tape up hand-written signs on typing paper, telling you to hang onto your boarding pass while you go through the metal detector. How many times do they have to hear, "Oh, I had no idea, it's in my carry-on" and watch the line back up into another county until that idea occurs to them as well?
And A Big Fuck You To Cancer Patients
...and people in excruciating pain across the United States from the Supreme Court.
Primates In Platform Boots
No sooner do you give a monkey currency than it's paying for sex. Yep, Freakonomics authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Leavitt write about Keith Chen's monkey research, and whaddya know:
Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)This is a sensitive subject. The capuchin lab at Yale has been built and maintained to make the monkeys as comfortable as possible, and especially to allow them to carry on in a natural state. The introduction of money was tricky enough; it wouldn't reflect well on anyone involved if the money turned the lab into a brothel. To this end, Chen has taken steps to ensure that future monkey sex at Yale occurs as nature intended it.
But these facts remain: When taught to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple incentives; responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex. In other words, they behaved a good bit like the creature that most of Chen's more traditional colleagues study: Homo sapiens.
Iraq & Roll, Sudan & Silence
Nicholas Kristof reminds President Bush, who seemed so concerned about human rights violations in Iraq, that there's genocide in them thar Sudanese hills. Oh, right!
Bush finally let the word Darfur pass his lips on Wednesday, after 142 days of silence, but only during a photo op. Such silence amounts to acquiescence, for this policy of rape flourishes only because it is ignored. I'm still chilled by the matter-of-fact explanation as to why it is women who collect firewood, even though they're the ones who are raped. It's an indication of how utterly we are failing the people of Darfur, two years into the first genocide of the 21st century. "It's simple," one woman here explained. "When the men go out, they're killed. The women are only raped."
Odd how our interest in human rights seems to coincide so neatly with our interest in oil wells.
Disrespecting The Koran
From Dr. Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute:
Muslims demand that non-Muslims show respect for the Koran. But does the Koran deserve our respect?Some argue that it doesn’t because on 9/11 the murder of 3,000 Americans was committed in its name. Others, including our President and government, argue that bin Laden and his henchmen misinterpret the Koran and have “hijacked a great religion.”
Neither side grasps that there is a fundamental standard by which to permanently decide the question of respect for the Koran. Above all else the Koran--and it is certainly not unique in this regard--demands that all human beings surrender their reason and submit to faith, i.e., to the acceptance of an idea in the absence of perceptual evidence or rational proof. On this basis alone the Koran should be rejected by all human beings--because surrendering one’s reason is the very essence and cause of human depravity and evil.
In other words, how about a little disrespect for all books that require the rejection of reason for belief? Hey, you believers out there, surely you'd sneer at some third world person who believed in what their witch doctor told them to think -- like, that there's a sun god or a toe god, or that marrying two giant toads will make it rain.
So, why is belief in what your rabbi or minister told you to think, also without any evidence, any more sensible? Irrational belief in god is what causes prohibitions against stem cell research and gays getting equal rights -- and gets people flying planes into buildings and sending their 16-year-olds out to be blown up. Oh, will they get 72 virgins upon death? Right. Easy to believe that -- and all other sorts of irrational crap -- after you make the leap to believing in god without proof.
Take away belief in god, and there goes the TSA, getting to the airport hours and hours ahead of time, and our reason for war in the middle east, to name just a few. If nutbags didn't believe in god, the middle east would probably be a center of commerce, science, and industry instead of a center of death and repression, and, in our own patch of the planet, we'd probably have cures for more diseases and a lot less sexual repression. Instead, we've got people in Congress arguing according to the direction of their witch doctors. Does it get sicker or more primitive?
Austin Powered
Flying home from the Human Behavior & Evolution conference in Austin, TX. More blog items from the airport or later. P.S. If the spirit of this posting seems tolerant or religion-friendly, that was not intended. Photo by Gregg Sutter.
Tom Cruise, Post-Partum Depression Expert
Scientology freak Cruise slams Brooke Shields for using Paxil to overcome postpartum depression:
Cruise, who claims to have helped people fight drug addictions through his controversial Scientology religion, says the Suddenly Susan actress should have used vitamins to help her feelings of despair.Cruise says, "Here is a woman, and I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented woman. You look at, where has her career gone?"
Despite the Minority Report actor's declaration her career is over, Shields is currently receiving rave reviews playing murderess Roxie Hart in the London theatre production of Chicago.
Cruise maintains, "These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off.
"When you talk about postpartum, you can take people today, women, and what you do is you use vitamins. There is a hormonal thing that is going on, scientifically, you can prove that. But when you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that.
"You can use vitamins to help a woman through those things."
Thanks, Tom. Like it's smart to take a couple of B12s at the advice of some movie star when you alternately want to die and find yourself dreaming of seeing your baby hurled against a wall. Brooke jabs back at "doctor" Cruise:
Tom should stick to saving the world from aliens," she tells People magazine, referring to his upcoming film "War of the Worlds," "and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them."
And maybe on the advice of people who have actually gone through some medical training, not those who simply go around with a bunch of pamphlets promoting a cult and a "clearing" machine with a long red hose, which he brought to Athens, NY, when he was shooting War Of The Worlds and kept in his hotel room...where we stayed a few weeks ago -- at Stewart House. Thanks, but I'll take better living through chemistry. Taking Ritalin has changed my life. It helps me focus well enough, for example, to write blog items about moron actors who take it upon themselves to give medical advice based on their wacky cult affiliation.
Why Seesaws Are Disappearing From Playgrounds In LA
My friend Jim McCarthy, of Goldstar Events, tells me that playgrounds have become mollycoddling grounds, with cushy groundcover (I don't have so much of a problem with that -- we had sand) and a disappearance of items kids could possibly get hurt playing on. I don't know about you, but one fall after doing something dumb was a very good teacher for me -- during the years my bones were a little more elastic than they are now.
These days, says Jim, they don't even have seesaws. Why? Because kids "might not cooperate well enough to use them." Well, maybe they could learn cooperative skills just like we did! Another example of this is the trend against correcting in red ink that's popping up in schools. One of my favorite debunkers of feminist lies and reasons to whine, Christina Hoff Sommers, writes in USA Today:
Purple is replacing red as the color of choice for teachers. Why, you may ask? It seems that educators worry that emphatic red corrections on a homework assignment or test can be stressful, demeaning — even "frightening" for a young person. The principal of Thaddeus Stevens Elementary in Pittsburgh advises teachers to use only "pleasant-feeling tones."Major pen manufacturers appear to agree. Robert Silberman, vice president of marketing at Pilot Pen, says teachers "are trying to be positive and reinforcing rather than harsh." Michael Finn, a spokesperson for Paper Mate, approves: "This is a kinder, more gentle education system." Which color is best for children? Stephen Ahle, principal at Pacific Rim Elementary in Carlsbad, Calif., offers lavender "because it is a calming color."
A calmer, gentler grading color? Are schoolchildren really so upset by corrections in primary red? Why have teachers become so careful?
Maybe if it feels like crap to see all those red corrections you'll work a little harder next time? Hoff Sommers explains further:
It seems that many adults today regard the children in their care as fragile hothouse flowers who require protection from even the remote possibility of frustration, disappointment or failure. The new solicitude goes far beyond blacklisting red pens. Many schools now discourage or prohibit competitive games such as tag or dodge ball. The rationale: too many hurt feelings. In May 2002, for example, the principal of Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, Calif., sent a newsletter to parents informing them that children could no longer play tag during the lunch recess. As she explained, "In this game, there is a 'victim' or 'It,' which creates a self-esteem issue."
Oh, please. Guess what, lady? Life is just full of them: Victims, "It"s, and self-esteem issues -- especially of those who've never had to learn the hard lessons because idiots like you gave them soft landing grounds their whole lives.
PS Goldstar offers half-price (and sometimes free) theater tickets -- and to some very good stuff -- to people who live in LA, San Francisco, Orange County, Silicon Valley, San Diego, Las Vegas, and soon, in Chicago.
God's Gift To The Ignorant
That would be creationism, writes Richard Dawkins, and the morons trying to wedge it into the curriculum in Kansas and other places, as if it has some validity:
The creationists’ fondness for “gaps” in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.
I'm in Austin, Texas, right now, at the yearly Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference. I believe there's T-Mobile at the hotel, so I'll try to live-blog from a few of the sessions. First is Martin Daly and Margo Wilson on impulsivity: how we "discount the future" and think it's in our interest to gamble or commit crimes. But, I'm really looking forward to UCLA's Martie Haselton, talking on "sexual regret." My only regret right now is that you can't see the hundreds of bats dotting the sky in this photo.
You'll just have to trust me that they're high-tailing it over the bridge.
I'm sure there's some sort of "evolution of group psychology" explanation for why I actually followed Alan Kugel and Catherine Salmon out to "The World's Largest Urban Bat Colony." Either that or I have a very high fever.
Unsafe At Any Term
Finally, it's safe to like Ralph Nader again. He's calling for Bush's impeachment, and Cheney's, too, in this Boston Globe piece, written with Kevin Zeese:
THE IMPEACHMENT of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.Minutes from a summer 2002 meeting involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal that the Bush administration was ''fixing" the intelligence to justify invading Iraq. US intelligence used to justify the war demonstrates repeatedly the truth of the meeting minutes -- evidence was thin and needed fixing.
President Clinton was impeached for perjury about his sexual relationships. Comparing Clinton's misbehavior to a destructive and costly war occupation launched in March 2003 under false pretenses in violation of domestic and international law certainly merits introduction of an impeachment resolution.
Eighty-nine members of Congress have asked the president whether intelligence was manipulated to lead the United States to war. The letter points to British meeting minutes that raise ''troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war." Those minutes describe the case for war as ''thin" and Saddam as ''nonthreatening to his neighbors," and ''Britain and America had to create conditions to justify a war." Finally, military action was ''seen as inevitable . . . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Indeed, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor any imminent threat to the United States:
The International Atomic Energy Agency Iraq inspection team reported in 1998, ''there were no indications of Iraq having achieved its program goals of producing a nuclear weapon; nor were there any indications that there remained in Iraq any physical capability for production of amounts of weapon-usable material." A 2003 update by the IAEA reached the same conclusions.
The CIA told the White House in February 2001: ''We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has . . . reconstitute[d] its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Colin Powell said in February 2001 that Saddam Hussein ''has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."
The CIA told the White House in two Fall 2002 memos not to make claims of Iraq uranium purchases. CIA Director George Tenet personally called top national security officials imploring them not to use that claim as proof of an Iraq nuclear threat.
Regarding unmanned bombers highlighted by Bush, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center concluded they could not carry weapons spray devices. The Defense Intelligence Agency told the president in June 2002 that the unmanned aerial bombers were unproven. Further, there was no reliable information showing Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons or whether it had established chemical agent production facilities.
When discussing WMD the CIA used words like ''might" and ''could." The case was always circumstantial with equivocations, unlike the president and vice president, e.g., Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002: ''Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
What do you think was their motivation for lying?