What's Worse Than Some Lady In A Ginormous SUV Holding Her Cell While Driving?
January 31st, late afternoon: A friend of mine took this picture while sitting in the passenger seat of a car going through Culver City down Venice Boulevard. She says the bus was moving at the time, and a girl on the bus who saw she was taking the picture was wildly giving her the high sign.
A Very Inconvenient Truth
Pictures of Al Gore's energy-sucking Nashville mansion here, at Pajamas Media.
She Mrs. The Point
I just posted another Advice Goddess column. A lady takes her husband's name upon marrying, then goes wiggo when her friends and relatives refer to her in the address on cards and letters as Mrs. John Doe:
Although I’m a staunch feminist, I took my husband’s last name. We regularly get mail to “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe.” Because of my long-standing hatred of this method of address (eliminating the woman’s first name), we deliberately return-addressed our wedding invitations and subsequent holiday cards with “Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe,” hoping people would understand our preference. Yet, even friends and family who knew me prior to marriage are writing “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe.” Surely my own loved ones would consider me someone who still has a first name! My husband understands my plight, but postulates that if I’m so bothered, I ought to inform the offenders. I do feel strongly about this (and all matters pertaining to a woman’s right to her own identity), but I’m an extreme introvert who’d rather die than hurt people’s feelings. Should I care less about what others think and tell them they’re hurting me by perpetuating something I find reprehensible?--Blinding Rage
My response? (I'm such a bitch!)
Dear Mrs. John Doe,
Enough about your blinding rage, let’s talk about mine. Last weekend, my boyfriend and I were staying at a hotel. I called down to the front desk with a request. The front desk guy said, “Certainly, Mrs. Sutter!” Well, I’m not “Mrs. Sutter,” and I have no intention of ever getting married. So…what was the proper response, lecturing him in the myriad ways people have committed relationships these days -- or simply thanking him for giving us late checkout?Of course, I understood that the guy was taking his best guess in an attempt to be polite -- not suggesting that a woman sharing a hotel room with a man is either his wife or a hooker. Likewise, it’s doubtful your friends and relatives are trying to communicate that you’ve lost all personhood in their eyes. Tradition says, and etiquette experts advise, that the correct way to address correspondence to a married woman who took her husband’s name is the way that peeves you most. Just a little something to consider before you come on like the Kim Jong Il of Christmas card feminism.
Yes, you did mail out your personal Magna Carta on how you were to be addressed -- communicated as a hint, probably in tiny script, on the upper left corner of envelopes. Sorry, but what kind of person has the time to pore over every piece of mail they get just in case there’s a hidden message in the return address? Probably one whose choice of daily activities is largely limited to chiseling through reinforced concrete with a sharpened toothbrush or sitting on their cot waiting for parole.
The real problem starts with you, the “staunch feminist” who took her husband’s last name. A wee bit of disconnect, huh? Luckily, there’s no need to admit you didn’t quite think this name-taking business through when you can blame friends and family for your “plight.” Couldn’t you just be happy you got Christmas cards? You could also follow the lead of an increasing number of women who feel powerful enough that they can be traditional, or even girly, without feeling like some subjugated patriarchal tool. Then again, if you can’t help but see this as the Western version of female circumcision, quit gnashing and send out a polite announcement that you’ll be using your maiden name. Yes, a woman has a right to her own identity, but when she willingly takes a man’s name then wigs out when people actually use it -- well, it’s kind of like going to a Klan rally and getting all poopy when nobody will join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome.”
Are Your Sperm Past The Sell-By Date?
These days, parents who look 9,000 years old are getting more and more common. First, there are weirdos like the lady who lied about her age to get in-vitro, then gave birth at 67. People have thought men could have kids well into their 70s -- and even beyond, if they can still get a woody. But, writes Roni Rabin in The New York Times, maybe that's not such a good idea:
Some studies suggest that the risk of sporadic single-gene mutations may be four to five times higher for fathers who are 45 and older, compared with fathers in their 20s, Dr. Simpson said. Over all, having an older father is estimated to increase the risk of a birth defect by 1 percent, against a background 3 percent risk for a birth defect, he said.Even grandchildren may be at greater risk for some conditions that are not expressed in the daughter of an older father, according to the American College of Medical Genetics. These include Duchenne muscular dystrophy, some types of hemophilia and fragile-X syndrome.
A recent study on autism attracted attention because of its striking findings about a perplexing disorder. Researchers analyzed a large Israeli military database to determine whether there was a correlation between paternal age and the incidence of autism and related disorders. It found that children of men who became a father at 40 or older were 5.75 times as likely to have an autism disorder as those whose fathers were younger than 30.
“Until now, the dominant view has been, ‘Blame it on the mother,’ ” said Dr. Avi Reichenberg, the lead author of the study, published in September in The Archives of General Psychiatry. “But we found a dose-response relationship: the older the father, the higher the risk. We think there is a biological mechanism that is linked to aging fathers.”
Just Because The Child's On A Leash
Doesn't mean she won't bite you.
This particular child actually seemed quite well-behaved. But, more parents -- especially the "parent" who ignored her tantrum-throwing child at a cafe I went to this weekend -- should put their children on leashes, muzzle them, give them flea baths, and leave them tied to parking meters.
Okay, I'm kidding about the flea baths. But, in lieu of treating children like dogs, perhaps more parents could treat them like children, and...actually parent them?
Time To Put On The Red Wig
A friend who lives in New York called me this week to ask me a question. I had him put it in writing, and said I'd poll all of you. Here it is:
Hi Amy,
Recently my girlfriend told me that I was being cheap when I left a 15% tip at a restaurant, and that 20% was now the standard restaurant-tip amount. This is news to me - I thought 15% was the expected amount you tip for good service. So what is the latest - 15% or 20%.....?
Your verdict?
Anna Nicole Who?
They can’t find Jimmy Hoffa, but they may have found Jesus, who supposedly died, then was "resurrected" three days later. So, how did he end up dead in a tomb with his wife and kid, Eddie, in a suburb of Jerusalem? Well, okay, I'm kidding about Eddie. But, people who believe in the resurrection dealie are a wee bit upset about the contention that the bones found belong to Jesus and Co. David Van Biema writes for TIME:
Here's the set-up. In 1980 a construction crew in the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiot chanced upon a first-century tomb, which are not uncommon in that city. The Israeli Antiquities Authority found 10 bone boxes there, and stored them in a warehouse. Some bore inscribed names: Jesus, son of Joseph; Maria; Mariamene e Mara; Matthew; Judas, son of Jesus; and Jose. Each name with the exception of Mariamene seemed common to their period, and it was only in 1996 that the BBC made a film suggesting that. given the combination, it might be that family. The idea was eventually discounted, however, because, as University of St. Andrews (Scotland) New Testament expert Richard Bauckham asserted in a subsequent book, the names with Biblical resonance are so common that even when you run the probabilities on the group, the odds of it being the famous Jesus's family are "very low."...Darrell Bock, a professor at the conservative Protestant Dallas Seminary, whom the Discovery Channel had vet the film two weeks ago, adds another objection: why would Jesus's family or followers bury his bones in a family plot and "then turn around and preach that he had been physically raised from the dead?" If that objection smacks secular readers as relying too heavily on scripture, then Bock's larger point is still trenchant: "I told them that there were too many assumptions being claimed as discoveries, and that they were trying to connect dots that didn't belong together."
Well, there's a coincidence. That's exactly why I always say about religion!
And just a thought, Professor Bock but could it be: "Jesus died, people lied"? Occam's razor, you know?
When Corduroy Comes Out Of The Closet
Let's hope it's on its way to a bonfire.
Tragically, there are corduroy enablers in the world, like Miles Rohan, who started -- most frighteningly -- The Corduroy Appreciation Club.
Finding members wasn't easy, according to this Talk Of The Town piece by Ben McGrath:
His wife, Jordana Furcht, who is a graphic designer, helped him with a sharper-looking batch of cards (they feature an image of a humpback whale, next to the phrase “All Wales Welcome,” and have real corduroy pasted on the back), and a few weeks ago he set out to canvass again. He brought fistfuls of cards into clothing stores and stealthily deposited them in the pockets of corduroy garments, hoping that shoppers would discover them and visit his new Web site. (“Banana Republic was scary—I almost got caught, because the pockets there are too small,” he said.) He chased a well-corded man into a Virgin Megastore. (“He looked cool, but he was completely freaked out by me.”) He stood on Astor Place holding a sign that said, “Do You Like Corduroy?”The meeting took place on November 11th—“because 11/11 is the date that most resembles corduroy,” Rohan said—in the Back Room, a Lower East Side bar said to be owned by Tim Robbins (who sometimes wears corduroy jackets) and the retired hockey star Mark Messier (who certainly does not). Guests were asked to wear at least two corduroy items and donate a dollar; in return, they were entitled to whale buttons and ribbed peanut-butter cookies.
...The club’s new members, including a toddler dressed in OshKosh corduroy overalls and a man wearing Italian slanted-wale pants, assembled in front of the bar’s fireplace, many sitting on furniture upholstered in velvet, a fustian rival. Betsy Franjola, the fabric manager for Karl Lagerfeld, delivered a history lesson, citing competing claims about the etymology of the word “corduroy”: one story has the term originating in seventeenth-century France (corde du roi: the king’s cloth), and another traces it to thirteenth-century Manchester, otherwise known as Cottonopolis. Lindland, when his time came, had a controversy of his own to clear up: horizontal cords, he said, do not make you look fat.
Unfortunately, just like vertical cords, they make you look like twice-rewarmed shit.
Why?
Pre-Oscar fashion, Venice, California.
It didn't get any better.
The minute-by-minute review of the Oscars is here, from the Fug sisters.
UPDATE: More fabulous fugging -- of the duds on people's bodies -- here. My personal horrifying favorites so far? Sally Kirkland as Endora, and the vine growing up Forest Whitaker's wife's back.
Why People Blow Themselves Up
Sunday, on CNN, I read about a female suicide bomber who killed 40 people and maimed others when she blew herself up at a Baghdad university. Can't blame Israel for that one!
But, who or what is to blame? What makes a person blow themself up? I got on Google, and found a piece by a man who grew up in Kenya in a Protestant Christian family with a mother who was and is still very religious. The man, who is no longer Christian or religious, ponders what makes a suicide bomber:
I have watched the CNN clips on how the Islamic fundamentalists are trained to become suicide bombers. Most of these young men come from poverty-ridden households with so much hardship that they find life not worth living. The teachers identify these vulnerable boys and offer them companionship, food and shelter at their training schools. In these schools, the teachers use religion, in this case Islam, to program the boys into robots. When the training is done and they are told to jump, they can only ask how high. The main argument they use is telling the boys that they are fighting for god. They convince them of the Holy War that exists between the Islamic world and the West. They convince them that all their hardships are caused by the West. They convince them that the West is at war with Islam and they should stand up and fight for their religion and their god.They convince them that the god they are fighting for is powerful, owns the heavens and will extend an olive branch to them when they blow themselves up in the holy war. These young men are thus convinced and after a few years of training, they are ready to perform their first and final mission. They are made to believe they will be met by a couple of virgins in the golden palaces up above as martyrs--heroes of the Holy War. Thus convinced, they blow up women and children from the skies, buses, hotels, churches, mosques and homes. I cannot help but ask myself, if there was no notion of religion that tricked these boys into believing they will have a better life once they died, if they knew that once they blew themselves up NO ONE knows what will happen when they die, if they knew that they might be killing themselves for nothing, would they still blow themselves up? Don't you think they would have asked for some time alone, maybe the rest of their lives, to think about the proposition from the teachers? I think they would. Another observation that comes into the picture is that the teachers don't do the missions themselves. If being a martyr is such a noble thing, shouldn't the teachers lead the way in killing themselves? They know more about the rewards that materialize in the end. They can easily train others to become teachers after they are dead and gone. Don't you think so? Once again, religion is used to deceive and achieve the objectives of a select group of people by taking captive the minds of the exploited individuals.
Once again, the problem seems to be getting through to the brainwashed -- helping people learn to reason. But, how do you break through the wall of irrational thought that is religion? Is it through a slow process of globalization, and having western values seep through into their culture? Hmmm, we're a very religous nation. People here believe in all sorts of unfounded shit. Are we really going to get through to them about how dumb it is to believe in the unproven crap shoveled at them by their particular religion?
Does Eric's Butt Look Fat In These Pants?
He really wants to know. And, yes, I've already chastised him for wearing corduroy, a fabric which should be banned.
Just Up The Block, Stores Called Epilepsy And Rheumatism
Diagnosis: Asshole
Psychiatrists and psychologists, in my opinion, are far too prissy in telling people what's wrong with them. Of course, there are a good many who have very little wisdom, and few or lax standards for living...so how can they really guide their patients in any substantive way?
The problem is, most people aren't that equipped to judge the quality of their therapy. I think the parchment on the wall is a security blanket for many patients, allowing them to take it on faith that the doc they're seeing knows what he or she is doing.
I'm suddenly reminded of the New York City shrink who, in the early 90s, after talking to me for all of 35 minutes, wanted to put me on...what else? Lithium! Hello? I was a little down at the time -- because I wasn't making enough money and I was having a hard time finding a boyfriend. Struggling and a little lonely does not a manic-depressive make!
I LOVED this essay by Dr. Richard A. Friedman in The New York Times which hits on an underdiagnosed (or completely undiagnosed) problem -- the patient is an asshole. A nasty, mean-spirited asshole. Not necessarily because he has an attachment disorder or is depressed or manic-depressive, but maybe because he's just a born jerk. Here's an excerpt:
...If some people turn out happy and good despite a lifetime of withering hardships, why can’t some people be mean or bad for no discernible reason?There can be a relationship between nastiness and mental illness, and many therapists assume that when patients are mentally ill and mean, the illness is probably the cause of the ill temper.
But human meanness is far more common than all the mental illness in the population combined, so the contribution of mental illness to this essential human trait must be very small indeed.
Don’t get me wrong. There is plenty of undesirable human behavior that falls well within the rightful domain of psychiatry to understand and treat. But must we turn everything we don’t like about our fellow humans into a form of psychopathology?
Think about it. About your own family. Is there, maybe, a mean gene? At the very least, are there two kids who are very much alike in temperment and view of the world, and one who's very unlike the others? It's like that in my family. And that's played out in Nancy Segal's studies of (monozygotic) identical twins:
While studying identical twins that were separated at birth, Segal was impressed by their similarities, despite their different home environments. Many of the separated twins held similar jobs, had similar mannerisms, liked the same kinds of food and entertainment, and frequently felt an immediate bond upon first meeting....The personalities of identical twins also are of interest to Segal.
“Some of the commonalities are incredible,” she says. “For instance, we discovered a case where twins, taking a test in the same class, made almost identical mistakes. In fact, in some instances, universities wanted to penalize identical twins because they’re convinced they’re cheating...only to discover that it simply wasn’t true.
“With identical twins, they seem to have similar processing skills.”
The question is, if somebody is a mean mofo, right from the genes (which, according to Matt Ridley, switch on and off in response to environmental forces [which can include social forces]), how much of the mean mofo thing can be controlled?
Hey, Thanks, George!
The headline says it all, from the NYT op-ed page, "Al Qaeda Resurgent":
Almost five and a half years ago, America — united by the shock of 9/11 — understood exactly what it needed to do. It had to find, thwart and take down the command structure of Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 innocent people on American soil. Despite years of costly warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, America today is not significantly closer to that essential goal.At a crucial moment, the Bush administration diverted America’s military strength, political attention and foreign aid dollars from a necessary, winnable war in Afghanistan to an unnecessary, and by now unwinnable, war in Iraq. Al Qaeda took full advantage of these blunders to survive and rebuild. Now it seems to be back in business.
...Al Qaeda’s comeback didn’t have to happen. And it must not be allowed to continue. The new Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan do not operate with the blessing of the Pakistani government. But Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has not tried very hard to drive them out. In recent months he has virtually conceded the tribal areas to local leaders sympathetic to Al Qaeda. President Bush needs to warn him that continued American backing depends on his doing more to rid his country of people being trained to kill Americans.
Washington also has to enlist more support on the Afghan side of the border. NATO allies need to drop restrictions that hobble their troops’ ability to fight a resurgent Taliban. Afghan leaders need to wage a more aggressive campaign against corruption and drug trafficking. And Washington needs to pour significantly more money into rural development, to give Afghan farmers alternatives to drug cultivation. One reason General Musharraf has been hedging his bets with the Taliban and Al Qaeda is his growing doubt that Washington is determined to succeed in Afghanistan.
Sorry, we're a little busy in Iraq at the moment. Can we get back to you?
How To Explain Theft To Socialists
After the John Edwards blogger brouhaha, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I hopped on Pandagon, the group blog of, among others, Amanda Marcotte, who ultimately resigned her job with Edwards' campaign. I found her shrill, male-bashing, simplistic and illogical. Yawn. Nothing to see there, move along.
Yesterday, I was talking about the Edwards blogging debacle with my editorial assistant, and I hopped on Pandagon again. I was extremely offended by what I saw. Not by the silly headline on the entry by Chris Clarke suggesting libertarians are dim -- "How To Explain Things to Libertarians" -- and not even by the ridiculous blowhardism that followed.
It was the fact that they appear to have published a B. Kliban cartoon, from the B. Kliban book, Two Guys Fooling Around with the Moon
I left a comment below the entry at Pandagon questioning whether they had the rights to the cartoon. My comment was "awaiting moderation," the dialogue box said. And awaiting and awaiting.
Other posts posted later than mine went up. A whole string of them. Mine still did not appear.
I refreshed the page a number of times over the next hour or so, and my comment was still "awaiting moderation." Here's a screen shot I took at 3:07 Pacific Time, according to the time-stamp in my computer:
My comment still hadn't been posted when I took the screen shot, but many others had been posted below it -- Em's and Stephen Stralka's, for example. (FYI, I believe Pandagon is on Eastern Time.)
At 1:00 am, PST, there are 165 responses posted -- just not mine. I'm guessing that if I were wrong about the cartoon, and they actually had paid for the right to use it, my comment would have been posted with some snide reply telling me how wrong I was.
The difference between a libertarian blog like Reason magazine's and Pandagon? Well, if my suspicions about the cartoon are correct, a respect for the intellectual property and property rights of others.
And then, freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas and differing opinions. I have yet to have a comment, no matter how critical of a Reason author or the magazine, deleted over in the free minds/free markets zone.
For those who want a sane, balanced, and informed idea what libertarianism really is, turn to Brian Doherty's excellent new book, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
If You're This Retarded
You shouldn't be allowed out of the institution unsupervised.
Sticker seen yesterday at Gelson's Market, Marina Del Rey. On every wedge of cheese they sell.
Weed Delivers
Why can't AIDS sufferers get a pot prescription? A study says, compared to prescription drugs, smoking marijuana provides superior pain relief from AIDS or HIV-related symptoms. Yes, it was a small sample size. But, it's amazing there was any study at all, considering the hard work of the "drug warriors" to prevent them.
Of course, thanks to all the vote prostitutes in government (and, for that, blame the voters), this study -- and any study that says anything similar -- will surely be ignored. The same goes for any contention that pot should be as legal as throwing back some a couple of martinis. The study is here. And here's the Washington Post story by Rick Weiss:
AIDS patients suffering from debilitating nerve pain got as much or more relief by smoking marijuana as they would typically get from prescription drugs -- and with fewer side effects -- according to a study conducted under rigorously controlled conditions with government-grown pot....The White House belittled the study as "a smoke screen," short on proof of efficacy and flawed because it did not consider the health impacts of inhaling smoke.
But other doctors and advocates of marijuana policy reform said the findings, in today's issue of the journal Neurology, offer powerful evidence that the Drug Enforcement Administration's classification of cannabis as having "no currently accepted medical use" is outdated.
"This should be a wake-up call for Congress to hold hearings to investigate the therapeutic use of cannabis and to encourage more research," said Barbara T. Roberts, a former interim associate deputy director in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, now with Americans for Safe Access, which promotes access to marijuana for therapies and research.
...Thirteen of 25 patients who smoked the regular marijuana achieved pain reduction of at least 30 percent, compared with six of 25 who smoked placebo pot. The average pain reduction for the real cannabis was 34 percent, compared with 17 percent for the placebo.
Opioids and other pills can reduce nerve pain by 20 to 30 percent but can cause drowsiness and confusion, Abrams said. And many patients complain that a prescription version of pot's main ingredient in pill form does not work for them.
That was true for Diana Dodson, 50, who received an AIDS diagnosis in 1997 after a blood transfusion.
"I have so many layers of pain I can hardly walk," said Dodson, who was in the new study. Prescription drugs made her feel worse. "But inhaled cannabis works," she said.
When it comes to drugs, there's at least one man in law enforcement with a little integrity -- a Colorado judge who resigned rather than impose ridiculously tough sentences for pot possession. From StopTheDrugWar:
An associate municipal court judge in the Colorado town of Lafayette has resigned his position in protest of the city's preliminary harsh new penalties for marijuana possession. Judge Leonard Frieling, who is also a Boulder criminal defense attorney, had served in the position for the past eight years.Frieling said he could not remain as a municipal court judge because he was unwilling to enforce a new ordinance that would raise the fine for possession of small amounts of marijuana from $100 to $1,000 and a year in jail. Under Colorado state law, possession of under an ounce of marijuana has been decriminalized and those caught with pot face only a $100 fine.
The measure isn't a done deal yet. The Lafayette City Council gave preliminary approval to the ordinance last week, but a final vote isn't set until next week.Frieling resigned anyway, saying since he doesn't want to enforce the law, he is ethically and morally unable to remain on the bench. Frieling also said he doesn't think marijuana should be illegal, but should instead be treated like alcohol, but he could live with the current $100 fine.
Let's see more like him.
How many of you know perfectly productive adults who take a toke every now and then -- or nightly? Every one of those people is in danger of losing everything they have for being caught with a little pot. And all because of these sleazy sellouts we continue to elect.
As one commenter on the Drug War link (above) about the judge put it:
Politicians think they can get votes by being Drug Warriors. And so far it has worked.
I don't smoke pot, but as long as you're not going to get behind the wheel while high, I support your right (that's right, your right) to go wherever you want in your head without the government throwing you in jail.
There's Hope For Your Weekend!
Proposal to ban spanking is revised.
Why Arab Muslims Come To America
Oh, well, among other things, that free speech thing. Here, from the AP, in Alexandra, Egypt, Nadia Abou El-Magd (who'd better be careful if she's an Egyptian citizen) writes:
An Egyptian blogger was convicted Thursday and sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Egypt's president, sending a chill through fellow Internet writers who fear a government crackdown.Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, had been a vocal secularist and sharp critic of conservative Muslims in his blog. He often lashed out at Al-Azhar - the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam - calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of encouraging extremism.
And he's right. From MEMRI, via JihadWatch:
"If we examine some of the extremist curricula, we will find that the principle of fighting any non-Muslim and killing him is not an offensive innovation by [founder of Wahhabism] Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab and by [Ayman] Al-Zawahiri, [Osama bin Laden's deputy and the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization]. This [is] because a book of the Hanafi [school of thought], 'Al-Ikhtiyar fi Ta'lil Al-Mukhtar' [by Abdallah Ibn Mahmoud Al-Mawsily] teaches the next generation that 'the war against the infidels is an obligation of all intelligent, healthy, free, and able men... And when the Muslims besiege their enemies in a town or a fortress, they must call upon them to convert to Islam. If they convert, [the Muslims] must cease fighting them, and if they do not convert, they must call upon them to pay the jizya [poll tax]. If they refuse to pay the jizya, the Muslims must call upon Allah's help in the war against them, to erect catapults, to destroy their fields and their trees, to burn them, and to pelt them [with catapult stones], even if [the enemies] use Muslims as a human shield...'"
blogger link via MachinesLikeUs
"Well, 'F' Them!"
I always hate when radio guys, who can't use swear words on the air, use girly approximations of them like the one above. Last night, while driving home, I flicked on 97.1 fm, and that's what one of the guys on the air said about Ikea -- either Conway or Whitman, I guess, since I was driving home between 9pm and 10pm.
The issue they're getting their manties in a wad about? Iraq? Darfur? Poor public transportation in Los Angeles?
Nope.
Ikea is going to start charging 5 cents for their formerly free plastic bags. Here's a link to a post about it from Consumerist:
According to Treehugger, IKEA will be charging $.05 for each plastic bag starting March 15 in an effort to encourage environmentally responsible behavior. IKEA will also be reducing the price of their re-usable blue shopping bags (also known as the greatest laundry bag ever) to $.59 from $.99. From Treehugger:Proceeds of up to $1.75 million (that's a whole lot of bags) from the bag campaign will go to American Forests, the nation's oldest non-profit citizens conservation organization, to plant trees to restore forests and offset CO2 emissions...
The first commenter there, Gena, was as silly and pissy as the radio hosts:
Looks like IKEA is off the shopping list. I'm all for the environment, and like the concept of stores giving customers an incentive for bringing their own bags in, but charging us to shop with them? No way. Plenty of other stores want my money and won't charge me to package my purchases.
You're not going to shop at Ikea over 5 cents? Right.
My favorite comment in response was from somebody called Rey:
What does it mean to be "all for the environment" but unwilling to take small steps to prove that commitment?
Here's the comment I left:
I already bring my own bags. I got them from reusablebags.com...they fold up very small.
I have four in my car for when I go to the grocery store, and one in my purse in case I'm out and go to the drugstore or something. Why use up resources unnecessarily?
And in France, non-chichi grocery stores do charge for them. And sometimes don't even have them. My American friend who lives there, married to a Frenchman, always has plastic bags folded up in small triangles in her purse in case she goes to the store.
It's a different way of thinking. They're much more conservative about resources there, and it's a good thing.
You also get ONE napkin there, not a stack.
And nobody there tells you to "Go 'F' yourself." Or, if they do, my French isn't fucking good enough to know.
Arson For Islam
Let's say you're a Christian or Jewish man living in...oh, let's say...Ohio.
What would you do if your eldest daughter told you she wanted to become a fashion designer, and didn't quite cotton to the guy you want her to marry?
Would you:
1. Tell her fashion is a precarious profession and she should take up something more solid, like accounting?
2. Lecture her on the kind of man you think would make a good husband?
3. Spray gasoline throughout your home and light it on fire, killing her, your wife, and her three sisters, 13, 10, and 3?
A Muslim man in England chose #3. by Nigel Bunyan writes in the Telegraph/UK:
A father killed his wife and four daughters in their sleep because he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle, an inquest heard yesterday.Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages.
On Hallowe'en last year he sprayed petrol throughout their terraced home in Accrington, Lancs, and set it alight.
Caneze Riaz, 39, woke and tried to protect her three-year-old child, Hannah, who was sleeping with her, but was overcome by fumes. Her other daughters, Sayrah, 16, Sophia, 13, and Alisha, 10, died elsewhere in the house.
Riaz, who had spent the evening drinking, set himself on fire and died two days later.
A pity he couldn't have offed himself first.
Somebody please tell me why, in light of not only the killings of non-Muslims, but murders of so many Muslim women, people keep calling Islam "The Religion of Peace."
Giuliani For...Mayor
Many the right are practically wetting themselves over the idea of Giuliani as a foreign policy expert. Jonathan Chait, writing in the LA Times, gets why the "tough-guy swagger" appeals, but reminds that the guy isn't quite the expert his swooning Republican fans see him to be:
I do know that a tough policy against the homeless is not a good proxy for the conduct of foreign policy.If having a macho swagger and talking tough about bad guys were enough to make a good commander in chief, we wouldn't have the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history on our hands right now in Iraq. And, need I remind anybody, one of the reasons Giuliani hasn't been able to fulfill his Bin Laden execution fantasy is that Bush allowed the Al Qaeda leader to escape at Tora Bora by using Afghan proxies instead of U.S. ground troops.
As I noted in this space last week, conservative foreign policy consists increasingly of abstract notions divorced from reality. In preparing for last week's House debate over the Iraq troop surge, the Republican leadership instructed its members in a memo: "The debate should not be about the surge or its details. This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date, mistakes that have been made or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose."
So they're strong on foreign policy, except insofar as it involves actual policy. They tend to be much better, however, at comparing themselves to figures such as Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln. They make such comparisons incessantly. Last week, Giuliani said that Lincoln had "that ability that a leader has — a leader like George Bush, a leader like Ronald Reagan — to look into the future."
A few days later, the New York Times revealed that the 2002 postwar plan for Iraq envisioned a broadly representative Iraqi government, an intact Iraqi army and just a handful of U.S. troops remaining. I would say this is not a good job of looking into the future.
Well, if not Giuliani for president, how about...Bill Richardson?
Huh?
Well, read what Yglesias has to say about him:
We'll leave aside, momentarily, the fact that Richardson is clearly more qualified for the White House than anyone else in the race, since everyone knows that doesn't matter. Just consider the bare fact that he's the popular, second-term governor of a swing state -- you know, the sort of person who back in the day used to win presidential elections. And it's not as if Richardson isn't getting attention because the field is crowded with popular second-term governors of swing states. No. We're too excited about the first-term senator from Illinois whose only competitive election in the past was against Bobby Rush -- and who lost. Or that vice presidential nominee from a losing ticket.The aforementioned Wikipedia article also notes that, as governor, Richardson "has been lauded by traditionally right-leaning publications and organizations such as Forbes Magazine and the Cato Institute for reforming New Mexico's economy," traditionally the sort of thing that would create some buzz given that we are, after all, talking about a fairly progressive Democrat.
Here's something else you might expect to garner some buzz: If that same Democrat also found some spare time in January to broker a cease-fire between the government of Sudan and some major rebel factions in Darfur. That kind of person might be someone who understands that these sort of humanitarian tragedies can't just be ended purely through righteous indignation.
But now we're getting back to the small matter of qualifications. Traditionally, Americans have turned to governors to serve as president, thinking that experience in executive office and with complicated managerial tasks outweighs the experience with federal policy issues that members of Congress can count in their favor. Happily, Richardson spent over a decade in the House of Representatives before becoming governor. In between, he was America's ambassador the United Nations, wracking up a level of national security experience that none of the other contenders can match. And did I mention he was also Secretary of Energy? Too bad nobody thinks energy independence and global climate change are important policy areas in which it would be good for the chief executive to have some knowledge. Oh, well.
Eventually, I found Richardson's speech. I didn't agree with all of it -- in particular the parts about Russia and intellectual property. But in a world where an arrogant gasbag like Joe Biden gets a reputation as knowledgeable about foreign policy, Richardson looks like George Kennan.
Richardson's speech is here. And here's a previous entry on do-it-yourself diplomacy by Bill Richardson. One big problem for him -- he doesn't have that cowboy swagger of Bush and Giuliani. Many Americans seem to vote for president based on who they'd most like to have a beer with. Richardson, in photographs, looks, well, stubby, sweaty, and unpresidential. Then again, he should pick up a good bit of the Latino vote, as he's half Mexican, and speaks Spanish.
As for V.P.? Well, let's find out a little more about Rocky, shall we?
No, Not All Canadian Muslims, Just 84,000 Of Them
That's the number, based on a poll, who think it's justifiable to behead the prime minister and blow up parliament and the CBC. Good piece, criticizing poor reporting of statistics by the CBC, in a Calgary Sun piece by Licia Corbella:
Apparently "more than 80% of Canada's roughly 700,000 Muslims are broadly satisfied with their lives here."That's a nice and cuddly kind of story, but hardly surprising. I've been to Afghanistan -- where many of Canada's latest Muslim population comes from -- and even the upper-middle class in Afghanistan live in difficult conditions. I stayed in Kabul's only five-star hotel in December 2003 where hot water was available one-to-two hours a day, electricity was sporadic and my lovely room was utterly freezing.
Poor and middle-class Afghans -- the vast majority -- have no running water, no heat, no electricity and most are totally illiterate to boot.
They are handsome hospitable people -- and extremely resourceful -- but Canada's homeless shelters would look like luxury to your average Afghan refugee. But I digress.
Waaaay down in the online CBC story about this poll is the news that when "asked about the arrests last summer of the 18 Muslim men and boys who were allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in southern Ontario, 73% of Muslim respondents said these attacks were not at all justified." That portion of the poll ended there. No more details. Why? The Environics website made no mention about this portion of the poll either.
However, on CBC's The National television program on the same day, this part of the poll was fleshed-out and the results are alarming.
Fully 12% of Muslim Canadians polled by Environics said the alleged terrorist plot -- that included kidnapping and beheading the prime minister and blowing up Parliament and the CBC -- was justified.
Predictably, the CBC managed to find a talking head -- in this case York University sociology professor Haideh Moghissi -- who dismissed this disturbing revelation.
"It's really negligible that 12 percent feel that the attacks would be justified," said Moghissi. "I don't think it even warrants attention."
Clearly, other news agencies and those who put the poll results on the CBC website agree with Moghissi.
But just how "negligible" is 12% of 700,000 people.
Well, if Moghissi knew arithmetic like she knows denial, she'd know if this poll is accurate, 84,000 Canadian Muslims think it's justifiable to behead our democratically elected prime minister and blow up the very symbol and centre of our democracy!
via Jihadwatch
Loose Brains
When I say "loose brains," I don't mean smart people on the loose: think of something a little more akin to loose stool, but in the cranial cavity. None other than George Monbiot, not exactly a darling of the right wing, rips up the notion of a government conspiracy behind 9/11 -- a theory advocated by the "documentary" Loose Change. Here's an excerpt of Monbiot's piece for Alternet:
The Pentagon, the film maintains, was not hit by a commercial airliner. There was "no discernable trace" of a plane found in the wreckage, and the entrance and exit holes in the building were far too small. It was hit by a Cruise missile. The twin towers were brought down by means of "a carefully planned controlled demolition." You can see the small puffs of smoke caused by explosives just below the cascading sections. All other hypotheses are implausible: the fire was not hot enough to melt steel and the towers fell too quickly. Building 7 was destroyed by the same means a few hours later.Flight 93 did not crash, but was redirected to Cleveland Airport, where the passengers were taken into a NASA building and never seen again. Their voices had been cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories and used to make fake calls to their relatives. The footage of Osama Bin Laden, claiming responsibility for the attacks, was faked. The US government carried out this great crime for four reasons: to help Larry Silverstein, who leased the towers, to collect his insurance money; to assist insider traders betting on falling airline stocks; to steal the gold in the basement; and to grant George Bush new executive powers, so that he could carry out his plans for world domination.
Even if you have seen or read no other accounts of 9/11, and your brain has not yet been liquidized, a few problems must occur to you. The first is the complete absence of scientific advice. At one point the presenter asks "So what brought down the Twin Towers? Let's ask the experts." But they don't ask the experts. The film makers take some old quotes, edit them to remove any contradictions, then denounce all subsequent retractions as further evidence of conspiracy.
The evidence says otherwise. As do eyewitness accounts; for example:
Read some conflicting accounts, and Loose Change's case crumbles faster than the Twin Towers. Hundreds of people saw a plane hit the Pentagon. Because it collided with one of the world's best- defended buildings at full speed, the plane was pulverised: even so, both plane parts and body parts were in fact recovered. The wings and tail disintegrated when they hit the wall, which is why the holes weren't bigger.
So why do so many people -- including a reasonably intelligent session musician I run into at a café I go to -- believe otherwise? Monbiot's proposal:
People believe Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil which runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos which really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. This neat story draws campaigners away from real issues -- global warming, the Iraq war, nuclear weapons, privatisation, inequality -- while permanently wrecking their credibility. Bush did capitalise on the attacks, and he did follow a pre-existing agenda, spelt out, as Loose Change says, by the Project for a New American Century. But by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be taken seriously.The film's greatest flaw is this: the men who made it are still alive. If the US government is running an all-knowing, all-encompassing conspiracy, why did it not snuff them out long ago? There is only one possible explanation. They are in fact agents of the Bush regime, employed to distract people from its real abuses of power. This, if you are inclined to believe such stories, is surely a more plausible theory than the one proposed in Loose Change.
The comments (scroll down) at the link don't bode well for the left. They should run ads for tinfoil hats with Monbiot's piece. They'd make a mint.
"Pants Are Back"!
Says so in this months Harper's Bazaar. Apparently, if you haven't been going around in a blouse and only a pair of panties, you've been completely out for quite some time. I love fashion magazines.
Uh-oh, and then there's this. I guess Kimberly Stewart has yet to get the memo. And, now, we're really frightened.
Venice Against Pussy?
Not anymore.
Playing Health Care Like Lotto
The aftermath of a motorcycle crash on Abbot Kinney (not the one mentioned in the piece below). The guy who looks like he's combing the pavement for loose eyeballs is just a friend of the motorcycle-crashing rider (in the gray sweatshirt). The guy on the bike, according to a witness who spoke to me, nearly hit a pedestrian at the crosswalk, and in avoiding the pedestrian, slid on his bike under the older couple's car.
Via Overlawyered, a helmetless 400-lb. man has a motorcycle crash, and the doctor who gives her all to try to save him almost ends up paying with her career. This doctor, Anna Maria Voltura, tells how the experience changed her, and encourages other doctors to stand up against opportunistic lawyers:
I still can't help but think that the only thing I did wrong was try to save his life....Herein lies one of many dilemmas. How do you keep a 6-foot, 400-pound man who lacks a visible neck in cervical spinal precautions? We had no collar on hand to fit him. He was as strong as an ox, and shook his head violently whenever he wasn't chemically paralyzed. We had to remove the head rolls to place a central line and perform a transesophageal echocardiogram. A nurse had to hold his head and neck in line to maintain C-spine precautions.
...It was profoundly enlightening to realize that my career was in the hands of 12 strangers who were expected to understand and interpret in three weeks what had taken me 10 long years to learn; and even longer to practice and internalize. Maybe it was akin to a 400-pound man coming to me as a stranger, asking that I save his life and keep it as it was before he was thrown off that motorcycle going 40 miles an hour.
I testified in court for four grueling hours. I was well prepared but nevertheless terrified I would say something wrong. I felt the need to repeat what took place over and over again just to make sure the jurors understood the sequence of events. The plaintiff's attorney—attractive, articulate, and dressed in an expensive suit—tried every trick in the book to get me to slip up, to say something she could twist into a lie. Anything she could to make me look inept, inexperienced, evil. Yes, evil. During closing arguments she played a scene of the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and equated the doctors in the case to the monsters. I sat there astounded that someone would actually say that I was an evil person wreaking havoc on innocent people behind the guise of a medical license.
She was found not guilty, but writes that she's never been the same:
I have never practiced the same. Now I'm more careful about my documentation. I discuss things ad infinitum with patients to make sure they understand. And I order more tests than before. Some people would call this defensive medicine, but it's what we've been forced to do to protect ourselves.I walked away from my experience hardened, less trusting of patients, and stripped of my idealism about helping others. But I'm trying to restore what was lost. I'm transitioning from general surgery to breast cancer care, which is what I want to do exclusively. I enjoy this subspecialty, and my patients sense that. I've also cut back my hours to take care of myself—to exercise, for one thing. So you'll find me bicycling around town more.
But what about our uneasy relationship with patients these days? I don't think we do enough to win back their trust. One way to do that is to refuse to settle malpractice lawsuits when we know we did nothing wrong. A lot of people view these suits as a kind of get-rich-quick lottery. We add to that perception when we settle for no good reason.
If you want to let yourself blow up to 400 pounds, then go cycling around without a helmet -- it's only fair you assume the risks. It's bad enough that the cost of the unhelmeted gets passed on to the rest of us in higher insurance costs -- but for the guy to try to turn a doctor who aparently did the best she could under the circustances into a form of winning the lottery...that makes for worse care for all of us.
As I've said before, I'd like to see a repeal of motorcycle helmet laws, and in their place, a no-helmet option: If you ride without a helmet, either you pay some kind of supplemental insurance that kicks in for your care after an accident, or we just leave you where you fell until the street cleaning guys sweep up what's left of you.
The alternative is forcing the rest of us to pay for your stupidity. We've got enough to pay for already, what with all the poor and uninsured -- and then, all the not-so-poor gambling that they won't need health insurance. Then again, why pay $150 a month for an HMO (assuming you're in your 20s) or get a low-cost, high-deductible health insurance plan when the taxpayers can be made to pick up your care?
Yes, that's Ben Ehrenreich and his girlfriend we're talking about. As Kate Coe puts it on Fishbowl LA:
Ben Ehrenreich's op-ed in today's LA Times is meant to point out that poor minorities suffer the most in hospital emergency rooms. His unnamed Chicana girlfriend (her name doesn't matter, but her ethnicity does?) broke her ankle, and being "between jobs and between health insurance plans", had no choice but to shuffle off to County-USC at 4 am, because Ehrenreich took some friend's advice on the best time to go. They waited 5 hours for a gurney. Ehrenreich, his blue eyes and well-known last name "required an introduction to this sort of indignity." Ehrenreich needs an introduction to a dope slap. At 4 am in an urban ER, bleeding takes priority, anything else can wait.Free-lancer Cathy Seipp, who has her own health insurance and with a rather more serious complaint, waited the same amount of time at Cedars. She too has blue eyes, but pain and suffering are no respecters of persons.
...Hospital emergency rooms are burdened enough trying to care for those who have no other choice for medical care. Writers who chose those services just because they'd rather not borrow money, max out their credit cards or work out a payment plan shouldn't be adding to that burden.
Exactly. And don't give me the whine about health insurance being so terribly expensive. I've ALWAYS had health insurance -- even at my most struggling, when I wasn't making enough money writing, and had to take a job one day with Amazon All-Girls Moving Company for $5/hr. And let's just say, I'm not exactly Miss Hercules.
I don't have Cadillac health insurance; more like Ford Focus insurance: Kaiser Permanente HMO. I believe it cost me just over $100 when I was in my 20s, and now, at 42, it's $258 a month. As I posted on Cathy's blog, paying it means I have to forgo a pair of shoes, or dining out every night, but it's just the right thing to do. The personal responsibility thing, you know?
Oh yeah, and back to Ehren-sponge, another good point made by Kate in yet another FBLA entry:
But here's the interesting part, when Ehrenreich writes:
A few weeks later, I was doing a little research to find out where to send a friend who had broken her ankle in New Mexico and needed surgery in Los Angeles.So the girlfriend showed up at an Emergency Room with not much of an emergency, it seems.
I guessed Ehrenreich's e-mail address and wrote to him -- Can you please tell me if your girlfriend paid anything for her care...and if so, what did she pay? -- to get a sense of how much we, the taxpayers, got fucked because his girlfriend didn't have health insurance, and got this back:
In a message dated 2/18/07 3:36:03 PM, behrenreich@laweekly.com writes:I am out of town and will not be able to check email until I return at the end of the month.
Yeah, I bet he is. I wonder if he can get us taxpayers to fund his vacations, too?
The Shrine Of The Sacred Squirrel
Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Venice, California.
Photo by Gregg Sutter
The Ancient Chinese Art Of Separating Fools And Their Money
Yes, I'm talking about feng shui. Now, there's something to having a window in the right place so you get nice light, and having rooms well-designed so you feel good about being in them. That takes a good interior designer, or good taste of your own -- not an interior witch doctor by way of China.
Newsflash to all the idiots throwing money at people mumbling stuff about "bad energy" in your foyer -- there is zero evidence that evil spirits will get you when you flush the toilet or that your "luck" will run out if your back door and front door are aligned.
Now, if you want to spend your own money on utter fucking crap, go right ahead. But, if you're getting your dough from us taxpayers, you'd better act more sensibly than whichever twit hired the architect who hired some chick to have the monkey house at the L.A. Zoo...get this...feng shui-ed. Here's the story from the LA Daily News, by Kerry Cavanaugh:
Believed to be the first zoo in the nation to tap the ancient Chinese science
(Science? Please.)
Los Angeles paid $4,500 to a feng shui consultant to ensure that the three endangered monkeys will have health, happiness, fertility and, of course, a strong life-force energy, in their new digs.
Oh. Hurl.
While feng shui (pronounced fung shway) is in demand among high-end architects and interior designers, Beverly Hills-based expert Simona Mainini said the trend hasn't yet caught on in animal-enclosure design."It's very experimental. We don't have any books on feng shui for monkeys. We just have to assume that Darwin is correct and that there is a connection and what is good for humans is good for monkeys."
Darwin said that? Maybe Steve Darwin, Fred Darwin, or Julie Darwin.
"The idea is to get people beyond just looking at the animals so they experience how the animals and people live," zoo General Manager John Lewis said."So when people see that a species is endangered, maybe they'll feel motivated to do something to save them."
What about when people on the public payroll act dumber than a barrel of monkeys? What do we do then? I suggest calling the all-too-approving-sounding Los Angeles Council-Monkey Tom LaBonge (if it's Sunday let it ring until voicemail picks up and leave a message) -- (213) 473-7004 -- to tell him we taxpayers want our $4500 back...even if he has to set up a fundraiser to replace it. Please do call him. He needs to be told that voters won't put up with paying for this utterly unscientific feng shit.
The Second Sight, where I first spotted the link, had a good suggestion:
Perhaps Los Angeles Zoo would sponsor our closer relatives, the great apes, to open interior design consultancies? I'd guess the orangutans would remove your bathroom and toilet, suspend all furniture from the rafters and expel the Man of the House. The chimps, on the other hand, would invite in the neighbours for a smashing good time and a toilet-graffiti repaint. Meanwhile, the gorillas would swap your furnishings for pots of lucky bamboo and a party fogger, and install your Man of the House in a silversuit on a pedestal.Then again, if Los Angeles Zoo wished to use its generous budget intelligently ($US7.4 million total cage cost), it could speak to someone who actually knows something. Baoguo Li of Shaanxi province, China is studying the behaviour and ecology of the golden monkey, Rhinopithecus roxellana.
A question: If LaBonge did approve of the feng shui, who would you vote for in the next election: LaBonge or a gorilla?
Here's a skeptical look at feng shui, from pscience (as in pseudo-science):
I found an interesting article here on the Tampa Bay Skeptic's website detailing a skeptic's experiences when taking a Feng Shui class at USF. It makes mention of another amusing look at Feng Shui by Penn and Teller in their Showtime series Bullshit. In the Feng Shui episode, they hired three different Feng Shui "masters" to apply their "science" to the same house, and all three had widely differing and contradictory results. If Feng Shui really is a science, shouldn't all of the experts come to at least remotely similar conclusions about the same space?
Sad Surprise While Shopping
Sometimes you see a picture of a person that strikes you. I went on Overstock.com yesterday, and was surprised to see this photo on their front page:
From the photo, Vanessa Quinn just looks like a cool person. She's got a very friendly face, and looks to me like the kind of girl who'd be good to her friends, and fun to hang around with. I'm just imagining that, of course. But, because I was struck by her photo, I clicked to see what happened to her. Tragically, she was shot in the mall in Utah. Here's her memorial site somebody built.
And here's Debbie Schlussel on what law enforcement hasn't done, like seize or search the murderer's computer, and on how mainstream media are largely ignoring the guy's Muslim background. The question remains, was this an act of individual jihad? Robert Spencer, on Front Page, compares a number of similar one-man rampages, like:
• On January 31, Ismail Yassin Mohamed, 22, stole a car in Minneapolis. He went on a rampage, ramming the stolen car into other cars and then stealing a van and continuing to ram other cars, injuring one person. His father told officials that Mohamed was suffering from mental problems; his mother added he had been depressed and hadn’t been taking his medication. During his rampage, Mohamed repeatedly yelled, “Die, die, die, kill, kill, kill,” and when asked why he did all this, he replied, “Allah made me do it.”• In March 2006, a twenty-two-year-old Iranian student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, deliberately trying to kill people and succeeding in injuring nine. After the incident, he seemed singularly pleased with himself, smiling and waving to crowds after a court appearance on Monday, at which he explained that he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” Officials here again dismissed the possibility of terrorism, even after Taheri-azar wrote a series of letters to the UNC campus newspaper detailing the Qur’anic justification for warfare against unbelievers, and explaining why he believed his attacks were justified from an Islamic perspective.
Spencer continues:
None of these were terrorist attacks in the sense that they were planned and executed by al-Qaeda agents. And it is possible that all of them were products of nothing more ideologically significant than a disturbed mental state, although it is at least noteworthy that each attacker explained his actions in terms of Islamic terrorism. As such attacks grow in number, it would behoove authorities at very least to consider the possibility that these attacks were inspired by the jihadist ideology of Islamic supremacism, and to step up pressure on American Muslim advocacy groups to renounce that ideology definitively and begin extensive programs to teach against it in American Islamic schools and mosques.In October 2006, a pro-jihad internet site published a “Guide for Individual Jihad,” explaining to jihadists “how to fight alone.” It recommended, among other things, assassination with guns and running people over. Is it possible that Sulejmen Talovic and some of these others were waging this jihad of one? It is indeed, but with law enforcement officials trained only to look for signs of membership in al-Qaeda or other jihad groups, and to discount terrorism as a factor if those signs aren’t there, it is a possibility that investigators will continue to overlook.
"Breathtaking Inanity"
That's how judge John E. Jones of Pennsylvania, whom I met when he spoke at the evolution society conference at Penn, described the case for "Intelligent Design." Doesn't seem to stop the fundies from popping out of the woodwork to try selling the inanity in their neck of the (back) woods.
Now, science blogger Eric Berger writes that Warren Chisum, " a powerful and influential member of the Texas House of Representatives who hails from Pampa" (very near Kansas, an embarrassed Texas tipster tells me) circulated a memo to the Texas House of Reps that the "evolution monopoly"! has to end:
If you have a reasonable understanding of science, this is all completely ludicrous, but let me walk you through the argument proposed by Bridges and Chisum anyway. In 2004 Judge John E. Jones, a Republican church-goer, ruled that teaching intelligent design in schools violated the constitutional separation of church and state. The central thesis of the Bridges-Chisum argument is that evolution science is also based on religion, and therefore is also unconstitutional. Here's a quote from the memo:All of that can now be changed! Indisputable evidence -- long hidden but now available to everyone -- demonstrates conclusively that so-called "secular evolution science" is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate "creation scenario" of the Pharisee Religion. This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic "holy book" Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.I know, it's a completely overwhelming argument. However, if you're still doubting -- which I find hard to believe -- the Bridges-Chisum memo says all of the supporting information can be found on the Fixed Earth Web site, where you can also find indisputable evidence that Copernicus was wrong, and the Sun actually rotates around the Earth. (Phil Plait is ready to debate geocentrism, if there are any takers.)
This would all be really funny if the Texas legislature didn't have some sway over the State Board of Education (which is subject to the Sunset Law) and if Chisum weren't a powerful Rep (he's chairman of the Appropriations Committee.) The Texas House could pass a bill ordering the board to stop teaching evolution, or perhaps Chisum could easily enough lean on some of the board's more conservative members to take action.
The fact is Chisum and Bridges are not only wrong about the science, they're in a position to act upon their stunning ignorance of science. I'm all for religion, but suggesting that teaching evolution in "is causing incalculable harm to every student and every truth-loving citizen" strays much too far beyond the realm of faith into that of rational lawmaking.
Links within the excerpt are live if you click on the link to Berger's piece -- including a link to the actual memo. It's a shame Berger feels compelled to say "I'm all for religion," when it's unlikely, as a science writer, he's anything of the sort. Perhaps he means "I'm all for freedom of religion," or "I really don't want to offend anybody." There's far too much of that. As Daniel Dennett told me at the evolution society conference dinner:
Give religion no more respect than you’d accord to animal husbandry.
For those who'd like a good fact sheet about evolution, here's 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense, from ScientificAmerican.com. Here are a few excerpts:
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty -- above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution -- or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter -- they are not expressing reservations about its truth.
In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.
All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.
This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas : microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time -- changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.
These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms -- such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization -- can drive profound changes in populations over time.
The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not -- and does not -- find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.
Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.
It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.
Too Bad Bumper Stickers Aren't Bulletproof
"Support our troops!" "Support our troops!"
When I see those stickers on the back of some R.V.-sized SUV I always wonder why they don't just cut to the chase with the real deal: "Proud Supporter of OPEC."
There's a lot of talk in the halls of government about supporting our troops -- and not a lot of action. Here's an editorial from The New York Times about the absolutely disgusting information that our troops now getting to Baghdad will have to wait UNTIL THE SUMMER!! "for the protective armor that could easily mean the difference between life and death":
...According to an article in The Washington Post this week, at least some of the troops will be sent out in Humvees not yet equipped with FRAG Kit 5 armor. That’s an advanced version designed to reduce deaths from roadside bombs, which now account for about 70 percent of United States casualties in Iraq.The more flexible materials used in the FRAG Kit 5 make it particularly helpful in containing the damage done by the especially deadly weapon the Bush administration is now most concerned about: those explosively formed penetrators that Washington accuses Iran of supplying to Shiite militias for use against American troops.
Older versions of Humvee armor are shattered by these penetrators, showering additional shrapnel in the direction of a Humvee’s occupants. The FRAG Kit 5 helps slow the incoming projectile and contains some of the shrapnel, giving the soldiers a better chance of survival.
Armor upgrades like this have become a feature of the Iraq war, as the Pentagon struggles to keep up with the constantly more powerful weapons and sophisticated tactics of the various militia and insurgent forces attacking American troops. But the Army, the National Guard and the Marine Corps have been caught constantly behind the curve.
Unglamorous and relatively inexpensive staples of ground combat, like armor, have never really captured the imagination and attention of military contractors and Pentagon budget-makers the way that “Top Gun” fighter jets, stealthy warships and “Star Wars” missile interceptors generally do.
We have no business sending anyone into war unless they're properly equipped. There is so much about this war that is wrong, but this sort of thing is especially terrible.
Furthermore, I'm more and more convinced we've gone about the Iraq thing totally wrong. Not just the fact that we're there at all. But, if you go to war, you can't go to war namby-pamby. We should have struck the place with the full might of our military, and snuffed out all the people we now call "insurgents," and basically colonized the place.
Again, don't get me wrong: I was never for going to war in Iraq, only for going after Osama and flattening a considerable tract of land in the mountains of Afghanistan. Moreover, I'm not at all for "nation building." But, if we're going to go to Iraq and nation-build, we might as well nation-build.
Sleazy Does It
A few days ago, I posted on the Asshole-Canceling Headphones entry that I'd caught our resident (of late) Islam violence apologist in some deception:
It seems we have a little deception going on here.Imelda -- IP address 124.152.58.26 -- is also Chester and Forest and Miranda -- all of whom posted nasty remarks just moments ago (on this entry and others).
Not a surprise, since she mainly comes here because she's angry that I dare speak critically of Islam; say, of Islam's principle of taquiyya: deception that serves the cause.
Imelda, wouldn't your time be better spent combating the Islam-advocated violence by Muslims against other Muslims and the rest of us --rather than criticizing me for coming down against it? And making little sniping remarks like the ones you've made in the past 10 minutes? If you continue to post under multiple identities, I'll ban your sleazy ass.
Posted by: Amy Alkon at February 13, 2007 8:30 AM
Clearly, I didn't ban her. I don't like to ban anyone and, in fact, in the four years I've been blogging, I have yet to do it. I value freedom of speech, and free and open discussion. Of course, in America, unlike in Islamic countries, you won't be stoned, jailed, or killed for speaking your mind.
Imelda just responded to my post. (Not sure what PSML means):
Amy says: "I'll ban your sleazy ass."PMSL. Ooer Ooer. Amy. Hear that sound? That's my knees a-knockin together. I am so scarwed. Oh mighty, powerful Alkon, please don't ban me. My life would be so empty without access to your website. *Sob* *Sob*
That's the problem with you yanks. You're so Goddamned full of your own self-importance. Ban my arse. Really. You have the power! Knock yaself out. Geeze I'm sick of you Goddammed arrogant sonsabeaches.
You're all the time telling the rest of the world how to live when your own society is one of shallow consumerism and self gratification. You keep people imprisoned without charge, without trial in Guantanamo Bay against the codes of the Geneva convention. You do whatever the hell you please regardless of international law or opinion then you dictate to everyone else how THEY'RE supposed to behave. I'm not angry at you for your anti-muslim stance. I'm in contempt of you for your arrogance and lack of self-awareness. You are a shallow, egotistical American like so many other shallow, egotistical Americans and I have had a gut full of the negative impact people like you are having on my society. So shove that in your bong and smoke it Alkon. You shit me to tears.
Posted by: Imelda at February 16, 2007 4:32 AM
Here's my response:
But, I didn't ban you, because I believe in freedom of speech, even for Muslim liars. In Judaism and Christianity, at least, there's a value for telling the truth. In "The Religion of Peace," there's a value for lying.How's that freedom of speech work for you in Islamic countries?
Ooer Ooer.
That sounds like a pig noise. Many Muslims teach their children that Jews are pigs. In fact, it's taught in schools in the Middle East.
What kind of backward people think that way, teach their children that way?
Aaah, again, "The Religion Of Peace."
It's so amazing that you attack me instead of standing up against Muslims who kill in the name of Islam, who use Islam as the reason for killing. Where's your outcry against them?
P.S. My self-importance compelled me to give generously after the tsunami, because I, unlike so many Muslims, don't have a primitive belief in god and the ensuing tribalism -- deadly tribalism, very often, in the case of your particular backward religion.
Again, where's your outcry against murder in the name of Islam? Is outcry against noise-canceling headphones more of a priority? Or is it really my
"arrogance and lack of self-awareness"? Sorry, I can't stop laughing. You post multiple angry posts in many people's names because I'm un-self-aware?Do you really think that smokescreen is working? I think part of the problem is that you were sold a religion that teaches you not to think, so you can't argue a point all that well; ie, honestly and dealing substantively with the real points. You have to post nasty remarks about me...one of them intimating that I'd be murdered for criticizing Islam.
There's the difference between Islam and the generally more civilized religions. When I post here about Jews and Christians being ridiculous for believing in god and all that ensues from that (banning stem cell research, the teaching of evolution, etc.) they debate me on the points. They sometimes tell me I'm a rude jerk. But, not once has a Jew or a Christian ever told me I'd end up dead for speaking freely against their religion.
Barbarian.
The Cost Of War, Pictured
Via Boing Boing, here are pictures -- heartwrenching photos by Nina Berman -- of Ty Ziegel, terribly wounded in Iraq when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a truck Ziegel and others were patrolling in. Here's the story from The Sunday Times of London.
Warning: These photos are likely to make you cry.
Going All The Away
I posted another one of my Advice Goddess columns -- about a guy who hits it off with a woman in a bar, then strikes out. The problem? An opportunity to have "casual sex" with her, and he's looking for something a little more...formal. Here's his question:
The other night, I really hit it off with a woman I met in a bar. Even though her friend had taken me aside and told me I could get this woman to go home with me, at the end of the evening, I only asked her for her number. When she hesitated in giving it to me, I gave her my e-mail address. I still haven’t heard from her. My guy friend chided me that I missed an opportunity to “get some.” The thing is, I am not looking to just “get some.” What I want most is a lasting, stable, sexual relationship with a woman with whom I can share this fleetingly beautiful existence. Did I do the right thing, or should I give up on my foolish notions of finding that special someone and just go for the “hookup”?--A Gentleman
And here's my answer:
It’s not the sort of thing you dream of telling your grandkids: “Your grandma and I met at a bar. We were drinking heavily, and she looked awfully good at closing time.”Still, even if you aren’t looking to “get some,” if you do happen to be offered some, the wisest course of action isn’t covering your privates and diving behind a barstool. This doesn’t mean you have to end the evening in the position to cancer-check a woman’s hidden moles. But, once you get something going with somebody, why not see that you keep it going? At least offer her a ride home, take her out for pancakes, grope her on her porch.
Whatever you do, do something -- except if that something is giving her your e-mail address. You’re better off giving up on ever seeing her again. (Beats being chained to your computer, waiting to be wanted.) “But, she wouldn’t give me her phone number!” Well, be a man, ask harder, and cut your losses if she still doesn’t respond. For all you know, this woman “hesitated” because she didn’t know how to tell you she wanted to go home with you -- not go home alone and forward you something about how your deodorant could be giving you a brain tumor.
Where you go wrong is in thinking the choices are mutually exclusive -- either share fleetingly beautiful drunken sex or “this fleetingly beautiful existence.” Sure, the hookup has its downsides: pregnancy…disease…missing the thrill of the chase because there’s no need to run after anybody, just roll over in bed. And then there’s the chance that “that sweetie” from the bar will turn into your psycho-stalker. Despite being given no assurances a one-night stand would lead to any future nights, there she is, storming around outside your workplace, shouting through a traffic cone, “Is that all I was to YOOOUUU?”
It turns out one of the downsides for other men could be an upside for you. Yes, some women can “compartmentalize” the way men do -- decide they’re having a fling, and that’s that. Even so, people don’t always know what they want. Sometimes they just think they know what they want. And with women, sometimes a hormone called oxytocin does their thinking for them. It kicks in when a woman has an orgasm, making her feel bonded to her partner, even if, intellectually, she’d rather be the kind of girl who uses him and puts him out like the cat. In other words, having casual sex doesn’t necessarily preclude you from having, well, formal sex -- all that naked and nasty stability you’ve been pining for. It may even lead you there -- providing you see to it that it’s not over until everybody has a big finish.
The link to that column and a few comments are here.
Dear Dinesh
A Muslim woman, from a "traditional Muslim community" writes a letter to Dinesh D'Souza via Victor David Hanson:
What threatens patriarchal Muslim communities are not the excesses of Western societies but its very norms. Individualism and the relatively equal position of women manifest themselves in the opportunities females have to pursue education and economic independence. And these principles of individual freedom and equality, even Mr D'Souza will agree, are neither Right nor Left, but simply American. There is no way that Muslim women, in great numbers, can be granted similar opportunities without it eventually shaking their societies at their very foundations. Whatever else the Taliban is obtuse about, they understand perfectly the concept of the slippery slope — allow a girl child to be educated at all, and you never know where she will end up — perhaps like me, with only tangential ties to some of the core values of the conservative Islamic community I was raised in.When I go back home to my country of birth, as I frequently do, I see the changes that education and economic independence have wrought in a once very orthodox community, which slowly allowed its women a more Western lifestyle. Women are waiting longer to get married, having fewer children (going against the Islamic obligation to increase the "Umma" — the community of Muslims), going out of the home to work, often choosing a spouse against the wishes of the family, and initiating divorce in numbers that were unthinkable in the past. The great strength of Muslim societies, the stability of its families, and the cohesiveness of its communities, is beginning , in some places, to fray at the edges and the anxiety provoking question for those who care about this, as I do, is —how much can the foundational thread of conservative Islamic societites, —women's submissiveness, and their economic and social dependence on men — be pulled out, without it unraveling the entire fabric?
In the face of this challenge there are those who believe that the solution lies in reverting to fundamentalist Islam, and among such people could well be some future terrorists. There are others who know there is no going back. To do so would be to tolerate, for instance, some of the rules that governed my mother's life. No leaving the house without a chaperone, no signing your own marriage certificate, and most tragic of all, no going to school, no matter how much you love to learn. Or it could mean, as it did with a schoolmate of mine, a seventeen year old girl would be forced to marry a fifty six year old man, because her family forced her to. If she could have fended for herself, she may have fled her family. But she could not, and went through the marriage ceremony tears pouring down her face.
How can Muslim societies strike a balance between the needs of the individual and the need of the community so as to stay true to some of its better traditions and avoid the breakdown of family and society that has taken place in the West? There are no easy answers to that, and certainly none so easy as staying as far away as possible from pornography, or even making it more difficult for a woman to get a divorce. If Mr D'Souza has any advice to give on this issue, I would like to hear it. Turning the TV off when Britney Spears appears, I know to do on my own.
Iraq & Al Qaeda Sittin' In A Tree...
"K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes Doug, then comes marriage..." (Sorry, but somebody had better tell Doug Feith that we aren't buying his latest fairy tale, either.)
Somebody (a Feith/administration sympathizer, I suspect) sent me his whine for legitimacy (i.e. op-ed from the Washington Post explaining himself, starting with a one of those hippie chants -- "Bush Lied, People Died" -- that call to mind Cindy Sheehan in need of deodorant on some dusty road in Crawford). Actually, come to think of it, it's more like, "Feith Lied, Then Bush Lied, Then People Died."
The theory that Iraq and the terrorists were all smoochy before we got there is just crap, despite Feith's administration-pleasing fairy tale that suggested Iraq and Al Qaeda were spending all their free time spooning before we laid waste to the place:
In evaluating our policy toward Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, my office realized that CIA analysts were suppressing some of their information. They excluded reports conflicting with their favored theory: that the secular Iraqi Baathist regime would not cooperate with al-Qaeda jihadists. (We now face a strategic alliance of jihadists and former Baathists in Iraq.)
Yeah, dude...thanks to our invasion of the place.
Venice Living
Right out of Better Mobile Homes & Gardens.
Girls Against For Cat Calls
Via Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store, I found a link to a story about Hollaback, a site that lets women post photos of guys who "harass" women in public. Meredith May writes for the SF Chron:
In September, San Francisco joined more than a dozen other cities and states that have HollaBack blogs. Women fill the sites with pictures of men they say verbally, and sometimes physically, harass them on the street."Some men assume they have a right to comment out loud about a woman, and we're supposed to just shrug it off," said Jessica, 22, who started HollaBack-SF out of frustration over the catcalls and kissing noises she heard whenever she left her San Francisco apartment. She asked that her last name not be used to avoid being harassed. The point of HollaBack, she said, is to shift the power dynamic so women have an alternative to simply hanging their heads and walking away.
"I don't necessarily think the men who are photographed are going to stop because of HollaBack, but this could start a discussion among women and their male friends about what is appropriate and what isn't," Jessica said.
Great. I'll start one right here, with the comment I left on Romenesko's site, and it isn't going to be some victim'y Eve Ensler tract:
Sure, there are those few construction workers ready at the crack of dawn with, "Hey, baby, I wanna eat your pussy." The truth is, it's rare a guy says something really rude -- at least, in my experience, and I've lived in New York and Los Angeles, and visited plenty of other cities.Now, I go to a good deal of trouble getting dressed in the morning. If some guy whistles or says something in the realm of complimentary, I simply smile and say thanks.
Hint to the ladies out there: it takes on a whole new tone if you don't think and act like a victim.
And another thing. Here's the first comment left on Romenesko's entry about the Hollaback site, by "vksjk":
There needs to be a website for men in which they can post the names or just simply describe the rudest rejections they've received from women. In my years on the dating scene I've seen some women reject men in some incredibly harsh and rude ways. It'd be nice if there was a website for men to post rude rejection stories.
I wrote a column last week which got into how to reject a man. Again, unless a man asks you out in a most rude and disrespectful way, I think you owe it to him to be kind in how you respond. Remember: He laid his ego on the line to ask you out. Does it really cost you to be gracious, to act grateful? Just have an excuse ready if he's not for you: You're married, a lesbian, you're 35 and still grounded, whatever. The important thing is that he understands your answer is no -- you don't have to squash him under your boot like a bug in the process.
Incredibly Courageous Woman
Via a comment by Chicknlady, here's an incredible, incredibly passionate speech by Wafa Sultan (which I actually posted previously) against the murderous excesses of Islam. If only there were more like her, and if only, in the Muslim world, people weren't rightly called "courageous" for speaking their minds -- when their minds aren't on slaying the infidel.
Hey, Dr. Zhivago, They Don't Take Euros At McDonald's
Via LAObserved, Omar Sharif gets sentenced to anger management classes and two years probabtion after pleading no contest to socking a Beverly Hills parking valet. Peter Y. Hong writes the somewhat detail-impaired, nine-little-paragraph story for the LA Times:
Sharif, best known for his roles in the 1960s films "Dr. Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia," struck valet Juan Anderson outside Mastro's Steakhouse on Cañon Drive on June 12, 2005.Anderson said Sharif, 74, became upset when his Porsche sport utility vehicle was not waiting for him. His lawsuit alleged that Sharif struck him in the face.
Braun said Anderson became upset when Sharif offered to tip him with European currency.
Well, geez, there's a shocker.
The LA Times didn't appear to check out Wikipedia allegations from at least one other newspaper that Sharif has a history of similar incidents -- allegedly assaulting a casino employee and head-butting! a cop in the past.
There's more, here on IMDB, from WENN:
The 74-year-old was also ordered to stay 100 yards away from the victim, witnesses and the restaurant where the incident occurred. The judge set a hearing for April 18 to determine how much compensation Sharif will have to pay the victim. According to Braun, the victim is asking for $17,000 due to a broken nose.
According to the IMDB/WENN report, Sharif gets to attend those anger mangement classes "in his native Egypt."
Here's more, from the BBC (from a story "last updated Wednesday, 7 December 2005"):
Police spokesman Lt Mitch McCann said the parking attendant declined medical treatment and had no visible injuries.Mr Anderson's lawyer, John Carpenter, said the actor's behaviour had "violated the California hate crimes statute".
Mr Sharif's lawyer Martin Singer denies the actor hit Mr Anderson and claims he is being targeted because he is famous.
Was that what happened in the casino incident and the head-butting the police officer incident, too?
For the record, I think the hate crimes statute is excessive and dumb. Aren't most violent crimes hate crimes? Is a guy who brutally mugs you, but uses no racial epithets, just showing the love?
But, back to Dr. Z, here's more, in an under-proofread October 26, 2005 story via UPI. Sharif says he "has witnesses to counter" the valet's story. But, the valet's story is also expanded:
Juan Anderson, 48, claims the star of "Doctor Zhivago" punched him and called him a "stupid Mexican" after he told him he could not retrieve his Porsche from the parking lot with euros, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.Anderson, a Guatemalan, said he was punched out by the actor after saying, "Good night, I'm sorry you talk too much about me."
He was then allegedly offered $50 "to pretend the attack did not happen."
Sharif's lawyer, Martin Singer, called the claim "ridiculous" and said Sharif has "several witnesses" who could back him up.
Singer noted his client "is also a minority" and said the only reason for the suit is because he is a celebrity.
"The looked into this claim and didn't want to file any charges," he added.
Wait...this happened quite some time ago, and it's kind of juicy, and that tiny, detail-challenged piece by Hong was the only story the LAT could bother to put out? Hello? You're the local newspaper. If you don't own Hollywood coverage -- even the delicious little gossipy bits -- why don't you just shut the doors?
Global Warming Caused By Star Exhaust, Not Car Exhaust?
The Times/UK has a very interesting article by Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, about an experiment by Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen that hints we are wrong about climate change:
Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.
That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.
But, could it be something else?
...The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.
The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.
In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.
Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change."
Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.
Asshole-Canceling Headphones For The Vain
I've always wanted noise-canceling headphones -- for those times when the buttwad shouting into their phone next to me looks like the leader of the Crips, or when I'm just not up to engaging.
The problem is, when in public, I prefer not to look like an air-traffic controller landing planes. In the past, noise-canceling headphones have only come in the "cans" style -- the big black padded headband with a big earcup on either end.
Well, for $42 (see "more buying choices on the right at the link) I just bought Koss QZ-77s, billed as an "Active Noise Reduction Ear Plug System," and I'm very pleased. Here's the whole deal, just below.
The little gizmo on the right has a switch on it. Leave it on "off," and they're regular headphones with comfier ear thingies (made out of some squishy earplug material). Turn the switch on "on," and the asshole canceling begins. (One AAA battery required.)
My verdict? Well, without music on, you can hear people talking -- it just sounds hollow and weird. But, with music on -- perrrfection! Even with something light, like Jackie Gleason's Music, Martinis and Memories, I couldn't hear a barking dog (I was told it was behind me), or the small simian man barking into his phone this morning at breakfast. I did send him telepathic messages of hate on behalf of civilization in general, and all in the immediate vicinity who weren't as technologically well-equipped as I was.
The Problem With Islam
Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI) talks to Front Page's Jamie Glazov about the absence of "the Golden Rule" in Islam:
Let’s examine the ethical basis of our civilization. All of our politics and ethics are based upon a unitary ethic that is best formulated in the Golden Rule:Treat others as you would be treated.
The basis of this rule is the recognition that at one level, we are all the same. We are not all equal. Any game of sports will show that we do not have equal abilities. But everyone wants to be treated as a human being. In particular, we all want to be equal under the law and be treated as social equals. On the basis of the Golden Rule—the equality of human beings—we have created democracy, ended slavery and treat women and men as political equals. So the Golden Rule is a unitary ethic. All people are to be treated the same. All religions have some version of the Golden Rule except Islam.
FP: So how is Islam different in this context?
Warner: The term “human being” has no meaning inside of Islam. There is no such thing as humanity, only the duality of the believer and unbeliever. Look at the ethical statements found in the Hadith. A Muslim should not lie, cheat, kill or steal from other Muslims. But a Muslim may lie, deceive or kill an unbeliever if it advances Islam.
There is no such thing as a universal statement of ethics in Islam. Muslims are to be treated one way and unbelievers another way. The closest Islam comes to a universal statement of ethics is that the entire world must submit to Islam. After Mohammed became a prophet, he never treated an unbeliever the same as a Muslim. Islam denies the truth of the Golden Rule.
By the way, this dualistic ethic is the basis for jihad. The ethical system sets up the unbeliever as less than human and therefore, it is easy to kill, harm or deceive the unbeliever.
The CSPI Method for understanding Islam, as quoted on their site (with literature for sale to make Islam accessible to the ordinary non-Islamic person):
1. Islam is a religion and a political system. Only the political system is of interest to non-Muslims, since it determines how Islam treats you. Study the religion of Islam if you want to become a Muslim.2. All of Islam is based upon the Koran, the Sira (life of Mohammed), and Hadith (Traditions of Mohammed)-the Islamic Trilogy.
3. The entire political doctrine is found in the Trilogy. By reading the Trilogy, you will understand Islam's actions and words.
Why Democracy Won't Work In Muslim Countries
Former Muslim, Ali Sina writes in "Understanding Islam and the Muslim Mind" why we were ridiculous to think we could turn Iraq into a democracy as long as Islam flourished there. Here's an excerpt from his book, available for purchase at the link:
So, why has real democracy in these countries not worked? The answer can be summarized in one word: ISLAM. Islam is the reason no true and long lasting democracy can be established or has taken root in any Islamic country. Islam is also the reason why these countries have remained poor, underdeveloped and backward.The reality is that democracy cannot be imposed from above. To construct a democracy, you must first provide the right foundation. The prerequisite of democracy is freedom.
In Islamic countries, people do not have an understanding of freedom. They confuse freedom with anarchy. They fear freedom. Freedom, as defined in the context of democracy, means freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom of action, as long as your freedom does not limit the freedom of others. This understanding is as frightening to Muslims as it is alien, because such freedom is not rooted in Islam and cannot be a part of Islamic society.
It is not their own, personal freedom that is frightening to them. Muslims living in non-Muslim nations, know how to take full advantage of their freedom in their host, democratic countries to promote their faith. They often demand even greater freedom, insisting upon freedoms not accorded even to the native, non-Muslim citizens.
What they most fear is the fact that within democracies, those perceived to be their natural opponents - the infidels, or non-Muslims - are likewise free and granted equal opportunity. For Muslims, who seek to establish their dominance over all others through coercion, having instead to compete on a level playing field with people of other beliefs, sets up a challenging and frightening prospect. Allowing equal advantage to those who otherwise exist in natural opposition to Islam, and according them the ability to promote their ideas, or worse, permitting them to influence those Muslims who might be “lured away” to new ways of thinking outside of Islam, is intolerable to Muslim sensitivity. They regard such freedom as a direct threat to Islam.
Muslims cannot tolerate views resistant or in opposition to their own. This became clear to the non-Muslim world with the recent cartoon row that through the encouragement of mullahs, managed to become a full conflagration. Almost overnight, millions of Muslims worldwide rioted in Islamic as well as Western countries. They burned embassies, desecrated and destroyed churches, killed innocent people, all because a Danish newspaper published a few cartoons depicting their prophet Muhammad.
Before any serious attempt to bring democracy to the Islamic countries can begin, we must first lay the foundation of democracy. For Islamic societies to be able to make this transition, they would have to become tolerant and learn to respect people with differing views, while their governments would have to ensure that all freedoms are safeguarded for all citizens, regardless of their faith or gender.
... Islam does not permit Muslims to leave Islam. Similarly, it does not allow people of other faiths to exercise their own religions freely, let alone be allowed to preach them. Islam does not recognize equal human rights for those who are not Muslims, nor does it recognize the equality of women. Islam does not allow freedom of thought or speech. It is for these reasons that democracies in Islamic countries don't work. As long as these countries remain Islamic in nature, there cannot be any true democracy. As long as they remain undemocratic, and in allegiance to Islam, they will stay a danger to themselves as well as to the world.
... The Western world is currently in a dilemma. Whatever options may still remain open, are rapidly dwindling, as time is no longer on our side. With every passing minute, as each new baby is born to a Muslim family in the West, the threat of Islam grows, while the hope for democracy and freedom becomes a fading prospect. With the birth of each new Muslim child in the West, the pace of that threat is increasing, exponentially. This threat is more serious than the threat of terrorism.
It is not just non-Muslims who are trapped. Muslims also have no options. They are prisoners too. They cannot have peace or tolerate others simply because this would be against their faith. They have to fight us, force us to convert, subdue and humiliate us, or kill us, if they want to be believers. We are all hostages of Islam. All these wars, all these pains and sufferings, these senseless killings, are the result of the belief in Islam. Mankind has been taken hostage by the ghost of one man – a narcissist, a sick needy man of the seventh century Arabia who lived to destroy the world to satiate his intense crave for love, recognition and power.
...Asking Muslims to live in peace with others is asking them to betray their faith. Muslims are obliged to wage Jihad. This is their religious duty. As long as Muslims believe in Islam they will have to fight and promote it with violence any time they feel they have the upper hand and can win. The Earth belongs to Allah, they believe, and as his only faithful subjects, they are the rightful owners of it. It is their obligation to reclaim it and establish Allah’s rule.
Though there are many Muslims who are peaceful, Islam itself is not peaceful. Therefore, it is unrealistic to expect all Muslims not to follow their religion fully, to believe in it and yet somehow not practice it.
My objective in writing this book is to show that Islam, far from being a religion of peace is a cult of war. That the reason there is no democracy in Islamic countries, and there can never be a lasting one, is because Islam is not compatible with democracy. I hope after reading this book, you too will come to the same conclusion that, as long as Islam is accepted as a religion, the Muslim world will not recover from its misery and the world will not see peace.
The problem is not because Muslims have distorted the original message of Islam, but because they have understood it clearly and have put it into practice.
Mary Had A Little War
Douglas Feith made up administration-pleasing fairy tales about Iraqi involvement in 9/11. Here, from a New York Times editorial, is how it all got started:
...Top administration officials, especially Mr. Cheney, had long been furious at the C.I.A. for refusing to confirm the delusion about a grand Iraqi terrorist conspiracy, something the Republican right had nursed for years. Their frustration only grew after 9/11 and the C.I.A. still refused to buy these theories.Mr. Wolfowitz would feverishly sketch out charts showing how this Iraqi knew that Iraqi, who was connected through six more degrees of separation to terrorist attacks, all the way back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
But the C.I.A. kept saying there was no reliable intelligence about an Iraq-Qaeda link. So Mr. Feith was sent to review the reports and come back with the answers Mr. Cheney wanted. The inspector general’s report said Mr. Feith’ s team gave a September 2002 briefing at the White House on the alleged Iraq-Qaeda connection that had not been vetted by the intelligence community (the director of central intelligence was pointedly not told it was happening) and “was not fully supported by the available intelligence.”
The false information included a meeting in Prague in April 2001 between an Iraqi official and Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 pilots. It never happened. But Mr. Feith’s report said it did, and Mr. Cheney will still not admit that the story is false.
In a statement released yesterday, Senator Carl Levin, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has been dogged in pursuit of the truth about the Iraqi intelligence, noted that the cooked-up Feith briefing had been leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine so Mr. Cheney could quote it as the “best source” of information about the supposed Iraq-Qaeda link.
The Pentagon report is one step in a long-delayed effort to figure out how the intelligence on Iraq was so badly twisted — and by whom. That work should have been finished before the 2004 elections, and it would have been if Pat Roberts, the obedient Republican who ran the Senate Intelligence Committee, had not helped the White House drag it out and load it in ways that would obscure the truth.
It is now up to Mr. Levin and Senator Jay Rockefeller, the current head of the intelligence panel, to give Americans the answers. Mr. Levin’s desire to have the entire inspector general’s report on the Feith scheme declassified is a good place to start. But it will be up to Mr. Rockefeller to finally determine how old, inconclusive, unsubstantiated and false intelligence was transformed into fresh, reliable and definitive reports — and then used by Mr. Bush and other top officials to drag the country into a disastrous and unnecessary war.
How incensed is the right wing about this? Well, on National Review's The Corner blog, I did find a correction they printed from The Washington Post about incorrectly attributed quotes about Feith's report.
Hmmm, I wonder, where's all that outrage they showed when Clinton lied about his penis? Do they care more about penises getting some illicit action in the White House than unnecesssarily dead soldiers who saw illicit action in Iraq?
UPDATE: Oh, wait, then, there's this, from January, 2005:
I Am a Dork [Kathryn Jean Lopez]I got an extra kick out of SNL last night because Douglas Feith (Undersecretary of Defense for Policy) was spoofed. The reason for the added enjoyment: he’s written for NR.
A little earlier, in October, 2004, National Review's Cliff May came up with this snidery:
I grew up with Uncle Walter. If he says Karl Rove was behind the bin Laden video, it must be true.And I’ll bet Mark McKinnon did the filming himself. And they probably used a Halliburton jet to get him into Waziristan. Richard Perle and Doug Feith went along for the ride. And they all stopped in Riyadh on the way back for kabobs with their good buddy Prince Abdullah. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
And then, there's this nasty little bit from Jonathan H. Adler, in June, 2005:
Senator Levin is threatening to block confirmation of Douglas Feith's successor at the Defense Department. Apparently this is due to a dispute over documents, and not an effort to see that one of the Senator's relatives gets the position.
No, you sleazebag. Carl Levin has been the senator from Michigan since I was a kid, and there's a reason for that. He's a pretty good guy and he does a pretty good job. Here's the money quote from the June, 2005, Washington Post article Adler links:
Levin has criticized Feith for portraying the relationship as more extensive and significant than U.S. intelligence agencies thought at the time. Administration officials have defended Feith's prewar efforts as reflecting a legitimate attempt to provide an alternative analysis.
National Review has been awwwwful quiet in the mea culpa department...along with the rest of the vast right-wing conspiracy. And, while the Democrats largely appear to be a bunch of dimwits, it does seem that there is a right-wing conspiracy -- against having the truth come out.
Be Careful What You Wish For
"Seventy-Two Virgins" -- a cautionary tale for jihadists, by Steve Martin in The New Yorker. Here's an excerpt:
Virgin No. 1: Yuck.Virgin No. 2: Ick.
Virgin No. 3: Ew.
Virgin No. 4: Ow.
Virgin No. 5: Do you like cats? I have fourteen!
Virgin No. 6: I’m Becky. I’ll be legal in two years.
Virgin No. 7: Here, I’ll just pull down your zipper. Oh, sorry!
Virgin No. 8: Can we cuddle first?
Virgin No. 9: It was a garlic-and-onion pizza. Why?
Virgin No. 10: . . . so I see Heath, and he goes, “Like, what are you doing here?,” and I go, “I’m hangin’ out,” so he goes, “Like, what?” . . .
Virgin No. 11: First you’re going to have to show me an up-to-date health certificate.
Virgin No. 12: Hurry! My parents are due home!
Virgin No. 13: Do you want the regular or the special?
Virgin No. 14: I’m eighty-four. So what?
Virgin No. 15: Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Virgin No. 16: Even I know that’s tiny.
Virgin No. 17: “Do it”? Meaning what?
Virgin No. 18: I’m saving myself for Jesus.
Oops.
Beyond The Valley Of Ugly
Minnie t's, Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Venice, California. Where ugly's gonna cost ya.
D Is For Disappointment
Terry Michael, former press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, writes in The Washington Times and the March print edition of Reason on the extreme ball-lessness of the Democrats:
It's hard to get out of a deal with the devil.That's the congressional Democrats' dilemma, as they continue to treat the Iraq war as a speed bump on their pathway to the perks of restored power, rather than as a moral question to which voters loudly demanded a moral answer two months ago.
Take Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. "There's not much I can do about it," responded the Democratic "leader" on foreign policy, when asked on one of the Sunday venues for pompous pontificators how he would respond to any attempt by President Bush to escalate the war in Iraq (or "surge," if you prefer it in Orwellian newspeak).
This is a man who sees a future president during his morning look in the mirror. Sadly, the glass reflects an empty suit who embodies the congressional Democrats' decision to reduce action on Iraq to a political calculus appropriate for the highway appropriations bill, rather than as a moral imperative to challenge a policy that has sent thousands of twenty-somethings to their deaths in the desert.
You certainly can do something about it, Senator. It's called leadership. You rise on the Senate floor. You say you were out of your mind to write a blank check for this hideous misprojection of American military power. And then you propose immediate withdrawal, just slow enough to maximize the safety of the 135,000 mostly young men and women you helped put in harm's way by your collusion with this elective war. You do what Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon had the guts to do last month, stopping just short of accurately labeling this public policy obscenity a criminal enterprise.
Who, these days, "speaks truth to power"? The only place Michael can find it is...
...on a cable TV comedy channel, not in the chambers of what used to be called the greatest deliberative body in the world. Is anybody out there willing to lead?
The Gospel Of Food
Culture Of Fear author Barry Glassner signs his new book, The Gospel of Food, today, Saturday, February 10 at 2pm, Dutton’s Brentwood Bookstore, 11975 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90049 (between Bundy and Montana).
A couple of his blurbs:
"Barry Glassner's The Gospel of Food is a well-timed brick through the plate glass window of conventional wisdom, pretentiousness, willful ignorance and political correctness through which most writers on food look out at the world. He gives you plenty to think about."
— Anthony Bourdain"It's plain that part of his own motivation is a genuine love of food and indignation at seeing a great common blessing made the sparring ground of officious sectarians who frequently don't know what they're talking about. As in The Culture of Fear, Mr. Glassner exposes the strained interpretations, 'prejudices dressed up as science,' and pure fabrications behind much received wisdom simply by checking out sources with an eye to original meanings... he gets to the heart of something deeply wrong on the national food scene: Most of us want the right food to make us healthy and wise as individuals and as a society, without trusting ourselves to know rightness.”
— The New York Times
Sex And The Single Islamic Girl
Via NoGodZone, Meet the Islamic Helen Gurley Brown, instructing Muslims on what happens if an unmarried Islamic woman has sex:
Phew! Well, there's a relief.
Welfare For Airborne Multimillionaires
From USA Today, an editorial about how commercial airline passengers are subsidizing the swells in their Gulfstreams:
Comparing two flights from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale highlights the unfairness of the current situation. One is a 757 commercial airliner that is 75% full. The other is a Hawker 400, a corporate jet seating eight passengers. According to the ATA, the passengers of the commercial flight will collectively pay the FAA about $1,760, directly in ticket taxes and indirectly in fuel taxes. The passengers of the Hawker will pay just $56, mostly from fuel taxes....Those subsidies are one reason there are more than 17,000 corporate airplanes in the USA, twice the number of commercial airliners. At times and places such as South Florida on winter weekends or New York at virtually any time, they can cause what might be called "Lear Lock." This Monday after the Super Bowl, for instance, corporate jets left South Florida at a rate of 200 to 250 per hour, causing delays for airline passengers, according to the Air Transport Association (ATA), the major carriers' trade group.
Those jets are so numerous in part because they are paying very little in taxes to support the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Even though a corporate jet places as great a burden on the air traffic system as an airliner, it pays only a fraction of the price. Most funding for the aviation trust fund, 94% in fact, comes from a variety of airline taxes, principally a 7.5% levy on the price of each ticket. Just 6% of the funding comes from all private jets and small aircraft.
President Bush's budget, released Monday, would replace per-passenger taxes based on the price of the ticket with per-airplane taxes based on the level of air traffic services rendered. This needed change would:
•End an egregious subsidy to corporations and wealthy individuals.
•Result in lower ticket prices or, more likely, let the FAA undertake a much-needed and expensive upgrade to its system.
•Encourage airlines to substitute larger jets for smaller regional aircraft that have barely enough legroom for a child or bin space for an iPod.
The proposal would have some impact on amateur pilots, particularly if they fly around major cities. It would have a bigger impact on corporate jets that more frequently fly in these crowded corridors.
Yes, good news about dismantling the corporate welfare state. A pat on the back for President Bush!
Unfortunately, the religious welfare state is still going strong. From a piece by C. Bradley Thompson:
In the president’s faith-based initiatives, we see compassionate conservatism’s two distinctive features: the use of “free-market mechanisms” to achieve welfare-state goals; and the redirection of the welfare state toward conservative, especially religious, goals.Compassionate conservatism’s proponents tout President Bush’s faith-based initiative as an application of free-market principles to welfare. Government-funded welfare is distributed by sub-contracting and out-sourcing the “politics of love” to private middlemen—namely, churches and faith-based charitable organizations. The Bush administration’s program aims to make “funds more accessible to neighborhood and faith-based organizations that administer a mix of love and discipline,” writes Stephen Goldsmith.23 Such “privatization” of the welfare system does give rise to a certain kind of “competition”: Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, the Unification Church, Rastafarians, Scientologists, and various other California-style churches compete to offer the most love and the best soup—and with your money.
This political competition between churches for taxpayer money is the beau idéal of compassionate conservatism. Churches and charities compete with one another for government funding, and the recipients of this “charity” have the freedom to choose between various government-sponsored and government-regulated denominational soup kitchens. This is what compassionate conservatives mean when they advocate combining “free market” policies with religious programs for the poor. But this is an Orwellian perversion and an utter corruption of free-market principles. There is no such thing as “market competition” between semi-private charities for the favors of government bureaucrats who have the power to arbitrarily give away money that is forcibly taken from other Americans. This is sheer government coercion and forced redistribution of wealth. Worse yet, it is a violation of the separation of church and state.
Unfortunately, Thompson writes, the president has been giving a lot more welfare than he's been taking away:
Under George Bush and the Republicans, the welfare state that Bill Clinton began to dismantle has been given a second life. The Bush administration and their Republican allies in Congress have, for instance, offered a tax “refund” to 6.5 million low-income people who do not pay taxes, passed a $180 billion farm subsidy bill (welfare for farmers), supported tariffs on steel imports (welfare for the American steel industry), and extended the American welfare state to Africa by offering the people of that continent $15 billion in AIDS relief.Then, of course, there’s President Bush’s signature welfare program administered by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The amount of money that the Bush administration has taken (or proposes to take) from American taxpayers for redistribution to the irresponsible and unproductive is utterly staggering: $50 million to fund mentors for children of criminals in jail, $240 million for promoting healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood, $206 million for an abstinence-only program, $75 million for the Prisoner Re-entry Initiative, $150 million for a drug-addiction program, $1.4 billion to house the homeless, $149 million to the Compassion Capital Fund (for the perpetually “needy”).
And finally, the difference between Democrats and Republicans?
Liberalism invokes the altruism of Marx; conservatism invokes the altruism of Jesus; and both camps are indebted to Rousseau for his emphasis on compassion. With respect to individual rights, there is and can be no fundamental difference between a secular-liberal welfare state and a religious-conservative welfare state. It matters not one whit to me whether my earned wealth is forcibly redistributed by a Hillary Clinton or a George Bush government; either way, my money is seized. The political subjugation of the individual in the name of the morality of sacrifice is the essence of both.
Scabies? Herpes? Hepatitis? An Asteroid-Sized Hemorrhoid?
the guy was coming to SF to use?
The following is a rough transcript of the message I left Wednesday afternoon on the voicemail of the guy shouting into his phone on my plane to San Francisco last week, and later, in SFO baggage claim:
I just want to tell you how INNNTERESTING it was to learn about your "PRE-EXISTING MEDICAL CONDITION." I was the girl seated in front of you on the plane to San Francisco. Actually, I would have preferred to read my book on Emilie du Chatelet and Voltaire to hearing your loud cell phone conversation, but your voice pretty much took over all the available air space, so I was forced to learn about you. Then, in the baggage claim, you very helpfully shouted your phone number, so I thought I'd call you and tell you how I felt. In the future, if you have information you'd like to keep private, perhaps you should avoid shouting it in public places where other people would prefer to think their own thoughts. Just a little something to remember! Bye!
Oh yeah, I forgot. As I was leaving baggage claim, I called across to the guy, "Thanks for your phone number! I'll be calling to discuss your pre-existing medical condition!"
Tragically, when I did get around to picking up the phone, operators were not standing by to take my call.
No fair. How come I have to listen when he feels like it, but he isn't available for a good yammering when it works for me?
Sigh...I guess there's no such thing as an equal-opportunity captive audience.
I just wish I could tie one of these people to a tetherball pole for an afternoon and make them listen to me blather on about my errands or something equally fascinating. Sadly, I believe there are kidnapping charges and jail time associated with that sort of thing.
I do have a new plan afoot. Not for restaurants, cafés, or coffee shops, since I don't want to be an aural annoyance myself, but for the next person who won't shut their big cellphone-shouting yap in a store.
Note to the undermannered with unlimited minutes at, say, the grocery store or the office supply store: Remember, the wine aisle and the pen aisle are the only places the rest of us can buy wine or pens. It's a mobile phone. Assclowns.
"Charges Won't Be Filed Against The Woman"?
Why the hell not?
Woman taken off plane for talking on cell phoneFort Myers, Florida - Lee County authorities say a Colorado woman was escorted off a commercial flight for ignoring instructions to stop talking on her cellular phone.
Barbara-Anne Urrutia, a spokeswoman for the Lee County Port Authority, tells the News-Press of Fort Myers that the woman was being disruptive aboard the American Airlines flight about 9:30 last night.
...Urrutia says charges won't be filed against the woman.
Thanks, Deirdre
Poof! He's Straight!
During my 20s, when I was having a hard time finding a boyfriend, it would have been great to be into, well, munching a little rug. While I'm a sexual person, and could probably sleep with a girl in a pinch, I'm just don't have it in me to want to have sex with women.
Of course, I can no more change my sexuality than I can change the fact that I loathe eggplant. We all know that, huh? So, what does that idiot Haggard think he's going to accomplish with his latest announcement, "I'm 200, no, 300, no, 656 percent straight!" (Other than making us weep with laughter?) I mean, does the guy think he's going to get another moneybags parish out of the deal?
Lena and I were talking Tuesday night, wouldn't it be great if the guy, like George Michael, finally just came out and said, "Yay! I'm a fag!"? And why is it that these guys have to be caught sucking somebody off in a bathroom or something before they'll do that?
I look forward to the day when it's just as boring to be gay as it is to be heterosexual.
Slippery When Unwed
I just posted another Advice Goddess column, about the silly prejudice against men who hit 40 without being married. Here's the guy's question:
Several years ago, I lost every penny I had, along with my health. I eventually recovered my health and career, and, in the process, grew up. I’m now in my mid-30s. Previously, I had two three-year relationships, but I only started dating again recently. The last woman I dated had eight drinks (yes, eight) on our first date -- and sounded like no stranger to the bottle. She confessed to a recent affair with a married man (I’m still trying to figure out why an affair was cool, but she was “nervous” about dating again after her divorce). She also told me things about her friends and family that would make Caligula blush. Even so, the fact that I’d never married made her leery of me -- and other women I’ve met have also found it a bone of contention. I’m a good guy, have good relationships with my friends and family, and I’m moving up at work. How come my matrimony-free life seems to be a stain on my character?
--Single And Degenerate
Here's my response:
Nothing makes a guy persona non grata with the ladies like neglecting to marry and divorce two or three of them and scatter kids all over the place like birdseed. Or, as I like to call them, “Future carjackers of America.”What, exactly, were you doing that you couldn’t find your way to an acrimonious divorce by 30? Oh yeah, crawling back from death’s door, rebuilding your career from scratch, and getting your self together instead of inflicting it, unformed, on some unsuspecting woman. And this is a stain on your character? Consider the source: a woman who drinks the bar dry on date one, whose affair points to a view of marriage vows as mere suggestions, and who doesn’t just hang with a bad seed or two, but more of a bad crop.
You’re a victim of the dating version of racial profiling. Like the Navajo handing down the oral tradition, generations of women have passed down the notion that any man who hasn’t wifed up by 40 must be an irredeemable bachelor -- interminably selfish, set in his ways, terrified of commitment, a major player, or just too busy with his boyfriend. In 1950, when pretty much everybody married, and usually in their early 20s, this assumption wasn’t such a stretch. Back then, U.S. Census data put the “median age for first marriage” at 20 for women and 22 for men. By 2003, it had risen to 25 for women and 27 for men, with more and more people marrying for the first time in their 30s, 40s, or 50s -- if at all.
So, are you a man who won’t commit, or a man who won’t commit to just anything? A woman who tells you what you are instead of asking you about yourself and getting to know you is telling you a lot about herself. This isn’t to say one snap judgment necessarily deserves another, but there are certain women prone to such leaps: those holding a stopwatch to their ovaries; the type who’d say to a guy, “I’m nothing without you,” and really mean it; and women who take an abstinence-only approach to critical thinking.
Women who do think understand that it isn’t a huge accomplishment to get married; just get drunk and impulsive in Vegas. That’s your chance to learn what’s worse than waking up clueless as to the name of the aging stripper snoring into your chest hair. Not to worry, “Darling” is just as good a save when the mystery lady also happens to be your wife.
Is That A Nuke In Your Suitcase...?
Enough with the bullshit. Take it from an American Muslim, Emilio Karim Dabul, who writes in The Wall Street Journal:
I am an Arab-American as well as a fan of "24." The two things are not mutually exclusive, despite what the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other such groups have to say about this season's opening episodes possibly increasing anti-Muslim and anti-Arab prejudice in American society.Most of the terrorists represented in "24" through the years have been Arab Muslims. Why? Well, probably because most terrorists today are, in fact, Arab Muslims. As a descendant of Syrian Muslims, I am very well aware that the majority of Muslims world-wide are peaceful, hard working, and law abiding. That still does not change the fact that the greatest terrorist threat to the U.S. today comes not from the ETA, the IRA, etc., but from one group: Islamic terrorists.
And this is what makes "24" a compelling drama every week. Instead of pretending Islamic terrorists don't exist, the show presents frighteningly real worst-case scenarios perpetrated by Osama bin Laden's followers. So CAIR thinks it's over the top for the terrorists in "24" to blow up Los Angeles with a nuke? Please, if bin Laden and his crew had nukes, most of us would be way too dead to argue over such points.
There is a dangerous trend in the U.S. today that involves skirting the truth at the risk of offending any individual or group. When Bill Cosby talks to African-Americans about self-respect and responsibility, and says publicly what many have been saying privately for years, he's branded a "reactionary," "misinformed," "judgmental," and so on. When "24" confronts America's worst fears about al Qaeda--whose goal remains to kill as many Americans as possible whenever possible--the show is said to be guilty of fueling anti-Muslim and anti-Arab prejudice.
Well, here's the hard, cold truth: When Islamic terrorists stop being a threat to America's survival, viewers will lose interest in "24," because it will have lost its relevancy. Until such time, I will continue to watch "24"--because, believe it or not, the idea that there are Jack Bauers out there in real life risking their lives to save ours does mean something to me.
Sorry, but holding hands and singing kumbayah just isn't going to do the job.
Want To See My Column And/Or Other Writing In The LA Times?
Ask for it. There's a 2pm live chat today, February 7, with Andrés Martinez, the editorial page editor of the LA Times. I once sat next to him at a dinner, and he seems like a good guy. He'd probably be open to running me if people ask.
The chat link itself is here, but won't be running until 2pm.
via LAObserved
P.S. That's Pacific Time.
Health Careless
When I was in Detroit a few weeks ago, my parents, who live and work there, told me that half the cost of an American car goes to pay for workers' health insurance, negotiated by the unions. "The unions are breaking the car companies," my mother said.
Yes, but half? She's my mother, but I still "fact-checked her ass." Here's a figure I found -- $1,500 for health care, added onto the price of every new GM vehicle, according to their CEO, G. Richard Wagoner, Jr. Not half, but not exactly pocket-change, either. And, writes Ceci Connolly, in The Washington Post link above, it's " a cost that his foreign competitors do not bear."
Julie Appleby and Sharon Silke Carty write in USA Today:
At a time when the average American company requires workers to pay more than $2,000 a year toward family health insurance premiums, the auto industry is among the 4% of employers that offer free family health coverage. Retirees, who outnumber workers by more than 2-to-1 at General Motors and represent significant percentages at the other major U.S. automakers, get the same deal."The health benefits for unionized autoworkers are a relic from another era, one where large, prosperous employers did typically pay for the whole health insurance premium," says Paul Ginsburg, an economist at the Center for Studying Health System Change.
As GM recovers from its worst quarterly loss in more than a decade, $1.1 billion, executives have targeted health care as a top opportunity for cost cutting. And as GM is the nation's largest private purchaser of health care, what it does is being watched closely and could have ramifications beyond its own 1.1 million employees, retirees and dependants.
"It begins to call into question whether employers can continue to be the backbone of our health care system," says Drew Altman, who heads the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan think tank that studies health care issues.
Of course, health care costs aren't the only problem -- or the reason I drive a Honda Insight instead of a Ford or GM Insight. Appleby and Silke Carty continue:
Japanese automakers are more innovative. South Korean manufacturers offer less-expensive products. Sales of SUVs have helped prop up profits of U.S. companies in recent years, but high gas prices are putting a damper on customer enthusiasm."GM has focused on health care as if this were the only thing standing between them and major success," says Shaiken at Berkeley. "That is a distortion, which is not to say health costs are unimportant. But it's neither the root of their problem or the solution alone to what ails them."
Jacob Sullum writes for Reason about a situation I've always found strange -- and stupid...the fact that most Americans get medical coverage through their employers:
People do not, as a rule, expect their employers to pay for their car insurance, their life insurance, or their homeowner's insurance. Why should employers pay for their health insurance?In a system based on employer-provided insurance, people lose their medical coverage when they lose their jobs, a problem that becomes increasingly serious as they get older and sicker. At the same time, the seemingly free coverage makes health care more expensive for everyone.
Not only are you unlikely to know or care how much your employer spends on health insurance, but the coverage may be more generous than you would choose on your own, which means you are unlikely to know or care how much particular services cost. If you were using your own money to buy insurance, you might opt for a cheaper policy with a higher deductible, in which case you would be more conscious of things like the fee for an office visit or the difference in price between name-brand and generic drugs. Indifference to such considerations contributes to escalating health care costs.
Bush's solution to these problems is straightforward. He would reverse the policy of excluding health insurance from taxable income. To avoid an overall tax increase, he would give taxpayers with health insurance a standard deduction of $7,500 for individuals and $15,000 for families.
The White House estimates that 80 percent of taxpayers who get health insurance through their employers would receive tax cuts as a result of these changes because their coverage costs less than the deduction. (The average cost of employer-sponsored medical coverage last year was about $4,200 for individuals and $11,500 for families.) The other 20 percent would pay higher taxes, which might encourage them to seek less generous coverage and get more of their compensation in cash.
Everyone who buys his own health insurance would pay lower taxes under Bush's plan. Some people who currently cannot afford coverage might be able to swing it as a result of the tax break, which (in the example favored by the Bush administration) would amount to $4,500 for a family of four earning $60,000.
The complaint that changing the tax treatment of health insurance would encourage employers to stop providing it misses the point: If employers are offering medical coverage instead of extra pay purely for tax reasons, they should stop. Eliminating the pernicious preference for employer-provided insurance would promote a greater diversity of options and help people choose the coverage that makes the most sense for them.
Are You A Woman Or A Goat?
If you’re a Saudi Arabian citizen, and you're female, it’s kind of hard to say. Women there are treated like property. Via ifeminist, here’s a story from the Khaleej Times about a petition against forced divorce:
The petition urges the king to allow the case of Fatima, which caused a public outcry in early January when a Saudi court forcibly separated the 34-year-old woman from her husband, to be disregarded and the family be reunited.According to the petition, Fatima’s case is not unique.
Arab News reported that the petition also calls on the king to intervene in the case of Rania Abou Al Enin, whose father filed a lawsuit to divorce her from her husband.
Human rights activist Fawzeya Al Ouyoni, one of the women behind the petition, said: “When the divorce is carried out with the couple’s approval then this is just the way it happens all over the world. But when it is forced on the couple with an order from a high court, then that is a massive disaster which threatens the safety of the Saudi family.”
Fatima has been seeking refuge in prison along with her one-year- old son Suleiman since October 2006 to escape the compulsory divorce. The couple’s other child, two-year-old Noha, is in her father’s custody.
Fatima’s brothers filed a lawsuit demanding that her three-year marriage be annulled “on the grounds that (the married couple) were tribally incompatible.”
This is not a prerequisite for legitimate marriage under Sharia (Islamic law), said her husband Mansour Al Timani. He also argued that an appeals court in Riyadh revoked the divorce ruling in a similar case in the city of Unaizah in Qasim a year ago and questioned why this case was not taken as a legal precedent.
But, Can You Bring Your Dog To Your 12-Step Meeting?
Washington State's considering allowing dogs in bars. Lucy has been quite a bar (and restaurant) fly for years, thanks to her many trips to the city on the Seine. Rachel La Corte writes for the AP:
Soggy dogs waiting outside a downtown Olympia pub inspired state Sen. Ken Jacobsen to propose a way to get them in from the cold and rain."There's all sorts of places you can bring animals now," said Jacobsen, who doesn't own a dog. "You can take dogs into hotels. My God, some people are carrying dogs in their purses. Why can't we have them in the bars?"
The Seattle Democrat's bill would allow bars and restaurants with liquor licenses to welcome dogs, as long as they accompany their owners and remain well-behaved and leashed. Establishments wouldn't be required to allow dogs, except for service animals.
Janna Goodwin with the National Conference of State Legislatures said she could not find any states that allowed dogs in bars, or any that were considering similar legislation.
A slightly different law that went into effect in Florida last summer allows restaurants, approved by local governments, to permit dogs to eat with their owners outside.
Health officials said the ban on pets in restaurants and bars is based on Food and Drug Administration regulations.
"Animals don't use the toilet and they shed and they sometimes drool, and those are potential issues with food," said Joe Graham, public health adviser for the Washington state Department of Health.
Yeah? I could say that about a number of humans I've seen in bars. Adult dogs don't spontaneously do their business inside, they don't leave piles of hair all over the place (and besides, the dog isn't going to be sprawled across the bar), nor will it be running around the kitchen licking the food before it's served.
And, on the plus side, no dog has ever tried to impress me by telling me he's a "producer," or asked me if my rack's real.
Dworkinized
The late, dubiously sane radical feminist Andrea Dworkin has had amazing success brainwashing people who've almost certainly never heard of her. Check out this LA Times story by Sam Verhovek (about the Seattle Times story) about "sexpresso" stands in Seattle, where "scantily clad" girls are the baristas.
Most of the baristas say that they are paid at or just above minimum wage — but that they can also make as much as $200 in tips during a seven-hour shift.At Tully's, a decidedly more mainstream chain of coffee shops in Seattle, barista Alex Torres, 17, said he was lucky if he got a $10 share on his shift from the plastic tips box.
Still, Torres said, he was glad not to work at a sexpresso stand.
"It just doesn't seem right, selling coffee in a bikini," said Torres, a sophomore at Seattle's Ballard High School. "It seems degrading to the women."
And while the money is good for the racy-themed baristas, plenty of other people agree with Torres that it is exploitative and demeaning.
Sorry, but why is it "degrading" or "exploitative and demeaning" to work in a bikini? To have people appreciate your body? Especially when they're appreciating it to the tune of $200 in tips? It's such a dumb, victim'y point of view.
Hey, Alex Torres: If hot guys were doing it...would it still be "degrading"?
Sleeping With The Enema
Muslim Low Self-Esteem
Martin Amis talks about it in an interview with the LATimes' Josh Getlin, and sounds the alarm that, as Getlin paraphrases it, "Fanatic, murderous ideologues cannot be ignored or dealt with in 'good faith,' whether they took root in Russia 60 years ago or thrive today in the Middle East." In Amis' words from the interview:
"Nobody in the West gave a damn about Islam on Sept. 10, 2001…. The Islamist ideology is that we're trying to destroy them. But we have no view one way or another. We're not at all obsessed about them. We really don't care. And yet there's this wounded narcissism in the Islamic world, because they want everything to be about them."Those feelings, he suggested, are rooted in the fact that Islam has been subordinate to the West since the 13th century, and "there is this bewilderment about why God is rewarding the infidels." That bewilderment has now led to unrepressed rage.
"We respect Islam, the donor of countless benefits to mankind, and possessor of a thrilling history," Amis wrote in "The Age of Horrorism." "But Islamism? No, we can hardly be asked to respect a creedal wave that calls for our own elimination….
Islamic societies aren't likely to produce the kinds of minds that would combat this sort of thing, suggests Henry Porter in a piece in The Guardian:
By the admission of the Arab Human Development Report, published in Cairo in 2002, Arab societies are crippled by the lack of political freedom and knowledge. As Pervez Hoodbhoy, a celebrated Muslim physicist, commented: 'High-quality, mind-opening education is virtually non-existent. Half of Arab women cannot read or write. The entire Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth the number that Greece translates... in the thousand years since the reign of Caliph al Ma'mun, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain does in just one year.'
And, as Porter writes earlier in the piece, we in the West are too busy bending over backwards to welcome those who hate us and want us dead -- or at least beaten up a little:
Imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury or any senior Anglican clergyman giving a sermon which suggested that homosexual men should be thrown off a mountain; that they were no better than filthy dogs. Imagine another priest rising in another church to preach that children should be hit for not praying, that women were deficient, should walk behind men and only go out with their man's permission. Consider what the reaction would be if a third joined in by saying all Jews were born liars....It's important to understand that while this was not a portrait of the whole Muslim Britain, it represents a significant part which cannot be ignored. The Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, where much of the programme was filmed, has the equivalent status of a cathedral and it was here that the clerics felt able to speak in this truly shocking way. Given the events last week, it's worth remembering that one cleric in the film suggested that it would be no tragedy if a Muslim soldier serving for the British armed forces in Afghanistan was beheaded.
Actually, the impact of this film did not come from any direct revelations about terrorism, but simply from the loathing and violence of the language used by these preachers about the 'kuffar' or infidel: i.e. the rest of British society. With the exception of the BNP, there is no grouping, community or party in these islands that permits itself to express such hatred. This hatred, so often accompanied by acute sense of persecution, has become a dangerous habit and a very great threat to our entire society.
Again, I stress the majority of Muslims wish to live peacefully and integrate into British society. This was emphasised by the Policy Exchange report last week which was written by three researchers, two of whom have Muslims backgrounds. 'The majority of Muslims,' says the report, 'feel they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain as with Muslims abroad.' Nearly two- thirds of Muslims would prefer to send their children to a mixed state school, compared with the 35 per cent who would prefer to use Islamic schools. And well over a third agree that one of the benefits of modern society is the freedom to criticise other people's religions or political views, a much higher proportion than I would ever have guessed.
It is a shrewd and balanced study that needs careful reading. 'By treating Muslims as a homogenous group,' it says, 'the government fails to see the diversity of opinions among Muslims.' So while 84 per cent of Muslims say they have been treated fairly in our society, 75 per cent of young Muslims want women to wear the veil, one in eight expressed some admiration for al-Qaeda and 40 per cent want to live under Sharia law.
The thing I fear most is the growth of an alternative account of reality among radicalised youth, a parallel truth almost uncontested within British Muslim society. The rest of us don't oppose it because either we think it isn't our business or we suffer from the mistaken belief that Jade Goody's alleged racism is where the real struggle lies, an error of the multicultural age.
God Said Ha
And then god went Whooosh! And did the Three Little Piggies number on the church:
The Lady Lake Church of God, built to withstand winds of up to 150 mph, was demolished, according to the Associated Press.
Here's an excerpt from Bill Henry's e-mail about it (from about 75 miles east of the church):
Hi Amy,Looks like our friend god fucked up this morning in Central Florida. When His tornado(s) hit, the good Lord our God forgot to pull it up before it went thru Lady Lake Church of God. It's totally demolished! 100%. Looks like another disaster that comes under the good old "mysterious ways" clause in His contract with His sheep.
Bill Henry
Here's a photo from an AP story posted on MSNBC.
Back Asswards
And I really like it that way. A sign I saw on the way to dinner last night.
The Mad Russian's Pretty Damn Sane
I saw Moscow-born artist Roman Genn at a little gathering last night, and he told me about a piece he'd written for National Review's The Corner that had caused quite a furor; basically contesting the notion that the Communist Soviet Union was atheistic. Roman wrote:
It most certainly was not. “Jesuits without Jesus,”( in Churchill’s words) certainly, but not without gods. The whole system was undoubtedly structured as a religion — the cult of Lenin and his gang, the Inquisition, the commissars in the army, and consistent extermination of nonbelievers and doubters (committed to mental institutions or expelled from the Motherland during the more vegetarian periods). Soviet Communism was no more than traditional Russian imperialism, draped in the red flag for the consumption of the useful macacas around the globe. Thus, the easy transition into newly founded “spirituality” — the former first secretaries and KGB colonels crossing themselves fervently, with laughable tales about secret baptisms by their babushkas.It is true that genuine believers are scarce (there’s not one prostitute or a thug in Moscow who doesn’t wear a religious adornment on her/his neck) but who do exist tend to be rabidly anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Catholic, as the Russian Orthodox Church is the source of the paranoia and hatred of liberal Western values. We will be fooling ourselves if we are to believe that, having exchanged the “Short Course of the History of the Communist Party” for the Bible, the Russians will become civilized.
Sugartits...Now With Almonds!
A sequel to last week's perplexing fan mail.
Everybody Must NOT Get Stoned
Think of it as Civilization 101: According to a declaration by the Hérouxville, Quebec town council, stoning women to death and/or burning them alive is strictly prohibited.
This small town has printed up a list of standards for new or would-be immigrants, explaining, "We would especially like to inform the new arrivals that the lifestyle that they left behind in their birth country cannot be brought here with them and they would have to adopt to their new social identity."
For example, as they inform the newbies (rather civilly, if you ask me), there is no law against a female doctor treating a man, nor a male doctor treating a woman. Boys and girls play together, and you will see men and women skiing the same hill.
You may not hide your face in public (behind a burkha, for example), except on Halloween. You will have your picture taken for your driver's license, health care card, and passports.
An employer doesn't have to provide you with a place to pray, or time to do so during the work day. And so on...
Since so many immigrants these days -- in Europe and New Zealand, especially -- seem to think they'll just take over the place and have it their way, Hérouxville seems wise to lay down some ground rules. Yet, from a Tom Leonard story in the UK Telegraph:
The declaration, included in the website's "public advice" section, has predictably deepened tensions in the predominantly French-speaking province over how far Quebecers should go in assimilating immigrants, particularly Asians.According to a 2001 census, around 10 per cent of Quebec's 7.5 million population were born outside Canada.
Hérouxville, which has 1,300 inhabitants, is about 100 miles northeast of Montreal.
Andre Drouin, the councillor who devised the declaration, told the National Post newspaper that the town was not racist.
"We invite people from all nationalities, all languages, all sexual orientations, whatever, to come live with us, but we want them to know ahead of time how we live," he said.
Salam Elmenyawi, president of the Muslim Council of Montreal, said the declaration had "set the clock back for decades" as far as race relations were concerned.
Oh, please. If you're a well-behaved guest in another country, meaning you understand and can live with the standards and customs of that country, why would there be a problem? If you believe in all sorts of barbaric stuff, like that beating your wife is okay (as I've blogged that a number of Islamic scholars have advised), well, it seems obvious Canada (and other Western countries) aren't the place for you.
Here's the English version of the standards. Go to the Avis Public page, then scroll down for "Standards' (English version). (written exactly like so)
Here's a screen shot of the first page of the PDF (other pages at the link):
By the way, did you hear the one about the Muslim cabbies who won't give a ride to anybody carrying alcohol or to blind people with Seeing-Eye dogs? Unfortunately for blind people and oenophiles, three-quarters of the cabbies at the Minnie-St. Paul airport (one of the country's biggest) are Muslim.
A View Inside The White House
How About Charges Of Stupidism?
In the end, I'm with Brad from WendyMcElroy.com -- the charges that should be filed in the Turner Broadcasting "bomb scare" case are those of idiocy, and against the officials who thought this thing was a bomb:
Yeah, that looks like a terrorist device to me. (Not.) Yesterday Boston went on high alert because several suspicious devices had been sighted around town. Turns out it was a marketing campaign for Turner Broadcasting, and the devices were electric lightboards showing a cartoon alien. (It took me a while to actually find a photo of the "device.")Having overreacted with pants-wetting hysteria, the city officials now blame Turner Broadcasting for the panic, and have actually arrested two culprits for the advertising gambit. They're charged with "placing a hoax device in a way that results in panic," a felony. (Never mind the fact that other U.S. cities have ignored identical devices for weeks.)
Do people really think Muslim terrorists have an iota of a sense of humor? That they'd put up little cartoon figures giving everybody the finger?
Of course, it doesn't help that the president has stirred the nation up into a furor by inventing four incidences of "terrorism" "we" stopped. Anything to justify that unconstitutional, illegal surveillance, huh?
Who's Spreading Fear In The USA?
Why, the guy who gave the State of the Union address, of course. Keith Olbermann parses George Bush's promotion of his agenda through terrorism fairy tales. Here's just one of them, from the most recent State of the Union:
"We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented," Mr. Bush noted, "but here is some of what we do know: we stopped an Al-Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast."This would, of course, sir, be the purported plot to knock down the 73-story building in Los Angeles, the one once known as the Library Tower — the one you personally revealed so breathlessly, a year ago next month.
It was embarrassing enough that you mistakenly referred to the structure as the Liberty Tower. But within hours, it was also revealed, that authorities in Los Angeles had had no idea you were going to make any of the details — whether serious or fanciful — public.
Who terrorized Southern California that day, Mr. Bush?
A year ago next month, the Los Angeles Times quoted a source — identified only by the labyrinthine description "a U-S official familiar with the operational aspects of the war on terrorism" — who insisted that the purported "Library Tower plot" was one of many Al-Qaeda operations that had not gotten very far past the conceptual stage.
The former staff director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council — now NBC and MSNBC News Analyst Roger Cressey — puts it a little more bluntly.
In our conversation, he classified the "Library Tower story" into a category he called the "What-Ifs" — as in the old Saturday Night Live sketches that tested the range of comic absurdity:
– What If… Superman Had Worked For The Nazis?
– What if… Spartacus Had A Piper Cub, during the battle against the Romans in 70 B-C?
More ominously, the L.A. Times source who debunked the Library Tower story said that those who could correctly measure the flimsiness of the scheme, quote, "feared political retaliation for providing a different characterization of the plan than that of the President."
But Mr. Bush, you're the decider.
And you decided that the Library Story should be scored as one for you.
And you continued with a second dubious claim of counter-terror success. "We broke up a Southeast Asian terror cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States," you said.
Well, sir, you've apparently stumped the intelligence community completely with this one.
In his article, Mr. Swanson suggests that in the last week there has been no reporting — even hinting — at what exactly you were talking about.
He hypothesizes that either you were claiming credit for a ring broken up in 1995, or that this was just the Library Tower story, quote, "by another name."
Another CIA source suggests to NBC News that since the Southeast Asian cell dreamed of a series of attacks on the same day, you declared the Library Tower one threat thwarted, and all their other ideas, a second threat thwarted.
Our colleague Mr. Cressey sums it up: this "Southeast Asian cell" was indeed the tale of the Library Tower, simply repeated.
Repeated, Mr. Bush, in consecutive sentences in the State of the Union, in your constitutionally mandated status report on the condition and safety of the nation.
More fairytales told by Mr. Bush at the above link.
Fabulous Moments In Bad Timing
From Craigslist:
Hey, Mr White SUV! By the time you read this it will be way too late
Date: 2004-11-10, 8:37PM PSTYes you,Mr.Too-busy-talking-on-my-cell-to avoid-pedestrians.
Today, White Lexus SUV, the full-size "Living Room" Edition, brand new by the look of it, but you did have a plate (that's good, read on to discover why!)
15th and Mission around 1pm. I was on the Northeast side waiting to cross Mission. You were so busy running that red light and babbling on your phone, ( by the way, the cameras got you) that you nearly ran me down; it almost looked like you swerved to hit me, but I'll be generous and credit that to your lack of interest in your surroundings while you were paying $20/hr for phone sex or something equally absorbing.
I quickly stepped backwards onto the sidewalk but not quickly enough to avoid your hitting my...
Paintbrush.
No, wait; this gets even better :)
The brush went along the length of the entire vehicle on the passenger side; a big broad 4" racing stripe. I did not do this intentionally; it was all I could do to avoid you hitting me; you swerved at least two feet in my direction whilst trying to re-position the phone under between your shoulder and your thick head. Too bad you didn't catch my other hand with the half-gallon pail in it, but that was further out of the way.
Thanks, Deirdre
