The Countryside On 59th Street
Wake Up Before We're All Under Water
Unless you're listening to the fundanutters who think they can just use up the earth before "The Rapture," or to politicians so deep in the pockets of people who'd like to continue business as usual, and damn the cost to the environment...you might actually believe what the scientists are saying -- that global warming is a real problem.
Wired's Mark Anderson interviews Elizabeth Kolbert, author of a three-part New Yorker series on climate change, asking her where we're headed, and how grim it's looking to those in the know:
Wired News: Many people seem to think that climate change is an issue involving a few scientists, not society as a whole. But your book makes it clear that climate change is more than just a science story.Elizabeth Kolbert: I really tried to impress upon people ... how we cannot wait. Even now, as global warming is starting to be made manifest in the world, we have determined the climate now for the next half-century. We will not see the full effects of what we have done for decades. (NASA climate scientist) James Hansen said, if we continue on this path, then by the end of this century, we will have committed ourselves to a world that is so warm as to be practically a different planet.
WN: Isn't part of the problem that people associate "warm" with comfortable?
Kolbert: People think, "I won't have to go to Florida anymore. Florida will come to me." People should realize that warmth doesn't mean Florida. It means New York is underwater. It may be that certain places like Siberia are more comfy, but it also means that they have no water. If people say, "Why should I be worried about global warming?" I think the answer is, "Do you like to eat?"
WN: You talk about David Rind's work -- predicting rampant drought conditions afflicting much of the continental United States within 50 years if greenhouse gas emissions continue at business-as-usual levels.
Kolbert: (In the book) he says that, "I wouldn't be surprised if by 2100 most things are destroyed." But he's certainly a very cool guy, not a hysterical person. He's a scientist, and he's just looking at the evidence.
WN: On the other hand, sometimes societal change can happen very quickly. Hit a social tipping point, and suddenly everything's different. And that could be a very good thing.
Kolbert: I think you do see out there in the world ... an increasing awareness. We here in the Northeast just barely had a winter. I think that anyone who has lived through the past winters certainly has been given pause. So we're starting to see the argument that "there's nothing going on" dissipating.
Then you get to the second question, and that's what are we going to do about it? If you want to be really brutally honest, this is not a problem that can be solved. The warming that we've seen so far is estimated to be only half of what (the CO2 already in the atmosphere will cause). It's a problem that you can only say, "In order to prevent this from becoming absolutely catastrophic, perhaps we can do this." But that (is) going to take a monumental effort.
Kolbert talks more about her series here. And here's her book on the subject, Field Notes On A Catastrophe.
The Powerlessness Of Prayer
Mean Amy must break all you "belieivers" yet another bit of bad news. When people say their prayers are with you, they mean well, but it's not going to do a damn thing for whatever the problem is. Benedict Carey writes in The New York Times of a study that shows that prayers not only didn't benefit people undergoing heart surgery, the announcement that they were having mental voodoo performed in their behalf seemed to do some detriment:
Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.
Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.
The question has been a contentious one among researchers. Proponents have argued that prayer is perhaps the most deeply human response to disease, and that it may relieve suffering by some mechanism that is not yet understood. Skeptics have contended that studying prayer is a waste of money and that it presupposes supernatural intervention, putting it by definition beyond the reach of science.
At least 10 studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out in the last six years, with mixed results. The new study was intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. The report was scheduled to appear in The American Heart Journal next week, but the journal's publisher released it online yesterday.
Go outside and appreciate a tree. Sitting around praying is a waste of time. Just think about the people it doesn't help. An example I've given before: Your four-year-old dies horribly in an accident while another four-year-old, of the people next door, manages to live. You pray, her parents pray, what does it mean, that your prayers are shit? No, it means that life is random, and sometimes your four-year-old is sitting closer to the point of impact than the neighbors' kid. No voodoo. Just physics and maybe a faulty car seat.
Tempting "Pen" Pal Request Of The Week
Thanks, but I already have a car thief in my life, and he sends me checks. Well, he eventually does when I call him and scream at him, but ours has always been challenging relationship.
Irrationality Lane
We're all glad, I'm sure, for the one miner who lived through the Sago mine ordeal, but it isn't a "miracle," that he did, but something that's explainable by biology or where he was situated in the mine. Yet, this story on CNN.com:
Randy McCloy, the only survivor of a January accident that killed 12 coal miners, left a Morgantown, West Virginia, hospital Thursday to recover at his home on newly named Miracle Road."I would just like to thank everybody for their thoughts and prayers," he said softly before leaving the hospital with his wife, son and brother-in-law for his home in Simpson.
Anna McCloy thanked the doctors who treated her husband after he was pulled from the Sago Mine barely alive.
"Our family is glad to be going home," she said. "Today is another part of our miracle, just three months after the accident. However, there are 12 families who are in our thoughts and prayers today and every day."
At the hospital, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin also announced that the street leading to McCloy's house is being renamed Miracle Road and presented him with a green sign bearing the name.
"West Virginia does believe in miracles," Manchin said.
Randy McCloy, 26, and 12 other miners were trapped underground after an explosion in the Sago Mine near Tallmansville.
The other miners died in the explosion or from carbon monoxide poisoning.
According to The Associated Press, McCloy said Wednesday that was still mystified as to how he was the only man to survive the blast and will try to forget those hours after the accident.
"I try to leave out all the gory details and stuff like that because I don't like to look at them in that light and that way," he told the AP. "I just like to picture them saved and in heaven, stuff like that."
You may want to picture them that way, but the truth is, they're decomposing. It's okay, perhaps, for kids to believe in Santa for a little while, but isn't it kind of pathetic when adults do the equivalent?
Why is it helpful to believe what the evidence tells us -- that people become dinner for worms -- not that they go on to "something better"? Well, for starters, because if you think that way, you might live as I do -- as if every day could be your last.
Yes, it's hard to have a friend die on you, especially in horrible circumstances. It happened to me with my friends Marlowe and Marnye, but I have no illusions as to where they are.
To many, it probably seems I'm too picky in going after stuff like this, but it's all part and parcel of the general stupidity that makes up the religious orientation of our society -- and that of the more violent whack jobs who want to kill us because we don't believe in their particular Imaginary Friend.
Parents Are Smarter Than Government Policy
At least, in San Antonio, where, in a survey, 80 percent of the parents of low-income students were for teaching their children about condoms and birth control "as early as middle school years," writes Cindy Tumiel in the Express-News:
As Bexar County continues to suffer one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, local health educators find themselves in the crosshairs of a passionate debate over what to teach children about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.Abstinence is the core message of all school-based sex education programs, in line with the Texas Education Code. But the state leaves it up to local school districts to decide whether to teach students about birth control and condoms, and at what grade level to introduce that information.
..."What we found is the vast majority of parents really want us to include positive information about contraceptives and condoms," said Realini, the lead author of the study.
Parents were asked to choose between "abstinence-only," which covers only the failure rates of condoms and contraceptives, and "abstinence plus," which teaches about the benefits of condoms and contraceptives as well as their failure rates.
The city's three largest districts — Northside, San Antonio and North East — all include abstinence-plus programs at high school-level health classes.
The result showed 80 percent of parents favored an abstinence-plus curriculum, 13 percent favored abstinence only and 7 percent wanted neither.
"I think that is telling — they want the schools to provide their children with information," said Northside parent Julie Eversol, who sits on the district's health curriculum advisory committee.
But Sylvia Enriquez, a parent who lives in San Antonio ISD, said the lessons should begin at home. "For some kids, it's easier to get the information from school than from their parents."
School district officials interviewed Friday said they didn't think the small study would have much influence on their policies.
I'm not surprised that parents turn out to be a lot more sensible about their children than fundamentalism-driven state policy. What do they really care about, fundamentalist goals -- or not seeing their daughter knocked up or their son a daddy at 15?
More on this from a (free) feature in The Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Bernstein:
Schools and other groups that accept the federal funding have to promote abstinence and play down the effectiveness of contraception. In January, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services effectively tightened its restrictions on what abstinence courses can teach. In a request for grant applications, new and detailed guidelines said that an acceptable curriculum should include teaching about "the potential psychological side effects (e.g., depression and suicide) associated with adolescent sexual activity" and stress points such as the following: "Non-marital sex in teen years may reduce the probability of a stable, happy marriage as an adult" and "Teen sexual activity is associated with decreased school completion, decreased educational attainment and decreased income potential."These statements "misuse" scientific data, says John Santelli, a professor of pediatrics and of population and family health at Columbia University, as well as a former official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There may be some truth to the associations they draw, but their conclusions are confused," he says.
...Sex education has long been a subject of controversy. But the current debate is turning into the latest culture-war issue to play out in the nation's classrooms. While the fight over whether to teach intelligent design in schools has received a lot of attention, the battle over sex ed may become even more heated. On one side, parents are challenging school boards and lobbying for legislation supporting comprehensive sex-ed programs.
Other groups that support the abstinence approach are urging states to further limit sex ed. Earlier this month, Kansas's board of education recommended to local school districts that teachers secure written permission from parents before students attend sex-ed classes. Some state legislatures are considering bills that would circumscribe the teaching of sex ed: A bill in South Dakota seeks to prevent any instruction in the use of contraceptives in sex-ed classes. A bill under consideration in Missouri would prohibit groups that provide abortions from teaching sex ed in the schools, effectively banning organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
...Sue Briss heard in the fall of 2004 that her daughter's school, Shamrock Middle School, in Decatur, Ga., was offering a sex-education course that winter, and she began talking to other parents. Some parents formed a group, Georgia Parents for Responsible Health Education, and researched the program. They felt "it was fear and shame based," she said. "There's nothing in there talking about sex as a natural part of a healthy loving relationship."
The program had been developed by an abstinence nonprofit. After the parents sent a representative to meet with a school administrator, the school found the curriculum hadn't gone through the normal approval process and agreed not to teach it. The controversy "made us think about and analyze sexuality education issues," says Crawford Lewis, superintendent of the Dekalb County School System. "It increased our awareness."
Very Fugging Funny
Am I deeply superficial or superficially deep? (Don't answer that.) But, do look at this week's fabulously funny fug:
This is the incarnation of Bobby Trendy that makes the entire wormhole collapse in on itself, because I think this is actually Bobby Trendy dressed up as Bai Ling dressing up as Bobby Trendy.
The War On A Metaphor
Gary Hart and Joyce Appleby write that the Bush administration's executive branch power-grab is really getting out of hand:
George W. Bush and his most trusted advisers, Richard B. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, entered office determined to restore the authority of the presidency. Five years and many decisions later, they've pushed the expansion of presidential power so far that we now confront a constitutional crisis.Relying on legal opinions from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Professor John Yoo, then working in the White House, Bush has insisted that there can be no limits to the power of the commander-in-chief in time of war. More recently the president has claimed that laws relating to domestic spying and the torture of detainees do not apply to him. His interpretation has produced a devilish conundrum.
President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the "war on terror" is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this "war" can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution.
When President Nixon covertly subverted checks and balances 30 years ago during the Vietnam War, Congress passed laws making clear that presidents were not to engage in unconstitutional behavior in the interest of "national security." Then Congress was reacting to violation of Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures without judicial warrants establishing "probable cause," attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and surveillance of American citizens.
Now the Iraq war is being used to justify similar abuses. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, providing constitutional means to carry out surveillance, and the Intelligence Identification Protection Act, protecting the identity of undercover intelligence agents, have both been violated by an administration seeking to restore "the legitimate authority of the presidency," as Cheney puts it.
The presidency possesses no power not granted to it under the Constitution. The powers the current administration seeks in its "war on terror" are not granted under the Constitution. Indeed, they are explicitly prohibited by acts of Congress.
There Was More To The Lincoln Assassination Than Just Lincoln
Fascinating piece by Andrew Gumbel in the Independent:
Most people will remember that Abraham Lincoln was the first US president to be assassinated, that he was shot at close range in his box at a Washington theatre, and that his assassin was John Wilkes Booth, a sympathiser with the confederate South who had been left aghast by the outcome of the recently concluded Civil War.What may not be so familiar, at least to non-specialists on this side of the Atlantic, are some of the other hair-raising details of the assassination plot. It was not just Lincoln, but the whole top echelon of the government that was targeted on the night of 14 April 1865. William Seward, the secretary of state, was viciously knifed in his own bed and came close to perishing nine days after he almost died in a horse-and-carriage accident. Andrew Johnson, the vice-president and eventual successor to Lincoln, would have been shot in his Washington hotel had his designated attacker not chickened out at the last moment. Ulysses Grant, the commander of the victorious Union army and future president, was originally scheduled to join Lincoln in his box at Ford's Theatre and might not have survived had he kept the appointment.
The whole episode was, in many respects, an eerie foreshadowing of what happened to the US almost a century and a half later on 11 September 2001. The country quickly realised it was under devastating attack, but did not immediately know who the attackers were, on whose behalf, if anyone, they were acting, or how much more they had planned after the initial strike. Fear and paranoia gripped the nation, as wild rumours spread of a reconstituted confederate army rising again, of dastardly plots to spread germ warfare (by the dissemination of clothing infected with yellow fever) or to poison the water supply of New York City.
Hundreds of people suspected of approving of the assassination were set upon, beaten or even killed by angry mobs. Lincoln, a controversial leader throughout his tenure - not least because of his willing suspension of habeas corpus and other core constitutional rights in his prosecution of the war - was suddenly elevated to the status of a secular saint, a transformation at least a little reminiscent of George Bush's sudden, if much more shortlived, surge in opinion polls four and a half years ago.
The rest of the story is at the link above.
The Latest In Scam Emails
I got this email, addressed to a guy at the Detroit News as well, at my address. A new way to separate fools and their money:
U.S Consulate General
387 Wichayanond Road
Chiang Mai 50300,Thailand
Dear client,
Congratulations,you have been selected as one of the lucky winners of the US VISA through our internet email extracting and screening machine,your application was applied and processed by our internet email extracting and screening machine which randomly extracts and scans millions of email adresses across the world.
This Special visa programme is new and was innovated by the US embassy in Kuala lumpur Malaysia last year november.The US Consulate in Chiang Mai launched the programme this year november,the programme is designed to be held every year ending.The aim and objectives of the programme is to give free visas to citizens of developing countries around the world to enable them travel to the US and start a new life and work.The Chiang Mai consulate released 12 visas in this regards and hopes to increase the visa number to 24 by late next year,you are among the 12 lucky people that won the visa and among the 5 foreigners that won the visa,7 visas were won by Thai nationals.
Your visa winner's identity is:MM-52047 and your serial net visa passport with us is:JM-102648,your visa type permits you to travel with your family.Your visa duration is 10 years multiple entry to the U.S,it is renewable upon expiration and it permits you to work,study and own properties in the US.
In this respect you are directed to forward the following requirements for the immediate processing of your visa certificate and acknowledgement card:
1.Write in full your office and residential adress.
2.Scanned copies of your recent passport photograph,members of your family passport photograph should be included if you have family members that wants to travel with you.
3.Scanned copies of your/members of your family international passport and i.d card,your family members above the age of 16 requires seperate international passports for travel.
4.Clearance and acceptance fee:U.S$1,015(One thousand fifteen dollars)only.This fee should be paid through an account of the designated agent and NOT by western union money transfer.
Providing the above requirements will assure you your visa certificate/acknowledgement card and visa security pin code which we shall scan to your email adress.With the visa certificate/acknowledgement card and pincode we shall send to you,the U.S embassy in your home country or your country of residence will stamp the 10 years multiple entry visa on your/members of your family international passport within 3 working days immediately you present these documents to them because the Chiang mai Cosulate has confirmed your visa,all they will do is to log in to the U.S Immigration network database and key in your visa pincode there they will find your visa winning details.
My Suitcase As A Homeless Shelter
I'm in New York for a few days, staying with my friend Cheryl Houser, who produced my Advice Goddess spots for Biography Channel that ran a few years back, and whose family has adopted me as the sixth cast member in their living sitcom. The derelict doll belongs to Sophie, 8, who prefers "the scientific explanation" of how rabbits evolved to the dumb story of how they came to be that she had to read and do a report on for class. My kinda girl!
"Who Moved My Fromage?"
That's the title of a John Tierney column in The New York Times suggesting we export the American self-help industry to France to rescue France from "its self-proclaimed malaise":
Close to a quarter of its young people are unemployed, but they're too busy burning cars to look for jobs. They're protesting a new policy allowing workers under age 26 to be hired for a two-year trial period during which — quelle horreur! — they could be easily fired.This policy, intended to encourage companies to take a chance on inexperienced workers, is being denounced for producing "slave jobs." It would be "like living beneath a guillotine," said Charlotte Billaud, a Sorbonne student.
"We're not disposable — we deserve better," said another student, Aurelie Silan. "Aren't we the future of France?"
Yes, mademoiselle, you are. That's the problem. What kind of college student wants a lifetime employment guarantee for the first job out of school? France's future is a generation of students whose idea of a good career — chosen by 75 percent of them in one poll — is a government job.
The leaders of the French Revolution called for constant daring: "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace." Today's street protesters have another motto: "Contre la Précarité." Against Precariousness!
Lyon-born Emmanuelle Richard writes very insightfully (and bilingually, to boot) on this topic, expressing her irritation that French students are demanding job security instead of fighting to make their society one that creates jobs for a change:
Having never experienced any "job security," which I probably never will even taste, I completely fail to understand this French obsession for the much-coveted CDI (unilimited-length job contract, which makes it very costly to fire you) or for public-service jobs for life. Changing jobs should be less of a headache in a country like France, where your health insurance doesn't depend on your job: here in the U.S., getting fired often means losing the entire family health coverage, which can be a catastrophe (French expat blogger Le Piou describes a typical U.S. job here.) Too much job stability means "velvet coffin" immobility in my view, and it breeds exclusion.While demonstrators in France were replacing the French flag on the Marseille city hall with a banner reading "No to capitalism", U.S. college graduates are facing the best job market since 2001, according to a report by an employment consulting firm quoted by Reuters. "We are approaching full employment and some employers are already dreaming up perks to attract the best talent," said the chief executive of the firm. What a contrast with the unemployment rate of recent college graduates in France, estimated at 23%.
She rounds out her piece with the observation that the French at least get out in the streets and protest policies they disagree with -- while we Americans just sit home and mutter to ourselves.
They're Really Good At Stopping Illegal Cheese
The "Ag" team at airport Customs will probably catch you if you try to bring a wedge of brie into California, but restrict yourself to smuggling in radioactive material and you shouldn't have a problem.
Yes, there we are all stripping naked every day at the airport while the TSA guys wave all the bombs on through, and the "point of entry" people are giving the radioactive materials, and the faked documents accompanying them, the high sign:
To test security at U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, GAO investigators represented themselves as employees of a fake company. When stopped, they presented counterfeit shipping papers and NRC documents that allegedly permitted them to receive, acquire, possess and transfer radioactive substances.Investigators found that customs agents weren't able to check whether a person caught with radioactive materials was permitted to possess the materials under a government-issued license.
"Unless nuclear smugglers in possession of faked license documents raised suspicions in some other way, CBP officers could follow agency guidelines yet unwittingly allow them to enter the country with their illegal nuclear cargo," a report said. It described this problem as "a significant gap" in the nation's safety procedures.
Jayson Ahern, the assistant customs commissioner for field operations, said a system for customs agents to confirm the authenticity of government licenses will be in place within 45 days. Ahern noted the radiation detectors had sounded alarms.
"We're pleased when a test like this is able to demonstrate the efficacy of our technology," Ahern said.
False radiation alarms are common — sometimes occurring more than 100 times a day — although the GAO said inspectors generally do a good job distinguishing nuisance alarms from actual ones. False alarms can be caused by ceramics, fertilizers, bananas and even patients who have recently undergone some types of medical procedures.
At one port — which investigators did not identify — a director frustrated over false alarms was worried that backed-up trains might block the entrance to a nearby military base until an alarm was checked out. The director's solution: simply turn off the radiation detector.
Maybe we should be a little less focused on listening in on everybody's telephone calls, and delving into whether they checked out Charlotte's Web or fed the homeless, and a little more focused on hiring and equipping people to guard the borders?
Homeland Security? What Homeland Security? Are all our dollars going to the mere perception of safety?
War Or Bust!
not the men and women they sent off to war.
Behind closed doors, in the days before the Iraq war, Bush and Blair were two supremely confident frat boys, not knowing the seriousness of what they were getting into. I guess it's not that hard to send other people's kids off to war, and tear up other people's countries -- for some. I felt sick reading the story, especially in light of the stories of the wounded in the Joan Ryan SF Chronicle piece I posted below. Don Van Natta, Jr., writes in The New York Times, of a five page confidential memo that recently came to light in Britain:
While the president's sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.
The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
The bit about the disguised fighter planes (further elaborated later in the article) -- it's just kid stuff. Then there's the "Hey, man, I know, let's take him out!" thing. I was struck, reading this article, how much these two sound like two 8-year-olds playing "fort." Scary. Horrifying. Especially if you're one of the men or women who lost legs -- or more -- in the process.
photo by Gregg Sutter
The Cost Of The War
In human terms. By the SF Chronicle's Joan Ryan:
He was 30 years old, the father of three young boys. He couldn't fathom, when he first saw the flat sheet where his legs should have been, how he would walk again. Now he looked down at his legs, the stumps tucked into the sockets of $50,000 prostheses with computer chips that made adjustments 50 times a second to replicate as closely as possible his natural gait. His sneakers looked enormous, like clown feet, at the ends of the thin titanium rods that served as his calves. He held a cane in each hand, steadying himself as he took one careful step after another. His physical therapist walked by his side."How's that?" the therapist asked.
The left leg's electronic knee had been vibrating and locking up. The therapist had just finished hooking it to his laptop and tapping in new commands to adjust the microprocessor.
"It seems OK now," Michael said, stopping at the metal folding chair where his wife, Carrie, sat.
She was 26, blond, pale-skinned and slight. She wore a T-shirt, capri pants and flip-flops. In the purse she clutched on her lap were her survival tools: her cell phone and her Marlboro Lights. She was up to a pack and a half a day. As soon as she had received the call on Christmas Eve, she dropped her boys off at her parents' mobile home up the road from hers and flew from the tiny Wenatchee airport in central Washington state directly to Washington, D.C.
She found out later that her husband had been conscious after the improvised explosive device blew him out of the Stryker. He was on his back, propped on his elbows, yelling for help. The Stryker's 19-year-old driver, bleeding but not seriously wounded, rushed to Michael. He couldn't be injured too seriously, the young soldier thought, if he was awake and talking. Then he saw Michael's legs.
Michael's first memory after the blast was of seeing Carrie standing over him. He wondered why she was in Iraq. His legs felt as if they were on fire. There were tubes snaking from his arms and an oxygen mask over his mouth. Every part of his body hurt, and later he would learn that the explosion had broken every rib on his left side, ruptured his spleen, collapsed his lungs, burned his hands and torso and cracked open his skull.
Carrie told him he was at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C. He had been in a coma for 12 days. He tried to say "pain," but he couldn't speak. He fell back to sleep.
When he woke again, he saw his father. He was in his red beret and Army jacket, the left sleeve loose over his atrophied arm. The elbow had been shattered in Vietnam. Michael thought he was dreaming. He couldn't feel his toes. He pulled the mask from his mouth.
"Are my legs OK?" he rasped.
"You're going to be fine."
When his father left and Carrie returned, he asked her the same question.
Carrie saw no reason to lie.
"Your legs are gone."
Why I May Have My Eardrums Removed
Ben Stein writes in The New York Times of the ultimate idiocy in recent memory -- the proposal that passengers on airplanes be allowed to use their cell phones throughout the flight:
Now, as everyone who has the misfortune to fly commercially knows, air travel today is mind-bogglingly uncomfortable. The seats are small. The flights are nearly always full to overflowing. The food is unspeakable. The air is fetid and filled with germs. Many a time I board an airliner hale and hearty, only to emerge with a raging pneumonia.But there is one saving grace. Unless you are seated behind or next to really rude people — which happens surprisingly rarely — air travel is fairly quiet. Yes, the flight attendants stand around and talk. Yes, before the plane takes off people scream into their cellphones, but along about three hours into the flight from, say, Kennedy to LAX, it's pretty peaceful.
That's solely because passengers can't use cellphones aloft. That prohibition was one of the great decisions ever. Now, in a fit of idiocy, some airlines are suggesting that they be allowed to sell the use of cellphones in the air at nominal prices. This will mean yelling and screaming and boasting and complaining for almost all the time you're sealed in that sardine can. The government is apparently planning to allow this anarchy.
...It is bad enough to allow cellphone use in a confined space anywhere. But on an airplane flight? No. Some planes already allow use of built-in telephones, but those are so hard to use, so amazingly costly, that they might as well not be there. Virtually unlimited cellphone use in the air will turn a swamp into Armageddon.
Welcome to Hell! Should the loud, dull conversation of the person next to you become too fucking annoying for any sentient human to bear, handguns will drop from the overhead compartment...
The Rage Of Aquarius
There's nothing that makes me want to sock somebody in the jaw like the announcement that they're "spiritual." I just posted a column in which I attack phony spirituality along the way to answering the woman's question.
First, her question:
I’m an acupuncturist, 35, dating again after a difficult divorce and the ensuing custody battle. I’m shocked at how many men either want to see (i.e., sleep with) several women simultaneously or keep me as a geisha to “complement” their pre-existing wives and/or girlfriends. Could the world have changed THAT much during my 10 years exiled in marriage? I’m ready to leap out of the lotus position and wave my hands in the air over this! Are other women experiencing the same thing, or is the grass truly greener on the other side of the Great Wall?
--Spiritual Girl In A Material World
Here's an excerpt from my answer:
A Zen state without the enlightenment is a style statement: grass mats covering the ugly shag, a red plastic Buddha to liven up the coffee table (goes great with the $34.99 Woodstock Desk Gong from Target), and, of course, the obligatory floor pillows -- intricately embroidered, and probably a real steal thanks to child labor!What does being “spiritual” really mean, anyway? For too many people, it’s a sneaky way of announcing how morally and emotionally superior they are to the rest of us; i.e., “I wear hemp, and you’re scum.” And sure, they’re giving some confused little old lady driver the finger -- but note the Sanskrit words for peace, love, and unity henna-tattooed across their knuckles!
Being “spiritual” can also be a great excuse for avoiding the tedious business of rational thought. Take “karma,” the eastern version of the naughty getting snubbed by Santa; the alluring idea that people eventually get what they deserve. Have you ever met a maggot who could definitively say he was Heinrich Himmler in past life?
Chances are, you have met hundreds, even thousands, of men who want commitment-free sex -- sometimes because they’ve already committed to one or more other women. Is the fact that men are into this sort of thing really news to you? If so, where have you been living the past 10 years, under the Great Wall?
Quite frankly, if straight guys could do what gay guys can -- go to a bar and pretty effortlessly snag some no-strings-attached sex -- a lot of them would. All that stands between them and their dream is the fact that they’re into women, most of whom refuse to participate.
Don't kid yourself, it isn't just gay men who are promiscuous. It's all men. But, because most straight women refuse to go to bars, fuck somebody in the bathroom, and be done with them, only gay guys get to act on this. Straight guys shouldn't bother feeling all superior. Believe me, if there were straight bars patterned on gay bars, they'd never sell another Nintendo game to another adult male.
But, enough digression. The rest of my answer to this woman's question is here.
I'm A Right-To-Death-er
I think capital punishment is barbaric. Nobody has the right to take another person's life -- certainly not as punishment for taking another's life! But, what if a person personally wishes to end it all? Shouldn't that be their choice? Karen Armstrong writes in The Guardian of her mother's agonizingly prolongued life -- a life prolongued against her will:
I did not expect the doctors to administer a lethal injection. All she needed was a strong sedative to give her some rest and teach her body to surrender. But for some inexplicable reason this was not allowed. We regularly use medication to help us through life's physical and psychological crises: through childbirth, menopause, bereavement and depression. Why can we not use drugs to educate the body in the alien ways of death? I am sure that I would have had no difficulty procuring antidepressants to get me through my mother's dying, but she herself could have no such help - probably because it smacked of abdication....The nurses who cared for my mother were heroines. She was not an easy patient, but they were unfailingly kind, cheerful, tender, humorous and skilful. But they were clearly baffled by her refusal to eat, because they still desperately wanted to cure her. Yet what could recovery possibly have meant for my mother but appalling years in a nursing home, incontinent, bewildered, incapable of feeding herself, and unable to recognise her visitors?
We are not good at calling a halt to our technological expertise, even when it is in our interests to do so. We have created weapons that can destroy the world, and our greed for progress has perhaps irreparably damaged the planet. If we are able to do something, we feel we should do it. Because they can cure so many diseases, our medical personnel feel obliged to do so at all times. Their passion to save life is wonderful but not always appropriate. To condemn my mother to a living death against her will would have been an act of cruelty.
Of course, there are dangers. Old people must not be pressured into premature death by overwrought relatives. Many sufferers cling desperately to life - and they must be helped to do so. But when somebody has made her wishes clear - as my mother did every time she rejected the feeding cup - this should be respected too.
The religious may argue that she should have submitted to the will of God. But even the most conservative theologians believe that God works through the natural processes and in my mother's case nature was, with the best of intentions, deflected from its course. Without drips and antibiotics, her ordeal would have been over weeks ago. She had to wait until the nurses could no longer find a vein to medicate her and she could die of an awful bowel infection.
Tragically, in our own country, thanks to the religious nutters, Dr. Kevorkian -- a living saint to the rational and humane -- is rotting in a Michigan prison for helping desperately ill people, desperate to die, out of their misery. I've said about prostitution, "it's your body, sell it if you want to." I feel the same way about eggs and sperm, of course. And I think it's your right to die if and when you wish -- and to have help doing so, and without asking that help to risk a life sentence in jail for helping you out of living hell.
"I AM INSUFFERABLE" Was Too Many Words?
I don't know about you, but if I were a cop, I'd stop this driver...just to be sure!
Hate Me, I Suck
Remember when air travel was fun? I flew United to New York on Friday. All I can remember, though, is my rage from Friday morning as I stood for 33 hot, smelly, and irritating minutes in a line a city block long that snaked back and forth, back and forth, dumping travelers at the metal detectors. (Are we safer or just more annoyed?)
When I got through the line, put my bra and underwear back on (just kidding!), and gathered my stuff, there was no time to do anything but go straight to the gate. I got on the plane snarling and grouchy, without breakfast or reading material, as there was no time to buy my usual flight fare (The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The Enquirer) and coffee and a danish.
As a public service to all of you "believers" who make a certain sector of your life off-limits to rational thought, I just want to remind you all why travel has become such a hideous and unpleasant chore:
Come on, if they were all atheists in the Middle East, they'd all be home watching Law & Order or Lost dubbed in Arabic, and maybe inventing an abacus with iTunes instead of coming up with new ways to blow up all the rest of us -- those of us who don't favor their particular brand of Imaginary Friend.
If they weren't so deadly, this would be laughable. These savages are essentially engaged in a death match over whether people should drink Coke or Pepsi. And, check your date-bearing clocks, people -- it's March, 2006. Perhaps it's time for rational thought over religious auto-think. Believe in god? As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
If you've had a coffee klatsch with god, feel free to send jpegs, and I'll post them here. Otherwise, please consider joining the modern age.
Unfortunately, mine is an unpopular viewpoint in America. In fact, it seems atheists are the most hated people in the country:
In a new study by University of Minnesota sociologists, more than 2,000 people were asked which of their fellow citizens lacked the proper "vision of American society."More than blacks or gays or immigrants or lesbians or even Muslims, atheists are viewed as the least American, according to the survey. And those without a god are the last people most folks would want their children to marry.
"Atheists, who account for about 3% of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years," says Penny Edgell, the study's lead researcher.
...Atheists don't demand anything, they don't preach or riot, they have no real organization and they are completely unelectable. Nonetheless, Americans don't trust them.
“It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy – and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell.
Not surprisingly, people who haven’t had much of a life – the majority of Americans – were the most likely to fear atheists.
There's some genius for you. Yeah, it's those of us who don't really care what you do as long as you're not hurting anybody else that you really should be afraid of. And just a reminder, atheism involves an absence of belief in unproven supernatural crap; being an atheist doesn't mean a person is without ethics. In fact, there's a pretty good chance most atheists are more ethical than most people who take the mental shortcuts required to arrive in the existence-of-god zone.
She Tells It Like It Is
Wafa Sultan, the Los Angeles-based Arab-American psychologist -- one of the few who's had the courage to speak out against the primitivism, savagery, and backwardness of so many in the Arab world -- talks at the link above, on tape, on Al Jazeera. She's sending a message in their language (subtitled in English) -- with exceptional courage, passion, and force -- but really, she's speaking ours:
The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
The interviewer cuts in:
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural...
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran...
Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.
[...]
Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.
It's the rare item on the Web that brings me close to tears -- but this is one of them. Here's a woman who's doing her part -- passionately, eloquently, and at great personal peril -- to advance civilization. What have you done for civilization lately? Compared to Wafa Sultan -- what have we all?
(Thanks, Norm.)
Fresh Squeezed
I think the idea that Fashion Week, or fashion in general, is just about clothes is far too limiting. I've always seen my own cars as fashion on the move. Or, in the case of my Rambler, fashion in the auto mechanic's bay. Here's this week's star of the automotive runway:
Up for seconds? Here it is from the front and rear.
Meanwhile, Back At The Raunch...
Finally, somebody bitch-slaps Ariel Levy, author of the book, Feminist Chauvinist Pigs, a rant against "raunch culture," which Levy thinks is "the new women's liberation." Oh, how tiresome. I couldn't bring myself to read more than the reviews of the thing. But, to the rescue comes Kate Taylor, author of A Woman's Guide To Sex, who writes in The Guardian:
In the book, she argues that the recent trend for soft-porn styling in everything from music videos to popular TV is reducing female sexuality to its basest levels. In short: "A tawdry, tarty, cartoon-like version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular."Which is all fair enough, until Levy starts to list the ways in which today's women are allowing their sexuality to be sold short. Thongs, for example. Crop tops. Lap-dancing classes. Maxim and FHM. Playboy T-shirts. The word "chick". Levy thinks raunch culture is a feminist movement gone terribly wrong. We are, in her eyes, doing all these things merely to show the men that we are "one of the guys" and "liberated and rebellious". Naturally, she finds this confusing. "Why is labouring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering?"
The answer is, labouring to look like Pamela Anderson is not empowering. We're not trying to be empowered. The twentysomething women I know don't care about old-style feminism. Partly this is because they already see themselves as equal to men: they can work, they can vote, they can bonk on the first date. For younger women, raunch is not about feminism, it's just about fashion.
Another reason for the rise of raunch is that women are rediscovering the joy of being loved for their bodies, not just their minds. Today sexes mix a lot more than they used to, so boys grow up having girls as friends. They tend to listen to what women have to say, and when they marry they don't consider sharing the housework to be castrating. Instead of desperately longing for the right to be seen as human beings, today's girls are playing with the old-fashioned notion of being seen as sex objects.
This is not terrible news. In fact, to me, this is the ultimate feminist ideal, which Levy would realise if she stopped shouting at MTV for a moment and thought about it. She proclaims that boob jobs and crop tops "don't bring us any closer to the fundamental feminist project of allowing every woman to be her own, specific self". But what if a woman's "own, specific self" is a thong-wearing, Playboy-T-shirted specific self who thinks lap-dancing is a laugh and likes getting wolf-whistled at by builders? What if a woman spends hours in the gym to create a body she is proud of? Is that a waste of time, time she should have spent in a university library? No.
She's exactly right. It's because I don't feel any lack of personal power or power in business that I can wear tight dresses, hot pink lipstick, and high-heeled boots (which I wear pretty much everywhere but the shower). Am I a sex object? I sure hope so. Am I only a sex object? Um...a girl who's as big a bossy/loudmouth/pain-in-the-ass as I am? Unlikely.
"You Lookin' At Me?"
Heh heh...whaddya know, I was walking down Melrose, on my way to meet cartoonist Donna Barstow at Chocolat, when I ran into this half-naked woman on the street corner.
I think her attire is a welcome change from what seems to be the Los Angeles city uniform for too many women: long stringy hair, flip-flops, and sweatpants with a big "Juicy" plastered across the ass.
I dunno about you, but the last thing I want plastered across my hindquarters is the word "Juicy." I don't want to see it on yours, either -- any more than I want to see the words "A Bit Backed Up Today" or "The Metamucil Should Be Working Very Soon." Thanks, but I'll learn that, and all the rest of your private medical information, from your long, loud cell phone calls.
The American Funda-Nut-ocracy
The dangers of the descent into religious nuttism by our country are detailed in The New York Times by Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy, who once saw a Republican government as a "source of stability," but no more:
Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory — that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ("Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath," an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. "You can't ask for better than that.") Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.And while this argument may be somewhat too simplistic to explain the complicated mix of motives behind the war, it is hard to dismiss Phillips's larger argument: that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration — unusually dominated by oilmen — has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels. The United States has embraced a kind of "petro-imperialism," Phillips writes, "the key aspect of which is the U.S. military's transformation into a global oil-protection force," and which "puts up a democratic facade, emphasizes freedom of the seas (or pipeline routes) and seeks to secure, protect, drill and ship oil, not administer everyday affairs."
Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right.
...On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.
Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public.
"Apocalypse? What Apocalypse?" said George Bush. Yeah, right.
UPDATE: Hear or read the transcript of Kevin Phillips on Democracy Now! (Thank you, Lena!)
Drooling While Intoxicated
Texas has found a way to prevent "drunk dialing" and myriad other forms of sloppy, drunken behavior. They're not going to wait for drunks to get behind the wheel. They'll just arrest them between margaritas!
Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission’s Carolyn Beck.
Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.
The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.
...Or get in some designated driver's car and throw up all over the new leather seats.
More Cultural Insensitivity, Please!
I recently posted a column, Nearly Beloved, in which the woman writing to me paralleled a husband's crack about having two wives to a Saudi Arabian's harem. Apparently, I've transgressed some rule of political correctness. A woman posted this comment:
what does saudi arabia and harems have to do with this...? i would really appreciate if we could leave cultural slurs out of unrelated-comments.
I was furious. I responded:
Do harems not exist in Saudi Arabia? If they don't, I'm sorry. But, how about this: Saudi Arabia is one of the more backward countries in the world, and a source of numerous terrorists and numerous barbaric practices and policies. Let's have it all out in the open, let's all talk about it as much as possible. In journalism, this is referred to as "sunshine laws" -- to open information to the public. I'll do a bit of sunshining here, to let you know how idiotically politically correct you are in making a comment like that.Here's how the primitive Saudis treat gays:
http://www.sodomylaws.org/world/saudi_arabia/saudi_arabia.htm
Here's how the primitive Saudis treat women:
http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/mideast/saudi.html
You can keep your lips zipped about the barbarians, but that doesn't mean they'll go away. In fact, information not aired tends to be much more damaging in the long run than information that is. And kudos to the Muslim woman from Los Angeles who recently spoke out about sick Muslim fundamentalism. Let's have more of that. Cultural insensitivity? I'm all for it.
I do, however, have a problem with people who email or post without caps. If you are not 10, and you're clear that I'm not, kindly hit the shift key at the beginning of a sentence.
More Barbarians!
An Afghan man converted from Islam to Christianity, and now he faces the death penalty in Afghanistan for doing it, writes Kim Barker in the Chicago Tribune:
"We will cut him into little pieces," said Hosnia Wafayosofi, who works at the jail, as she made a cutting motion with her hands. "There's no need to see him."Rahman's trial, which started Thursday, is thought to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan. It goes to the heart of the struggle between Islamic reformists and fundamentalists in the country, which is still recovering from 23 years of war and the harsh rule of the Taliban, a radical religious regime that fell in late 2001.
Even under the more moderate government now in power, Islamic law is supposed to be followed, and many believe it requires the death penalty for anyone who leaves Islam for another religion.
"We are Muslim, our fathers were Muslim, our grandfathers were Muslim," said Abdul Manan, Rahman's father, who is 75. "This is an Islamic country. Imagine if your son told a police commander, also a Muslim, that he is a Christian. How would this affect you? It's very difficult for us."
Much of Afghanistan remains conservative and religious. But Islamic rules are violated in Afghanistan every day--whether by alcohol being sold openly on the streets, or by prostitutes who cater to both foreigners and Afghans, or by the booming opium trade.
Many Islamic scholars believe that Muslims who convert from Islam should be killed, but liberal and moderate scholars disagree. One Afghan liberal scholar, Ali Mohaqeq Nasab, spent almost three months in jail last fall after publishing a magazine challenging many traditional views on Islamic law, including the belief that Muslims who convert to other religions deserve to die.
Well, isn't that modern! Sure must make the 18,000 American troops, now in Afghanistan, feel really good!
Oops...sorry, is it "culturally insensitive" for me to say so?
The War On Common Sense
The terrorists have email accounts. It's just our FBI agents who don't:
Budget constraints are forcing some FBI agents to operate without e-mail accounts, according to the agency's top official in New York."As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts," Mark Mershon said when asked about the gap at a New York Daily News editorial board meeting.
"We just don't have the money, and that is an endless stream of complaints that come from the field," he said.
He neglected to mention whether they came in from the field in crayon. But, on the bright side:
FBI officials in Washington denied that cost-cutting was putting agents at a disadvantage.
Shortly after these officials spoke, the bus for learning-disabled children picked them all up and took them to the Quiet Room for milk and cookies and their naps.
Luckily, there's good news on the horizon:
Spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said e-mail addresses are still being assigned, adding that the city bureau's 2,000 employees would all have accounts by the end of the year.
Maybe if we all cross our fingers, click our red shoes together three times, and wish really hard that no bad men sneak into our country...
Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the agency's New York City office, also said that 100 city agents have been given Internet-ready phones such as BlackBerry devices.Christine Monaco, a spokeswoman for the FBI in New York, said Monday that all FBI agents can communicate with each other via a secure internal e-mail system, and about 75 percent of the New York office's employees have outside e-mail accounts.
"The outside e-mail accounts have to be separately funded," she said.
Hmmm...where could we possibly get the money? I know! Let's ask Ted Stevens!
Very Fuggin Funny
Fug Girl Heather reviews yet another fashion horror (photo at the link, boys and girls, I'm copyright-friendly):
It's very ... I feel like this outfit was made by someone who was pitching a Jennifer Lopez movie about a woman who works as a mechanic while she's studying to be a pilot, and late at night at the auto shop she fantasizes about being a stylish and adored air hero, twirling around in her cape and boots and jumpsuit while singing a song about flying the friendly skies (which she's always wanted to do ever since her mother, also a flight student, was tragically killed during her night job as an air traffic controller when she paused to scratch her nose with the orange stick and a pilot interpreted this wrongly and ran her over).
Don't miss The Breast Police, same site. Note to all of you who earn a living in "civilized" work environments, there are exposed nipples.
A note, in that section, from Heather to Brooke Shields (photo here):
Dear Brooke,Thank you for wearing a bra. Thank you. But... do you not understand how bras and shirts work together?
BLACK bra, Brooke. BLACK. Not white. Not even off-white. Black. You can get a very comfortable one for under $40 at Victoria's Secret. Would you like me to take you there? Do you need me to put a black bra in your hand and explain to you what it is, and what its advantages are? And if I do that, can I trust you not to turn around and wear it under a white shirt?
I don't think I can, can I? Look, you might have to just call me. I can make you a bra chart. Because clearly, you're not going to get this on your own.
Relentless in my crusade to make sure Hollywood and The Bra can coexist in harmony,
Heather
Tom Cruise As Your Psychiatrist Is Like Hello Kitty As Your Super Bowl Coach
Forget psychiatry! Do as Scientology says, and combat schizophrenia with vitamins! You might stab your mother 77 times, but at least you won't be contributing to an ancient alien civilization's plot to drug and enslave humanity!
On March 13, 2003, Jeremy Perkins, a 28 year old untreated schizophrenic, stabbed his mother Elli 77 times. She bled to death on her bedroom floor. Jeremy is currently being held at Rochester Psychiatric Center, having been found not responsible for Elli's murder by reason of mental disease or defect.Perkins, his mother and father, his sister, and her husband are all members of the Church of Scientology, a group that believes modern psychiatric medicine derives from an ancient alien civilization's plot to drug and enslave humanity. Scientologists like Tom Cruise vehemently and publicly oppose the pharmacological treatment of mental illness. Unfortunately, Scientology's own brand of therapy, called "auditing", is worthless.
Elli Perkins was a senior auditor (counselor) at the Church of Scientology of Buffalo, New York. Her son-in-law, Jeff Carlson, is the Executive Director of that church. Jeremy himself had taken Scientology courses there, and was even flown out to Los Angeles to join Scientology's paramilitary Sea Organization, although he was promptly sent back home due to his mental problems.
After consulting a Scientologist osteopath, Dr. Conrad Maulfair, Elli was treating Jeremy with vitamins, which he disliked. Within hours of Elli's murder, which occurred on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, the Church of Scientology initiated a crash cover-up to hide its connections to the case. Jeremy's family has since "disconnected" from him, per Scientology policy. This web site reveals Scientology's true role in the death of Elli Perkins and the destruction of Jeremy's life.
Hmmm. Maybe it's people who believe in Scientology who are a little...not quite right in the head? On the other hand, maybe they're just dumb.
Just a thought: If you think the practices of Scientology are creepy and awful, maybe you shouldn't contribute to a big draw for them -- Their Celebrity Center -- by viewing movies and TV shows starring prominent actor Scientologists?
Low Income? Please Die.
We've got plenty of money to wage war in a country that didn't attack us, and had no WMD, all the while ignoring a bunch of terrorists who did attack us and all the countries that are nuked up (North Korea and Pakistan). What we don't have is enough dough to test poor women for breast and ovarian cancer, writes The New York Times Bob Herbert, and never mind that it saves money to detect it earlier rather than late:
So what did this president do? He proposed a cut in the program of $1.4 million (a minuscule amount when you're talking about the national budget), which would mean that 4,000 fewer women would have access to early detection.This makes no sense. In human terms, it is cruel. From a budget standpoint, it's self-defeating.
"The program is really designed to help working women," said Dan Smith, a senior vice president at the American Cancer Society. "They may be working at a job that doesn't provide health insurance, but they're not the poorest of the poor who would qualify for Medicaid."
In many cases, these are women who do not have family doctors who might encourage them to be screened. The program offers free mammograms, Pap tests and other early detection services. "If they're diagnosed," said Mr. Smith, "there's a complementary program that allows them to be immediately insured so they can actually have the coverage for their treatment. That's a great program, as well."
"The early detection program is a good program because it has saved lives," said Dr. Harold Freeman, a senior adviser to the Cancer Society. "The women who are served come from a population that has a proven higher death rate from cervical and breast cancer."
He added: "It's hard to get into the health care system when you are asymptomatic. It's much easier to get into the system if you're obviously sick, if you're bleeding or in pain. But the problem with cancer is, if you're going to be cured, you have to get in before those kinds of symptoms occur. So these women need to be screened."
Dr. Freeman, a New York physician who has long specialized in the prevention and treatment of cancer, made it clear that his first concern was the health and quality of life of his patients. But then he addressed what he characterized as the "shortsighted" economic rationale for the budget cut.
"It won't save money," he said. "You don't save money by not diagnosing cancer early. You end up spending more money because anyone who develops cancer will get into the health care system and they will be treated. And the cost at that point will be a lot more. The logic here is very simple: the later you diagnose cancer of the breast or cervix, the more expensive it is to the country."
Now, I'm not for national health care for everyone, but I think poor people should be given coverage. Why? It's simply the civilized thing to do.
Rumsfeld Must Go
And no, it isn't some commie liberal dove saying so. Paul D. Eaton, a retired U.S. Army major general, in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004, writes in The New York Times and IHT:
...Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (bio here) is not competent to lead America's armed forces. First, his failure to build coalitions with U.S. allies from what he dismissively called "old Europe" has imposed far greater demands and risks on American soldiers in Iraq than necessary. Second, he alienated his allies in the U.S. military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input.In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to America's mission in Iraq. Rumsfeld must step down.
..Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his Cold Warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result, the U.S. Army finds itself severely undermanned - cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.
Only General Eric Shinseki, the army chief of staff when President George W. Bush was elected, had the courage to challenge the downsizing plans. So Rumsfeld retaliated by naming Shinseki's successor more than a year before his scheduled retirement, effectively undercutting his authority. The rest of the senior brass got the message, and nobody has complained since.
Now the Pentagon's new Quadrennial Defense Review shows that Rumsfeld also fails to understand the nature of protracted counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and the demands it places on ground forces. The document, amazingly, does not call for enlarging the army; rather, it increases only Special Operations forces, by a token 15 percent, maybe 1,500 troops.
Rumsfeld has also failed in terms of operations in Iraq. He rejected the so-called Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force and sent just enough tech-enhanced troops to complete what we called Phase III of the war - ground combat against the uniformed Iraqis. He ignored competent advisers like General Anthony Zinni and others who predicted that the Iraqi forces might melt away, leading to chaos.
It is all too clear that Shinseki was right: Several hundred thousand men would have made a big difference then, as we began Phase IV, or country reconstruction. There was never a question that we would make quick work of the Iraqi Army.
Last, you do not expect a secretary of defense to be criticized for tactical ineptness. Normally, tactics are the domain of the soldier on the ground. But in this case we all felt what L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy in Iraq, has called the "8,000-mile screwdriver" reaching from the Pentagon. Commanders in the field had their discretionary financing for things like rebuilding hospitals randomly cut; money to pay Iraqi construction companies to build barracks was withheld; contracts for purchasing military equipment for the new Iraqi army were rewritten back in Washington.
He calls for Bush to accept the resignation Rumsfeld has tendered a number of times. I was never in agreement with the war in Iraq. But, if you go in, you have to go in prepared for the likely outcomes -- and stay that way. It all adds up to what Eaton wrote: Rumsfeld must go.
“The New GTI 2006. Turbo Sweaty Nutsack.”
Consumerist points out a wee problem with the new Volkswagon GTI billboards:
Volkswagen has opted to remove billboards in New York, Los Angeles and Miami for the new GTI 2006 after Hispanics in the neighborhood found it either offensive or hysterical. The GTI’s slogan? “Turbo Cojones.”Although English speakers use the phrase to refer to someone with a lot of daring, it apparently never lost its vulgar testicular association in the native Spanish.
What I really want to know is where Consumerist found the photo of the big-balled squirrel.
How Do We Know Tofu Doesn't Scream When We Eat It?
And, yes, I use the "we" (in the "eating it" sense) very lightly.
Fathers' Rights Come Last
The Ethicist is unethical. Here's a question and answer from his latest New York Times Magazine column (thanks, Kate Coe):
An attorney with experience in paternity-fraud cases, I was called by a man dating a divorced woman who told him her ex-husband is unaware that he is not the biological father of two of her three children; he pays child support and visits all three. My caller wonders if he should tell the ex-husband, whom he knows. He has no legal obligation to, but does the golden rule suggest an ethical one? Louis Kiefer, HartfordYour caller should keep this to himself. I can imagine few good consequences and many bad ones from his doing otherwise. For one thing, he has no way of knowing if the claim is true; people say all sorts of things. But even if it is, what would result from his disclosing it? The putative bio-dad already visits the kids, i.e., is involved in their lives. Why risk disturbing that? If DNA testing did prove him to be the biological father of just one child, what would he do — visit only that one and ignore the other two? Buy only that one a winter coat? What makes someone a parent is a continuous relationship with the kids, not the mere exchange of genetic material. If I were to learn suddenly that my college-age daughter had been exchanged in her cradle, I'd love her nonetheless.
What's more, his coming forward would force a confrontation that both parents might wish to avoid. It is not unusual for people to determinedly ignore evidence of infidelity that is obvious to everyone else. There are things people choose not to know, and such information should not be foisted on them. The golden rule is a fine precept, but it's not always obvious what other people would like done unto them.
Unless the mother needs medical information from the bio-dad, the only benefit I can imagine here is that the biological father might be urged to shoulder his financial and emotional obligations. But that seems unlikely. One other thing that you, a lawyer, no doubt realize: in some states a husband is the legal father of his wife's children, which can compel an ex to pay child support even for kids who are not biologically his.
Now, maybe the man will decide to keep fathering as he has been fathering, but maybe that should be his choice -- not a choice made for him? And, if I were the attorney or The "Ethicist," I'd tell the attorney's caller to dump this creepy, unethical woman immediately. Why is it everybody thinks somebody's only going to be creepy and unethical with "other people"?
More on fathers' rights here, in a Tamara Lewin story in The New York Times about fathers who lose their parental rights because...get this...because they didn't register on a list after having sex with a woman as a potential father. List? What list? That's exactly what the men asked as they were losing their rights to their biological children they wanted to keep:
Under Florida law, and that of other states, an unmarried father has no right to withhold consent for adoption unless he has registered with the state putative father registry before an adoption petition is filed. Mr. Jones missed the deadline.Although one in every three American babies has unwed parents, birth fathers' rights remain an unsettled area, a delicate balancing act between the importance of biological ties and the undisrupted placement of babies whose mothers relinquish them for adoption.
While women have the right to get an abortion, or to have and raise a child, without informing the father, courts have increasingly found that when birth mothers choose adoption, fathers who have shown a desire for involvement have rights, too.
But to claim those rights most states require a father to put his name on a registry. While about 30 states now have registries, they vary widely. In some, fathers must actually claim paternity; in others, just the possibility of paternity. The deadlines may be 5 days after birth or 30, or any time before an adoption petition is filed.
And registries are a double-edged sword: It remains an open question whether they serve more to protect fathers' rights or to protect adoptive parents, and the babies they have bonded with, from biological fathers' claims.
"My specialty is contested adoptions, and the most common contest is where the mom wants to place the baby and the dad objects," said Martin Bauer, president of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys. "Registries can protect men against birth mothers who won't disclose the father's name or actively lie about his identity."
Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit research and education group, sees it differently. "It's all smoke and mirrors," Mr. Pertman said. "How can registries work if no one's heard of them? And it's just not reasonable to expect that men will register every time they have sex."
Everybody Hates Hillary
Now, even the left is coming out against her. Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes of Clinton's fundraising email, "Changing the Senate," that didn't mention bringing the troops home (apparently, an issue Dems have been advised to avoid!). (And frankly, how can we, considering the state we've left Iraq in?). Here's an excerpt from Vanden Heuvel's blog item about Clinton:
But in her 672 word email (hint to Dems: your emails are too long) calling for "change," how many times did Senator Clinton mention Iraq? You guessed it--not a mention.Healthcare costs, education, energy, and New Orleans–-all critical issues--are each mentioned in the NY Senator's appeal, along with this assertion: "I know that Democrats like you are ready to stand up and take on these tough challenges."
Hillary's right on this. But Democrats and independents are also taking a stand on changing course in Iraq while leading Democrats run for cover. Where is their passion and attention on an issue that is paramount in voters' concerns?
Three years, 20,000 U.S. casualties, up to $300 billion in direct war expenditures and close to $1 trillion in estimated total costs--and still no position? If not now, when?
Here's an idea: contact Hillary, the DSCC, and the DCCC--tell them until they take a stand for you, you won't take a stand for them either. The bank is closed. Because while they might not listen to the people, we know that money still talks in Washington.
And while I hated Hillary's health care plan, I've been reading her ideas (on children's rights in New York Review of Books) since long before I knew who Bill Clinton was, and I'd vote for her in a second. Unfortunately, I can't imagine her being elected.
The ME! ME! ME! Generation Comes To Starbucks
A man walked into Starbucks on Main carrying a silver Mac laptop. He was a heavy-set businessman, probably about 5’8”, a split between his front teeth, yellow business shirt, cuffed brownish wool pants, nice black square-toed loafers with rubber soles, holding a Blackberry.
He looked friendly, and I liked that he was wearing real clothes, not dirty sweats, which are pretty much the uniform around these parts.
I smiled at him. I pretty much smile at everyone if I’m looking up and paying attention, because I like to live in a world that’s friendly, not cold and alienating.
When the guy came closer, I realized with chagrin he was bellowing into his Blackberry –- or rather, one of those earbud speakers that allow you to speak as if the person’s in front of you –- or louder. I politely asked him to pipe down.
Not exactly a big thinker, he responded: “It’s a public place," and went back to yammering.
“Yes it is a public place," I said, "Which means you share it with other people.”
His defense -- pointing out that people were conversing at the table next to me.
I explained that when you’re on a cell phone, you have a one-sided conversation, and the human brain is bent upon filling in the missing side of the dialogue, so you hear it more than you do a conversation between people. In fact, your brain pretty much forces you to listen in.
He ignored me and yammered into his phone. He clearly wasn’t interested anything but having his conversation when he wanted, as loudly as he wanted, whether it was bothering anyone else or not.
He repeatedly told the person on the other end, “She’s crazy.”
To me: “Shut the fuck up.”
And again into the phone: “She’s crazy.”
I said, in the direction of his ear bud, “Yes, it does seem insane to expect people to behave as if they have manners, to act with some consideration of other people.”
I’ll try to take his picture on the way out. What I really want is his mother’s phone number. I want to ask her if that was how he was raised, with that “fuck you, shut the fuck up” attitude toward anybody’s needs but his own.
Oh, and one more wish, now that he’s bellowing again, is his phone number. Please, please! Instead, there’s only this dull stuff.
Yeah, I got it, ya need it? You’ll have it in a second. Just going through that. Hey man, how are ya. Hmmm? Mmmm. You know. You know what, it’s funny you bring that up, because I have another customer with that problem. And it was with …you’ve been having a problem with that. Is that why you…because you wanted a…Hmmm. You know what, I’m gonna check the XN 1.3 bug reports and see if there are any issues with that. I had another customer call me about that. That may be an issue, that may be an issue. So if it is, I go ahead. Okay. Bye!
I’m reminded of the difference in spirit and demeanor between this guy and a man and woman I saw on a date last week at this very same Starbucks. I posted this in comments to an earlier entry, but I’ll copy it in here as well:
They were both tiny and quite old. He was a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor, and pretty much blind, I later found out, which is probably why he knocked over his coffee onto the floor. Well, the woman reacted, not by going to summon a Starbucks employee with a mop, but by getting newspapers, putting them down on the floor, and then...doing a little dance on them to mop up the liquid...à la Snoopy in the old Peanuts cartoons.Beyond the fact that (I think) she did her dance so the man wouldn’t feel bad about knocking over his coffee -- she just “gets it” about life, and in a way so few people do. I told her so, which is why I got to know the two of them a little.
All in all, it turned out to be a great day, and just because some little old man spilled a cup of coffee.
Yesterday, unfortunately, was a different story, thanks to my pal here, seen from the rather ample rear. Do you know this man?
If so, do tell him to pop by and post his justification here for what I call “lunar landing behavior” –- acting as if you just landed on the moon and you have the entire planet all to yourself.
Enough With The Govern-Nannying
Ayn Rand Institute's Yaron Brook comes out, in an e-press release, against the "indecency" fines proposed by the FCC against CBS. I'm with him. He calls the fines...
...an ominous attack on the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.Just as the government doesn't fine newspapers that publish cartoons that Muslims deem indecent, it shouldn't fine broadcasters that air shows that viewers deem indecent.
...Moreover, it is the parents--not the government--who should be responsible for determining what their children are allowed to watch on TV.
Exactly. You've got kids, you parent them -- by discovering the "off" button on your TV remote. The same goes for any desire you, personally, might have, to avoid "indecent" shows. Personally, I recommend all the "indecent" shows, which tend to replace violence (bad!) with sex (good!).
In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV as kids, save the (yawn!) Wonderful World Of Disney on Sunday nights. I can't tell you much about The Three Stooges, but I mowed through all of Jane Austen by the age of 12, and moved on to Thackery, and then the Russians: Larr-sky, Moesky, and Raskolnikovsky.
Why Blind People Shouldn't Be Window Dressers
Hmmm. Let's just hope this window-dresser is...um...under-sighted. Oh, the horror, the horror...and just in time for LA's Fashion Week.
Living Enlarged
What do men think of fake breasts? Not just in general, but on your own girlfriend – (hypothetically speaking, if you either don’t have a girlfriend or don’t have one with enormous fake Charlies).
They apparently make ‘em now so they aren’t hard, and feel pretty natural. Does this make a difference? But, the big question – what do you think of a girl who’s slim and otherwise great looking, but with huge DDDs she shows off in low-cut clothing. Good? Embarrassing? A deal-breaker, ultimately, in a relationship?
The thing is, there’s this misconception that looks don’t matter. People will tell you that, because they’re embarrassed by the truth: They do matter, and they matter a lot. For example, here's the word of a girl formerly in denial on the looks issue, who commented on my column, I Can't Believe I Innate The Whole Thing:
Touche. It took me a lot of years to learn that. I started putting on weight in my 30's and screamed ... you should love me for who I am ... it wasn't until my mid 40's that I realized ... I'm fat and he's not attracted to me .. that's life. He's not a bad person and I need to change. I was lucky he stuck it out with me (it was 20 pounds) as a lot of guys wouldn't have. I lost the weight and we're doing great. He's so much happier and so am I.
There are men who like women who are pretty flat-chested. Is a guy like this going to look at a woman’s huge fake hooters and be grossed out? Probably. The phony answer is, “Not if he loves her.” Wrong. You like what you like, and, chances are, you can no more train yourself to like big’uns if you like itty bitty titties than I can train myself to like eggplant (to me, like eating something out of a swamp) or celery, which I just find indescribably nasty in taste and texture.
Boys, where do you stand on ins and outs of the big fake boobs issue? Inquiring minds want to know.
One more point for everybody: a friend of mine dated a doctor with implants, and he swears she doesn’t have low self-esteem (the assumption a lot of people make about girls with implants). She told him, when she walks into a room, she commands all the attention.
The thing is, what kind of attention is she getting? Do people think “Look at the woman with the huge porn-star breasts?” or “What’s wrong with her that she had to do that?” Or is it something more positive?
Oops! We Forgot To Riot And Kill Each Other!
You know how the barbarians reacted to the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, with mayhem, murder, and arson? Well, the Iranian newspaper made good on its promise of an anti-semitic cartoon contest. Here...yawwwwwn...are the results.
For the really funny shit, you have to go to the Israeli anti-semitic cartoon contest. Yes, you read right. The Israelis responded by putting on an anti-semitic cartoon contest of their own:
Contest open to Jew creators only! Sorry! This is Jews joking about themselves here!
Hmmm, which population seems more advanced? That's a toughie!
The Modern Muslim In Paris
My friend from France, who wrote me the very interesting letter (scroll down the link a bit) on the Muslim situation there, sent me an article about Boubakeur, rector of the Paris Mosque.
My friend emails: "He is the one I was writing you about, saying he was too pro-French in the eyes of radical muslims, which leads me to fear that he might eventually get his throat slit."
Here is an excerpt from the piece about Boubakeur, by Katrin Bennhold, in the IHT:
He was born in Algeria, heads the main mosque of Paris and is the most prominent Muslim in a predominantly Catholic country. But Dalil Boubakeur, president of France's officially sanctioned Muslim Council, can sound Frencher than the French."I am not in favor of multiculturalism," Boubakeur, 65, said recently at his ornate office at the mosque, a soaring structure surrounding a mosaic-lined courtyard on the Left Bank. In a secular country like France, he added matter- of-factly, "there is only one culture: French culture."
This may not play well with the entire five-million-member Muslim community here. But Boubakeur shrugs off criticism, explaining that he considers himself a forerunner of a modern, liberal, apolitical Islam - an Islam he reckons will take root this century in Europe and beyond.
"When you're ahead, you are lonely," he said. "I was born a Muslim, I am of French culture and I love Europe. There is no contradiction."
...It also helped that Boubakeur oozes European sophistication. His attire is Western, his face clean-shaven. His secretary in the front office does not wear a head scarf. He cites Voltaire, speaks German and holds France's highest honor, the Légion d'Honneur. He is what the newspaper Le Monde last month dubbed "the ideal Muslim."
But many French Muslims, most of whom are descendants of working- class immigrants, feel resentment toward a man they say is not one of them. They say that Boubakeur, who has never lived in an immigrant suburb and rarely visits one, does not understand their plight and that he has bought into a Republican vision of integration that has left them in limbo between formal equality and de facto discrimination.
"He is a good person, but he is the antithesis of a Muslim representative," said Mohammed Henniche, leader of the Union of Muslim Associations in the Seine-Saint-Denis district north of Paris, which is home to many families of North African origin and was a hot spot in last year's riots. "He speaks the language of the French elites, not that of ordinary Muslims. The youth in the suburbs don't understand him, and he does not understand them."
Boubakeur replies that his acceptance of French values is the wave of the future.
"That for me is being a modern man," he said, "and that is the message I would like to pass on to my Muslim brothers and sisters. I want them to adapt European culture without fear and to embrace it wholeheartedly."
Here's an article about him in French, with a photo. They call him "un fervent défenseur de la un fervent défenseur de la laïcité" -- basically, "a fervent defender of secularism." (Consult the laïcité link for the unsimplified meaning of that term.)
Want Some Pi?
Racism As A Solution For Racism
Finally! Somebody's figured out that minority-only or women-and-minority-only scholarship programs are racist and sexist. Jonathan D. Glater writes in The New York Times that colleges are opening to white students the opportunities formerly reserved for minorities and women:
"Our concern is that the law be followed and that nobody be denied participation in a program on account of skin color or what country their ancestors came from," said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which has been pressing institutions on the issue."We're not looking at achieving a particular racial outcome," Mr. Clegg added. "And it's unfortunate that some organizations seem to view the success or failure of the program based simply on what percentage of students of this color or that color can participate."
Advocates of focused scholarships programs like Theodore M. Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., challenge the notion that programs for minority students hurt whites. "How is it that they conclude that the great evil in this country is discrimination against white people?" Mr. Shaw asked. "Can I put that question any more pointedly? I struggle to find the words to do it because it's so stunning."
...The two Supreme Court affirmative action decisions that are worrying the institutions involved the University of Michigan. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the court upheld the use of race in admissions decisions at the law school. It found that there had been a "highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant's file" in which race could be properly considered.
In Gratz v. Bollinger, the court struck down the use of race in undergraduate admissions, finding that those applications used a scoring system that should not have awarded points based on race.
"When the Gratz and Grutter decisions came down, that was really kind of a mixed bag," Mr. Reindl said. "It's still a very murky environment, and it's also a very contentious environment."
To me, the biggest divider of people is financial status, not race. A lot of newspapers have these minority scholarships and fellowships. Well, what of the white kids who don't come from rich families and have to work two jobs just to make ends meet during college? Aren't the kids of any skin color and lesser means the ones who need help -- not a middle-class black kid who won the skin-color lottery, at least in hand-out terms?
UPDATE: More on this from a young journalist named Jeanene Harlick who posted a letter over at Romenesko, the media blog:
I have been a struggling, daily newspaper reporter for more than five years. I have had enough people tell me I’m gifted, smart and gutsy to know that it’s true.And yet – I cannot for the life of me secure a staff writing post at a decent paper. Why? I don’t have the connections. And perhaps worse, I’m white.
We all know that connections and race is what it comes down to in the end, when it comes to working at the big papers. Those connections are rooted in one’s socio-economic background – i.e. family wealth and heritage. I grew up in a working class family that never had money, pedigrees or knew anyone the slightest bit “important.” My sister and I were the first of our family to graduate from college. I worked my ass off at UCLA and graduated summa cum laude. I also graduated with the highest GPA of any student athlete (I was on the track team). I think it’s clear I am smart and a very hard worker. But because I am a middle class, white woman, I never get a break.
Because I’m white, I don’t get any nice little affirmative action hiring gestures. And since I don’t have connections, editors never read my clips, because I’m a nobody. And on top of it all, I’m a woman, putting me at even more risk of being overlooked.
Big-name papers only look at you if you’ve worked at other big-name papers. But the only way to ever get a job or internship at your first one is 1) to be a minority, 2) be rich enough to attend a fancy grad program that has great internships, or 3) know someone. The rest of us are screwed. Period. No matter how hard we work.
I bet if somebody investigated the backgrounds of the newsroom staff of the nation’s major metropolitan papers, they would find that the people hired either 1) come from a privileged background or 2) are an ethnic minority. I dare newspapers to open up their doors and let me prove it.
Shouldn't the institutions who are largely responsible for molding public opinion be just as subject to investigation as our politicians? There is something wrong about the lack of scrutiny newspaper professionals receive.
I applied for a position at the San Francisco Chronicle Monday night. I applied online, sent my clips, everything. I have freelanced for the Chronicle for 3 years. All my stories have been on the community the advertised beat covers. Today, I got a generic e-mail from the Human Resources Department saying thanks but no thanks. I have never been so insulted. Obviously, The Chronicle did not even look at my clips. They automatically screened me out after a quick glance at my resume.
I am without a doubt qualified for the position. Besides being a veteran reporter, I grew up in the neighborhood the beat in question covers. But because I’m a poor, white, nobody of a woman I’m screwed.
Nearly Beloved
Her boyfriend of four years is still married. That's fine. She just gets a little ticked off when he mentions it at family gatherings. Here's an excerpt from my Advice Goddess column I just posted:
Nothing says “You’re the one!” quite like a marriage certificate inscribed with the name of the other “one.”Marriage generally signifies a lifelong commitment to another person (unless the two people marrying are Hollywood stars, in which case, it may signify a weekend commitment). Remaining legally married to one woman is typically a major impediment to becoming the long-term, live-in boyfriend of another. While relationships do come in varying forms these days, a guy with an interest in spending all or part of the rest of his life with somebody would be wise (and kind) to first dispense with spending the rest of his life with somebody else.
Did you really need to wait for your boyfriend to rub your nose in his marital status to notice you were smelling something, and it wasn’t the April Fresh Scent of Downy? Perhaps there’s some compelling reason they’re still officially together -- like, if they divorce, the little girl won’t inherit Great Uncle Nutso’s bazillions. Or, perhaps it has more to do with the four years you’ve spent underreacting to their marriage, to the tune of Kumbaya. Evidently, you were fine with him having his cake, and your cake, too -- providing he didn’t advertise it: “Family, gather round, say hello to my mistress! Grandma, you remember my concubine?”
How lovely that you’re “good friends” with his wife. What do you two talk about, how he misses the bowl, and whether his herpes has cleared up yet? Obviously, relationship communism -- what’s yours is hers, and what’s hers is officially hers -- is a failed experiment. It’s one thing if you truly don’t care. It’s another thing entirely, if, between group hugs, you’re building up a Chernobyl-like core of resentment because you can’t even squeeze bigamy out of the guy.
The reader question and the rest of my answer are here.
Oh yeah, while we're at it, here's my second question from that week, All’s Fare In Love And War.
How much is too much on the first date? I’m fine with splurging on a woman I care about, just not a near stranger. Isn’t paying for romantic extras (flowers, expensive meals) before you know someone a bit ridiculous?--Romance, Not Finance
The idea is getting to know a girl, not getting to know how she takes her caviar. The best way to do that is to invite her out for a drink, as opposed to squeezing questions between courses at some restaurant that charges a car payment for a plate of premature carrots. An ideal first date leaves her wanting more -- while providing you with a graceful out in case 10 minutes with her leaves you wanting less. A moderately priced evening is also less likely to make her feel pressured to have sex with you. (Note that feeling pressured and feeling compelled to follow through are two very different things.) And, yes, coffee is technically considered a drink, but remember, there may be a chance to go in for a little lip action at the end of a date. To tilt the odds in your favor, see to it that you won’t be making your move in the height of the afternoon in the parking lot next to Chuck E. Cheese’s.
©2005-2006, Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess, all rights reserved.
Watson, Come Here!
I don't pander to my readers daily like some bloggers do -- but only because I lack a substantial bank of cheap, tawdry photos. (I'm working on it.) This photo -- and even the headline -- were stolen from my man in crime, Gregg Sutter.
Maxmind Asshole Finder
Good news for girl detectives! Wanna know who's spamming you -- or at least where they're doing it from? Check out GeoTool. Just type in the buttwad's IP address and zip in with the satellite function!
Thank you, Consumerist, for yet another great link.
The Pussy Pages
Hire this kid -- Acton H. Gorton -- to edit your newspaper. Unlike so many editors, he ran the Jyllands Posten cartoons -- as he should have, because they're news -- and got supended, then fired for doing it:
Acton H. Gorton was suspended, with pay, from The Daily Illini days after the Feb. 9 publication of the cartoons, which sparked Muslim protests around the world after they first appeared in a Danish newspaper.At the time, Daily Illini publishers said the action was taken against Gorton not for publishing the cartoons, but for failing to discuss it with others in the newsroom first.
The Illini Media Co. board of directors, which comprises students and faculty, voted unanimously to fire the editor after a review "found that Gorton violated Daily Illini policies about thoughtful discussion of and preparation for the publication of inflammatory material," according to a statement.
Gorton has said he sought out advice from The Daily Illini's former editor-in-chief and others before deciding to run the cartoons. He has said that accusations he tried to hide his decision were wrong.
On Tuesday, he called his firing a blow against free speech on college campuses.
Unfortunately, Acton, they're looking a lot more like the rest of the world every day.
Why Judges Are Recognizing Gay Parents
Um, because it's good for the kids? Imagine that. Dahlia Lithwick writes on Slate:
If in fact judges around this country are increasingly inclined to recognize the validity of same-sex parenting arrangements, it's not because they are activists, or because they're mangling a long-established tradition of family law to do so. Courts that adopt broader visions of "parent" and "family" aren't reading radical new rights into their state constitutions. They are doing precisely what family courts are asked to do: Make a determination about what's in the "best interest of the child." That standard remains the polestar for judicial decision-making in both the adoption and custody contexts. And, as it turns out, most children usually have larger and more urgent concerns than what their parents do in bed.The "best interest" test reinforces the legal proposition that children are not their parents' chattel; the state has an obligation to privilege their needs, sometimes even over the needs of their own parents, and other meddlesome adults. The best interest test is a legal standard, and not a fixed rule, precisely because judges must figure out what's best for kids on a fact-specific, case-by-case basis. And while judges can and should be able to make subjective policy decisions about whether two-parent adoptive homes are better than single-parent homes, they also need to be free to decide that in this case it's preferable for little Joey to have a gay adoptive father than none; or to have two legal mommies rather than one. Categorical rules rooted in sweeping moral judgments don't generally work in family law for the same reason they don't work for families: Kids love and need the parents they have, not necessarily the parents we love.
Just speaking in probabilities, who's likely to be a better parent, somebody who accidently shits out a kid because they forgot birth control, or two people who spent thousands of dollars and years to make it happen the newfangled way?
The Hate Mail's Rolling In!
I dared write a column criticizing couples getting married who use the occasion to bleed their friends dry -- asking them to pay for everything from their honeymoon, to a downpayment on a home, to their wedding.
I even advised rethinking registering for gifts at all -- "This is America, not the Sudan" -- and suggested, as I have before, that people tell their friends, "Love is all we need," and ask them, if they're compelled to give a gift, to make a donation to their favorite charity.
Here's the first of the angry letters:
Gee Amy, why don't you find the guy and slit his throat.... where were you raised, you have to be the most creepy person and very RUDE I have ever read... give the guy a slack.. he just asked a simple question of asking for money for down payment on a house rather than a gift, he probably didn't know the rules & he sounds young.... Didn't you have a Mother... if not than that's a shame she would have brought you up right "WITH MANNERS". Too me you don't look like you could be a "advice goddess"... I can not believe people actually send in question to you.... Have a nice day... you need it.
And here's my response to this person's email:
My suggesting that Americans, perhaps, have enough stuff without bleeding their friends dry at wedding time is a trying concept for many. Regarding your question about a mother: I believe I was hatched fully formed in the forest. Perhaps that's why I have this notion that some things -- like wedding gift customs -- need some rethinking.Regarding your curiosity about my mother and my manners:
where were you raised, you have to be the most creepy person and very RUDE I have ever readJust as I don't think it's a parent's responsibility to endlessly feed their adult child's upstretched palm, whether I do or don't have manners at this point is my responsibility alone. And, by the way, even an orphan can read really great books and come up with a sense of morality, personal responsibility, and an ethical code.
Finally, I would never write a nasty letter like you did, then end it with "have a nice day," because one of the qualities I value is sincerity. I would have respected you more if you'd written, "Buzz off you old cow!" -- which is much more in keeping with the the tone of the rest of your letter.
--Amy Alkon
Here's a much nicer letter; actually, a thank-you card I got in the mail today:
This came from Erika, who reads me in the OC Register, which, unlike the LA Times, has been running my column for years. In fact, they were the very first daily to pick me up -- thanks to then-features editor Michael Hewitt, who had the guts to stand up to the angry letters from little old ladies that flew in at the start.
Mobile Computing
Rush Limbaugh Eaten Alive By Audience
There's a reason Rush is on the radio, not TV. See for yourself.
That said, he is a brilliant broadcaster, as is Howard Stern. I've listened to Stern on and off much of my life -- from the days he was at Detroit's W4. His mind is wasted on the midgets and porn stars. I just wish he were talking politics.
via Metafilter
Belief In Good, Not God
Slavoj Zizek sets the record straight about atheism in The New York TImes.No, I don't believe in god, but this doesn't mean I'm without ethics. Quite the contrary. I'd say I have a stronger ethical framework than most god-believers, plus it's my own, not a prefab one that I let some guy wearing some variation on a bathrobe jam down my craw. Zizek writes:
FOR centuries, we have been told that without religion we are no more than egotistic animals fighting for our share, our only morality that of a pack of wolves; only religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?More than a century ago, in "The Brothers Karamazov" and other works, Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even applied Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his book, "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan," suggests.
This argument couldn't have been more wrong: the lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted — at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations. In short, fundamentalists have become no different than the "godless" Stalinist Communists, to whom everything was permitted since they perceived themselves as direct instruments of their divinity, the Historical Necessity of Progress Toward Communism.
During the Seventh Crusade, led by St. Louis, Yves le Breton reported how he once encountered an old woman who wandered down the street with a dish full of fire in her right hand and a bowl full of water in her left hand. Asked why she carried the two bowls, she answered that with the fire she would burn up Paradise until nothing remained of it, and with the water she would put out the fires of Hell until nothing remained of them: "Because I want no one to do good in order to receive the reward of Paradise, or from fear of Hell; but solely out of love for God." Today, this properly Christian ethical stance survives mostly in atheism.
Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence.
Yellow Dogs In The White House Press Room
All the lap dogs of the press, please continue to remain seated. Helen Thomas, one of the few remaining actual reporters, will do all the work. Here, she's questioning Scott McClellan:
Helen: The other day, in fact this week, you [McClellan] said that we, the United States, are in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history?Scott: No. We are...that's where we are currently.
Helen: In view of your credibility, which is already mired...how can you say that?
Scott: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically elected governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Helen: Were we invited into Iraq?
Scott: There are democratically elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, but we are there today.
Helen: You mean, if they asked us out, that we would have left?
Scott: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments.
Helen: I'm talking about today, too.
Scott: We are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.
Helen: Did we invade those countries?
At that point McClellan called on another reporter.
Thomas remarks on the exchange:
Those were the days when I longed for ABC-TV's great Sam Donaldson to back up my questions as he always did, and I did the same for him and other daring reporters. Then I realized that the old pros, reporters whom I had known in the past, many of them around during World War II and later the Vietnam War, reporters who had some historical perspective on government deception and folly, were not around anymore.I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration's war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives.
It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may.
Sunset Over Park One
The view from the parking lot just outside LAX isn't half bad.
Yesterday's News Today!
The great, snoring LA Times, based in what's probably the plastic surgery capital of the universe, finally discovers vaginal rejuvenation surgery! Today's date: March 13, 2006.
Too bad they didn't have Sandy Kobrin on staff, who published a story on this on November 11, 2004.
It does give me a better understanding of why they continue to refuse to run my column, despite all the emails I get forwarded from people who write to head features editor John Montorio asking to see it in the paper. (That's John.Montorio@latimes.com, if you're among those who'd like to read me locally.)
Perish forbid they'd run a feature by somebody who questions the societal status quo or would tell LA Times readers something they don't already know!
Here's what the judges wrote when I beat then LA Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley for first place for "Signed Commentary" in the most recent LA Press Club awards -- and for an advice column:
SIGNED COMMENTARY
Daily/Weekly Newspapers Over 100,000 Circulation
AMY ALKON - Creators Syndicate. "Ask the Advice Goddess."
Comments: Funny, engaging, insightful, entertaining and, as befits signed commentary, charged with high-voltage personality. Also thought-provoking and well-researched, although the commentary/advice rings with honesty that appears to have welled from within.
"Funny, engaging, high-voltage personality"? Naw, they prefer to run writing a little more along these lines -- just one example of the many dreadful Thursday Calendar "Getting Personal" pieces.
"Together Against The New Totalitarianism: Islam"
French satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo published a manifesto against Islamic totalitarianism, reprinted by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten.
The manifesto was signed by a group of 12, including Salmon Rushdie, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (the Somali woman who wrote the script for Submission, by Theo Van Gogh, who is now in the Dutch government, and in hiding thanks to threats on her life by radical Islamists), a number of exiled Arab writers, and others. Here's my translation of the French (mostly accurate, I hope):
"After having vanquished Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, the world is made to face a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism. We writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for the resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of liberty, equal opportunity, and secularism (laïcité) for all."
Actually, here's more, already translated into English, from the Jyllands Posten link above, printed in The Editors Weblog:
"The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values ... Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism."The 'Manifesto' declares "We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam with stigmatisation of its believers. We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be excercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas."
Where are all the US newspaper editors? Too busy worrying that their obscene profits are now only grandiose profits? Aside from a handful of US newspapers, pretty much only bloggers are taking a stand against the barbarians at all.
The Merits Of Being Chatty
If you smile a little and chat with people you encounter, you find stuff out. I got to talking with the woman changing my seat at the Northwest counter, and found out that, in a couple of weeks, they'll be charging $15 for an exit-row seat. She thinks it's bad business, and so do I. If all the airlines don't do it, how many more customers will Northwest lose simply out of anger and annoyance at being nickel-and-dimed?
Then again, if people are averse to paying it, maybe it'll be easier to get an exit-row seat. Right now, instead of the policy of other airlines, where the first to the airport get the exit-row seats, they give them away to premium flyers.
Gregg thinks they should charge if you want to recline your seat in coach. I'm all for that. You should have to pay the person behind you $300, and whatever it costs to repair their cracked computer screen you bounced back on. For the record, I never recline my seat, as, under the currect conditions where you have about the same volume of space as in an open baby food jar, I consider it rude to the person behind me.
The Paris Of The Midwest
Yes, I'm in Detroit for the weekend.
We're staying at the fabulous airport Westin, but we did tour some of the nitty-gritty hotspots.
Finally, A Muslim Voice Of Reason
John M. Broder writes in The New York Times about a "largely unknown" Syrian-American psychiatrist who spoke out on Al Jazeera about what she sees as the distortion of Islam for violent ends:
"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."
Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."
She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."
She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."
What's Wrong (Or Right) With LAX?
LA city councilman Bill Rosendahl wants to know. Here's the email I sent him in response to his request:
I'm sitting in the Westin Hotel at the Northwest Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport. I flew in for the weekend to be with my boyfriend, who's in town for his work -- but I'd fly to Detroit just to stay at this hotel and never leave the airport.The new Northwest terminal here is great -- airy, with high ceilings, and filled with light, with cool stores, and giant TV screens playing CNN while you're waiting for your flight. Contrast that with LAX, where I waited for my flight in a dark, smelly, cave-like gate area, littered with candy wrappers and newspapers, with too few of the dismal brown vinyl seats to accomodate all the passengers. Ellis Island with wings!
In Detroit, there are lots of places to sit throughout the airport -- in all the places it would seem like a person might want to sit down. After a recent flight to LAX, I was nauseated and needed to sit down, but there was not a bench to be seen in baggage claim. I was forced to pile my stuff on the floor and lean on it while my boyfriend waited for my bags. Again dismal and totally inhospitable. And LA's supposed to be a vacation spot?
Oh yeah, and in Detroit there's Wifi available throughout the terminal. I got off my plane in the morning, opened my computer, logged into my T-Mobile account, posted three blog items, and toddled off to baggage claim. Zilcho at LAX, although there are a few uncomfortable, usually-broken connect-to-the Internet phones here and there.
I don't have time to go to a bunch of meetings, and Detroit does a lot of stuff stupidly, but the new terminal here is just great -- and worth copying inch for inch, as much as possible.
Best,-Amy Alkon
Here's Rosendahl's email, cut slightly for space reasons:
Last December, when Mayor Villaraigosa and I announced the historic legal agreement ending LAX expansion, we promised the neighborhoods around the airport a genuine voice in planning the future of LAX. We start making that promise real right now.This coming week, LAWA will begin holding public meetings to hear your views about how best to modernize LAX. The airport is in dire need of improvements in safety, security and efficiency. We need your perspective on how to make those improvements in a manner that is friendly to the neighboring communities.
There will be two meetings this week...At each session, LAWA officials will give a detailed presentation on the settlement agreement, and outline the process to kill and replace the parts of the LAX Master Plan we all found objectionable.
We have much work ahead. We’ve committed to scotching plans for a remote check-in center at Manchester Square. Now we need to put our heads together to find alternative methods to mitigate airport traffic. At these two meetings, LAWA officials will begin to frame the questions, and ask us all to help develop answers.
When:
6:00pm-9:00pm, Wednesday, March 15
9:00am-12:00pm, Saturday, March 18Where:
Flight Path Learning Center
6661 West Imperial Highway, Los AngelesYou can write him at councilman.rosendahl@lacity.org. I've also asked him to drop in and comment here.
Hey, Thanks, Whoever You Are!
Somebody sent me $50 through my Amazon "contribute to this site" button, but perhaps because I'm a little fast deleting all my non-email mail, I deleted the message saying who it was from. Much appreciated.
One More Thing To Love About France
Le readily-available thigh-high. Bought these at Monoprix (kind of like Target, but with fois gras, fine wine, and escargot) for 3 euros on sale.
NOTE: This photograph was taken for Will from OC, who longs for me to post more shots of girls with candles on their heads. Sorry, but the best I can do today is to show a little thigh.
One Man's Greed Is Another Man's "Exciting New Business Model"
The telecom industry is trying to figure out how to force us all into an "a la carte Internet," says an NBC news story by George Lewis:
Wayne Bauer, an independent filmmaker who lives in Santa Clarita, Calif., uses a free Internet service called Skype to play online Scrabble with a buddy in Texas. They do this with no long-distance charges. But if the cable company that pipes the Internet to Bauer's house gets its way, that could change soon."It's about having a virtual, electronic toll booth to constantly charge you extra for things we get today for a fair and flat rate," says Jeff Chester with the Center for Digital Democracy.
Consumers like Bauer who make long-distance phone calls on the Internet, those who pay to download tunes or TV shows onto their iPods and people who now watch streaming video free of charge — all might get hit with extra fees.
A group of telecommunications companies is mulling ways of charging customers for moving certain kinds of content over the Internet.
It's all being discussed at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank funded by the telephone, cable and media industries. This network's parent, NBC Universal, is a member.
"I don't think this is corporate greed," says Adam Thierer with the Progress and Freedom Foundation. "This is the beginning of a new business model for the Internet."
Um, excuse me, Adam, for raining on your self-interest, but I think a much-needed and super-nifty new business model for the Internet would be one that promotes more competition between the broadband and DSL providers so we aren't all paying through both nostrils for crappy service and slow connections.
A friend of mine, a Swiss-Italian journalist, has been having an enormous problem with Comcast blocking email from a magazine she writes for in Italy, as well as email from her sister and others. And she isn't the only one. She writes about her own email issue:
In the last two months I couldn't get emails from an Italian magazine I write for (<@mondadori.it>), an Italian newspaper (<@ilgiornale.it>), and from my sister and friends who use the biggest Swiss provider (<@bluewin.ch>). The same problem happened last summer with <@ticino.com>, another provider from Switzerland. And who knows who else cannot reach me, since I am not aware of the problem until someone calls me to tell me about it. I must say that of course these people are in my address book and that I don't use filters. Here is the message they get in return (which a colleague sent me on a yahoo address I use only for emergencies):Da: Mail Delivery SubsystemData: 28 febbraio 2006 11:01:53 CET A: Oggetto: Returned mail: see transcript for details The original message was received at Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:01:48 +0100 from [193.42.179.127]
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- XXXXXXXXXXX@comcast.net
(reason: 550-193.42.201.86 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net)
----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to gateway-s.comcast.net.:
>>> MAIL From:SIZE=903
<<< 550-193.42.201.86 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net
<<< 550 Blocked for abuse. Please send blacklist removal requests to
blacklist_comcastnet@cable.comcast.com - Be sure to include your mail server IP ADDRESS.
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
Reporting-MTA: dns; watchcat.mondadori.it
Arrival-Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:01:48 +0100
My friend continues:
When my correspondents or myself write to Comcast asking to remove their addresses from the blacklist (whan an ominous name!) we usually get a message in return either saying that Comcast doesn't use filters (a big lie, since they say that they "block for abuse", see above), or "Please do not reply to this message. We have received your request for removal from our inbound blacklist. After investigating the issue, we have found that the IP you provided for removal is currently not on our blacklist. Please verify the IP address and resubmit your request to blacklist_comcastnet@cable.comcast.com".First of all I wonder why Comcast thinks they have the right to block and put on their blacklist legitimate European providers (without telling me, their client), when at the same time I get tons of junk mail coming from the most absurd addresses. The internet is a free space, and as a consumer I prefer to delete spam than to risk not receiving mail from people I need to be in touch with for business and family reasons. And it makes sense that people use the internet to correspond with people who live far away, maybe even in other countries (yes, the world doesn't stop at the US border), and not only with their next door neighbors.
God Has Lost Faith In Blair
A hilarious piece in the Guardian by film director, actor, and Python Terry Jones. Here's an excerpt:
A high-level leak has revealed that God is "furious" at Tony Blair's attempts to implicate him in the bombing of Iraq. Sources close to the archangel Gabriel report him as describing the Almighty as "hopping mad ... with sanctimonious yet unscrupulous politicians claiming He would condone their bestial activities when He has no way of going public Himself, owing to the MMW agreement" (a reference to the long-established Moving in Mysterious Ways concordat).Mr Blair went public about God on Michael Parkinson's TV show. "If you have faith about these things," he said, "then you realise that judgment is made by other people. If you believe in God, it's made by God as well." As is customary with Mr Blair's statements, it's rather hard to tease out what he is actually saying; but the gist is clearly that if God didn't actually tell him to bomb Iraq, then the Almighty would certainly agree it was the right thing to do.
"If Tony Blair thinks his friendship with George W Bush is worth rubbing out a couple of hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children, then that's something he can talk over with me later," said God. "But when he starts publicly claiming that's the way I do the arithmetic too, it's time I put my foot down!" It is well known that God has a very big foot.
A source says Gabriel has spent days trying to dissuade the Almighty from loosing a plague of toads upon the Blair family. Gabriel reminded God that Cherie and the children had nothing to do with Tony's decisions. God's response, it is reliably reported, was: "Blair says the Iraqis are lucky to have got bombed, so how can he complain if his family gets a few toads in the bath?"
...The archangel further revealed that he had been advised by no less a person than Alastair Campbell to warn God to keep out of politics. "But it's hard to get God to do anything He doesn't want to," sighed the archangel. "It's all to do with what He calls 'free will', though a lot of us have a problem working that one out, since He's omnipotent and omniscient."
God, the archangel says, is also disturbed by Mr Blair's remark that while religious beliefs might colour his politics, "it's best not to take it too far".
"How would he like it if I went round claiming that he gave me his full backing when I sent the tsunami last year?"
Making Crime Pay
No, you simply cannot steal my time and get away with it, not if I can help it. And a lot of times I can.
If I have a hobby, it's being a part-time detective. I've tracked down one stolen car and the dirtbag who stole it, then tracked him down again and made him pay me his court-ordered restitution. Then there was my hit-and-run driver, whom I also tracked down, and had prosecuted.
I also tracked down a friend's birth parents and figured out who was e-harrassing another friend of mine. The friend wanted to send a person an email demanding they stop. Naw. I instead looked up their corporate email policy -- all the small print every big company puts out about not using corporate email for nefarious ends -- and we sent the harrasser a screen-shot of it. That was the last my friend heard from the harrasser, of course.
And then there's stuff like this little adventure from the other evening:
Richard "RJ" LaBarba, who was ticked off about my anti-SUV campaign, anonymously signed me up for a slew of list-serves -- everything from the John Birch Society to the NRA to Omaha Steaks and some lobster company. Unfortunately for him, he picked the wrong girl. I tracked his ass down in the span of about 20 minutes and called him, yelled at him, and told him he owed me $50 for my time.
After I lectured him for a while on why, he said he'd pay me the $50 in a couple of weeks. Hmm. Well, I blogged it, and wondered in that blog item whether that was so, and, lo and behold, he was the first comment on that blog item, apologizing, and he express-mailed me $50 bucks, cash, right away. Here it is.
I've always joked, "Revenge is the best revenge," but really what this is about is accountability. No, if you take my time, it's not enough to simply apologize. My time is worth something, and frankly, at $50 for deleting 30 or so list-serve subscriptions, RJ got off cheaply.
The point isn't really to make money off people (although I'm going after a telemarketer next, and because of the guy's arrogance, plan to sue him in small claims court for my posted prices), it's to show people that they just can't just walk all over people with impunity and play out their lives as if they're the lone member of the ME! ME! ME! generation. And besides, it's fun as hell!
Possibly Dying For Your Country And Getting Royally Screwed At The Same Time
Consumerist notes that AT&T is overcharging soldiers in Iraq...because it can. Completely vile and disgusting. If I hadn't already switched from AT&T to Verizon this fall, I'd do it now. I suggest those still with AT&T make the switch, and be sure to tell them why:
Allegations have arisen that AT&T is abusing its power as a monopoly provider in US soldier’s PBXs in Iraq to block 1-800 numbers needed to use non-AT&T calling cards.“The wholesale rate for calls to the US is less than one cent a minute. Skype charges about 1.5 cents RETAIL to call the US from anywhere in the world. You can buy prepaid cards almost anywhere in the world to call the US for less than two cents a minute. AT&T charges soldiers in Iraq twenty-one cents,” writes the Fractals of Change blog.
In France, I use those cheapo international calling cards. I spent 7.50 euros on a phone card I bought at a tabac (coffee bar/smokes seller), and spend HOURS AND HOURS talking to my assistant and Gregg, and didn't use the thing up in an entire week. This is absolutely disgusting, and AT&T needs to be sent a message, as do all our apparently welded-to-the-the-lobbyist's-teat Congressturds.
The Art Of The Meal
Jackie Danicki was in town from London, and we had dinner plans with Hillary Johnson. A special occasion calls for a special restaurant: the ever-inventive and ever-fabulous Joe's, in Venice:
Joe's Restaurant. A name as ho-hum as this doesn't usually send gastronomic expectations soaring or set mouths watering. It seems more appropriate for that fallback restaurant you schlep to when every other place is booked. That is, unless chef Joe Miller is wearing the toque.For 11 years, Miller, a man as unassuming as his name suggests, has continued to dazzle the particular palates of Angelenos. He's accomplished this by serving up his trademark "soulful" and "heartfelt" California-French fare, as S. Irene Virbila described it in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Since opening, Joe's Restaurant has been on just about everyone's "best" list, including Food & Wine, Gourmet, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. But perhaps the biggest testament to Miller's cooking is that "other chefs … congregate here just to roll up their sleeves and eat some good food," as the Wine Spectator's Harvey Steiman wrote in his own Best of L.A. list.
Desserts by Jason, the pastry chef, who made Stilton ice cream to go with this sculpture, and came out to talk to us after he heard how much we liked his handiwork -- the difference between Venice and the rest of the planet of Los Angeles.
Who Wears The Panties In The Family?
I got a question in my email about a guy who cross-dresses. Make that a married guy who likes to wear his wife’s panties. Married? Married? Yep, married.
Most cross-dressers, according the data I’ve read over the years, are married -- and hetero. There are actually two different kinds of cross-dressers: “periodic cross-dressers” (the married straight guy in a 3 piece suit and lacy lavender panties), and those who feel like women trapped in a man’s body, to one degree or another; the most extreme examples being the ones who don’t feel truly themselves until they get their weenies whacked off. (See Transamerica.)
The guys who sometimes get off sexually on going girly are the married heteros. For the gay drag queen, or the sex reassignment candidate, there’s no turn-on associated with getting into a girdle; it’s really just an expression of who he is -- or would like to be. Of course, some do express their inner girly-hood better than others. I'm suddenly reminded of the frightening photos of Dennis Rodman in drag Lena sent me recently. Dennis, dear, please refer to Trannie Rule Number One: False eyelashes and a 5-o’clock shadow do not mix.
What’s behind the propensity for straight guys to cross-dress? I’m going to talk to a cross-dressing friend of mine (who happens to not only be straight, but quite the girl-magnet). I’m also hoping to interview “Doctor Docter” later this week and see if he has a few clues (that’s Dr. Richard F. Docter, who, with Virginia Prince, did a recent survey of 1032 cross-dressers; an update on Prince’s 1972 report). Other cross-dressers, gay and straight, please feel free to contact me via email (at adviceamy-at-aol.com) with your take on it.
Regarding the sexual aspect, in response to Docter and Prince’s survey point, “Cross-dressing brings sexual excitement and orgasm,” 21 percent said “nearly always,” 19 percent said “often,” and 32 percent said “occasionally.” But 41 percent answered “frequently” as to whether they “enjoy wearing feminine items when orgasm is not feasible.” So, isn’t just a sexual thing. In fact, many heterosexual cross-dressers report that it gives them a feeling of calm, and diminishes their anxiety. (One man’s Prozac is another man’s pink lace thong!)
What’s sad is the way cross-dressing has been pathologized in the psychiatric literature as some kind of disease. There even used to be laws against it -- no, not against Annie Hall in a schlumpy suit and a tie, just against a man going out in, say, a prom dress. Think about it: women and gay men can wear whatever they want. But, if you’re a straight guy, forget it.
Now, granted, I’m not the girl who’s going to be into a guy who’s competing with me in the clearance bin at La Perla. Still, there are women out there who don’t seem to mind; for example, the one who wrote to me about her husband of five months who likes to wear her panties:
"...He does look kind of sexy in them, but I’m afraid it’s a little odd. He is in no way gay, he just says they feel good on his skin and make him feel closer to me. Is this crazy? Is this just a phase? Am I crazy for being okay with it?"
Bush's Junkie-nomics
When a junkie needs some cash, what's he do? Well, he probably steals a TV. When our president needs some cash after all those tax cuts and handouts to his cronies (in addition to the cost of our removing Saddam and inciting civil war in Iraq), what's he do? Balance the budget? Naw. We'll just suck funds out of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund! Stephen Barr writes in the Washington Post:
The Treasury Department has started drawing from the civil service pension fund to avoid hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit. The move to tap the pension fund follows last month's decision to suspend investments in a retirement savings plan held by government employees.In a letter to Congress this week, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said he would rely on the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund to avoid bumping up against the statutory debt limit. He said the Treasury is suspending investments and will redeem a portion of the money credited to the fund.
Once Congress raises the debt limit, the Treasury will "restore all due interest and principal" to the pension fund as soon as possible, Snow said. He made a similar promise when the Treasury announced that reinvestment of some assets in the Thrift Savings Plan's government securities fund, or G Fund, had been suspended.
The civil service trust fund will provide the Treasury with several billion dollars for extra borrowing. The fund had an estimated balance of about $655 billion at the start of the year, but only a small portion of that is available to the Treasury because of the statutes restricting the fund's use during "debt issuance suspension" periods. The G Fund has assets of about $65.3 billion, and all are available for Treasury's use.
The Treasury has leaned on federal employee retirement funds in past years when officials worried about a possible default on the national debt, and most federal employees take it in stride. Still, many employees object to the financial maneuvers, arguing that they amount to a raid on their personal accounts.
Colleen M. Kelley , president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said last month that federal employees should not have their pension accounts "used as a rainy day fund. . . . No private-sector employer would ever be allowed to do this."
Today's PR Genius
In a message dated 3/8/06 9:39:52 PM, jeanette@popculturepr.com, who's hawking some client with tanning salons, emails:
With award-show season in the midst of Winter and the Academy Awards having just finished, I'm sure your Creators Syndicate readers wonder, "How do celebrities keep their great tans?"
I respond:
Jeannette, are you high?Clearly, you've never read my column or my blog.
Go to my blog and search Anthelios.
Only a moron would go to a tanning salon.
Luckily, there are a lot of morons out there, so I'll be one of the few who hits 50 and doesn't look like an Hermes handbag.
And PS, Beyonce's darling cousin used to work for me, and she had Beyoncé's same "sun-kissed look" you mention later in the press release...hmmm...perhaps because she's (light-skinned) black!
Big Men With Imaginary Friends
Oh, fantastic...the men leading the great powers of the free world both believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny. Well, okay, so they believe in god, entirely without proof. Why is that evidence-free, irrational living any less scary? In an interview on Britain's ITV, Tony Blair mistakes the will of the British People for that of the Big Guy In The Sky:
Asked about joining the US-led invasion in March 2003, he said: "That decision has to be taken and has to be lived with, and in the end there is a judgment that -- well, I think if you have faith about these things then you realise that judgment is made by other people."Pushed to clarify what he meant, Blair, a devout Christian, replied: "If you believe in God, it's made by God as well."
...In October last year US president George W. Bush US allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and
Afghanistan, according to a report.Blair's comments were immediately criticised by opposition political parties and families of some of the 103 British soldiers who have died since the start of the conflict.
Menzies Campbell, leader of the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats, which opposed military action, said: "Going to war isn't just an act of faith, it requires rigorous analysis of the legality of doing so, the likelihood of success, the number of possible casualties and the long-term consquences.
"My complaint of the prime minister is that while he may have believed what he was doing was right, the prospect for military action was flawed."
His Lib Dem colleague Evan Harris, an honorary associate of campaign group the National Secular Society, agreed.
"Our political system relies on decisions being made by accountable and elected politicians, not by their or anyone else's gods," Harris said.
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of people in the world sequester a part of their brains from rational thought, allowing themselves to believe in god. This being 2006, isn't it time we started being guided by rationality and evidence-based belief rather than primitive god mumbo jumbo? And, for starters, how about we all get too horrified to elect people who make decisions without first consulting The Great Pumpkin?
More Fun And Games From The Church
A friend of mine from Ireland in his 50s told me abuse by "funny priests" has been something a number of his friends and acquaintances endured as children. Finally, it's on CNN:
The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Dublin published a report Wednesday that says 102 of its priests -- more than 3.5 percent of the total -- are suspected of sexually or physically abusing at least 350 children since 1940, the biggest such admission to date in Ireland.The office of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said it was publishing its findings ahead of the expected formation later this month of a government-appointed commission to investigate the history and handling of such abuse throughout Ireland. This predominantly Catholic nation has been rocked by waves of church sex-abuse scandals since 1994.
The office said the numbers were based on a two-year review of the personnel files of more than 2,800 priests who have worked in the Dublin archdiocese, either as parish priests or in religious orders, during the past 66 years.
According to the report, eight Dublin-assigned priests have received criminal convictions for abuse charges, while 32 priests have been sued for damages by 105 victims at a cost to the archdiocese of 5.8 million euros ($7 million), including 1.7 million euros ($2.05 million) in both sides' legal bills.
But it said costs were expected to go much higher because 40 cases remained unsettled, while church authorities had positively identified at least 350 abuse victims and "a possible further 40 persons who may have been abused but who it is not yet possible to identify or trace."
He's Not Just A Sleazebag, He's Their Sleazebag
Tom DeLay's district votes him in in the GOP primary:
The Tuesday primary was DeLay's first electoral test since he was indicted on money-laundering charges in September. He later stepped down as House majority leader.DeLay hoped to give up his No. 2 post in the House only temporarily, but he took another political blow from his association with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges and is cooperating with federal investigators.
DeLay later gave up his leadership post permanently, clearing the way for Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio.
DeLay has denied all charges, saying they were politically motivated.
A weak showing in Tuesday's primary would have been a sign of political vulnerability in the GOP-friendly district he has represented for 22 years.
After casting his ballot Tuesday, DeLay smiled confidently and shook hands with voters in his hometown of Sugar Land.
Shame, anyone? Anybody remember shame?
Small Penis Cards Attract The Slight-Of-Brained
I started getting a bunch of list subscriptions in my email box Monday night (inspired, I later found out, by my original anti-SUV campaign).
Some assclown was apparently signing me up, but who? Well, apparently, one who doesn't know there's really not that much anonymity for the average person on the Internet.
Alliance Defense Fund, which puts out one of the newsletters he subscribed me to, also sends out a handy-dandy email with a "how was I subscribed?" link -- which lists the IP of the moron who signed me up (in bold below).
Email Address: adviceamy@aol.com First Name: Amy Last Name: Suburban Email Type: not specified, defaulted to MIME Date and time signed up: March 06, 2006 at 07:45:01 PM Your IP Address: 69.164.17.125 You signed up on this page: not recorded
I turn to Arin WhoIs to look up the IP. Adelphia. I write to them at abuse@adelphia.net with the person's IP, asking them to figure out who it is. Then, after unsubscribing to all the lists when I could have been giving advice to about 50 people whose emails are waiting for answers in my mailbox, I noticed an email that wasn't list-served, just on top of all the ones that were. I opened it, and immediately thought to peel back the IP. Yep, shore enough, here's the return path (the essential bits, anyway):
Return-Path:Received: from BrothersMedia ([69.164.17.125]) by mta13.adelphia.net
(InterMail vM.6.01.05.02 201-2131-123-102-20050715) with ESMTP
id <20060307031228.QLOF23930.mta13.adelphia.net@BrothersMedia>
for; Mon, 6 Mar 2006 22:12:28 -0500
From: "Hail Caesar"
To:
Subject: Vehicle Update
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 22:12:37 -0500
Here's the guy's email:
In a message dated 3/6/06 7:12:45 PM, hail-caesar@adelphia.net writes:Just so you know the scales always remain in balance – I just bought my wife a HUGE Suburban. Lovely, 11 miles to the gallon in the city! MMMMM!
As for me, I just can’t give up my 1973 Jeep and 2002 Ford 250!!!! I had a 2001 Corvette but just got tired of it – sorry! When my kids are 18, they get whatever they want as long as it has a V8!
Ahhhh, Capitalism!!!!! Support the economy that has given us all so much!!!!
RJ
p.s. Don’t fret, someday you will get laid and find something worth while to occupy your time with instead of vulgar insults! Oh, and please remember, always Give War a Chance!
Here's what I wrote him back:
It was unwise of you to sign me up for all these lists. I've found your IP and matched it to the one in your email. I've reported the IP address to Adelphia already; now I'll do the rest of the detective work so they don't have to.It's not a surprise that you'd do such a thing -- you already take more than your fair share of the gas on the planet, not caring that our soldiers in Iraq might be getting their arms and legs amputated and coming home in body bags. How can that be anything to be proud of?
As for getting a life, I've been writing a column for 120-plus papers all day long; you've been subscribing my name to lists all over the Internet. Perhaps you should take your own advice? And RJ, what's your full name, big man?
Well, I'll answer that for myself, perhaps, by looking up "BrothersMedia" in his email return. I let my fingers do the walking -- G-O-O-G-L-E.C-O-M, and lookee what I found:
http://brothersmedia.net/
Hmm, whaddya know, we find an RJ there! Helloooo, Genius! It's like the guy who did a hit-and-run on my car...complete with a personalized license plate. If you're going go all asshole on somebody, at least have the good sense to go asshole while undercover. Here's the guy's name, phone number, and email address (which may not be good much longer if Adelphia actually does anything about abuse):
Richard "R.J." LaBarba rjlabarba@brothersmedia.net - 704.451.5207
I called him and told him he'd better get apologizing to me, and fast. Apparently (so he said via another email), he'd actually called me back -- but on my anti-SUV message line (I never check that line), so I called him back again after getting this email:
Amy,Just left you a voice mail with this same message - Kudos for having the intestinal fortitude to make the phone call! Again, I apologize for my low-road ‘p.s.’ comment on my earlier email. After getting my car keyed to the tune of $1250 by a ‘green’ supporter last year (who also left a card) my temper gets the best of me sometimes per anti-SUV campaigners.
I have to say I didn’t listen to your voice mail because after you said your name I hung up and decided to just accept the feeling of “good for her” instead of potentially listening to an unpleasant voice mail, deservedly so, and potentially engaging in tit-for-tat emails.
Well, that is it and I will close with a sincere - have a great rest of the week!
RJ
I told him that he was no better than the car keyer for taking my time without my permission and subscribing me to those email lists -- especially when I could have been answering emails from people who need advice. For example, this guy, who was wondering what I was doing instead of answering his question (well, for one thing, deleting my name from the John Birch Society newsletter):
Are you going to write back or answer on your Web site? Still looking for your help. Thank you! Waiting
My response:
Sorry, but I'm on deadline now. I will answer you, but Wednesday or just after. Best,-Amy
I told LaBarba I want him to be accountable. He simply kept saying he was sorry. Not good enough. He took my time, and he owes me for it. I asked for $50. (I do that to telemarketers and others who call me unless they get me madder as a way to have them put their money where their mouth is -- in real accountability.)
LaBarba bragged (classy!) that he charges $250 an hour and said he'd send me the $50 in "a couple weeks." Hmm, we'll see. Bets on whether he's a man of his word, anyone?
Oh yeah...and any other Jell-O-for-brains interested in trying to scam my ass this week?
--Amy Alkon, Girl Detective
UPDATE: Did he or didn't he (pay up)? The answer here.
Homeland Spending Like A Drunken Sailor, Uh, Security
Veronique de Rugy writes in Reason about how our homeland security dollars are being spent:
What do gym memberships, the Fourteen Mile Bridge in Mobile, Alabama, and a promotional campaign for a child pornography tip-line have in common? Answer: They all were funded with your homeland security dollars.Since September 11, Congress has appropriated nearly $180 billion to protect Americans from terrorism. Total spending on homeland security in 2006 will be at least $50 billion—roughly $450 per American household. But far from making us more secure, the money is being allocated like so much pork. States and cities are spending federal homeland security grants on pet projects that have nothing to do with homeland security; state and local officials fight over who will get the biggest share of the money, regardless of whether they have a legitimate claim to it. And when Congress isn’t doling out cash indiscriminately, it’s overreacting to yesterday’s attacks instead of concentrating on cost-effective defenses against the most likely current threats. The result is an edifice that, far from preventing terrorist assaults, actually makes us more vulnerable by diverting resources from worthier projects.
One of the reasons she gives is a "failure to prioritize":
If power companies invested in infrastructure the way DHS and Congress fight terrorism, a New Yorker wouldn’t be able to run a hairdryer but everyone in Bozeman, Montana, could light up a stadium. Efficient expenditures concentrate limited resources on the most cost-effective initiatives; not every need is worth funding, and the greatest priorities and risks must be addressed first. But because Congress is more interested in politics than security, it gives every threat, every state, and every interest group a share of the homeland security pie, regardless of risk.It doesn’t take a security expert to realize that some anti-terror expenditures are more cost-effective than others. Simple cockpit barricades, which the airline industry has now installed at relatively low cost, can prevent all 9/11-style attacks. In contrast, the burgeoning U.S. system for screening the bags of every airline passenger has already cost $18 billion during the last four years but will do little to prevent 9/11-style hijacking. Nor does the screening system prevent the destruction of airplanes, since it doesn’t systematically check carry-on bags or air freight for explosives.
Another example: Congress insists that DHS hand out ever greater portions of its budget to “first responder” programs—essentially federal funds for state and local police and fire departments. But as James Carafano has shown in a 2005 study for the conservative Heritage Foundation, a dollar spent on preventing the next terror attack is vastly more cost-effective than a dollar spent recovering from it.
That’s not to say it isn’t prudent to prepare for an attack. But federalizing first-responder programs accentuates the incentive problems that already plague the political process. When such programs are a state responsibility, legislators have a strong incentive to accurately assess the risk and potential damages to their states. They have to decide whether to spend more on homeland security or on other accounts. When these programs are funded at the federal level, by contrast, a congressman from Wyoming has no incentive to admit that his state is not a likely target or that if it ever were a target, the damages would be limited. He has no incentive to turn down federal money and even less incentive to volunteer taxpayers’ dollars for other states.
The bottom line is that our country is being run by a bunch of idiots on the take to lobbyists and whose idea of government is funneling pork through to their own states over the protection of the nation. Until we all stop electing them, we're all to blame.
God Hates Fred
No, I haven't woken up with a fever, and I still don't believe in the Big Imaginary Friend. But, if there were a god -- let's say, if Jesus existed, from everything I've read of the guy, whose side would he be on, that of Fred Phelps, or soldiers who are gay?
This past Saturday morning I found myself in a five-car caravan cutting across the Kansas plains with about 30 religious protesters. In the back of a truck, there were signs that read "Thank God for IED's" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."I was with the Phelps family. They've launched a disturbing campaign to tarnish the funerals of fallen soldiers.
This is a painful drama playing out at dozens of military funerals across the country. The group is led by Fred Phelps.
He and his family have picketed and heckled military families at more than 100 funerals since June. They say the soldiers are fighting for an army that represents a country that accepts homosexuality.
...This past weekend's target was Army Sgt. Jessie Davila.
Davila was killed February 20 in Iraq by a suicide bomber. He served as a Marine after graduating from high school. He returned to civilian life, and had a daughter. But he was always a soldier at heart, so two years ago he joined the Army National Guard and was three months into an Iraqi deployment when he was killed.
This is also very much a story about another phenomenon the Phelps protest has created. That's the birth of a group called the "Patriot Guard Riders." They're a volunteer group that came together after hearing that so many military families were being blindsided by the protesters.
More than 400 motorcycles thundered toward this showdown in Dodge City this weekend to make sure Sgt. Jessie Davila's funeral was not overshadowed by the Phelps protest. They converged from small towns all over southwest Kansas to support Sgt. Davila's family. One group leader says, "I knew we would have a crowd, but I didn't know it would be this big."
Just as too many "moderate Muslims" are silent about the terror attacks, where have all the "real Christians" been during all the years Fred Phelps has been spewing his homo hate?
In the words of the ancient Hebrew school teacher Hillel, since we're on religion: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me. If I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?"
Yooohooo? We're waiting!
Some Might Say It's The Black Toenail Polish
...That makes the man. Another fine fashion figure from Melrose Avenue.
Is It The Love Or The Loot?
Via Kate Coe, who knows I'm writing a column for this week's deadline on registering for wedding gifts, the site, helpusgetleid.com, where they're looking to their friends to pay for their wedding in Hawaii:
While we lived together, I racked up $30,000 in student loans in the process of earning a bachelor's degree in business administration. Then, all I could find were $11/hr administrative assistant jobs! And my loan payment is how much a month??The bad news…
Knowing that neither of our parents could possibly contribute to a wedding, we continued to postpone our plans. Now seven years later, we just want to get married already! So, we’re scaling back – no big party with all of our friends and family, no caterers, no big band – just a ceremony please! We have both always dreamed of getting married with sand between our toes in Hawaii, so now it’s just going to be the two of us.The plan…
We decided that we want to do it this year, on June 26 in Hawaii. I figured that a Monday would hopefully be a little less expensive than the traditional weekend weddings. Our family and friends are not likely to be able to afford to join us, but the date is set and we are going regardless of where the chips may fall!We hope you can help! Mahalo!
Tacky, tacky, tacky!
My point of view on the expectation of wedding gifts: This is America, not the Sudan. We all basically have everything we need. Even at my churchmouse poorest, I didn't need people to buy me presents to make my coffee, toast my toast, and have a plate or two for eating my dinner. Who really lacks for anything?
Do you really neeeeeed fine china and silver? Will your dinner parties be that much less without them? Is your love dependent upon getting that toaster that also makes espresso and accesses your email? To me, unless you're dirt poor, why not tell your guests "love is all we need," and in lieu of gifts, they can make a smaaaaaall anonymous donation to some charity if they really feel they must give something?
I also think the massive, expensive wedding is pretty tacky. Enough with all the overspending. My old assistant Lydia is one of the most happily married people I know, and she and her husband spent a total of about $300 for her wedding on the beach -- including a case of Prosecco, their wedding clothes, and a cake. They borrowed somebody's beach house for the reception and had their friends all bring pot-luck. Their friends, essentially, contributed to their wedding, made their wedding, in fact -- but in a small, reasonable way.
I understand some of the arguments for registering -- that people don't want to get 26 blenders, and that some people have no idea what to give. But, maybe people who don't know you well enough to give without your help have no business coming to your wedding? And maybe a truly meaningful wedding gift would simply be a note from each person about what they wish for you (such as, that your marriage will last longer than the payments they'd be making on that monogrammed silver decanter set they would have gotten you at Tiffany's).
If it's truly about the love, why is everybody expected to go out and spear you some expensive home appliance, or, tsk, tsk, tacky, tacky -- a down payment on a house or a honeymoon? Some say it's okay to go for that stuff as long as it comes from "word of mouth." Well, whose mouth does anyone think it originated from first of all? And what of the friends who don't have much money? Are they expected to go into hock, or just into embarrassment, for this kind of gift-giving plan?
If anything, what every couple really needs (for less than $20), is the book, The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work, and then, if you've still got some spare cash, She Comes First, The Sex-Starved Marriage (okay, so the title's a bit of a downer, but it's a preventive measure), maybe a couple of others, and maybe a few trips to a Certified Financial Planner.
I do think, however, it might make a certain kind of sense to register for a divorce lawyer, at the rate and length marriages are lasting these days. And I wonder...how many people would be so hot to get married if they couldn't have the big, splashy ceremony and all the gifts? If they just did it downtown, in a dressup clothes, before a couple close friends and family members and a justice of the peace?
This Cow Is About To Burst Into Tears
My cup runneth under.
I'm going through my Din Johnson/Nancy Rommelmann artisanally-roasted Ristretto coffee super-fast, because it's so good.
My review: It's like drinking velvet.
Now, there's confirmation of that from Iraq, where soldiers read my column in the Stars & Stripes. I got this email from one of them:
You're right, the coffee is great, like velvet...the french however are like human sandpaper!
If you want to mail-order some of their coffee (and I swear, you'll rank other coffees as Swill, Swill-Minus, or worse, once you do), drop in at the brand new Ristretto site Jackie Danicki and Hillary Johnson just designed out of exasperation that such amazing coffee wasn't available by mail order, except to friends of Nancy's who had her personal email address.
The Savages Are Restless
Europe is learning too little, too late, that it made a major, maybe fatal, mistake, with the policies of open immigration that let in millions of Muslims, so many of whom are hostile to the European way of life.
Europe is foaming with acts of barbarianism -- from the murder of Theo Van Gogh to the most recent horrible torture-murder of a young Parisian Jew named Ilan Halimi.
The lead barbarian, Youssouf Fofana, 25, who actually proudly took the name Barbarian for his gang, denies, in The New York Times, that their savagery was religiously motivated. Right. All the evidence says otherwise. Paris-dwelling novelist Nidra Poller writes in The Wall Street Journal:
Paris is well aware that the case threatens France's international reputation, but far more than that is at stake. Once again, as in the suburban riots of 2005, the country is forced to come face to face with the criminalized, alienated and racist Muslim youth and their adult enablers in its midst.Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin declared, in a long speech delivered at the annual dinner of the CRIF, that this heinous crime was anti-Semitic, and that anti-Semitism is not acceptable in France. He promised that the perpetrators would be captured and punished. Two French policemen were sent to the Ivory Coast with an international warrant to arrest Mr. Fofana who flew there on a one-way ticket on Feb. 15, the day that his photo appeared in Le Figaro. A delegation of the CRIF and members of the Halimi family this past Tuesday met with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The murder of Ilan Halimi invites comparison with the November 2003 killing of a Jewish disc jockey, Sebastien Selam. His Muslim neighbor, Adel, slit his throat, nearly decapitating him, and gouged out his eyes with a carving fork in his building's underground parking garage. Adel came upstairs with bloodied hands and told his mother, "I killed my Jew, I will go to paradise." In the two years before his murder, the Selam family was repeatedly harassed for being Jewish. The Selam case has not been opened by the magistrate. The murderer, who admits his guilt, was placed in a psychiatric hospital, and may be released soon.
The initial response to the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi suggested a comparably selective ignorance. But many things have changed in French society in the past two years. Then, faced with the new tide of anti-Semitism, the Jewish community was left alone with its distress and at times even accused of being justifiably targeted because of its support for Israel. Today the government has apparently decided that the barbarous hatred unleashed against one Jewish man is a threat to all of France.
Too little, too late, for France and for Europe -- or do they have any hope of getting out of this? (And don't forget the birth rate of all those immigrants, so many of them on the dole in the countries they now call home.) One difference between, say, the Muslims in Europe and the immigrants who founded (and continue to build) this country is in the desire to assimilate -- to join a country already in progress. I think Europe is in for some pretty big trouble -- all of Europe. Is there any turning it back?
Your Mind Or The Monkey?
Stuart Jeffries interviews Tipu Aziz, a scientist who's open about his animal testing, and defends its use in the cosmetics industry:
Professor Tipu Aziz is showing me a bullfight on his laptop. "It's a film from the 60s by a Yale professor called Delgado," he says. "That's an angry bull," the neurosurgeon adds unnecessarily, pointing at the twitching, menacing animal. On screen, Delgado hides behind the anti-goring screen at the edge of the ring, leaving his research student to defend himself with a cape. Then we see the bull after Delgado has implanted electrodes in its brain. He has become a picture of calm. If only all bulls had such brain surgery, bullfighting would be obsolete.Aziz shows me this film as one of the first examples of deep brain stimulation, a surgical procedure he pioneered in Britain to halt the symptoms of Parkinson's disease (which affects one in 100 people over 60) and other crippling tremor-based ailments. Patients have small electrodes permanently implanted in their brains. Wires are passed under the skin to a pacemaker. A battery is inserted in the chest. Some patients have described the surgery as miraculous - tremors stop and, in some cases, patients walk again. "Many people cry after the surgery because they are so happy that the symptoms have been effectively turned off."
He shows me several before-and-after videos of sufferers to whom he has brought relief - upsetting images of twitching, horribly writhing men and women, unable to walk, unable to talk, but with their mental faculties intact. He shows me a four-year-old girl suffering from dystonia, a degenerative condition akin to Parkinson's. "At first we didn't want to operate on a small girl, but when she came to us she was dying - she couldn't swallow or move. So we operated. Now," he says, clinching the point, "she is a healthy teenager." These films are marvellous PR for Aziz's work, of course. He performs brain surgery about three times a week. He says that 40,000 people around the world have benefited from the techniques he has developed. He is very proud of his work.
Only one problem: Aziz is a vivisectionist. He experiments on monkeys. He drills into their heads and puts electrodes in their brains. He has drugged them, too, in order to recreate the symptoms of Parkinson's. He reckons to use on average two monkeys a year this way and estimates that about 100 have been used for such research around the world. "I have absolutely no qualms about what I do." He points at his laptop: "These cases are why my conscience is clear."
Animals are not people. People have to take priority. I'm not for needlessly causing animals pain, or killing them for sport (if they aren't also eaten or used), but I have no problem with eating them or wearing them -- and as for animal testing for medical purposes or cosmetics...please do (as humanely as possible).
I had to laugh when a woman I know disparaged me for wearing my eBay Furs 1940s mouton lamb swing coat (a bargain at $129!). "Honey, I don't like fur," she said, slipping into her hip-length suede coat.
I get the sense that a lot of the "anti-fur" people take their position because the animals in question are so cute. If a baby seal looked like a tarantula, would they really care?
Forever 1972
Melrose Ave near Fairfax, Los Angeles.
And Now, To The Videotape
Casual sex with a woman you don't know can be a dangerous thing -- unless you catch the whole thing on videotape. Yet another group of men is cleared of "rape" charges -- this group in Orange County, Florida -- thanks to video evidence that the sex was consensual. The police now say the woman made up the story about being raped by several international workers at Florida's Disney World:
The woman, Elizabeth Sunde, 26, is being charged with making a false police report, WESH NewsChannel 2 reported.On Feb. 26, police responded to a report of an alleged sexual battery involving multiple suspects.
Sunde told investigators that she was approached by five or six "French men" in her apartment complex at approximately 4 a.m., and said the men physically carried her to the Gables Commons Apartments, where she was held down and sexually battered by at least four men.
Sunde stated she returned to her apartment some time after 5 a.m. after the alleged assaults and ultimately went to work. She did not report the incident to the Sheriff's Office until about 5 p.m., when she returned to her apartment after her work day.
...The suspects in the alleged attacks were cooperative with the investigation from its onset to the point of providing a video tape of the incident, which helped corroborate their account of the incident.
She's charged merely with making a false police report. It's, well, criminal, that there isn't a stronger charge when her allegations could have ruined the lives of these men. How many women had second thoughts, or were just vengeful for some reason, and went to the cops where there was no videotape to back up the men?
(Thanks, Crid, for the link)
Cops On Melrose
Melrose near La Brea, Thursday, February 23. At least the police are well-protected!
The Sound Of Silence
That's the sound George Bush made when presented with the details on the raging waters of an impending national disaster. The man didn't ask a single question. Nope. Lips zipped...okey dokey...next? John Dickerson writes on Slate that he bought the PR version of Bush as The Great Interrogator until he got a load of Bush in action. Well, if being mute in the face of national disaster can be called "action":
You know you're in trouble when Michael Brown outshines you. But the president's question-free briefing is more than a momentary bad piece of public relations. It's a blow to a key Bush myth. The Bush management philosophy relies on him as an interrogator. He delegates, but that's OK because he knows how to question those he empowers to make sure they're focused. Question-asking is also a central public tool in the "trust me" presidency. We aren't supposed to worry that the NSA wiretapping program goes too far because the president has asked all the questions. When the president was wrong about the level of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the strength of the insurgency, it wasn't because he didn't ask enough questions, we have been told, it was because he was given the wrong answers.Bush has long been criticized for being incurious. That isn't always a bad thing. A president can be uninterested in visiting the Taj Mahal if he's laserlike behind the scenes. Perhaps the Katrina briefing was an aberration. But I worry that it isn't. Those in the room with him during other briefings also say he didn't ask very sharp questions then, either. Former anti-terrorism official Richard Clarke and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill both wrote about Bush's lack of curiosity. L. Paul Bremer's account of his 14 months in Iraq as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority inadvertently paints a similar picture. In briefings, Bush offered a pep talk—"pace yourself, Jerry"—and questions about tangential issues like whether the new Iraqi leaders would thank the Americans for their sacrifice. George Packer didn't work for Bush, but his book The Assassin's Gate paints a grim portrait of what happens when the president doesn't ask the right questions: Factions within his administration take over and pursue their own agendas.
A White House spokesman told the AP that in this specific case the president had already received multiple briefings. Aides also leaked a transcript to Newsweek of another briefing in which Brown tells others that the president is engaged and asking questions. (Though they didn't release any transcript that actually showed Bush asking those questions, just Brown's secondhand account.)
But shouldn't talk of catastrophe in the briefing AP acquired have spurred the president's interest—no matter how many previous briefings he'd received? Was Michael Brown such a good briefer that everything was clear? I don't know what question the president should have asked, but shouldn't he have asked something?
What I want to know is whether all the people who voted for Bush and have trumpeted his greatness (or at least thought he was doing a reasonably good job) through all the shitstorms of phony intelligence and Katrina and all the rest...still think so. And sure, Kerry was no choice at all, but let's say John McCain or somebody generally believed to have a brain and some semblance of character were running today. Would all you Bush voters go for your man now in office or would you opt for a better class of candidate?
Pay Your Credit Card, Get Flagged As A Terrorist!
via Digg.com, columnist Bob Kerr writes that a couple paid off their $6,522 in credit card debt on their JC Penney Platinum MasterCard (what's next, Burger King Platinum MasterCards?) -- only to get flagged by Homeland Security:
After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.
"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.
They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.
Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.
"The more I'm on, the scarier it gets," he said. "It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy."
Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.
But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.
"If it can happen to me, it can happen to others," he said.
Letting Sleeping Pinup Girls Lie
My Web site was about to implode. I had over 300,000 Blacklisted pieces of spam piled up like turds in the background of my site, and I was 15 megs over the limit allowed by my server company. While Gregg got to work researching a solution, and ultimately upgrading me to Movable Type 3.2, Lucy did her bit, laying in bed and doing her best to channel Scarlett Johansson.
I did send one last nasty note to an Atlanta real estate chick whose site name appeared repeatedly in my spam (and called her, too, leaving her an angry message on her work number when I was up at 3am deleting spam):
I'm a syndicated columnist, and either you or somebody you paid just left a bunch of spam turds on my site. That's vandalism and theft, and if I were in the Atlanta area, I'd come there and sue you in small claims court. I pay for my site, and I don't do it to run free ads from the likes of you. How disgusting. We're having problems with my site now, because we can disappear the spam from the visible site (and make it ineligible for Google rankings), but I'm carrying all the spam on my site in the background - it never goes away - which means I may have to pay for a dedicated server, and that my Movable Type software isn't working.What I want to know, as a price of carrying your spam turds around forever, is who you paid -- which spammer -- to get you Google rankings. I also want you to know how sleazy and creepy this is. By the way, your spammer is working very hard, doing stuff like "Valencia..." in their listings, to screw with the software of the unsuspecting. FYI, your name has been added to the master Movable Type blacklist, so sites subscribing to it will automatically not let you post. Creepy. You tell me what I want to know. It's the least you can do, with all the time I've taken to delete all your spam turds, and with the fact that I'm still carrying around your crap on my server. -Amy Alkon
She didn't write back (there's a surprise!), but I feel better not having sucked down her spam in silence.
Knocked Up, Who's There?
The Grinch who cut contraceptive funding, for one. Ceci Connolly explains, in The Washington Post, why unintended pregnancies are up:
At a time when policymakers have made reducing unintended pregnancies a national priority, 33 states have made it more difficult or more expensive for poor women and teenagers to obtain contraceptives and related medical services, according to an analysis released yesterday by the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute.From 1994 to 2001, many states cut funds for family planning, enacted laws restricting access to birth control and placed tight controls on sex education, said the institute, a privately funded research group that focuses on sexual health and family issues.
The statewide trends help explain why more than half of the 6 million pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended and offer clues for tackling problems associated with teenage pregnancy and abortion, said researchers who specialize in the field."The most powerful and least divisive way to decrease abortion is to reduce unintended pregnancy," said Sarah Brown, director of the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "If we can make progress reducing unintended pregnancy, we can make enormous progress reducing abortion."
Why aren't there condom vending machines in every high school -- and everywhere? Why don't we pass out condoms free on street corners? Oh, does your religion say sex before marriage is a sin? We're so sorry. Why don't you go hide under a pew somewhere and let the rest of us throw around contraceptives and give realistic sex education classes -- the kind that don't promote "abstinence"...that kind of education being the real sin (the kind against reality and common sense that leads to 17-year-old mommies).
Being Good Without God
Robert Wright interviews E.O. Wilson, Stephen Pinker, Daniel Dennett, and others on why you don't have to have irrational belief in god to be a good person. E.O. Wilson gets into something I believe as well -- that we are hard-wired for morality. You can call it "reciprocal altruism" or "do unto others," but there seems to be a module in all of us for empathy (an important underpinning of manners and ethics) and a realization as well that others have modules for cheater detection that lead to some punishment being meted out to those who, in some way, take more than their fair share. This is true whether somebody's grabbing a vastly bigger slice of the pie or clocking somebody over the head with a pipe wrench and stealing their wallet.
It's A Rough Week For Morons In Utah
Kirk Johnson writes in The New York Times that an anti-evolution bill has tanked in Utah:
In a defeat for critics of Darwin, the Utah House of Representatives on Monday voted down a bill intended to challenge the theory of evolution in high school science classes.The bill had been viewed nationally, by people on each side of the science education debate, as an important proposal because Utah is such a conservative state, with a Legislature dominated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But the bill died on a 46-to-28 vote in the Republican-controlled House after being amended by the majority whip, Stephen H. Urquhart, a Mormon who said he thought God did not have an argument with science. The amendment stripped out most of the bill's language, leaving only that the state board of education "shall establish curriculum requirements relating to scientific instruction."
What I wanna know is how Urquhart knows what god does and doesn't have an argument with. It's like that idiot Jerry Falwell, who says Jews can't get into "heaven." And no, he hasn't reversed his position on that, as was previously reported. If there were a god, you'd think god would be pretty pissed off with all these morons who claim to speak for him.
If we're picking teams for a brain trust, I'll take Dawkins and Dennett, and all the stem-cell researchers, and you primitives, you take the preachers and snake oil salesmen.
The Evil Free Browser Distributors
via Consumerist, a tenderheaded British "Trading Standards" lady from a small northern town attacks Mozilla for...giving away the browser free? And for...not having a problem with people selling hard copies of the thing? Gervase Markham writes in The London Times:
Who could possibly be upset with the Mozilla Foundation for giving away its Firefox browser?One of my roles at the Mozilla Foundation relates to copyright licensing. I'm responsible for making sure that the software we distribute respects the conditions of the free software licences of the underlying code. I'm also the first point of contact for licensing questions.
Most of the time, this job involves helping people who want to use our code in their own products understand the terms, or advising project members who want to integrate code from another project into our codebase. Occasionally, however, something a little more unusual comes along.
A little while ago, I received an e-mail from a lady in the Trading Standards department of a large northern town. They had encountered businesses which were selling copies of Firefox, and wanted to confirm that this was in violation of our licence agreements before taking action against them.
I wrote back, politely explaining the principles of copyleft – that the software was free, both as in speech and as in price, and that people copying and redistributing it was a feature, not a bug. I said that selling verbatim copies of Firefox on physical media was absolutely fine with us, and we would like her to return any confiscated CDs and allow us to continue with our plan for world domination (or words to that effect).
Unfortunately, this was not well received. Her reply was incredulous:
"I can't believe that your company would allow people to make money from something that you allow people to have free access to. Is this really the case?" she asked.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."
I felt somewhat unnerved at being held responsible for the disintegration of the UK anti-piracy system. Who would have thought giving away software could cause such difficulties?