Whatever Happened To Good Old Republican Values?
Reason editor Nick Gillespie takes to the LA Times to remind Republicans of what they could still be -- the party of Goldwater. A Goldwater quote I love: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice...moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Nick suggests:
...The Craig scandal also provides the Republican Party, battered into minority status in Congress after years of domestic and foreign overreach, a golden opportunity to recover its attractive minimal-government heritage, at least when it comes to using the state to police sexual behavior among consenting adults.At least since the opening of the impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1998, when House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-La.) announced his resignation after his extramarital affairs were made public, the GOP has shot itself in the foot repeatedly in the regulation of sexual activity. Certainly last year's exposure of Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who bombarded teenage male congressional pages with racy instant messages even as he authored legislation aimed at online predators, played a key factor in the party of Lincoln's massive loss in the midterm elections. While it remains to be seen if Craig's scandal, or the recent revelation that the name of Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) appeared on a Washington escort service's client list, will have any electoral fallout in 2008, the time is ripe for the GOP to reclaim the heritage of "Mr. Conservative," the late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.).
Goldwater, who inspired Ronald Reagan and helped lay the groundwork for the rise of the Republicans to majority status in the late 20th century, preached a small-government gospel that was appealing and logically consistent. To Goldwater, the state was inefficient at best and predicated on violence and coercion at worst. As much as possible, he argued, individuals should be left alone to pursue their happiness as they saw fit, whether in the workplace or the home. A longtime proponent of reproductive rights, Goldwater was an outspoken defender of gays and lesbians, noting during the original gays-in-the-military debates of the early 1990s that "you don't have to be straight" to serve, "you just have to shoot straight."
Partly owing to their own misbehavior, the Republicans have (thankfully) lost the culture wars, especially when it comes to shutting down alternative sexuality. They should follow the message of the architect of their success. As author Sheila Kennedy has written, "To Goldwater, government did not belong either in your boardroom or your bedroom." Or, as Craig might add, in your bathroom.
Teen Drinking -- I'm For It
I've told the story of how, when I got to college, I found the idea of getting drunk so boring that I don't think I had a single drink when I was there. Why? Probably because my parents consistently offered me alcohol when I was a kid. (Which, I believe, is now a crime in some states.)
Anyway, if my dad was drinking something, he'd offer us a taste. So drinking had no allure of the forbidden. And because we were offered it, we almost never accepted (tasted terrible). And then, being raised Jewish, we'd have wine at holidays (Manichevitz will put anyone but the most hardened drunk off drinking).
At 15, I got curious about getting drunk. Since my parents were unforbidding about alcohol, I decided the safest way to experiment would be to do it when they were there. We went to my cousin Patty's wedding, and I drank (ugh!) vodka and Tab until I was reeling. I threw up on the way home and my dad laughed at me and said, "I bet you won't be doing that (drinking too much) again." I didn't have another drink until I was in my mid-20s, and then only an occasional glass of wine. And still.
Addiction treatment pioneer Stanton Peele, who just came out with the book Addiction-Proof Your Child, finds this approach wise, and write$ about it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Here's an excerpt:
What kind of parents would ever allow their children to drink at home? Doesn't this put youngsters at risk?The answer to the first question is simple. Most of the state laws include a specific exemption for children drinking at home during family and religious ceremonies. Observant Jews, for example, traditionally serve children small glasses of wine during Friday night Sabbath ceremonies. Other cultures also begin socializing children into drinking at an early age -- including Mediterranean societies such as Italy, Greece and Turkey (and non-Mediterranean societies such as China).
As for the second, two international surveys -- one conducted by the World Health Organization -- revealed that these Mediterranean countries and Israel had the lowest binge drinking rates among European adolescents.
In societies where children drink with their parents, this typically means giving a kid a small amount of wine or other alcohol, often watered down on special occasions or a family dinner. Many European countries also lower the drinking age for children when they are accompanied by parents. In the United Kingdom, for example, the legal age is 18, but for a family at a restaurant it is 16. In France and Italy, where the legal age is 16, there is no age limit for children drinking with parents.
But what might all of this mean for teen drinking problems in America?
Several studies have shown that the younger kids are when they start to drink, the more likely they are to develop severe drinking problems. But the kind of drinking these studies mean -- drinking in the woods to get bombed or at unattended homes -- is particularly high risk.
Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2004 found that adolescents whose parents permitted them to attend unchaperoned parties where drinking occurred had twice the average binge-drinking rate. But the study also had another, more arresting conclusion: Children whose parents introduced drinking to the children at home were one-third as likely to binge.
"It appears that parents who model responsible drinking behaviors have the potential to teach their children the same," noted Kristie Foley, the principal author of the study. While the phrasing was cautious, the implication of the study's finding needs to be highlighted: Parents who do not introduce children to alcohol in a home setting might be setting them up to become binge drinkers later on. You will not likely hear this at your school's parent drug- and alcohol-awareness nights.
Obviously, if a parent isn't comfortable consuming alcohol -- for whatever reason -- he or she is going to find it difficult to teach a child moderate social drinking. Fair enough. But neither should parents feel guilty or intimidated about responsibly introducing their children to alcohol in a home setting. The research suggests that this is more likely, not less, to protect the kids against the excessive drinking that permeates American high schools and colleges.
The youngest of my three children attends New York University, in a metropolis that is no stranger to alcohol. But alcohol is not forbidden fruit, since Anna drank wine at home. She says binge drinking holds no allure. I believe her.
Stanton's website is here.
Farm Subsidies...In Midtown Manhattan?
Hey, no fair! I had a window box with three dead pansies in it when I lived in New York City -- my very own little Brown Acres. So...where was my Federal agricultural subsidy?
Yeah, that's right. Farm subsidies for the straphanging set. And up and down Park Avenue.
On National Review's The Corner, Yuval Levin shows a map of Manhattan just dotted with people receiving wheelbarrow-fulls of Federal handouts meant for farmers.
Just loved this remark:
The larger red blobs mark people receiving more than a quarter of a million dollars in farm subsidies annually.
Yes, in MANHATTAN! Levin continues:
The farm bill passed by House Democrats in July would continue giving millionaires farm subsidies (setting the income threshold for payments at $1 million a year, and keeping loopholes in place that allow some making much more to qualify). The Bush administration has proposed sharply reducing the income threshold to $200,000 a year and ending many of those loopholes. That would reduce the number of subsidy recipients by less than 40,000 (of the current million or so recipients)—though I suppose it might put some rooftop gardens on Park Avenue out of commission.
Do we really have a budget deficit...or just a nation of government-glad-handed thieves? (Don't even get me started on the tax break for California yacht owners.)
Somebody please file an FOIA request and find out who these "farming" fuckwads are (I'm particularly busy tormenting anthropologists now, or I would file it myself). Anyway, you, uh, sorry, get the dirt, and I will dig up details about them and post them here...ideally, by going to New York City and getting them on camera. With great pleasure.
How Do You Feel About Spam?
Does it make you feel all warm and glowy inside when you're in the middle of, say, reading something challenging, and you see your e-mail icon bouncing, and you think it might be something important, something about you and your concerns?
And then, do you still feel that warm, glowy feeling when you discover that, yet again, you've put aside what's important to you, interrupted your day, broken your flow, because some time thief has decided to barrage you with spam?
..day after day, hour upon hour, in two of your e-mail accounts? (The five e-mails in the top part of this blog item are from only one of my e-mail addresses, and only from one day -- August 29 -- even though the 9:53pm one is dated August 30.)
...despite your calling and e-mailing and asking to be taken off the scumbag's lists?
The spammer's name is Robert Sexton, and he isn't hiding out somewhere in Romania sending me e-mails offering me a bigger penis. No, the genius is e-harassing me and countless others from right down the pike in So Cal.
Sexton's e-mails brag about his work for, among others, this woman:
This is the placement we do for Kathryn Bishop, a Realtor in Los Angeles,
After having zero luck being taken off Sexton's list, I realized that people mentioned in his e-mail probably support what he does, or they wouldn't allow themselves to be mentioned, right?
Maybe I'd have some luck getting off Sexton's list if I enlisted Kathryn Bishop, the above-named real estate lady in the Valley. I called and e-mailed her, but the e-mails from Sexton kept coming and coming.
I finally got her on the phone, and suggested that she Google Robert Sexton and she'd see that a few people on the Internet are a wee bit pissed at being spammed by him. She said "I'll deal with it when I get back to town." (I hope by telling Sexton to take my e-mail address off his list.)
FYI, you can report spam just by forwarding it (with the headers exposed) to SPAM@UCE.GOV, which I did:
I also filed a complaint with the So-Cal Better Business Bureau here.
UPDATE: This guy is something else. I just got an e-mail from him, not long after getting Ms. Bishop on the phone.
SUBJECT: Formal Notice (Cease and Desist) for Amy Alkon - This is NOT SPAM, Amy ..In a message dated 8/29/07 10:52:53 PM, bob@starposition.com writes:
Ms. Alkon
It's come to my attention you've been contacting my business references and saying derogatory things about my company. I'm also aware of your rather shrieking, manic comments you've left on my voicemail, and the two or three times you've called my company.
Let me lay it on the line for you, clearly. That's called 'tortuous interference with a business' which can carry civil penalties under the California Civil Code. If for some reason you continue to have any contact with either this company, or any of my business references, I will refer this to legal counsel, who will subpoena AOL, and then serve you with notice to appear in Court.
If for some reason you do not wish to be contacted by my company either by phone, email, fax, or carrier pigeon, it's actually very simple. All you have to do, minus the shrieking, is to say 'Don't contact me' and that's how it works. One of my Testimonials was nice enough to forward me your email address, so that's why I am contacting you. Now, what appears to be frosting you a bit is you do not wish to be contacted via email. That's not a problem, it's called using the 'reply' button, and simply specifying which email address or addresses you don't want to have contacted further. That's done within an hour or so during the weekdays. That's actually quicker than Federal law requires.
So, now that I've basically laid things out for you, all you have to do is a> specify which other email addresses you don't wish contacted, and b> not contact my references further. And please do so without the shrieking. It's a bit unbecoming.
Best Regards,Robert Sexton
Director of Business Development, Star Position US and Star Position UK
Phone: 800.481.2979, ext. 2001
Direct: 949.215.0022Star Position US Website: WWW.STARPOSITION.COM
Star Position UK Website: WWW.STARPOSITION.CO.UKProud member of the Better Business Bureau
Keywords: Search Engine Positioning, Search Engine Placement
Here's my reply:
Yeah, I saw you sent somebody else one of these threatening legal letters (Google "Robert Sexton" and spam and numerous pages about people complaining about being spammed by you come up -- including one with you threatening the person with legal action). I'm not scared. I said nothing defamatory about you - nothing but the truth - which is that you're spamming people right and left, including me, and I wanted to be taken off your lists, but got no action by asking you to be removed.And lo and behold, it seems I did just the right thing by calling Ms. Bishop, who (apparently) endorses you in the e-mails you've been repeatedly harassing me with.
Until I did, you didn't respond to a single e-mail I sent (for example, one I just pulled up from this address on August 9, 2007, 7:04 pm, asking to be taken off your list).
(To show how effective that was, here's yet another piece of life-interference from Sexton; this one, from the 24th. Hmmm, what happened to that supposed "hour or so during the weekdays" for removal?)
I need my time for my work, not for constant interruption by you. How creepy of you that you think it's okay to barrage total strangers with unasked for, unwanted e-mail. How many e-mail a day do you send, and where do you get the lists of names?
Cease and desist? Funny, that's what I've been asking from you. Oh yeah -- I've saved the e-mails asking to be removed that you didn't respond to, in case you're wondering. Maybe, in the future, you'll be responsive when people ask to be removed.
P.S. You're breaking the CAN-SPAM law by not providing a return address or an opt-out. Each violation is subject to an $11,000 fine.
Finally, I find your business practices repellent. I pay for AOL and value my time, and you have taken it time and time and time again. What right do you have to do that?
Here are the addresses to remove so I can have my life back.
NOTE -- Bishop wrote me this e-mail:
Amy, I do appreciate that you've let me know that Robert Sexton is doing this with my name. My question to you is -- why do you blame me and talk about me as a Realtor you'd never use, when in fact, I didn't know he was doing this?Sincerely,
Kathryn Bishop
But it seems I'm not the first to contact her. A guy on grassrootsnetworking writes:
Yesterday I had received about 20 copies of the email below on my computer from Robert Sexton.He is a BIG time spammer for sure. I have received hundreds of these e mails through the course of the year. My guess is that he might be taking advantage of people as well.
Please read the email below. If you have received these e mails as well and you would like to help find out if he provides a legitimate search engine marketing service, please call him, ask him what he does, what his charges are and for a list of referrals and we can compare notes.
Today I called Kathryn Bishop, Certified E-Pro Realtor and she told me he charges her about $1,100.00 a year for one term.
I did the search for "LOS ANGELES REAL ESTATE" on Google and did not find her.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=LOS+ANGELES+REAL+ESTATEHey check out this search Robert Sexton can't even get his clients site to come up if they search their own name.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Kathryn+Bishop%2C+Certified+E-Pro+Realtor+&btnG=SearchThere is something strange going on around here?
UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 3, 2007: There's more from the guy. Simply not to be believed. Here.
P.C. Asshat Alert
Down here, boys and girls, on the entry Erin Aubry Kaplan's White Fright. Somebody linked to this entry, and the P.C. girls are lining up to snipe. Dew Drop Inn, as they say, and help me slap their ignorant, P.C. asses around.
Bend Over For Islam!
Great Theodore Dalrymple shorty piece on City-Journal, "How Societies Commit Suicide: Scots and Italians surrender to Islam." Here's an excerpt, on the ridiculous cultural kowtowing in Scotland:
In an effort to ensure that no Muslim doctors ever again try to bomb Glasgow Airport, bureaucrats at Glasgow’s public hospitals have decreed that henceforth no staff may eat lunch at their desks or in their offices during the holy month of Ramadan, so that fasting Muslims shall not be offended by the sight or smell of their food. Vending machines will also disappear from the premises during that period.Apparently the bureaucrats believe that the would-be bombers were demanding sandwich-free offices in Glasgow hospitals during Ramadan. This kind of absurdity is what happens when the highly contestable doctrine of multiculturalism becomes a career opportunity for the semi-educated and otherwise unemployable products of a grossly and unnecessarily swollen university system.
And then he runs an update:
The hospital boards in Scotland have denied the allegations against them, though they admit advising hospitals to consider avoiding working lunches during Ramadan if Muslims would normally participate in them, and to consider altering the route of lunch trolleys to accommodate “sensitive colleagues who adhere to the Muslim faith.” No hospital board, as far as I am aware, has ever advised that one should not eat pork in front of Jews, or beef in front of Hindus...
Little by little, we in Western societies, by being "tolerant" (ie, lap dogs to Islam), are becoming responsible for the beginnings of the end -- the demise of post-Enlightenment western society, culture, and values, and the replacement of life as we know it with the primitivism and backward brutality of life under Sharia law and all that is Islam.
Sound crazy? Perhaps. I'd say there's no time like the present to visit Europe, before, thanks to the birth rate of all the Muslim immigrants on the dole in so many of the countries there, it turns into an outpost of that fountain of democracy, rights for women, and free thinking that is Iran.
Bad News For Our Upstairs Neighbors, Eh?
It seems so obvious -- taking in immigrants because it's good for our country as opposed to good for them -- why haven't we done it before?
I'm not opposed to giving refuge to the few political prisoners who come our way -- and usually, I'd venture, they're the kind of immigrants who'd serve our society beyond the capacity of most people coming in. But, should we really be putting our tax dollars into giving refuge to people who will clean toilets and pick lettuce?
Kevin Steel writes for the Western Standard in Canada, worrying that the U.S. is about to adopt Canada's "immigration point system" -- meaning changing our immigration system from family-based to merit based:
Sean Fitzpatrick is very worried. He sees, just over the proverbial horizon, a big "brain drain" coming to Canada. The last time the brain drain captured the Canadian public's attention was just before the turn of the millennium, at the height of the Internet investment bubble. Canadians, caught up in the explosion of tech stocks, were treated daily to media discussions of how we were losing skilled workers to the United States. When the tech bubble burst in 2000, most of the brain drain discussion disappeared along with it. But with the U.S. playing by new rules, the drain Fitzpatrick foresees now is a little more real.Fitzpatrick, president and founder of Talentmap, an Ottawa-based employee research and survey company, knows the Americans are on the verge of changing their immigration system from family-based to merit-based, and that the effect on Canada could be profound. Specifically, they are debating whether they should adopt the points system, where a prospective immigrant is awarded points for education and experience and qualified on that basis. Not only would the change make it easier for Canada's best and brightest to live and work in the gigantic American marketplace, it would make it easier for anyone in the world to work there. And the change will make it that much harder for Canada to attract talented immigrants to solve its own labour shortages. "I say this is a really big concern, one that we are underestimating," Fitzpatrick says.
...The irony here is that Canada stands to become a victim of its own success. The points system was developed here and implemented in 1967. Prior to that, prospective immigrants were chosen more on the basis of country of origin; people from England, Australia and even the U.S. were all given priority. At the time it was thought the system carried a whiff of racism, and was too arbitrary. Valerie Knowles, a Toronto-based writer and author of Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2006, says for at least the first 20 years of the points-based system, it was very highly thought of and there was a great deal of confidence in it on the part of the administrators. "It did allow for some individual judgment, but it did do away with a lot of capriciousness and a certain degree of prejudice. That's why other countries have wanted to emulate it," says Knowles. However, it certainly isn't perfect. Knowles says in the last 20 years, the Canadian system has become somewhat complicated. Overall, though, Canada's immigration process is recognized internationally as a success. In 1989, Australia implemented a points system, and two years later New Zealand followed suit. Six years ago the United Kingdom did the same. Now many European countries are considering following Canada's lead.
The result, however, is that the Canadian advantage--through the innovation of its immigration system--has been slowly dwindling. Finn Poschmann, senior policy analyst for the C.D. Howe Institute in Toronto, calls the threat very real. "Canada has been a beneficiary--for decades now--of brain-dead U.S. immigration policy; their mechanism was tilted towards bringing [in] low-wage, low-skilled workers, and making it more difficult for economic migrants with skills to enter the U.S.," Poschmann says. Switching to the points system, he adds, is a big leap forward for them.
Bad news for Canada, great news for us. And even one of the biggest idiots on immigration, Mr. Gramnesty himself, Lindsay Graham, has come around to the merit-based notion -- surely, finger in the wind-style.
'Til Death-Grip Do Us Part
Just posted another Advice Goddess column. Here's the letter from the rabidly jealous wife:
My husband of 10 years has an old friend he dated for a few years before we met. She comes into our lives about once a year when she’s in town. Her e-mails sometimes seem flirty, and my husband says I take them too seriously. But, she also seems edgy around me, making me suspect she still has feelings for him. When she was here for a funeral, I told him he could join her and some friends for a night out if he didn’t make me look bad. Two days later, I got a mass e-mail with pictures of him and his ex cheek-to-cheek! That argument lasted a month. He finally agreed to do something, but I think he isn’t making it clear enough that she shouldn’t call or e-mail again because she hasn’t stopped. He claims he feels bad ending one of the only friendships he’s maintained for the past 20 years. Well, their relationship’s taking a toll on ours. How can I cut off their contact?--Irate Wife
My answer starts like this:
If you love someone, turn off the electrified fencing. If they hang around, they’re yours. If not, at least you won’t be facing manslaughter charges.The guy married you, not her. Why work so hard to make him sorry he did? Sure, he’s still with you after 10-plus years -- maybe because he’s too beaten down to crawl to the phone and start ringing divorce lawyers. To your credit, you did decide to let him see this woman -- before you decided that he can never see her, talk to her, or even e-mail her again. Excuse me, but who decided that you get to decide these things? I’m guessing you were pronounced “husband and wife,” not “husband and warden.” Yet, at the moment, your relationship is basically prison with better towels.
The rest of my answer, and a pile of comments, is here.
Das Booty
The Homoerotic Taliban
Never mind that they don't even allow street signs with the little symbolic walk or don't walk figures with heads on them, here's a video/photo show of the pretty boys of the Taliban. Black eye-liner and hand-holding and pretty long hair are evident in the photos, although homosexual behavior is strictly banned. The Taliban actually turn young boys into sex slaves. Here's an excerpt from an article on that from Jamie Glazov from FrontPageMagazine.com:
Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters.Many of the instructions were to be expected: rule No. 25 commands the murder of teachers if a warning and a beating does not dissuade them from teaching. No. 26 outlines the exquisite delicacy of burning schools and destroying anything that aid organizations might undertake -- such as the building of a new road, school or clinic. The essence of the other rules are easily left to the imagination, basically involving what militant Islam is about: vile hate, death and destruction.
But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters.
Right.
(Cough and clearing of the throat).
Aside from the question of what is permitted if a young boy does happen to have facial hair, this new Taliban commandment brings light to a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of militant Islam. And it is crucial to deconstruct the meaning of this rule -- and the horrid reality that it represents -- because it serves as a gateway to understanding the primary causes of Islamic rage and terror.
Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem.
The fact that Taliban militants’ spare time involves sodomizing young boys should by no means be any kind of surprise or eyebrow raiser. That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality -- and puts her out of mind and sight -- is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman’s ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers.
The key issue here is that the demented sickness that underlies Rule No. 19 is by no means exclusive to the Taliban; it is a widespread phenomenon throughout Islamic-Arab culture and it lies, among other factors, at the root of that culture’s addiction to rage and its lust for violence, terror and suicide.
There is a basic and common sense empirical human reality: wherever humans construct and perpetuate an environment in which females and their sexuality are demonized and are pushed into invisibility, homosexual behaviour among men and the sexual abuse of young boys by older men always increases. Islamic-Arab culture serves as a perfect example of this paradigm, seeing that gender apartheid, fear of female sexuality and a vicious misogyny are the structures on which the whole society functions.
It is no surprise that John Racy, a psychiatrist with much experience in Arab societies, has noted that homosexuality is “extremely common” in many parts of the Arab world. [1] Indeed, even though homosexuality is officially despised in this culture and strictly prohibited and punishable by imprisonment, incarceration and/or death, having sex with boys or effeminate men is actually a social norm. Males serve as available substitutes for unavailable women. The key is this: the male who does the penetrating is not considered to be homosexual or emasculated any more than if he were to have sex with his wife, while the male who is penetrated is emasculated. The boy, however, is not considered to be emasculated since he is not yet considered to be a man. A man who has sex with boys is simply doing what many men (especially unmarried ones) do. [2] And this reality is connected to the fact that, as scholar Bruce Dunne has demonstrated, sex in Islamic-Arab societies is not about mutuality between partners, but about the adult male's achievement of pleasure through violent domination. [3]
Do You Know Who I Am?!
That statement, or one along those lines, never ends well for the one doing the asking. In this case, the answer was something along the lines of "Yeah -- you're a guy who's getting his (apparently) overly friendly ass hauled off to the police station."
Via Obscure Store, from a USA Today blog item referencing a Roll Call story by Lucas Everidge, Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig was arrested earlier this summer for "a lewd conduct incident" in an airport men's room:
After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states....“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot.
I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.
Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could ... see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”
Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.
“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. ... Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”
In a recorded interview after his arrest, Craig “either disagreed with me or ‘didn’t recall’ the events as they happened,” the report states.
Craig stated “that he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine,” the report states. Craig also told the arresting officer that he reached down with his right hand to pick up a piece of paper that was on the floor.
“It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper,” the arresting officer said in the report.
Not even one of the numerous pieces of paper he's signed denying gays rights. Let's see...if you can't beat 'em...get one of 'em to beat you off...uh...or something like that. ("Do you blow who I am?")
More on Craig and closets here.
Beware Of Owner
photo by Gregg Sutter
Newt Has A Great Idea
Of course, it's probably a little ways off, but I expect him to run. And here he is, in the LA Times, suggesting a way to get past all the talking points:
A challenge arrived at the office of every presidential candidate about two weeks ago. It was a letter, signed by journalist Marvin Kalb and me, challenging each one, Republican and Democrat, to sign on for "Nine Nineties in Nine." That is, if nominated, they would pledge to take part in nine 90-minute debates in the nine weeks leading up to election day.How is this different? We are asking the candidates to throw out the rule book that has stifled political debate. Each party's nominee would be expected to present and defend solutions in a one-on-one dialogue with his or her opponent. The moderator would only keep time and introduce topics.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has informally agreed to "Nine Nineties in Nine," but so far, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is the only candidate to officially accept the challenge.
Our system to elect a president is not working for the American people. The big-city-machine bosses of the past have been replaced by professional political consultant bosses. Sadly, the role of the candidate -- the man or woman who would lead the most powerful nation on Earth -- largely has been reduced to raising the money to hire consultants and then reading what the consultants scrawl on 3-by-5 cards. It's a stunningly dangerous development for a democracy.
We don't really have presidential debates today; we have a kind of meaningless political performance art: a recitation of talking points choreographed to avoid any risk.
In the 2004 election, the Bush-Kerry debate rules ran a full 32 pages of do's and don'ts, including one rule that ordered the moderator to stop any candidate who dared to depart from the script to reference someone in the audience.
The candidates also were ordered to turn over for inspection "all such paper and any pens or pencils with which a candidate may wish to take notes during the debate." Pen and pencils. Talk about the vital stuff of democracy!
In telling contrast, the ground rules for the most famous debates in U.S. history were outlined in a two-sentence letter from Abraham Lincoln to Stephen Douglas, his opponent in the 1858 race for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. After a prompt exchange of letters, they settled on the terms for seven debates. Lincoln insisted only that "I wish perfect reciprocity, and no more." There was no talk of pens and pencils.
Newt's absolutely right: If you want to find out what candidates think, you have to let them talk -- no, actually, make them talk -- and for far longer than they can remember the points that have been thought out for them by their groomers. Only through that will you get moments like this one -- where Bill Richardson showed himself to be, well, kind of a moron.
Ham, Not Spam
If you post a comment and it disappears (or you get a message that it's being "moderated"), don't think I hate you, think to e-mail me and let me know instead. (AdviceAmy AT aol DOT com.)
Right now, Akismet, the anti-spam software that has given me my life back (I was spending a half-hour to an hour despamming) is banning Slate links. Previously, Reason.com links were a problem. I've written them, and Gregg is seeing what we can do to make another spam plugin I have a little less, shall we say...aggressive.
I love you all, even the biggest assholes among you, and appreciate all your comments. So, please, asshole or otherwise, never think I've banned you -- just let me know ASAP that the beast has gotten out of its cage again, and I'll rescue your words from its jaws.
George Bush Finally Goes To Vietnam
Big blunder. Hitchens has it in The Guardian:
How do I dislike President George Bush? Let me count the ways. Most of them have to do with his contented assumption that 'faith' is, in and of itself, a virtue. This self-satisfied mentality helps explain almost everything, from the smug expression on his face to the way in which, as governor of Texas, he signed all those death warrants without losing a second's composure.It explains the way in which he embraced ex-KGB goon Vladimir Putin, citing as the basis of a beautiful relationship the fact that Putin was wearing a crucifix. (Has Putin been seen wearing that crucifix before or since? Did his advisers tell him that the President of the United States was that easy a pushover?)
...Then, addressing the convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week, the President came thundering down the pike to announce that a defeat in Iraq would be - guess what? - another Vietnam. As my hand smacks my brow, and as I ask myself not for the first time if Mr Bush suffers from some sort of political death wish, I quickly restate the reasons why he is wrong to join with his most venomous and ignorant critics in making this case.
1) The Vietminh, later the Vietnamese NLF, were allies of the United States and Britain against the Axis during the Second World War. The Iraqi Baath party was on the other side.
2) Ho Chi Minh quoted Thomas Jefferson in proclaiming Vietnam's own declaration of independence, a note that has hardly been struck in Baathist or jihadist propaganda.
3) Vietnam was resisting French colonialism and had defeated it by 1954 at Dien Bien Phu; the real 'war' was therefore over before the US even landed troops in the country.
4) The subsequent conflict was fought to preserve an imposed partition of a country striving to reunify itself; if anything, the Iraqi case is the reverse.
5) The Vietnamese leadership appealed to the UN: the Saddamists and their jihadist allies murdered the first UN envoy to arrive in Iraq, saying that he was fit only for death because he had assisted in securing the independence of East Timor from Indonesia.
6) Vietnam never threatened any other country; Iraq under Saddam invaded two of its neighbours and declared one of them (Kuwait) to be part of Iraq itself.
7) Vietnam was a victim of chemical and ecological warfare; Iraq was the perpetrator of such illegal methods and sought to develop even worse nuclear and biological ones.
8) Vietnam neither sponsored nor encouraged terrorist tactics beyond its borders; Iraq under Saddam was a haven for Abu Nidal and other random killers and its 'insurgents' now proclaim war on Hindus, Jews, unbelievers and the wrong sort of Muslim.
9) There has for years been a 'people's war' fought by genuine guerrillas in Iraq; it is the war of liberation conducted by Kurdish fighters against genocide and dictatorship. Inconveniently for all analogies, these fighters are ranged on the side of the US and Britain.
10) The Iraqi Communist party and the Iraqi labour movement advocated the overthrow of Saddam (if not necessarily by Bush), a rather conspicuous difference from the situation in Indochina. These forces still form a part of the tenuous civil society that is fighting to defend itself against the parties of God.
11) The American-sponsored regimes in Vietnam tended, among other things, to be strongly identified with one confessional minority (Catholic) to the exclusion of secular, nationalist and Buddhist forces. The elected government in Iraq may have a sectarian hue, but at least it draws upon hitherto repressed majority populations - Kurds and Shias - and at least the American embassy works as a solvent upon religious and ethnic divisions rather than an inciter of them.
12) President Eisenhower admitted that if there had ever been a fair election in Vietnam, it would have been won by Ho Chi Minh; the Baath party's successors refused to participate in the Iraqi elections and their jihadist allies declared that democracy was an alien concept and threatened all voters with murder.
13) The Americans in Vietnam employed methods ('search and destroy'; 'body count') and weapons (napalm, Agent Orange) that targeted civilians. Today, those who make indiscriminate war on the innocent show their hand on the streets of Baghdad and are often the proxies of neighbouring dictatorships or of international gangster organisations.
The above list is by no means exhaustive, but will do, I think, as a caution against any glib invocation of historical comparisons. One might add that among the results of the Vietnamese revolution was an admittedly crude form of market socialism, none the less wedded to ideas of modernisation; a strong resistance to Chinese expansionism (one excuse for Washington's invasion); and a military expedition to depose the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.
I cannot see how any self-respecting Republican can look at this record without wincing and moaning with shame or how any former friend of the Vietnamese can equate them with either a fascist dictatorship or a nihilistic Islamist death-squad campaign. And now Bush has joined forces with anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan in making the two struggles morally equivalent.
Beauty And The Rented Beast
Just another dull Saturday night for my friends; in this case, Lydia Prior, on her 30th birthday, dancing with a giant toilet seat cover that may or may not be her husband Sam.
Here's an excerpt of a piece she wrote that appeared in the Los Angeles Times magazine's "The Rules Of Hollywood":
I would like to pay you to write this script."There are few sweeter words, even when the sum following them is 1,200 pounds. After all, I was still a Classics student at Oxford, I'd never written a screenplay, and I wasn't about to say no. Even when I told him my idea—a romance between a geologist and a cave diver, with digressions on plate tectonics—he didn't flinch. Before I knew it, I was drinking Bardolino at 3 a.m. in his flat while he sang along to Elvis Costello: "Even in a perfect world, where everyone was equal/I'd still own the film rights/And be working on the sequel . . . " Different country, different rules.
Magnus asked if I had any other ideas. After three glasses of wine, I have ideas the way hamsters have babies. "This one came to me and my dad when our British Blue got an infection. It's an animated series about two gay cats. They hang out at this bar called 'The Hungry Tom.' One of them, the butch one with a swagger that would scare off a pit bull, has a long-lost son, a little kitten, who comes to the big city . . . "
"I like it," Magnus said. "Has anyone ever told you you look like Posh Spice?"
Cut to: EXT. OCEAN AVENUE—DAY. SUPER: One year later.
Halfway through my first year of film school in L.A., I am an infinitely savvier screenwriter. I eschew geologists. I make right turns on red, and I know how to use SUPER to indicate the passage of time. I am on my way to yoga. The American Film Market, an annual event where everyone who has a film—and even more people who don't—descend on Santa Monica to hawk their wares, is filling the sidewalk with baffled foreigners. Still, I'm not expecting to see Magnus.
"Your car looks like a suppository," he says, which seems a bit rich coming from someone staying at the Travelodge, and not even the one on Ocean. Over coffee on the terrace of the Loews Hotel, I assure him that he mustn't let me keep him if he has meetings to attend. I am not surprised to hear he has plenty of time.
I am surprised, though, when I see a sharply dressed man with a copy of Variety tucked under one arm walk briskly toward us, waving to Magnus. And I am even more surprised when Magnus, rather than acting like he has some business being here, seems flustered and embarrassed.
Belatedly, almost grudgingly, Magnus introduces me to Adam, the director of development for a major London production company.
"I'm just on my way to a meeting with HBO," Adam says, "but I wanted to tell you how things are going with your idea."
"Oh, that," Magnus protests weakly. "Forget it. It's not remotely commercial ..."
"No, there's something fresh about it," Adam persists. "Two gay cats. Who'd have thought of that? Anyway, I floated it to my boss, and we should definitely have a meeting when we're back in town. Nice to meet you . . . ?"
"Lydia."
He's gone. Magnus squirms, avoiding eye contact. "I was just about to tell you . . . " he bleats. I go and get my suppository from the valet.
The piece continues at the link above.
They Swift-Boated The Wrong Guys
We've got some major P.R. problems. Thomas Friedman asks in the NYTime$/IHT how the Bush boys can be so inept at Swift-Boating real evil-doers abroad:
How could the Bush team Swift-boat John Kerry and Max Cleland - authentic Vietnam war heroes, whom the White House turned into surrendering pacifists in the war on terror - but never manage to Swift-boat Osama bin Laden, a genocidal monster, who today is still regarded in many quarters as the vanguard of anti-American "resistance."Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won't take 30 seconds before the words "Abu Ghraib" and "Guantánamo Bay" are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared with what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.
Consider what happened Aug. 14. Four jihadist suicide-bombers blew themselves up in two Iraqi villages, killing more than 500 Kurdish civilians - men, women and babies - who belonged to a tiny pre-Islamic sect known as the Yazidis.
And what was the Bush team's response to this outrage? Virtual silence. After much Googling, the best I could find was: " 'We're looking at Al Qaeda as the prime suspect,' said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman." Wow.
Excuse me, but what exactly are we Americans fighting for in Iraq, or in this wider war against Islamist extremism, if the murder of 500 civilians can be shrugged off? Even if we don't know the exact perpetrators, we know who is inspiring this sort of genocide - Al Qaeda and bin Laden - and we need to say that every day.
Ask yourself this: If bin Laden were running against George Bush for president, how would Karl Rove and Karen Hughes have handled the Yazidi murders? Within an hour, they'd have had a press release out saying: "This genocide of Iraqi civilians was inspired by bin Laden. We accuse bin Laden of the mass murder of 500 women and children. Bin Laden has killed more Iraqis and Muslims than any person alive. Support bin Laden and you support genocide against Muslims." And they would have repeated that point on every network, every day.
They're a little busy, it seems, going after Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
Stupidity Remains Legal
Atlanta asshat and City Councilman C.T. Martin has introduced legislation that would outlaw clothing that shows off underwear -- from boxers, thongs, and sports bras to bra straps, writes Today Show contributor Mike Celizic -- but the legislation was specifically targeted at baggy, drooping, boxer short-revealing pants:
“I don’t think women should have to see that. I don’t think young girls should have to see that. I don’t think children should have to see that,” Martin told TODAY’s Ann Curry during an interview Friday.
I likewise don't think I should have to see people's dingy toes in their flipflops when I'm eating, but there's not a hell of a lot I can do about it, short of going to a livestock supply place and buying a set of blinders.
Two cities in Louisiana, Delcambre and Opelousas, have similar laws providing for fines up to $500 and up to six months in jail, although no one has yet been charged under the laws.“I’m a firm believer in the First Amendment,” Martin told Curry. “It’s not about putting anyone in jail. It’s about trying to get some educational discussion about the future for young people.”
How come everybody always says they're "a firm believer in the First Amendment" just as they trying to rip it up?
And let's contemplate the enforcement process. Is Atlanta so crime-free that they can afford to start having the cops come out on, say, "Code 34D, Code 34D, bra strap showing on Main!"?
And guess what: The kids will grow up and tire of wearing their pants around their ankles. You see a lot of 45-year-olds favoring that style?
There are real problems out there. Either solve them or resign so somebody with a clue can take over.
Rude Or Illiterate?
There are two spaces at the Santa Monica Public Library for people to pull in and return their library books. Not a whole lot of complicated language on the signs beside them, either.
I drove around the library to pull into one. And around and around. No dice. Two cars parked there. This asshat with a fancy-schmancy silver brand new-looking Mercedes two-seater had his flashers on.
Grrrr.
The logic of people who park assholishly but put on their flashers is reminiscent of that of kids who cover their eyes and think you can't see them -- as if use of flashers makes one's car invisible, and helps it defy the laws of physics.
But, let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Was he, perchance, returning a book to the Y across the street? Because that's the building he trotted over from to get his car. Eventually.
Or...did he pay so much for the flashy car that he couldn't afford a quarter for the parking?
Living Out Loud
It's wise to avoid relatively din-free public places when meeting friends who shout instead of conversing. There's a café I frequent where everybody's usually reading or writing or talking quietly...with the occasional exception:
"How'd your IRS thing go?" the little man yelled to his approaching friend.His friend's face went red, almost from bottom to top, like in a cartoon.
On the bright side, Little Bigmouth didn't ask, "Test for crabs come out okay?!"
In other rudeness news, when somebody shushes you because you're shouting into your phone, avoid announcing, "It's not a library."
We're well aware of that, as we can all see the Starbucks logo all over the place.
Which means it's probably not a boxing match, either.
So...kindly shut the fuck up.
It's the FREEDOM Of Information Act...
Not the Captivity Of Information Act. From IHT/NYT, a few words on the Bush admininistration's notion that the rules, including the FOIA act rules, don't apply to them:
The Bush administration's obsession with secrecy took another absurd turn this week. The administration is claiming that the White House Office of Administration is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, even though there are some compelling reasons to think it is. Like the fact that the office has its own FOIA officer. And it responded to 65 FOIA requests last year. And the White House's Web site, as of Thursday, insisted the office is covered by FOIA.The fight over the Office of Administration's status is part of a larger battle over access to an estimated 5 million e-mail messages that have mysteriously disappeared from White House computers. The missing messages are important evidence in the scandal over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, apparently because they refused to use their positions to help Republicans win elections. The Office of Administration seems to know a lot about when and how those messages disappeared, but it does not want to tell the public.
What exactly does the administration want to hide? It is certainly acting as if the e-mail messages would confirm suspicions that the White House coordinated the prosecutors' firings and that it may have broken laws. It is hard to believe the administration's constant refrain that there is nothing to the prosecutor scandal when it is working so hard to avoid letting the facts about it get out.
Open government is essential to a democracy. Let's try to maintain ours. Both the open government and the democracy. At least, in this case, it's too implausible for them to plead national security. Especially since it's so transparently a matter of personal security -- that of those behind the firings.
The guy in the Oval Office works for us. Like any employer, we want to know how our employee is doing his job, national security excepting. And what could be preventing our chief employee and his underlings from giving us a briefing on their actions in this area -- save for it being true that they broke the law?
I think the administration suspects they're going to lose this one. (Is it any surprise Karl Rove is the latest to feel a sudden desire to "spend more time with his family"?)
Is Fidel Castro Dead Again?
This time without continuing to breathe?
And, if so, predictions for Cuba?
Gregg has been there -- while researching Elmore Leonard's Cuba Libre -- and said the other day there are a whole lot of people living in a whole lot of other people's homes, and quoted a lady who said she'd fight to the death before she gave back the home she'd lived in all these years.
Gregg also saw the still-bullet-riddled wall where Che Guevara executed a lot of prisoners. I put a Che crack in my column this week -- about the idiots who wear Che shirts, clueless that the guy was actually a mass murderer. I can't wait to get the hate mail from the deniers...sigh.
For the truth about Che, Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, by Humberto Fontova.
They SAY The Tap Water Is Safe
The Girlie-fication Of American Culture
Boys gravitate toward playing with guns. Trucks, trains, planes and other transportation items, too. Most girls will pick up dolls. Studies show this is true even for very, very young girls and boys, and even for girls and boys whose P.C. parents work very, very hard to keep their kids away from guns, and/or to see they aren't given the message that boys play with one thing and girls play with another. In fact, it's even true for boy and girl Vervet monkeys, from a study by Geriane Alexander and Melissa Hines:
Though the monkeys had no concept of a "boy" toy and a "girl" toy, they still showed the same gender preferences in playing with the toys, Alexander says. That is, compared to female monkeys, male monkeys spent more time with "boy" toys, and the female monkeys, compared to their male counterparts, spent more time with "girl" toys, she notes."Masculine toys and feminine toys," Alexander says, "are clearly categories constructed by people. However, our finding that male and female vervet monkeys show similar preferences for these toys as boys and girls do, suggests that what makes a 'boy toy' and a 'girl toy' is more than just what society dictates – it suggests that there may be perceptual cues that attract males or females to particular objects such as toys."
In the experiment, Alexander says, male monkeys spent more time playing with traditional male toys such as a car and a ball than did female monkeys. The female monkeys, however, spent more time playing with a doll and pot than did the males. What's more, both male and female monkeys spent about the same amount of time with "gender neutral" toys such as a picture book and a stuffed dog.
The implication is that what makes a "girl toy" and what makes a "boy toy" isn't just human society or stereotypes but rather something innate that draws boys and girls to different types of toys, she explains.
Alexander believes her findings suggests that there are certain aspects of objects that appeal to the specific sexes and that these aspects may relate to traditional male and female functions dating back to the dawn of the species.
Playing with guns -- or drawing a gun -- isn't necessarily a sign a boy is violent. I mean, how many millions of boys played with guns or drew guns who never went Columbine on anyone? But, never mind that. In Arizona, 13-year-old boy was suspended from school this week for drawing what looks like a gun.
Now, combined with evidence that he's troubled, violent, and about to blow, I understand that there would be cause for concern. Problem is, it doesn't seem there was any sort of evidence that was the case. And suspending him? Wouldn't a little investigation be in order before just drop-kicking him out of school? (There's this old line I recall, "Innocent until proven guilty.")
David Biscobing from the Tribune in Phoenix writes:
...Parents of the 13-year-old, who attends Payne Junior High School in the Chandler Unified School District, said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted.“I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” said Paula Mosteller, the boy’s mother. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”
Payne Junior High officials did not allow the Tribune to view the drawing. The Mostellers said the drawing did not depict blood, injuries, bullets or any human targets. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun.
But Payne Junior High administrators determined that was enough to constitute a gun threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension that was later reduced to three days.
...In the letter, school officials told parents about the incident and indicated there would be a zero-tolerance policy toward gun threats.
Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the school is not allowed to discuss students’ discipline records. However, he said the sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and threatening words or pictures are punished.
The school did not contact police about the threat and did not provide counseling or an evaluation to the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat.
The Mostellers said their son has no discipline record at the school because they just moved from Colorado this year.
The sketch was one of several drawings scratched in the margins of a science assignment that was turned in on Friday. The boy said he never meant for the picture to be seen as a threat. He said he was just drawing because he finished an assignment early.
School officials issued the suspension on Monday afternoon and notified the student’s father, Ben. He met with school officials and persuaded them to shorten the suspension from five days to three.
This kid is going to be marked by this -- at the very least, for his entire tenure in K-12. That's got to make being a teenager even more fun than it already is.
via Obscure Store
You Get What We Pay For?
Uh, sorry, that's not the way it works. Or not the way it should, anyway: You can't pay the price of admission, you can't get into the fair, okay?
Nevertheless, in San Francisco, city officials are trying to make citizens subsidize immigrants' green cards and citizenship!
Supervisor Chris Daly, reacting to the new and significantly higher federal fee structure for immigrants seeking citizenship, imposed last week by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, complained that the fee hikes raise concerns that immigrants "cannot obtain safe pathways to legal immigrant status and citizenship" and "further exacerbates pressures on families, increasing stress," according to the San Francisco Examiner.Under the new fee structure, the cost to apply for a green card is now $930, up $605 from the old fee. Citizenship applications went from $330 to $595. On Tuesday, Daly asked the city attorney to draw up legislation that would subsidize immigrants applying for citizenship, green cards and petitions for relatives and workers.
If you can't afford the price of being allowed the privilege of working here or possibly becoming a citizen here...stay the fuck where you were.
Does anybody here think the subsidization will stop with green cards?
via Maia Lazar
Poppa Wheelie
"Scientists Should Unite Against The Threat From Religion"
It's always shocking to me when people seek to defend Islam as "The Religion Of Peace" -- even in light of all the barbarianism it's visiting on "infidels" all over the world, as commanded by its texts. To me, the psychology behind Islam is that of an angry, sociopathic fourth grader who's been left out one time too many on the playground.
Great letter from Sam Harris in Nature, addressing the temptation to nicey-nicey up Islam; in addition, addressing the idiocy that is Collins on the supposed existence of god (links within are subscriber only, unfortunately):
It was genuinely alarming to encounter Ziauddin Sardar's whitewash of Islam in the pages of your journal ('Beyond the troubled relationship' Nature 448, 131–133; 2007). Here, as elsewhere, Nature's coverage of religion has been unfailingly tactful — to the point of obscurantism.In his Commentary, Sardar seems to accept, at face value, the claim that Islam constitutes an "intrinsically rational world view". Perhaps there are occasions where public intellectuals must proclaim the teachings of Islam to be perfectly in harmony with scientific naturalism. But let us not do so, just yet, in the world's foremost scientific journal.
Under the basic teachings of Islam, the Koran cannot be challenged or contradicted, being the perfect word of the creator of the Universe. To speak of the compatibility of science and Islam in 2007 is rather like speaking of the compatibility of science and Christianity in the year 1633, just as Galileo was being forced, under threat of death, to recant his understanding of the Earth's motion.
An Editorial announcing the publication of Francis Collins's book, The Language of God ('Building bridges' Nature 442, 110; doi:10.1038/442110a 2006) represents another instance of high-minded squeamishness in addressing the incompatibility of faith and reason. Nature praises Collins, a devout Christian, for engaging "with people of faith to explore how science — both in its mode of thought and its results — is consistent with their religious beliefs".
But here is Collins on how he, as a scientist, finally became convinced of the divinity of Jesus Christ: "On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains... the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ."
What does the "mode of thought" displayed by Collins have in common with science? The Language of God should have sparked gasping outrage from the editors at Nature. Instead, they deemed Collins's efforts "moving" and "laudable", commending him for building a "bridge across the social and intellectual divide that exists between most of US academia and the so-called heartlands."
At a time when Muslim doctors and engineers stand accused of attempting atrocities in the expectation of supernatural reward, when the Catholic Church still preaches the sinfulness of condom use in villages devastated by AIDS, when the president of the United States repeatedly vetoes the most promising medical research for religious reasons, much depends on the scientific community presenting a united front against the forces of unreason.
There are bridges and there are gangplanks, and it is the business of journals such as Nature to know the difference.
Juan Cole Gets Some Right, A Lot Wrong, And Leaves Out The Part About The Democrats
Here, from Wikipedia, it started with the Carter administration, which Cole forgot to demonize:
As part of a Cold War strategy, in 1979 the United States government (under President Jimmy Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski) began covertly to fund and train anti-government Mujahideen forces through the Pakistani secret service known as Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). In order to bolster the local Communist forces, the Soviet Union—citing the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness that had been signed between the two countries—intervened on December 24, 1979. Over 100,000 Soviet troops took part in the invasion, who were backed by another 100,000 and plus pro-communist forces of Afghanistan. The Soviet occupation resulted in the killings of at least 600,000 to 2 million Afghan civilians. Over 5 million Afghans fled their country to Pakistan, Iran and other parts of the world. Faced with mounting international pressure and great number of casualties on both sides, the Soviets withdrew in 1989.
More on that here.
Here's the piece from Cole, (but go to the link and go through the whole thing):
The Bush administration responded to these attacks by the former proteges of Ronald Reagan by putting the old Mujahideen warlords back in charge of Afghanistan's provinces, allowing Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to escape, declaring that Americans no longer needed a Bill of Rights, and suddenly invading another old Reagan protege, Saddam's Iraq, which had had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no threat to the US. The name given this bizarre set of actions by Bush was "the War on Terror."In Iraq, the US committed many atrocities, including bombing campaigns on civilian quarters of cities it had already occupied, and a ferocious assault on Fallujah, and tortured Iraqi prisoners.
In the meantime, the Bush administration put virtually no money or effort into actually combatting terrorist cells in places like Morocco, as opposed to putting $200 billion into the Iraq war and aftermath. As a result, a string of terrorist attacks were allowed to strike at Madrid, London and elsewhere.
Fred Ikle, who had been part of the Reaganist/Chinese Communist effort to convince Muslim fundamentalist generals in Pakistan--against their better judgment-- to allow the US to give the radical Muslim extremists even more sophisticated weapons, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal urging the nuking of Mecca.
And here's a counterpoint from one of his commenters:
This is ridiculous, I don't have the time to rip this apart but our "support" of the Afghans fighting the Soviet Invasion may be looked upon as poor policy but this wasn't a cabal directed from Washington. We wanted them to defeat the soviets, just like when FDR befriended Stalin to take out Hitler and we befriended Saddam to counter the Iranians. Sometimes you have to use bad men to take out worse men and when those bad men become the "worst" men you get them next. This isn't neocon policy, its been how international affairs have worked since the dawn of mankind and we've made it pretty damn far. And Reagan's military spending was a major factor of the collapse of the Soviet Economy...so did he win the Cold War? Well he was on the winning side and he was at the helm and he gave the speeches and he out spent them so......use logic. Pinkos! yuk lol
As for the allegation that we created Bin Laden, here's a well-sourced statement on that from The State Department.
For the record, for those who don't know, as I like to say, "I was against the Iraq war before I was against it," but I think a little honesty is in order here from Cole.
Agree? Disagree?
via Deirdre
Elizabeth Cady Headscarf
If you think denial of Enlightenment values and the enslavement of women is beautiful, well, ladies, don your hijabs and your burkhas. If you prefer to move forward rather than being vaulted back to the Middle Ages, but with cell phones, don't listen to girls like the one on CNN.com who claims the hijab is a focus on inner beauty. Here in the west, where we still have science (and not just to blow up people who think differently), data says otherwise.
I've been reading an advance copy of Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa's terrific book, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, and early on, there was a significant passage:
...A recent study shows that women in Iran, where they are generally not exposed to the western media and culture, and thus would not know Jessica Simpson from Roseanne Barr, and where most women wear the traditional Muslim hijab that loosely covers their entire body so as to make it impossible to tell what shape it is, are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts in the land of Vogue and the Barbie Doll.
More on the Iranian dress code here, from the Iran Press Service, complete with pictures. Here's a thumbnail. Text from their story follows below:
With the arrival of spring, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s police have launched this year its traditional crackdown on women's dress. Such crackdowns have become a regular feature of Iranian women. The crackdown is to force women to respect the strict Islamic dress code.Under Iran's Islamic laws “Shari’a”, women are obliged to cover their body from head- to- toe with black veil or at least long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their whole figures. The Islamic dress code is severely imposed this time. Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment.
And, of course, it's pure speculation on my part, but, perhaps the death penalty for the camel toe?
The Movie Stars Look Like They're Applying For A Job Cleaning Out Your Garage
And the accountants look like movie stars.
She was an accountant or the accountant on the picture "3:10 to Yuma," which was based on the Glenn Ford/Van Heflin movie "3:10 to Yuma," which was based on one of Elmore Leonard's pulp westerns. And she was a rare visual treat in a sea of slobs at the premiere.
I haven't seen the original 3:10, but I do recommend the one and only Valdez Is Coming, with Burt Lancaster, which we saw on a big screen at the Noir In festival in Italy last winter.
As for the current 3:10, it was exciting, engaging and fun...until the end, when it got...less engaging. Now, I have an incredible ability to suspend disbelief, but, at the end, they ended up stretching it so far it snapped.
I won't tell too much, but I'll just say a man with a vintage 1800s prosthetic leg jumping around like it's "Die Hard" without the elevators probably isn't going to be believable for you either. The silliest moment at the end (save for the fact that the two of them didn't get killed by one of any number of ricocheting bullets) was watching as the gimp with the vintage prosethesis leapt from roof to roof.
Gregg, of course, was bothered by historical gaffes; some of which I caught. Now, I don't have the "S" section, only the volumes A-G and H-O of the amazing Historical Dictionary of American Slang, which Random House is no longer publishing. (They ran out of money before they could do the last volume, but it's being rescued/published by Oxford University Press...sigh...just not soon enough.)
Anyway, not having the "S" section, I couldn't look up "You don't know shit!" which I believe a kid actually said. Beyond whether kids back then spoke that way to their dads without being caned within inches of their lives...I dunno, that sounds pretty 20th century lingo to me! The same goes for "Listen up!" which Ben Foster, who stole the movie (although Russell Crowe, Peter Fonda, and Bale were great) yelled to get the attention of the people in town.
And no, these things aren't a big deal. Most people probably won't notice them. And all in all I did like the movie. Of course, I'm not an Apache -- the Indians seen in the movie attacking at night. In real life they never did, Gregg said, because they believed if they were killed at night their souls would wander forever. (If you see any ghostly Apaches hitchhiking along the 10 freeway...)
Last but not least, one more shot from the premiere -- Peter Fonda on the red carpet. And no, I'm not going all star-struck on you. Truth be told, I shot it, in large part, for the leather jacket.
And no, even though he's wearing jeans, I don't consider him one of the garage cleaners...but the girl in the man-pants jeans in the back sure is giving the illegals standing out in front of Home Depot a run for their money!
Wok On The Wild Side
Just posted another Advice Goddess column, from a guy who seems to have cornered the market on self-pity:
Seven years ago, my wife of 11 years left me and married my moneybags boss. Next, my girlfriend dumped me for my wealthy friend. Then, a different girlfriend left me to marry my best friend. Another girlfriend realized she was a lesbian; another couldn’t say “I love you” back. Although I was a struggling grad student when my wife and girlfriend ditched me for rich guys, I now have a prestigious job and a large income. (The woman who dumped me for my wealthy friend mysteriously came groveling back when I got money.) I’m a sensitive guy with a lot of love to give, but I’ve been hurt so badly, I feel safest home alone with Chinese take-out. How can I overcome my fears before I die of loneliness?--Most Likely To Be Left
My answer starts out:
You’re looking for Action! Adventure! Romance! To ride the rapids of love -- with all the drama and suspense of a nice warm soak in the bathtub; or, in action/adventure terms, something more “Die Hard With A Plush Stuffed Bunny” than “With A Vengeance.”
The rest, including comments, is here. Here's a bit of one I left:
I hate when people say a marriage or relationship that ends is a "failed relationship." Not necessarily. If it was good while it lasted, you had a successful relationship. It's our standards, and people's expectations vis a vis reality that are out of line.
Have Your Deep Fried Oreos And Eat Them, Too!
I can't think of anything that sounds more disgusting, except maybe deep-fried poo. But, for you fans of deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Snickers and the rest...happy day! Turns out the fine people at the Indiana State Fat Farm (uh, Fair) are now making these goodies trans-fat free! And just when you were worried about ballooning up to size 26...!
Here's the link from Consumerist/NYT, from a story by Monica Davey:
NDIANAPOLIS, Aug. 17 — The deep-fried Combo Plate may be a little more healthful this year at the Great Indiana State Fair. So say the fair’s leaders, who, taking a step rarely seen in the realm of corn dogs and fried pickles, have banned oils with trans fats from all the fryers that line the grounds here.The change is only the latest in a string of bans on artificial trans fats. Tied to health problems including heart disease, they have been banished by national restaurant chains, snack brands and New York City, which forbids restaurants to use them in food preparation.
But this is perhaps the most unlikely locale yet: the nation’s classic summer fair, long seen as one final safe haven from the health police.
Along the steamy thoroughfare here, where only sensitive palates can distinguish among the various cuts of potato (curly fries, ribbon fries and the old standby, French), fairgoers seemed pleased with the switch. The food tasted the same, they said happily. And if this meant they could indulge without guilt or have one more helping, so much the better.
“This is a slice of heaven,” said Ryan Howell, 31, as he cradled his Combo Plate, which, for the record, consists of one battered Snickers bar, two battered Oreos and a battered Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup — all deep-fried in oil that is trans-fat free, thank goodness.
“This was an issue we wanted to tackle,” said Cindy Hoye, executive director of the fair, which spent the winter months testing various oils and, despite the fears of some concessionaires about possible changes to taste or costs or tradition, concluded that trans-fat-free oils created what Ms. Hoye called a better product.
And yes, in case you were wondering, there is one thing stupider than banning trans fats in places like New York City. It's trying to ban use of the word "bitch."
Duck Day Afternoon
Free real estate on the Venice Canals! (Must have webbed feet.)
photo by Gregg Sutter
Two Foul Calls, It Looks To Me
The "Ethicist" in The New York Times got this question:
At my son’s Little League game, a foul ball sailed over the fence and shattered the window of a parked car. Signs at the ball field specify that the league is not responsible. One parent argued that the hitters family should replace the window. Our family thinks the player and his parents have no such obligation: foul balls are part of the game. Who is right? — Steve Fram, Palo Alto, Calif.
The "Ethicist" (and I put it that way because I sometimes find his answers to be lacking in not only actual humor, but ethics) answers the question like so:
The league that runs the game (or the municipality that operates the ballpark) should pay for the window. It determines the conditions under which the game is played. The young players have little say in such things (along with notoriously shallow pockets). The league should also provide, or require each team to provide, insurance against such mishaps. Posting a sign doesn’t shield you. If it did, I'd post one waiving my responsibility for, well, nearly everything.Foul balls are indeed a part of the game, and I’d exempt the league here if that car had been parked between the third-base line and the dugout. That is: Foul balls are a risk accepted by those inside the ballpark, not those on the street nearby. Your offer of absolution is curiously open-ended. May a hard-hitting player shatter a window with impunity on a car parked a block away? Ten blocks away? In France?
(Incidentally, baseball would be a lot more entertaining if cars did routinely drive onto the field, adding a note of danger and unpredictability to our tedious national pastime.)
Fortunately, there is a real-world solution or at least a California-world solution. Vanessa Wells, safety officer for the Palo Alto Little League, explains that “California insurance law generally treats auto damage involving a falling object as a no-fault claim on the car owner’s insurer. A baseball is regarded as such a falling object.” Like plummeting aircraft parts. Briefly lofted into the stratosphere by a muscular Barry Bonds.
Heh heh heh heh...whatever.
Yes, he does say the league should pay for the window -- but then seems to suggest, no biggie!, that the car owner should or could pick up the tab. Ironically, he refers to this as "real world advice." Well, I guess it's real enough for somebody who takes cabs, buses, or the subway wherever they need to go. But, here in California, there's such a thing as a deductible on one's car insurance, which the car owner pays.
And besides, while I'm not an insurance expert either, merely a person with insurance, even if you don't get points, I don't think it exactly serves you to file claims on your insurance (in terms of keeping your premium down and/or hanging onto your insurance)...whether or not that's supposed to be the case.
On an ABC/KGO.com news site, I found this:
When the glass company told her she could file a no-fault insurance claim without any points on her record, she did.Chris Owens, car owner: "The deductible was $100 versus the $400 I was going to be paying out of pocket, so I'll go ahead and take her advice and open up claims for the windshields."
No, Mr. "Ethicist," it seems no-fault doesn't mean "no-pay." And frankly, the person whose window was hit will be paying big in hassle and lost hours of their life to get that window replaced. Something nobody seems to consider, not only when writing ethics advice columns -- but when they crash into somebody else's car while, say, texting on their cellphone, which is sure to be the next big cause of car crashes.
Our God's Cool And Your God Sucks!
Love, George.
Joanna Sugden posts "The Top 50 Bushisms" on god on the religion blog at The London Times:
1. I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. Sharm el-Sheikh August 20032. I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job.
Statement made during campaign visit to Amish community, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Jul. 9, 20043. I'm also mindful that man should never try to put words in God's mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God. Washington, D.C., Jan. 14, 2005
23. And I just -- I cannot speak strongly enough about how we must collectively get after those who kill in the name of -- in the name of some kind of false religion.
Press appearance with King Abdullah of Jordan, Aug. 1, 200227. One of the great things about this country is a lot of people pray. Washington, D.C., Apr. 13, 2003
36. The United States of America must understand that freedom is universal, that there is an Almighty, and the great gift of that Almighty to each man and woman in this world is the desire to be free. Nashville, Tennessee, Aug. 30, 2006
49. The reason I'm -- asked [these AmeriCorps workers] to join us here is because I want you to know, America can be saved one person at a time. Green Tree, Pennsylvania, Aug. 5, 2002
50. Government can hand out money, but it cannot put hope into people's hearts. It cannot put faith into people's lives. West Ashley High School, Charleston, South Carolina, Jul. 29, 2002
Of course, these days, especially, that doesn't seem to stop them from trying.
Yes, the leader of the free world, and presumably every other candidate running for the office, believes that there's a big invisible man in the sky guiding our every move. This impacts the rest of us in a whole lot of ways, obviously -- down to our ability to breathe the air.
The religious nutters believe in the notion that man has "dominion" over the planet, and that "The Apocalypse" will come, and infidels like me will be thrown in, I guess, some flaming pit somewhere, but that they'll go someplace better. So...no biggie if they treat the earth like a giant toilet. The way they see it, they won't need it much longer anyway.
P.S. And thanks for thinking of me, Mr. Bush (in the note about being "saved") but I don't believe the silly crap that, as a newborn baby, I came into the world a sinner simply because my parents fucked me into existence. I realize this sort of notion keeps the church collection plates full, but come on, should grown adults really believe in this sort of thing?
And P.P.S. As I always say about that "virgin birth": If, like Mary, you were 16 and got knocked up, what do you tell your daddy, "It was that hippie stablehand Joseph, or...God did it"? Typical smart Jewish girl, that Mary! But, look what a mess she's made for millions upon millions of Christians.
list via dubyaspeak
Law Enforcement 101
She's an illegal alien. Enforce the law and deport her. Any questions?
After a year of seeking "sanctuary" (excuse me?) in a church, illegal alien mama Elvira Arellano was finally arrested "before 3 p.m. outside Our Lady Queen of Angels church on L.A.'s historic Olvera street," says the AP:
Arellano has become a symbol of the struggles of illegal immigrant parents and a source of controversy. She had said Saturday she was not afraid of being taken into custody by immigration agents."From the time I took sanctuary the possibility has existed that they arrest me in the place and time they want," she said in Spanish. "I only have two choices. I either go to my country, Mexico, or stay and keep fighting. I decided to stay and fight."
Arellano came to Washington state illegally in 1997. She was deported to Mexico shortly after, but returned and moved to Illinois in 2000, taking a job cleaning planes at O'Hare International Airport.
I think one answer is prosecuting people who knowingly hire illegals. If there are no jobs for illegal aliens here, the rest of us won't be left to pay for their kids' school, for their health care, and for the cost of keeping criminal aliens in jail.
Yeah, think about it, all you commenters who complain that you can't get health insurance. Health care is free for illegal aliens. They can't be turned away, and they most likely can't be made to pay. Sooo...you can't pay for your health care, but through your taxes, you have to pay for theirs. Sweet!
How much does illegal immigration cost you personally? Well, if you live in Florida, probably $300 a year. Think about what you would do with that money if you had a choice -- buy something you want or need, pay off a bill, or even give it to a charity of your choice.
Sorry! You get to give to a charity, and you don't get to choose!
Consider that as you check out a photo of Arellano "commemorating her year of taking refuge" inside a Chicago church, per the photo caption on a Chicago Tribune story by Antonio Olivo. Apparently immigration agents didn't want the (sniff, sniff) bad publicity that would result from doing their jobs, or, as Olivo puts it in his piece:
...officials have avoided the symbolism of raiding a church, referring anyone who asks about their intentions to a prepared statement that calls Arellano a fugitive and explains that all arrests are prioritized.
What a load of crap. It's a building. Enter it. Arrest her. Put her on a bus back to Mexico. And prosecute the people who knowingly gave "refuge" to a criminal. (We typically call that "aiding and abetting, right?)
Olivo quotes the mother:
"God has protected me for this long year," Arellano said, delivering a prepared statement in both unsteady English and in her native Spanish before a standing-room-only crowd of supporters and TV cameras inside the tiny Division Street church.
Sorry, lady, no evidence there's a god. But plenty of evidence for immigration officials not doing their jobs. The mother continues:
"But I cannot sit by now and watch the lives of mothers and fathers like me and children like Saul be destroyed.""If this government would separate me from my son, let them do it in front of the men and women who have the responsibility to fix this broken law and uphold the principles of human dignity," Arellano said, calling on supporters to skip school and boycott local businesses while she's in Washington.
What's broken is our legal system, which allows people like Arellano to game it and extrude U.S. citizens simply by squatting and dropping them on U.S. soil. If you're not worried because you think it's only poor Mexican ladies doing this, don't be. Islamist ladies are just as capable of pumping out terrorists-to-be complete with American citizenship.
Time to revise the 14th Amendment, which "was intended to secure rights for former slaves," but is being abused by people like Arellano with abandon.
Finally, as a statement by San Diego County Supe Bill Horn puts it:
We can’t let up. We need to complete the construction of the border fence because every dollar spent on providing services to illegal immigrants, or their children, is a dollar that isn’t used on tax paying citizens. San Diego will continue to be the gateway to Mexico, but it’s time our taxpayers stopped being the doormat.
Got A Macy's Card?
I don't anymore -- as of five minutes ago. Read this post on Consumerist:
Recently, a Consumerist tipster sent in an internal memo from Macy's explaining that the store was "flipping" 3.5 million inactive store accounts into Citibank Mastercards. The memo reads:
"Approximately 3.5 million inactive (24-48 months) Macy's accounts have been selected to "flip" to the Citibank Mastercard. That means the customer will be sent a Citibank Mastercard to replace their inactive Macy's card. "The "flip," as they call it, was "opt-out"—which means that if you missed a recent letter from Macy's explaining that they were going to open a credit card for you, you can expect a Citibank Mastercard in the mail.
We hadn't heard of this questionable-sounding practice before, so we showed the memo to Elizabeth Warren, consumer law expert and Harvard professor. She hadn't heard of it either, but expressed concerns about what this action by Macy's might do to a customer's credit score.
And then there's the potential nightmare if it gets put in the wrong mailbox or goes to an old address. Here's the course of action I suggest, in a comment I left on Consumerist:
Oh, this is horrible. My inactive Macy's card may go to an old address. I woke up at 5am to work on my column for my deadline, but I just got up from the computer and tore up several drawers looking for my Macy's card. I'm calling the scumbags now. If anybody else needs the number:1-800-BUY-MACY
These scumbags. I just closed my account (which I hadn't used since 2000, since I buy everything with an airlines reward Visa) and I'll never shop at Macy's again. And I told them that. Turns out I had changed the address to my correct address...but I had a moment of panic that I'd maybe forgotten. Phew!
Cancel your Macy's card and tell them why.
We'll Always Have Ferris
The Mess We've Made
Or rather, unleashed, in Iraq. Seven American soldiers, now coming home, tell it the way they see it in The New York Times. From the bit at the end of the piece:
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
They write:
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
...In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear.
...In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
Any chance of that policy suggestion succeeding? Or any policy succeeding? Or, are these people going to keep killing each other until the end of time?
Camping For Pussies
I'm basically an urban girl -- one whose idea of embracing "the great outdoors" involves standing on my porch and watching the birds in my bushes. Hence, I have camped -- I went on a 13-day canoe trip (one change of clothes for six days, another for the other seven) when I was 12 or so at Camp Tamakwa. But, I do not camp. (As some old joke goes, I consider "camping" staying in a bad hotel.)
There are some who don't let a take on camping like mine stop them from doing it. Kimi Yoshino writes for the LA Times about "roughin' in the easy way":
When 6-year-old Ethan Bondick told his mom and dad he wanted to go fly-fishing in Montana, his well-heeled parents were stumped."We looked at each other and said, 'Oh, god, now what?' " said Gigi Bondick, 37, a "reformed" attorney whose husband works as a private-equity partner in Massachusetts.
"We're just not the camping kind of people. We don't pitch tents. We don't cook outdoors. We don't share a bathroom. It's just not going to happen. This is a kid who has never flown anything but first class or stayed anywhere other than a Four Seasons."
After typing "luxury" into a Google search along with "camping" and "Montana," the couple settled on The Resort at Paws Up, a 37,000-acre getaway in the heart of Big Sky country. It's a place for affluent travelers who want to enjoy the outdoors but can't fathom using a smelly outhouse, a place where paying someone to light the campfire is a badge of honor, not the mark of a Boy Scout flunky.
The Bondicks, who live in a sprawling home on the edge of a state park outside Boston and hire a personal chef at home, shelled out $595 a night -- plus an additional $110 per person per day for food.
It's a hefty price to sleep in a tent, but the perks include a camp butler to build their fire, a maid to crank up the heated down comforter at nightfall and a cook to whip up bison rib-eye for dinner and French toast topped with huckleberries for breakfast.
The number of visits to U.S. national parks is declining, but "glamping" -- glamorous camping -- is on the rise in North America after gaining popularity among wealthy travelers in Africa and England, where luxury tents come with Persian rugs and electricity to power blow dryers.
On a side note: When your 6-year-old tells you he wants to go fly-fishing in Montana...ever consider telling him "No"? Please, please, don't let me meet this kid when he grows up.
Oh yeah, and a word to those with profiles up on online dating sites: If, for example, your attitude about camping mirrors mine, do not say on your profile that you like to camp to give yourself "flavor." Somebody is likely to take you up on it, and maybe even expect you to camp regularly.
I'm reminded of a friend of mine, a rather sedentary writer who did enjoy the occasional hike, who put on his profile that he enjoyed "bodysurfing." I recommended him as a potential date to my masseuse, and she and I looked at his profile together. I called him up when I got home. "Bodysurfing? BODYSURFING?"
"Girls like stuff like that."
Especially if it's true. And again, what if somebody actually expects you to get in the ocean and human surfboard to the shore without drowning? Ideally, dating should not be fatal -- metaphorically or literally.
What Do You Take Me For, A Cheap Hooker?
Arafat Had AIDS
Here's his personal doctor saying so:
Over the years, there have been rumors from time to time about Arafat and young boys. Here's more on that, and on Arafat's medical condition when he died, from a story on IsraelNationalNews.com, by Ezra Halevi:
Arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat’s doctor has confirmed the long-circulating rumors that the PLO chairman had AIDS – though the doctor insists Israel poisoned Arafat as well, causing his death....Even before Arafat died, US author and intelligence expert John Loftus said on the John Batchelor Show on WABC radio on October 26 that it was widely known in CIA circles that Arafat was dying from AIDS. Loftus further said that was the reason the US kept preventing Israel from killing Arafat – to allow him to be discredited by the ailment.
A 1987 book by Lt.-Gen. Ion Pacepa, the deputy chief of Romania's intelligence service under Communist dictator Nicola Ceausescu, may explain how Arafat contracted the sexually transmitted disease.
In his memoirs "Red Horizons," Pacepa relates a 1978 conversation with the general assigned to teach Arafat and the PLO techniques to deceive the West into granting the organization recognition. The general told him about Arafat’s nightly relations with his young male bodyguards and multiple partners. “Beginning with his teacher when he was a teen-ager and ending with his current bodyguards. After reading the report, I felt a compulsion to take a shower whenever I had been kissed by Arafat, or even just shaken his hand," Pacepa wrote.
Senior US intelligence official James J. Welsh, the National Security Agency's former PA analyst, told WorldNetDaily, "One of the things we looked for when we were intercepting Fatah communications were messages about Ashbal [Lion cub] members who would be called to Beirut from bases outside of Beirut. The Ashbal were often orphaned or abandoned boys who were brought into the organization, ostensibly to train for later entry into Fedayeen fighter units. Arafat always had several of these 13-15 year old boys in his entourage. We figured out that he would often recall several of these boys to Beirut just before he would leave for a trip outside Lebanon. It proved to be a good indicator of Arafat's travel plans. While Arafat did have a regular security detail, many of those thought to be security personnel - the teenage boys - were actually there for other purposes."
How much fun is it to be gay and Muslim? From the Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association...oh, typically about this much fun:
“Kill the one who sodomises and the one who lets it be done to him.” – Tirmidhi.“Lesbianism by women is adultery between them.” – Tabarani. (Consider that death is the penalty for adultery.)
“If a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.” – Sunan Abu Dawud, 38:4448.
With statements like these it is little wonder that life can be grim – and short – for homosexuals in Muslim countries. Apologists like to point to the apparent acceptance of homosexual behaviour in some Muslim societies. Paradoxically, there have indeed been times and places where it was tolerated. However, whenever and wherever the religion has been taken seriously by the authorities, and its laws enforced, the results for sexual minorities have been dire.
Homosexuality is illegal in most Muslim countries and punishable by death in several. Amnesty International, Homan (an exiled Iranian group) and other human rights groups regularly report shocking abuses and crimes against homosexuals. For example, in April 2001, nine gay men were given prison terms of 4 to 5 years with 2400 to 2600 lashes in Saudi Arabia. Abdul Sami (18) and Bismillah (22) were killed by the Taliban by having a wall toppled on them in 1998. In 2001, 52 men were arrested following a party on a river boat and charged with “immoral behaviour” and “contempt of religion” in Egypt (a supposedly “moderate” Islamic country). Many were given prison sentences with hard labour.
Iran has been particularly enthusiastic in its persecution of homosexuals. Estimates of the numbers of gay and lesbian people this evil regime has murdered range from hundreds to thousands but, as many executions are not public, and bereaved families may cover up the reasons out of shame, the higher estimates are plausible. Those cases that have been publicised include three gay men and two lesbians beheaded in January 1990, and 70 people executed in the early 1980s for trying to set up a lesbian and gay organisation. The Iranian Chief Justice, Morteza Moghtadai, justified the 1990 beheadings by saying, “The religious punishment for the despicable act of homosexuality is death for both parties.” False, trumped-up charges of homosexuality are also used to suppress political opponents, as happened to Dr Ali Mozaffarian, a Sunni Muslim leader executed in Shiraz in 1992.
Now, there are no pictures of Yasser and his boys, and yes, I know men in the Middle East kiss and hold hands, but here's Arafat going at it like a schoolgirl with some bearded religious whack job:
Just friendly...or something more? You be the judge!
Ray Outs Merv
Kudos to my friend Ray Richmond, for doing his part to make being gay just another mundane detail about a person, as it should be. Ray writes in The Hollywood Reporter:
Merv Griffin was gay.Why should that be so uncomfortable to read? Why is it so difficult to write? Why are we still so jittery even about raising the issue in purportedly liberal-minded Hollywood in 2007? We can refer to it casually in conversation, but the mainstream media somehow remains trapped in the Dark Ages when it comes to labeling a person as gay.
Maybe that helps explain why Griffin, who died of prostate cancer Sunday at 82, stayed in the closet throughout his life. Perhaps he figured it was preferable to remain the object of gossip rather than live openly as "one of them." But how tremendously sad it is that a man of Merv's renown, of his gregarious nature and social dexterity, would feel compelled to endure such a stealthy double life even as the gay community's clout, and its levels of acceptance and equality, rose steadily from the ashes of ignorance.
I'm not at all insinuating that Griffin had a responsibility to come out. That was up to him.
But what a powerful message Griffin might have sent had he squired his male companions around town rather than Eva Gabor, his longtime good friend and platonic public pal. Imagine the amount of good Merv could have done as a well-respected, hugely successful, beloved and uncloseted gay man in embodying a positive image.
Kevin Roderick writes on LAObserved
Elizabeth Guider, the new editor of The Hollywood Reporter, is out of state but ordered the trade's website to take down this morning's story by Ray Richmond about Merv Griffin's sexuality, says a source. It's still up at Richmond's blog.* Cancel that: As of 2:40 pm or so it's back online at THR, as I kinda expected it would be.
And here's the link to the website of a friend of Ray's on which he discusses the the story:
Q. Have you talked to your editors or bosses at The Hollywood Reporter?A. I will have discussions with them, and I will hope at some point we can have it restored online. It seems that scotching the post gives the appearance of liability when there isn’t any. It was simply a factual, very informed discussion of the larger issue of the media’s difficulty in allowing someone to be labeled as gay in the mainstream, as if that is somehow a huge shame. My whole reason for doing the piece for the Reporter was to shine a light on that fact. Unfortunately that appears to be the case...even internally.
Q. Have you been contacted by anyone representing Merv Griffin?
A. No. I have not.
Q. What are you going to do next?
A. I am hopeful that I am going to defend my piece. I don’t feel anybody at the Reporter is culpable with regard to this –- this is about me and what I wrote in my column. This is my view, my take, my feeling.
I did this not with malice in my heart, but with concern. I wanted to make sure that the truth was out there and not a version of it that allowed everyone to make Merv the subject of gossip or the butt of jokes. I wanted to put the truth out there in a loving and concerned way. One could make the point that it was his business alone, but I don’t think this was true, because he was a public figure and this was who the man was.
Q. Anything else?
A. And I am proud of The Hollywood Reporter for letting me run it in its pages.
Q. What happens next?
A. I don't know.
A commenter named Kate writes below the entry:
So Isaiah Washington gets canned for a gay slur, but discussing the open secret that Merv Griffin was a homosexual is also a slur worthy of censorship?
Exactly the problem.
John Edwards Will Do Anything To Get His Name In The Press
His latest: Callling Ann Coulter a "she-devil" -- before saying he shouldn't engage in name-calling. Campaign funds running a mite low, John?
via Drudge
What To Do If Your Comment Disappears
Think of this as a tiny Goofus and Gallant webisode. You'll have to guess which one is Goofus and which one is Gallant.
But, first, a lttle background. In the past two days, two people's comments have gotten eaten. It happens. Gregg put in some pretty strong software, and if you post two comments in rapid succession (very rapid) you might set off the software. It's rare -- and I did it to myself once (I type at just under the speed of light).
Also, if you want to put links in comments, put one in per comment. If you have two links, post two comments. I won't mind. Maybe I'll even get points for having more traffic.
But back to Goofus and Gallant:
Crid e-mails something along the lines of: "My comment got eaten."Chuck e-mails simply this: "Do you have a problem?"
Guess which one sent me scurrying to retrieve the comment from the spam folder. I know, it's a toughie...but give it your best. And, FYI, if your comment gets munched, kindly just e-mail me right away (as in immediately) and let me know in plain English.
Oh yes, one further word to the wise. I get e-mail for a living. In other words, it's more of a Noah's Ark-type deluge than a trickle, so try to let me know in the header it's 1. time-sensitive, and 2. about your comment being eaten.
Thank you.
Steal This Zuke
Yes, that's the word "abundance" carved/grown into this squash. We're now managing to sentimentalize even our vegetables.
This thing was about 15 inches long, and my friend Glenn said it had been there for about a week, on this concave sculpture of a body, on somebody's front yard in Santa Monica, off Main Street. (I'm guessing it had only recently acquired the "FREE" and "enjoy" signs.) On our way back we saw somebody had either taken it -- or taken it inside and put it out of its misery.
The Religious Nutters Take On "Heather Has Two Mommies"
Oh, the horror, the horror, at the thought of children hearing a story about another child who has lesbian parents. The nutters said children were too young to be exposed to such topics, writes Classically Liberal, yet, they've come up with a doosy of a kids book. But, first, a little background:
At the same time they endorse a farcical group often called “the exgay movement”. Groups like Focus in the Family pour money onto these groups in order to give the impression that religious therapy can turn gay people into straight people. That movement has spawned another movement: the ex-exgay movement”. That is made of up people who were previously “cured” through a dose of prayer but apparently preferred other things when upon their knees.So far there has been no sign of an ex-ex-exgay movement.
Closely connected to these exgay “ministries” is NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. These are mostly religious therapists who are rather obsessed over the sexual partners of other adults. I always find it a bit bizarre when someone is really, really obsessed the sex lives of others. And one person who was close, both to NARTH and the exgay ministries, was Richard Cohen.
Mr. Cohen has personally produced a children’s book, "Alfie's Home," which explains the exgay view of homosexuality in terms that, well, in terms even a child could understand. And it includes illustrations including a young boy lying naked in bed with a full grown adult male. Heather having two mommies was too advanced but apparently showing boys in bed with men is acceptable provided you are pushing an antigay agenda. If you don’t believe follow the rest of this post as we go through what Cohen is saying and show you precisely what he concocted to show children.
Pictures and text from the book at the link above -- including their notion of how a person "becomes" gay. Must be seen to be believed. An excerpt from Classically Liberal's book review:
Step 2: Evil Vampire Homosexual. Now that Alfie feels too comforted by mommy and too distant from daddy along comes his Uncle Pete who just can’t get enough of holding little Alfie which makes him “feel loved.” Of course Uncle Pete then jumps into the sack with little Alfie and “started touching my private parts” and “taught me to touch and play with his”. So little Alfie and Uncle Pete bonk like rabbits “for several months”.
And yes, this is a children's book!
via ifeminists
Compassionate Credit-Grabbing
If your main talent is commandeering credit from the deserving, have the good sense not to write a book about your greatness. White House speech writer Matthew Scully kept his mouth shut for a long time, and then he got a peek at fellow speech writer Michael Gerson's new book, and made a number of...corrections in a piece ($ubscription) in The Atlantic:
My favorite example came in a piece by Bob Woodward and two other Washington Post reporters. The writer’s writer and the reporter’s reporter spent a lot of time together, and whatever Bob got out of the deal you could always find Mike’s reward in print. There had been a September 13, 2001, Oval Office meeting attended by adviser Karen Hughes and three speechwriters—Mike, John McConnell, and me. Early in the meeting President Bush said to us, “We’re at war”—an exact quote, and not the sort of moment easily forgotten. In The Washington Post account, however, the rest of us have vanished, and the president declares, “Mike, we’re at war.”One word, and history is changed. And not only have colleagues been cleared out, but the attention of Woodward’s readers isn’t even on the president anymore. Things like this happened all the time with Mike—crowded rooms and collaborative efforts gave way, in the retelling, to the self-involved spectacle of one.
Woodward’s trilogy about the Bush years is a tale of speechwriting glory that Mike himself could hardly improve upon. Remember those powerful and moving addresses the president gave after September 11? According to Woodward’s State of Denial, Mike wrote all of those speeches by himself—and if there were other speechwriters, well, they must not have made it back from the evacuation:
Gerson, a 40-year-old evangelical Christian who had majored in theology at evangelist Billy Graham’s alma mater, Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, had written all of Bush’s memorable post-9/11 speeches, including the one he gave at Washington’s National Cathedral on September 14, 2001—“This conflict has begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour of our choosing”—as well as his remarks before a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001: “Americans should not expect one battle but a lengthy campaign.” Gerson had written Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech identifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “Axis of Evil” connecting terrorism with weapons of mass destruction, and had also come up with the intellectual and historical roots for Bush’s “preemption” doctrine speech, delivered at West Point in June 2002—“The war on terrorism will not be won on the defensive.”How do I break the news to Bob Woodward that his high-placed source wrote not a single one of the lines quoted above, at best a third of any of the speeches he mentions, and that the National Cathedral address was half-written before Mike even entered the room?
Without fear of contradiction—because it’s all in the presidential records—I can report here that Michael Gerson never wrote a single speech by himself for President Bush. From beginning to end, every notable speech, and a huge proportion of the rest, was written by a team of speechwriters, working in the same office and on the same computer. Few lines of note were written by Mike, and none at all that come to mind from the post-9/11 addresses—not even “axis of evil.”
He allowed false assumptions, and also encouraged them. Among chummy reporters, he created a fictionalized, “Mike, we’re at war” version of presidential speechwriting, casting himself in a grand and solitary role. The narrative that Mike Gerson presented to the world is a story of extravagant falsehood. He has been held up for us in six years’ worth of coddling profiles as the great, inspiring, and idealistic exception of the Bush White House. In reality, Mike’s conduct is just the most familiar and depressing of Washington stories—a history of self- seeking and media manipulation that is only more distasteful for being cast in such lofty terms.
How To Terrorize Your Pets
The "Religion Of Peace" shows children how its wrong to be cruel to animals -- by swinging a kitty by its tail. (Should be required viewing for the P.C. nimrods who insist we be "tolerant" of all beliefs.)
via Breitbart.com
Why Wait 'Til College To Be Terrified Nobody Will Hire You?
You can be terrified as early as ninth grade! A Bergen County high school is making students choose majors -- ones that will determine what electives they take for four years. Winnie Hu writes in The New York Times:
For Dwight Morrow, a school that has struggled with low test scores and racial tensions for years, establishing majors is a way to make their students stay interested until graduation and stand out in the hypercompetitive college admissions process.Some parents have welcomed the requirement, noting that a magnet school in the district already allowed some students to specialize. But other parents and some educators have criticized it as preprofessionalism run amok or a marketing gimmick.
“I thought high school was about finding what you liked to do,” said Kendall Eatman, an Englewood mother of six who was president of the Dwight Morrow student body before graduating in 1978. “I think it’s too early to be so rigid.”
Even college might be. One of the best things I did in college was do an internship at UPI in Washington. I didn't even work for my college newspaper -- I got it with column clips from high school. But, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. I realized, after working at UPI a month, the last thing I wanted to do was run around writing about what other people were doing.
Here's an example like mine from Hu's piece:
Nicole’s mother, Georgette Hutchison, said she liked the concept of majors, but wondered whether it was “premature” for ninth graders to make such choices. “I don’t know what they’re expecting out of these 14-year-olds,” said Mrs. Hutchison, who drives a school bus. “I think they’re going to have a lot of ‘I changed my mind.’ ”Akelia Morrison already has.
Two years ago, Akelia applied to the magnet program’s law and public safety academy because she wanted to be a lawyer. But after finding many of the legal cases boring and hard to relate to, she was unable to take classes in other fields because she was locked into her specialization.
“Now I wish I had probably gone to another academy because I like computers,” said Akelia, who is 16 and starting her junior year. “When you’re 13, you don’t realize how much work you have to put in to be a lawyer. It’s not like you just go to court, and win or lose, you make a lot of money.”
More from Hu:
Debra Humphreys, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Colleges and Universities, called high-school majors “a colossally bad idea,” saying youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills.“Today’s economy requires people to be constantly learning and changing,” Ms. Humphreys said. “A lot of jobs that high school students are likely to have 10 years from now don’t yet exist, so preparing too narrowly will not serve them well.”
Despite such naysayers, a number of school districts around the country are experimenting with high school majors, an outgrowth of the popular “career academies” that have become commonplace nationally, and in New York City, over the past decade. But while many career academies simply add a few courses to a broad core curriculum, majors require individual students to make a more serious commitment to a particular educational path.
Already, little kids have more homework than I ever did in high school. In my New York City adopted family -- my friend Cheryl and her husband and three kids -- the seven-year-old sometimes has hours of schoolwork, and loads of pressure on her. Is this a good thing? Does it make kids into better adults, or more neurotic ones?
Retouch Of Evil
Recognize the landscape?
(Windward Ave. stood in for Mexico.)
photo by Gregg Sutter
Please Melt
Not only do we not do the single most effective thing to combat illegal immigration -- enforcing the law and deporting illegal aliens, we're far too accepting of legal immigrants who are lazy about joining, or simply refuse to join, the American "melting pot," by learning the language (just for starters). "Press one for Spanish?" Press "How about you learn English as part of your privilege of being here?" If you can't speak the language, you can't blend, and you're more likely to stay ghettoized with "your own." So...are we going to wait until we're a nation of people who can't speak to each other to do something about this?
France has a solution of sorts to the cultural standoffishness -- a too little/too late solution for them -- but it sounds like a great idea in concept. Jon Frosch writes in the IHT that migrants, or longterm visitors in France, must, among other things, take a day-long class in what it means to be French:
She was one of about 20 foreign-born residents of France - as diverse a group as one could imagine - who gathered in a classroom on a summer morning in Paris. What brought them there was an agreement each had signed with the government of France: They would try to integrate into society, accept French values and learn the language, and France would help them along the way.The contract "of welcome and integration" has been mandatory since January for all people from outside the European Union applying for long-stay visas, except for students and seasonal workers. It is part of a package of immigration rules known as the "Sarkozy law," passed in July 2006, when Nicolas Sarkozy, now the president, was interior minister.
The routine procedures for a prospective long-stay visa holder include a medical examination, an interview and a language assessment. But the contract adds a new requirement: a day of civic training, regardless of the applicant's language fluency and the length of time spent in France.
...France is certainly not alone in adopting increasingly rigorous integration policies. Other European countries, like the Netherlands, Germany and Britain, have established similar measures, including tests for potential citizens on the host country's language, culture and principles.
But Sarkozy's emphasis on national identity and "Frenchness" is unsettling to some migrants and political critics, who feel he is fundamentally hostile to immigration. After all, his detractors say, this is the man who stepped up the deportation of illegal immigrants and courted far-right voters by evoking (with slightly more tactful language) a slogan used by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant National Front party: "France, love it or leave it."
Sarko is probably looking to keep his country from going down le tubes -- both by getting rid of the socialism that's killing France economically and by keeping out people who'd kill France culturally and economically (Muslim immigrants who move to France, extrude 12 children, and spend their lives on the dole). I'm all for his plan, and think we should ask more of people who wish to be legal citizens of this country -- and ask those who aren't legal citizens to step into the buses and paddywagons that will take them back to where they belong by law.
Mr. Always Right
I'm very proud. I helped a girl get away from a violent, controlling-asshole boyfriend. She wrote me a week or two after the column was published (I'd e-mailed back and forth with her quite a bit) and she told me that she'd finally gotten out. She seems to have seen the light, too. Pretty thrilling. Here's her question:
On New Year’s Eve I met the only man I ever wanted to marry. We have the same likes and dislikes, his family loves me, mine loves him, and he wants to marry me. Still, he finds ways to make me feel I may not be the perfect girl for him (like a knock-down drag-out fight where he smashed my phone and iPod against the wall because I’d kissed his best friend before he and I met). Also, he doesn't want me being some big career-minded woman (what he initially claimed to love about me). I just got my dream job, which requires overtime and travel. He’s pushing me to go for something less demanding so I can be home to cook him dinner and care for the kids (which I do want…someday). He reminds me that his mother quit being a lawyer to help his father run his restaurant and so they could have “a beautiful life together and two adorable kids.” How much is too much to sacrifice for love?--Conflicted
The beginning of my reply:
How much is too much to sacrifice for love?” Well, when you actually have love in your life, write back and I’ll let you know. In the meantime, just wondering, when your boyfriend turned your iPod into a $400 doorstop, was it playing your song?
The entire thing is here.
The Love Bloat
Oh, look, somebody took the U.S.S. Nimitz to Earl Scheib!
The Execution Will Be Televised
If we're going to have capital punishment, and if its proponents argue that it's a deterrent, well, why not make it Must-See TV? And come on, bring on the firing squads, none of this quietly lethal death-by-needle business. I got the idea from a letter from David Hayden, of Wilton, Connecticut, on The New York Times op-ed page:
Proponents of capital punishment demonstrate a peculiar inconsistency: they claim that executions punish criminals and serve as a deterrent, and yet they allow the process to become ever more secretive and antiseptic.During the last century we have gone from shooting and hanging the condemned to gassing and electrocuting them; now the preferred method is usually strapping them to a gurney shaped like a crucifix and injecting them with lethal chemicals.
Any motion or resistance from the dying man causes controversy, and the process is hidden from the general public. It seems to me that advocates of execution should want the process to be public and obviously painful instead of covert and sanitized.
GM Does Make A High Mileage Car
You just can't buy it in the USA. From a story by Asjylyn Loder in the St. Pete Times:
Drivers looking for a best-selling car that gets better than 30 miles to the gallon might find that car in a surprising place: General Motors, the nation's No. 1 automaker and one of the leading opponents of raising mileage requirements on U.S. cars.There's a catch, of course. GM sells the Opel Astra only in Europe, where GM and other U.S. automakers average near 35 mpg - the same target they argue they can't reach here by 2020.
In Europe, Latin America and Asia, Detroit's automakers have seen profits even as their North American divisions struggle. Much of their overseas success relies on smaller cars with better mileage, often in models that aren't offered in the United States.
...But will Americans buy them?
...Consumer taste is the oft-ignored crucible where the success or failure of CAFE standards will be decided. That's because the federal government judges compliance not on what automakers build, but on what American drivers buy.
Technically, the CAFE standard is "sales weighted." In layman's terms, that means the American love for trucks drags down the gains made by Prius-driving do-gooders.
"It ain't just the manufacturers that are the bad guys," said Dennis Simanaitis, engineering editor of Road & Track magazine. "It's us. We're the enemy. We're the ones who've been buying these things."
More on cars: Mickey Kaus completely lacks confidence "that GM will capitalize successfully on any technological lead it has." Turns out we're not only paying huge costs for US autoworkers' healthcare, he found "about $1000" in costs per vehicle "not related to health care (or 'legacy' pensions, for that matter)":
I don't begrudge Detroit auto workers six-digit pay packages--unlike some professors, I don't think it odd that they make more than professors. It's harder work! But I also don't see why they should necessarily make more than Toyota's hard-working American autoworkers. And as a car consumer, every time I see a nice Detroit vehicle I might want to buy--the Ford Mustang and Pontiac Solstice come to mind--and then I see the tacky materials used in the interior, I think about how much more appealing the car would be if I didn't have to pay $1,000/vehicle in extra costs to finance the UAW's work rules, etc. (with the grand going to buy higher quality plastics or to lower the price). Toyotas don't have this problem--I'm more confident the money I spend will efficiently go into the car I buy.Update: This better-than-MSM Automotive News article--free at the moment, with registration--argues that the coming UAW-Detroit negotiations will actually start the process of bringing GM, Ford, and Chrysler's labor costs down a notch to Toyota's level. In effect, argues David Sedgwick, we still have "pattern bargaining," it's just that non-union Toyota sets the pattern. ... But isn't it just as likely that, in the toothpulling process by which the UAW is forced to climb down from above-Toyota labor costs, the concessions will be too little, too late--or rather, just enough to keep current workers employed but not enough to actually let GM make significant anti-Toyota inroads?
Amy Alkon, Opinionated Bitch
What's amazing is how those who purport to be against sexism are so often the most sexist of all...which brings us to the question...How can we force more women to be political bloggers?
Wait. Force them?
It seems we have to increase the vagina count in the ranks of political bloggers...because who reads a blog simply because the blogger has something to say? No, according to columnist Ellen Goodman, there's apparently some vast white male conspiracy out there to only read people with balls. (Sorry, but why would anyone want to read anyone without them?)
Okay, okay...so, Goodman's beef is that we're all reading a lot of people who not only have balls, but have them attached to their bodies. (For the record, mine are snap-ons, and yes, if you must know, I have them in five colors, including hot pink.)
But, back to our mewling woman of the week, Goodman writes in The Boston Globe about political blogging:
The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men -- white men, even angry white men.I began tracking the maleness of this media last spring while I was a visiting fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. An intrepid graduate student created a spreadsheet of the top 90 political blogs. A full 42 percent were edited and written by men only, while 7 percent were by women only. Another 45 percent were edited or authored by both men and women, though the "coed" mix was overwhelmingly male. And, not surprisingly, most male bloggers linked to male bloggers.
Most male bloggers linked to male bloggers? Who thinks about somebody's genitalia when they're linking? Some days I just wake up and say, "Shit, it's 6am, and I don't have a blog item!" Quite frankly, if you're a hermaphrodite...if you're a houseplant, and you only fuck yourself...if you blogged something worth linking, you're in, baby!
Meanwhile, Goodman continues her whining below:
Yes, this is the kettle of the MSM -- mainstream media -- calling the pot of the netroots male. In fairness, half of all 96 million blogs are written by women. But in the smaller political sphere, what is touted as a fresh force for change looks an awful lot like a new boy network.Now, after what's been a long, low rumble over demography and diversity, a grass-roots rebellion is finally surfacing in the netroots. At Yearly Kos itself, home of what Jennifer Pozner described on Huffington Post as the "blustering A-list boys of the 'netroots,' " there was the panel titled gamely: "Blogging While Female." The question for the panel was this: "The blogosphere was supposed to be a place where gender didn't matter and voice was all. So what happened?"
What did happen? Is it the angry voice -- a netroot norm but a female abnorm? Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos and namesake of the convention, said unabashedly in an ABC News interview last year, "I learned to talk the way I do in the US Army. And we don't mince words. In politics, I don't see it any different. I see it as a battlefield." The American Prospect's Garance Franke-Ruta, who was on the panel notes, wryly, "If you're an angry man you're righteous. If you're an angry woman, you're crazy or a bitch."
Oh, please. Yeah, I'm a bitch. I think it makes me a better read.
Goodman keeps hyperventilating:
Is it harassment? Women have been talking about this since blogger Kathy Sierra was threatened with a picture of her next to a noose. Convention organizer Gina Cooper has two e-mail addresses, just one carrying her female name. Only "Gina" gets the hate e-mail with sexual threats and such comments as: "I'm going to hunt you down." Who knows how many women are scared silent.
I saw something about this on a girlie tech blog I sometimes read, called ShinyShiny. Cate Sevilla asks, "Are Women Really Harrassed More Online?":
I haven't actually heard of any men who have been harassed to the same extent that women are. Why is that? Is it that women get more harassed online because the internet is like a misogynists' playground, giving men, and female hating women, a place to spread their venom? Is it that people are really still that adverse to women being mouthy, opinionated, and angry...Is that men are just as harassed online as women, and that women are just harassed in a different way?
What do you think?
Here's the comment I posted there:
As a syndicated advice columnist who regularly pisses people off, I'm sometimes threatened (usually via e-mail) with rape, violence and death. I call the duty officer at the FBI and report it. They also have an Internet crime center at the FBI.But, other than threats of violence, the rest of them I post on my blog -- let the air and my commenters get to them.
Quite frankly, ladies, if you can't stand the heat...well, you know.
As for the question I didn't get around to answering in my comment, ("Are men just as harassed...?): Men harass other men in whatever way they can. It's "Where's The Weak Spot?" instead of "Where's Waldo?" But, don't just take my word for it. Here's a Psychology Today excerpt from my friend Satoshi Kanazawa's book, referencing the work of Kingsley Browne:
Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or "hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.
But, back to Goodman (Waaaaah!):
It's not that women are invisible. There are "women's pages" on the Internet. Technorati counts more than 11,000 "mommy blogs." There are "women's issues" blogs like the funny and bracing Feministing.But this is not just about counting, not just about diversity-by-the-numbers. It's about the political dialogue -- who gets heard and who sets the agenda. Cooper asks herself: "Are we going to do the same thing we've done all along, but with computers? Or will we create a new institution that allows for marginalized voices?"
Excuse me while I projectile vomit.
I don't want people reading my blog because I'm a girl, but because they think I have something to say.
Also, unlike too many women I encounter, I'm interested in politics and in what's going on in the world. I love newspapers and the news, and I've been reading the newspaper since I was about 8. Back then, I read the Detroit News and Free Press. These days, I read a mix of news and opinion in about 20 different newspapers a week -- in addition to all the blogs and other sites I read. And while I click into The Fug Sisters and a few other fun zones, mostly, I'm not reading about celebrity cellulite or shoes.
As for who sets the political agenda, no it isn't the mommy bloggers. While there are women out there who are as fierce or fiercer than the boys, if the rest of the ladies want to blog about diaper rash, that's just the way it is.
Then again, maybe what Ms. Goodman should be railing against is the tendency of too many women to forgo answering questions like "Who am I, what do I think, and what's happening in the world?" in favor of "Who am I with?"
via Baldilocks
And Now, Let's Hear From The Bonehead From New Mexico!
Not understanding that being gay isn't "a lifestyle choice" didn't stop Bill Richardson from backing domestic partnership legislation in his state. Yes, welcome to an "I am my talking points moment" -- except that in this case, somebody forgot to brief the guy on what he's supposed to believe.
As Melissa Etheridge asks, a show of hands: Who here believes kids wake up in seventh grade and say to themselves, "Gee, I think I'll be gay!"?
Inexplicable Nora Ephron Piece
Why doesn't Ephron just photograph her toenail clippings and upload the photo to the web? The piece (on IHT.com) didn't even have a coherent headline; at 8:51 a.m. PST, it was this:
UPDATE: Ha! Kate Coe asks: "When did the IHT become HRT?"
Girl Magnet Or Girl Deterrent?
So...what's your take, ladies, on men who wear their team spirit while not at the game? Giant foam thumbs up or giant foam thumbs down?
P.S. The vagina-less should feel free to weigh in, too. Men, that is.
A List Of Things To Ban
1. Talking on your cellphone without a handsfree device while behind the wheel of your flying car.
2. Having sex with a space alien without using birth control.
3. Internet hunting.
Zachary M. Seward writes for The Wall Street Journal that the Humane Society is behind a push to ban #3:
The Humane Society of the United States last year mailed more than 50,000 people an urgent message, underlined and in bold type: "Such horrific cruelty must stop and stop now!"The cruelty in question was Internet hunting, which the animal-rights group described as the "sick and depraved" sport of shooting live game with a gun controlled remotely over the Web. Responding to the Humane Society's call, 33 states have outlawed Internet hunting since 2005, and a bill to ban it nationally has been introduced in Congress.
But nobody actually hunts animals over the Internet. Although the concept -- first broached publicly by a Texas entrepreneur in 2004 -- is technically feasible, it hasn't caught on. How so many states have nonetheless come to ban the practice is a testament to public alarm over Internet threats and the gilded life of legislation that nobody opposes.
With no Internet hunters to defend the sport, the Humane Society's lobbying campaign has been hugely successful -- a welcome change for an organization that has struggled to curtail actual boots-on-the-ground hunting. Michael Markarian, who has led the group's effort, calls it "one of the fastest paces of reform for any animal issue that we can remember seeing."
Vicki L. Walker, a state senator in Oregon, says she wasn't aware of Internet hunting until a representative from the society told her about it and asked her to sponsor a ban. "It offended my sensibilities," she says. The bill passed unanimously this year.
Melanie George Marshall, a Delaware state representative who sponsored an Internet-hunting ban that passed in June, considers her legislation a matter of homeland security. "I don't want to give ideas to people," she says, "but these kinds of operations would have the potential to make terrorism easier."
Even the National Rifle Association endorses the ban. "It's pretty easy to outlaw something that doesn't exist," says Rod Harder, a lobbyist for the NRA in Oregon who supported an Internet-hunting ban that took effect in June. "We were happy to do it."
John C. Astle, a Maryland state senator, angered animal-rights groups in 2004 when he successfully pushed to allow hunting black bears in the state. Safari Club International, a hunting group, named him the nation's State Legislator of the Year in 2005. But last year, working with the Humane Society, he sponsored an Internet-hunting ban that sailed through the legislature.
"If you're a dedicated hunter, you believe in the concept of fair chase," says Mr. Astle, who once shot a 13-foot crocodile in Africa's Zambezi river. Internet hunting, he says, "flies in the face of fair chase."
But, what if you don't believe in the concept of fair chase?
Osama Bin Bykofsky
Philly Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky thinks an attack on the U.S. would be just the thing to bring us together (or is that just the thing to nudge his profile up a notch)? Bykofsky writes:
ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I'm thinking another 9/11 would help America.What kind of a sick bastard would write such a thing?
A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically - thanks mainly to our ineptitude in Iraq - that we have forgotten who the enemy is.
It is not Bush and it is not Hillary and it is not Daily Kos or Bill O'Reilly or Giuliani or Barack. It is global terrorists who use Islam to justify their hideous sins, including blowing up women and children.
Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage our enemies. We are deeply divided and division is weakness.
Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why?
Not because Americans are "anti-war."
Americans have turned their backs because the war has dragged on too long and we don't have the patience for a long slog. We've been in Iraq for four years, but to some it seems like a century. In contrast, Britain just pulled its soldiers out of Northern Ireland where they had been, often being shot at, almost 40 years.
That's not the American way.
In Iraq, we don't believe our military is being beaten on the battleground. It's more that there is no formal "battleground." There is the drip of daily casualties and victory is not around the corner. Americans are impatient. We like fast food and fast war.
Americans loved the 1991 Gulf War. It raged for just 100 hours when George H.W. Bush ended it with a declaration of victory. He sent a half-million troops into harm's way and we suffered fewer than 300 deaths.
America likes wars shorter than the World Series.
Especially when we're told by the president that that's exactly what they'll be. (Remember the big "Mission Accomplished" sign?)
Is getting the Daily Kos and the Little Green Footballs people to hold hands against the Islamists the answer? I'd venture that it's militarily and diplomatically going after the Islamists in a way that works, and doing what I do pretty regularly on this blog, and what Jihadwatch is all about: Putting out the truth about Islam -- that it's anything but a religion of peace, as its texts command its adherents to convert or kill the infidels (anybody who doesn't believe in their particular brand of unproven bullshit).
Gin And Tonic With A Side Of Humor?
One of the fun things about writing a column that not only doesn't rubberstamp the status quo, but is written with humor, is figuring out the tweak of the week: Which group of people is going to be deeply offended by something I've written, and by what.
Sometimes I know it's coming -- like with the bunny huggers. And my editor warned me about The Cat People -- not the ones from the horror movie, but the ones horrified by any mention of cats (nasty creatures!) that's anything less than glowing.
Recently, I've gotten a few letters from irate female bartenders in response to a single line in the column, Opportunity Knockers, about the guy whose bartender wife was getting a new rack, and then some, funded by some aging barfly.
Here's the line (boldfaced) in context:
A female bartender is basically an affordable stripper. For some guys, she’s the one woman who will not only speak to them but listen like she’s actually interested. A lot of guys mistake this paid interest for genuine interest, and it’s up to the bartender to close out a guy’s tab and his fantasy at the end of the evening and go home to her family. And then there’s your wife, who sees no reason why having a husband and child should stop her from having a “Who’s yer daddy?!”
Here's an irate comment left by some woman named Loraine:
Am I the only one who takes offense to the statement "a female bartender is basically an affordable stripper" ?? What kind of BS is that? Thanks for insulting me and my job, which, by the way, doesn't involve me taking my clothes off, a brass pole, or lap dances! bartenders, while they should appear to have fun on the job, also have to juggle dozens of tasks at the same time, all while keeping an eye on everything going on at the bar, and being responsible for all cash and alcohol (and all that occurs in the bar on her shift, usually)! We do all this with a smile and try to insure that everyone within a diverse group of people is having a good time. (But not TOO good of a time! I.E. Not overserving, no barfights, etc!) I could keep going forever on the intricacies of the job, so suffice it to say I really didn't appreciate that nasy little comment, Amy
And here's my reply:
No, Loraine, there are other humorless female bartenders writing me as well.Read the next line: "For some guys, she’s the one woman who will not only speak to them but listen like she’s actually interested."
Do you really think all your regulars come to the bar because they haven't figured out that they can get a whole six-pack for the price of a beer? A number of these guys are probably paying you for your attention. For their fantasy relationship with you. That's what guys get from strippers, too.
I interviewed a friend of mine who is a bartender for this column (who, by the way, has a sense of humor and thought the line was hilarious). She told me stories about, for example, how she once offhandly mentioned that her back hurt. 10 minutes later, two guys were back with bottles of aspirin. You think they do that for the guys who bartend?
P.S. If anybody should be insulted, it's strippers, by comments like yours. What's wrong with a woman taking her clothes off for a living? Free market, consenting adults? Is there something wrong with a woman modeling for Vogue for a living? What if she takes her top off in Vogue and earns money for it? Where do you draw the line, Loraine?
Welcome to America The Humorless.
FYI, you'll find the exposed titties in French Vogue.
The Church Is Evil
As, I believe, Marion commented on this blog not long ago, it's wise to use the word "evil" sparingly. And I do. These days, I just bring it out for special occasions, like when I read stories about how the Church is lobbying against extending the amount of time victims of child sexual abuse have to pursue justice against their abusers. From Bill Frogameni on Alternet:
Although such legislation isn't meant to apply only to victims of clerical abuse, opposition has overwhelmingly come from the Catholic Church. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops claims not to hold a position on retroactive suits, but bishops' conferences in individual states have lobbied vigorously against them. Last year, a bill proposed by Colorado State Senate President Joan Fitzgerald to extend civil statutes and create a window period was effectively killed after Colorado's bishops hired lobbyists and had letters read in church invoking the fear of bankruptcy and urging congregants to call their representatives. "It was horrific," says Fitzgerald. "They pulled out all the stops ... It seemed amazing to me -- their lack of concern for their flock and their laity."Fitzgerald, herself Catholic, believes that concerns about unfair suits and Church bankruptcy are red herrings. The real agenda, she thinks, is to insulate Church leaders from further public scrutiny over abuse and cover-ups. Bishops are required by Church law to keep records of scandal secret, so documentation of abuse often remains in files controlled by top diocesan officials. Barbara Blaine, founder of the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP), agrees with Fitzgerald that bishops' real fear is having these documents exposed. "More than anything else, they are fixated on avoiding depositions and courtroom testimony where they'll be treated like regular citizens instead of royalty, and where they'll have to explain decades of secrecy and recklessness and corruption," Blaine says.
Retroactive civil action affords a unique opportunity to identify perpetrators who escaped criminal penalties and may still be abusive, says Marci Hamilton, a professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law and author of God vs.The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2005). "If you don't extend the statute of limitations and you don't create a window, it's just a given you won't know about 90 percent of the perpetrators out there," says Hamilton, who has testified in several states on the constitutionality of retroactive civil windows.
SNAP's Blaine refuses to accept a system that lets child abusers -- and those who protected them -- off the hook. "Many prosecutors are timid and many laws are antiquated," she says, "so [Church] cover-ups will stay covered up unless child sex victims are given a chance to seek justice and expose crimes in court."
Oh yeah, and even the Pope's in on the obstruction of justice!
LYT Goes Cover-Boy
Word has it, he didn't even have to get Botox first.
Let's See How Yee-Hah Iraq War They All Are When Their Kids Are Up For The Draft
From CNN.com, President Bush's new war adviser says our all-volunteer military is stressed by frequent tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, making it worth considering a return to the draft:
"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered.""And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," said Lute, who is sometimes referred to as the "Iraq war czar." It was his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.
President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a "major policy shift" and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.
"The president's position is that the all-volunteer military meets the needs of the country and there is no discussion of a draft. Gen. Lute made that point as well," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
In the interview, Lute also said that "Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well."
Tell that to the sergeant in Tikrit who just wrote me. He served for 12 months, and just had his tour extended, and now his wife of a year is lonely and "attracted" to somebody else.
Hooker Chic Comes To The Beverly Center
Hint: if you don't want people to suspect you're working the Boulevard instead of the dinner shift at Applebee's avoid wearing short shorts and heels.
You Can't Be In What You Don't Enter
There was a hue and cry from black readers of the Raleigh News & Observer over a fall fashion shoot that only included white teens. Gasp! How could they do such a thing?! Well, because only white teens showed up wanting to be included. In a piece mea culp-ily headlined "Minority omission damages a good feature," Ted Vaden writes for the paper:
...There was an uh-oh moment when seven teens turned up for the photo shoot: All were white girls. At that point, it was too late in the production schedule to find more models or change the story, editors said, so The N&O's Features Department went ahead Monday with the Life, etc. fashion front called "Students of Style," complete with full-length photos of the stylish but un-diverse students.The reaction from readers was swift:
* "I was stunned that in 2007 this newspaper would feature seven girls who look exactly the same. Where are the girls of color? There were no Latinas, no African-Americans, and no Asians represented. No girls who don't fit the 'typically pretty' image!" --Neva Bartholomew, Chapel Hill.
* "It's difficult to believe that every respondent to the call for area fashionistas was Caucasian with shoulder-length straight hair and predictably trendy fashion sense. If so, perhaps the editors of Life, etc. should take the hint and write articles that appeal to a more diverse readership." -- Claire McGarry, Raleigh.
And on and on. The reporter and editors involved acknowledge that the feature turned out unfortunately and that they would handle it differently if they had a do-over. "I think perhaps if we had started the process earlier, we could have been prepared to deal with it," said Pop Culture Editor Adrienne Johnson Martin.
There were several factors working against this project, she said. First, school is out for most students, so the paper had difficulty finding teens to model their fashion choices. The solution was to post a "fetch" in the Life, etc. section inviting high school students to participate. The problem with that was that the pool of participants then became self-selecting, and no minorities selected themselves.
Martin said it was too bad that race ended up being readers' focus, because the project otherwise had pretty good diversity, with girls from five schools in three counties wearing styles ranging from discount store to boutique.
...Linda Williams, an N&O assistant managing editor, says there are some subtle reasons behind minorities' unwillingness to participate in a newspaper feature like the back-to-school story. The self-selection for that story, she said, presumably was done not by the students but by their mothers, who are the readers of the paper. In the black community, she said, mothers would be less likely to encourage their daughters to participate. "There's a concern about the exposure of bodies of young black women, because of things going on in popular culture," said Williams, who is African-American. "For them to do it, there has to be a lot of trust."
Oh, please. You don't enter, you don't appear. And you don't get to complain that the paper didn't show people who look like you. Do we really need to have affirmative action for voluntary photo shoots...send some of those white girls who want to be in the photo home, and force black girls in off the street who don't want to participate?
By the way, I didn't need my mother telling me what was in the paper because I read the paper every day when I was growing up -- in fact, I read the two papers my parents subscribed to, Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News; first, because I loved reading, and because I wanted to know what was going on in the world. Had I seen an ad for a fashion contest at either paper, I would've walked, crawled or flown downtown to be in the shot.
Of course, redheads are often unrepresented in magazines and newspapers. Do you think I have a case? (At very least, for a lot of complaining?)
I'm reminded of a talk I had with a professor who was in charge of one of the early evolutionary psychology conferences, in the 90s. In the spirt of having female researchers "well-represented," not just in presenting papers in small groups, but in giving the big talks to the entire group, he invited woman after woman to do one of the big talks. All turned him down. Even when he begged. So sometimes, when it's all men doing the talking in some professional situation, maybe somebody's keeping the chicks out...or maybe, just maybe, many of the chicks don't want in in quite the same way the men do.
Do note that I say this as a grandstanding, floor-hogging, mike-grabbing, radio-or-tv-show-of-my-own coveting, loudmouthed broad. If they're taking volunteers, or even if they're not, I'm volunteering. But, it's my sense that that women just aren't as aggressive as men in a lot of venues. Why should they be? First, women almost always have far less testosterone, the aggression chemical. And men, I believe, are fighters and business-world fighters largely to get chicks. While men, these days, increasingly go for smart women, "pretty" still matters more than "successful" to a whole lot of men, and women know that. And a lot of men find women who are successful threatening, and an exit risk (as in, they're more likely to leave).
Also, I think there are a lot of women out there who think to themselves, "Gee, if it gets rough in the work world, I'll just marry some guy and become a Brentwood (fill in your Easy Acres 'burb here) mom." Not because they're somehow morally less than men but because they can and they know it. Guys simply don't have that option -- both because they can't get pregnant, and because they know that chicks don't generally go for the guys who are semi-employed at the gas station. So, doing what it takes to be a Big Man On Campus in the work world is understandably much more essential to a lot of men than to a lot of women.
How To Prevent Women From Wanting To Have Sex With You
Listen to fashion designers. Alexis Petridis writes in the Guardian:
...Designers persist with male leggings, news of the fact that wearing them makes you look like a cross between Timothy Claypole and something off the sex offenders register having clearly failed to reach their ateliers. On the catwalk, Calvin Klein teamed them with shirts and blazers, the mind-boggling implication seemingly that you should wear them to the office, genital bulge and all. And one commentator said, "Leggings can also be matched with the extreme short shorts trend." You're probably thinking the same thing as me: what extreme short shorts trend? For the sake of all our mental equilibria, I shall refrain from investigating that particular sartorial avenue.
Stupid fashions for women include the empire waist dress, which eliminates, in the minds of men, any suspicion that you might have one. What's the idea here, appealing to men looking for women who look like some other guy has already knocked them up?
Why I Don't Drink Diet Coke
Tastes like plastic, first of all. But, also because I figured out a long time ago that eating diet foods is counterproductive. Low-fat pastry, for example, is packed with sugar and no fat to make you feel full. So, shortly after eating it, you're not just hungry, you're raging bitch, get the fuck out of the way so I can get a donut hungry. A much better idea is eating small portions of high-nutrient food with fat in it. But, that's just Amythink. Here's a study that bears my thinking out. From an article by Alice Park in Time about a study in the journal Obesity that suggests our bodies can't be fooled by diet or low-cal versions of foods:
Led by David Pierce, researchers at the University of Alberta studied the eating habits of young rats, and found that they tended to overeat when they were fed "diet" foods. Though the new study was conducted in animals, it adds to a growing body of research in humans that suggests a diet-foods paradox: the more low-calorie (or even zero-calorie) sodas and foods you consume, the more your body demands payback for the calories it was deprived.Pierce and his team started with the assumption that animals, and young animals in particular, are adapted to crave high-calorie foods that are packed with fat and carbohydrates, the crucial biological fuel that rapidly growing juveniles need. Using classic Pavlovian conditioning techniques, Pierce trained his rats to associate low-calorie foods with a "diet" taste, and high-calorie foods with a different taste. So, when the rats were fed a high-calorie food that had been flavored with the diet taste, their brains assumed that their bodies were running low on calories. These animals then overate at their next meal in an effort to refuel and make up for the lost energy. "Animals have the ability to sense the caloric value of food they take in," says Pierce. "We found out that an animal can learn to use flavors to predict calories in an attempt to achieve energy balance."
This same phenomenon could explain similar results in recent studies of dieters, says Pierce. Two years ago, scientists at the University of Texas reported in an eight-year study that for every can of diet soda that a person drank, he raised his risk of being overweight by 41%, compared to a 30% increase in drinkers of regular, sugared drinks. Earlier this year, another study of diet-soda drinkers came to a similar conclusion, this time about metabolic syndrome, the dangerous constellation of risk factors, such as obesity, high cholesterol and insulin resistance, that increases the likelihood of heart disease. In this report, part of the 60-year-old Framingham Heart Study, researchers found that soda drinkers, regardless of whether they consumed diet or regular beverages, had a 48% higher risk of metabolic syndrome than non-soda drinkers.
At the time, even the study authors conceded that it was impossible to implicate diet drinks completely, since it's possible that those who drank low-calorie beverages were already overweight or at higher risk of metabolic syndrome, and chose the diet drinks in an effort to get healthier. But Pierce's work hints that a more basic, biological mechanism may be at work. The animals in his study were able to predict the amount of calories in a food based on taste, demonstrating that the body uses cues like taste and texture to make sure it's getting enough fuel. Just as Pierce's rats were fooled into thinking they hadn't absorbed enough calories after eating diet chow, people are preprogrammed to anticipate sugary, high-calorie fulfillment when drinking a soda or noshing on a sweet-tasting snack. So, the diet versions of these foods may leave them unsatisfied, driving them to eat more to make up the difference.
Financial Advice For The Hearing Impaired
Cramer loses his shit...
The sad thing is, it sounds like thousands of people may be losing their shirts...and then some...in the sub-prime crash.
Or...is this the case, as commenter Zentec writes on Consumerist?
There won't be thousands of foreclosures. Either the mortgage holders will rewrite the terms of the existing mortgage or the foreclosure department at the bank will become so overburdened that they can't possibly manage to take on any more foreclosures.The likely scenario is that at some point, the bank will walk up to those about to be foreclosed and say "what will it take for you to keep the house?" "Oh, you need a monthly payment of $600 per month?" "Done."
Troy F. responds:
And *THAT* is what really pisses me off. Once the results of the collective stupidity hits critical mass, the people who did the WRONG thing will be rewarded while those of us who did the right thing will get to absorb the damage. I am tempted to call my lender up and say "HEY! I bought within my means - maybe you should reward me instead of some deadbeat." $20k off my principle might placate me.
Julie Creswell and Michael J. de la Merced write for The New York Times that the fallout from the mortgage loan business is being felt far and wide -- even in the silverware business, where Oneida "was forced to withdraw a planned offering of $120 million in high-yield bonds to investors as the credit markets froze up seemingly overnight":
If the deal had been offered just a month earlier, said Andrew G. Church, Oneida’s chief financial officer, the company would have had no trouble raising the money. “But it happened so quickly,” he said. “We’ve never seen anything as quick as this.”The sudden change in the financial atmosphere is emerging as the toughest test yet for Ben S. Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. While the Fed is not expected to alter short-term interest rates at its monetary policy meeting today, Mr. Bernanke is being pressed by many on Wall Street to emulate his predecessor Alan Greenspan and quickly open the door to a future rate cut. But others argue that he should resist any easing and let the market sort out the winners and losers rather than help bail out troubled borrowers and lenders.
An American 11-Year-Old
Which taxpayers should pay for children to go to school? Well, how about those who actually have them?
Yes, I think parents, except for those who are very poor, should pay for their own children to go to school. (I'm for the rest of us picking up the cost only for the very poor, in hopes of maintaining an educated populace -- necessary for maintaining a democracy.)
As for publicly funded schooling, perhaps if parents were paying for it directly there'd be more oversight, and I wouldn't get e-mail after e-mail on the level of this one from Sunday -- from an 11-year-old American girl:
Dear Amy,I need advice see I have a freind that is a boy.But I seem to have mixed feeling about him.But I was afarid to make a move.But now it's to late because he moved.But all summer I thougt about him and what we could have been.What should I do?My freinds all said I lke him and he liked me but we both denied it.Knowing we did.Now every time a flirt with a boy I think of him.
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fighting in flirtion
I think she meant "flirtation."
Women Are Jerks
I got yet another one of those amazing letters in which a guy complains it's not fair that women don't ask him out -- yet another guy who mistakes "equal under the law" for biologically the same. Here's that letter, from the most recent Advice Goddess column I posted:
I’m a 37-year-old single, never-married man. I have a decent career, own my own home, and I’m debt-free. What could possibly be the problem? Women have never asked me out, offered to buy me a drink, or even opened a door for me. The only women who’ve acknowledged me this year are two Realtors who offered to sell my home (of course, for a fee). I’m tired of asking women out because it’s us men who have to figure out whether a woman’s married, seeing someone, or is a lesbian. This past year, I’ve asked out several women only to have them snub me or give me the wrong number. Now, my only revenge is to never patronize female-owned businesses. Women have never done anything for me, and I will pass my philosophy on to other men, because I’ve just had it!--Women Are Jerks
My reply starts:
So, for you, going fishing must mean standing on the dock holding a frying pan over the water, snarling, “Why hasn’t a trout leapt into my pan?!”
The rest is here.
UPDATE: I totally forgot...this guy was the one who wrote me on the teddy bear stationery!
"The Fog Comes On Little..."
Best I could do on short notice, what can I say?
Menial Streets
Does waiting tables as a teenager make you a better person? With teen paid employment at an all-time low, and kids jetting off to learning camps and exotic locations, then into internships, The Wall Street Journal's Kay S. Hymowitz mourns the death-throes of the menial summer job:
There's little question that the demise of the summer job is due in part to globalization. For one thing, with millions of low-skilled immigrants around, service industries don't need to rely on kid labor the way they used to. Lawn-care companies and fast-food restaurants can now employ a more permanent adult staff. And, according to Neil Howe, an expert on age cohorts, kids are so used to seeing immigrants doing that sort of work that they assume "I don't have to mess with food or cleaning stuff up." Ironically, the same kids whose parents are paying $4,000 for them to go to Oaxaca to build houses for the poor can't imagine working for money next to Mexican immigrants at the local Dunkin' Donuts.....But as in all things in contemporary society, internships are being defined downward. Now teenagers who used to sweep the drug-store floor are being "introduced to office culture," expanding their "skill sets," working with new technologies and beginning a lifetime of networking. This is what is called "real world experience."
But are internships really more reality-based than sweeping floors? Worried about running afoul of labor laws that might require them to pay interns a salary, many companies are insisting that kids get college credit for their experience; Vault says there has been at least a 30% jump over the past five years in the number of such companies. After weeks of cold-calling and emailing, my own daughter, a freshman at Skidmore College, landed a prized internship for this summer at a teen fashion magazine. My husband and I were duly proud, until we realized we had to pay a lot of money to the college bursar for the privilege of having her work -- meaning sort dresses and fetch shoes -- for free. We also had to cough up money for an office-appropriate wardrobe, subway fare and lunch allowance every day. If that's real-world experience, then Disneyland is the real America.
This means that internships are largely for rich kids -- and therein lies another problem. The menial summer job gave many kids their first paycheck and the feeling of independence that came with it. It was also inherently democratic. For eight hours a day, at any rate, working-class and middle-class kids were in the same boat. They all had to learn that life wasn't always entertaining. They had to wait tables for people who could be less than polite -- people who sometimes reminded them of themselves. With many of them in four-year colleges (where close to 75% of their classmates come from homes at the top quarter of the income scale), without a draft and now without menial jobs, privileged kids almost never meet up with their less well-off peers.
The menial summer job, in other words, was an exercise in humbling self-discipline. It should come as no surprise, then, that this is exactly what a lot of managers complain is missing in today's interns. Business Web sites and magazines are filled with stories of kids who have no clue that their exposed navel rings or iPods are less than suitable officewear, and that overconfidence and complaining are not the best way to ingratiate yourself with a boss. "This is the largest, healthiest, most pampered generation in history," Mary Crane, a Denver-based consultant, told the New York Times recently. "They were expected to spend their spare time making the varsity team." But maybe there's something to be said for serving its members fries and shakes one summer instead.
In case you're wondering, I worked in bagel joint as a kid...saving money I later used to pay expenses on an internship at UPI in D.C. I actually got a lot out of a very short time I spent working on a kibbutz -- Yad Mordechai, near Ashkelon -- first picking pears, and then working in the kibbutz' roadside restaurant, after I wrote an essay that won me a free trip to Israel.
As for building decent human beings, the teen shit job thing is a good idea, but I think you have to start much younger -- letting little kids know they aren't the gold-plated shit.
I'm reminded of the brat we saw at the Apple store on Thursday night. She was about 5, I think, carrying a bag with THREE of those obscene looking and obscenely expensive American Girl dolls. Her parents were fiddling with the iPhone and, when she whined, "Mo-hhhhmm!" her mother didn't immediately whirl around to immediately attend to her needs. Naturally, the brat just...kicked her mother in the shins! And kept kicking...and whining. Finally, the mother finally turned around and told her to wait a moment. They later walked out of the store, the brat whining all the while.
Had that been me, I'd still be grounded. At 43.
Feeding The Hand That Bites Us
Here we go again! Yes, perish forbid we should learn our lesson from propping up the whackos running the various countries in the Middle East. David S. Cloud writes for The New York Time$ that the Bush administration wants to sell a $20 billion arms package to the Saudis -- just "when some U.S. officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq." (You could say that, considering all the nutbags they're giving a little pat on the butt when they totter over the border to Iraq to go blow themselves, innocent Iraqis, and American soldiers up.) A quote from Cloud's piece:
The officials said the plan to bolster the militaries of Persian Gulf countries is part of an American strategy to contain the growing power of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies. Officials from the State Department and the Pentagon agreed to outline the terms of the deal after some details emerged from closed briefings this week on Capitol Hill....''The role of the Sunni Arab neighbors is to send a positive, affirmative message to moderates in Iraq in government that the neighbors are with you,'' a senior State Department official told reporters in a conference call on Friday. More specifically, the official said, the United States wants the gulf states to make clear to Sunnis engaged in violence in Iraq that such actions are ''killing your future.''
Are they expected to accomplish this by dropping off little pamphlets with smiley faces at every house...or what? What is this, arms deals by Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? There's more:
In addition to promising an increase in American military aid to Israel, the Pentagon is seeking to ease Israel's concerns over the proposed weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by asking the Saudis to accept restrictions on the range, size and location of the satellite-guided bombs, including a commitment not to store the weapons at air bases close to Israeli territory, the officials said.
Forgetting the naivete here...maybe it would be more in our interest to send over driving instructors for all those ladies who aren't allowed to drive, and other steps toward modernity, rather than just arming the country so many of the terrorists come from to its tablecloth-headed teeth?
Mormon Racism
Read yesterday in a Vanity Fair piece by Hitchens about "the official racism" of the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: "a policy of exclusion" of blacks "that persisted until 1978." This led me to look up what Mormonism says about blacks, and I found some very ugly stuff at Rethinking Mormonism:
Mormon Racism as doctrine, not merely folklore or traditionMormon scripture: God curses bad races with black skin
2 Nephi 5:21
21 And the Lord had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.Alma 3: 6 "And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men."
3 Nephi 2:14-15
14 And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites;
15 And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites;...Official LDS Church Publications Explain Racist LDS Scriptures
"We will first inquire into the results of the approbation or displeasure of God upon a people, starting with the belief that a black skin is a mark of the curse of heaven placed upon some portions of mankind. Some, however, will argue that a black skin is not a curse, nor a white skin a blessing. In fact, some have been so foolish as to believe and say that a black skin is a blessing, and that the negro is the finest type of a perfect man that exists on the earth; but to us such teachings are foolishness. We understand that when God made man in his own image and pronounced him very good, that he made him white. We have no record of any of God's favored servants being of a black race....every angel who ever brought a message of God's mercy to man was beautiful to look upon, clad in the purest white and with a countenance bright as the noonday sun.”
- The Juvenile Instructor, Vol. 3, page 1...Some church members make the mistake of dismissing the racist statements of 19th-century Mormon leaders as "their own opinion," "not official doctrine," "products of their times," etc.
Those same church members assert that the only "official doctrine" is the Standard Works and official statements of the First Presidency, and that if some leaders said something that didn't come from those sources, it isn't "binding on the membership," and it isn't "canon" or "official doctrine."
However, an official statement of the LDS Church First Presidency issued on August 17, 1951, reads:
"The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the pre-mortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality, and that while the details of this principle have not been made known, the principle itself indicates that the coming to this earth and taking on mortality is a privilege that is given to those who maintained their first estate; and that the worth of the privilege is so great that spirits are willing to come to earth and take on bodies no matter what the handicap may be as to the kind of bodies they are to secure; and that among the
handicaps, failure of the right to enjoy in mortality the blessings of the priesthood is a handicap which spirits are willing to assume in order that they might come to earth. Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes.....""Man will be punished for his own sins and not for Adam's transgression. If this is carried further, it would imply that the Negro is punished or alloted to a certain position on this earth, not because of Cain's transgression, but came to earth through the loins of Cain because of his failure to achieve other stature in the spirit world."
- William E. Berrett's "The Church and the Negroid People," pp. 16-1
More here, in the Jamaica Observer, by Mark Wignall, from 2005:
My telephone call two weeks ago to the local arm of the church was quite specific in its request. Backed up by an e-mail to the organisation, I wanted to know the date of arrival in Jamaica, the membership and details of any outreach programme in force. Most importantly, I wanted to know why an organisation grounded in white supremacy would want Jamaica as one of its permanent postings considering that 95 per cent of Jamaicans are black-skinned.Well, the alarm bells went off immediately. District president Kevin Brown, (a young black Jamaican) adopted a defensive stance on the telephone. After informing me that the president of the Jamaica branch, Leroy Turner (a white American), was off the island, he followed up with, "You people are always writing about us, saying we are racist and practise polygamy. Ian Boyne and you have written all sorts of things about us which are untrue." I stopped him.
"Mr Brown, I have never written anything about the Mormons," I said. He apologised. The next day I met with president Turner and district president Mr Brown at the church's headquarters. Our meeting lasted only 30 minutes. My main focus in the short interview was the church's stance on racism.
At the end of it, I left with a copy of the Book of Mormon and nothing to convince me that the anti-racist positions of Turner and Brown, men who I believe are fairly decent human beings, if not the sharpest tools in the box, could counter the very racist words written in the very book they had presented to me.
...On June 13, 1978 The Salt Lake Tribune reported the following: "President Kimball refused to discuss the revelation that changed the Church's 148 year-old policy against ordination of Blacks, saying it was a personal thing. Kimball said the revelation came at this time because conditions and people have changed. It's a different world than it was 20 or 25 years ago. The world is ready for it, he said."
...When the church received the priesthood 'revelation' in 1978, were the past statements of these important 'apostles' and 'prophets' made redundant? Was there ever a wholesale condemnation by the church of these virulently racist attacks on black people? No, there was not, and the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the doctrine of the curse of a black skin is still very much a part of the church's position in the 21st century.
It seems to me that not only was the church forged in infamy, but in a world far removed from the racism of 19th century America, the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has made only patronising concessions on the issue of skin colour.
Too much of the origins of the church and the doctrines in the Book of Mormon are steeped in 'the curse.' It cannot be reversed as that would make Joseph Smith's 1830 'revelations' a bigger curse to the present church leaders. And that would negate everything else that the church stands for.
I'm guessing Mormons (like those running for president) will tell you they pick and choose what they believe and live by in their texts -- same as Christians aren't stoning their neighbors for adultery. How do these religious types manage to justify believing in one thing as "the word" while rejecting so many other words in their text?
Highly recommend picking up Vanity Fair, by the way, for the Hitchens piece, about his often-hilarious experiences on his book tour through the states of the faithful.
It's Starting To Look Like There's A Lot Of "I" In Giving
I've long thought that there's a lot of self-interest in what we see as altruism, although I saw it as something giving a leg up to self-concept (and in turn, confidence) as well as being a social, uh, lubricant. Geoffrey Miller, author of The Mating Mind, a pretty fascinating book, has coauthored a study on altruism (with ASU's Vladas Griskevicius, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). Although they are using on-paper hypotheticals (pictures of buildings and hotties) to spark test subjects' imaginations, their study suggests support for the notion that, as the Economist puts it, "Charity is just as 'selfish' as self-indulgence":
They divided a bunch of volunteers into two groups. Those in one were put into what the researchers hoped would be a “romantic mindset” by being shown pictures of attractive members of the opposite sex. They were each asked to write a description of a perfect date with one of these people. The unlucky members of the other group were shown pictures of buildings and told to write about the weather.The participants were then asked two things. The first was to imagine they had $5,000 in the bank. They could spend part or all of it on various luxury items such as a new car, a dinner party at a restaurant or a holiday in Europe. They were also asked what fraction of a hypothetical 60 hours of leisure time during the course of a month they would devote to volunteer work.
The results were just what the researchers hoped for. In the romantically primed group, the men went wild with the Monopoly money. Conversely, the women volunteered their lives away. Those women continued, however, to be skinflints, and the men remained callously indifferent to those less fortunate than themselves. Meanwhile, in the other group there was little inclination either to profligate spending or to good works. Based on this result, it looks as though the sexes do, indeed, have different strategies for showing off. Moreover, they do not waste their resources by behaving like that all the time. Only when it counts sexually are men profligate and women helpful.
That result was confirmed by the second experiment which, instead of looking at the amount of spending and volunteering, looked at how conspicuous it was. After all, there is little point in producing a costly signal if no one sees it.
As predicted, romantically primed men wanted to buy items that they could wear or drive, rather than things to be kept at home. Their motive, therefore, was not mere acquisitiveness. Similarly, romantically primed women volunteered for activities such as working in a shelter for the homeless, rather than spending an afternoon alone picking up rubbish in a park. For both sexes, however, those in an unromantic mood were indifferent to the public visibility of their choices.
These two studies support the idea, familiar from everyday life, that what women want in a partner is material support while men require self-sacrifice. Conspicuous consumption allows men to demonstrate the former. Blatant benevolence allows women to demonstrate the latter. There is, however, a confounding observation. The most blatant benevolence of all, that of billionaires giving away their fortunes and heroes giving away (or at least risking) their lives, is almost entirely a male phenomenon.
To examine this, the team did another experiment. They found that when requests for benevolence were financial, rather than time-consuming, romantically primed men were happy to chip in extravagantly. Giving money to charity is thus more akin to conspicuous consumption than it is to blatant benevolence. The primed men were also willing (or at least said they were willing) to act heroically as well as spend—but only if the action suggested was life-threatening. Women, romantically primed or not, weren't.
The "costly signaling" mentioned in the Economist piece is detailed in Zahavi and Zahavi's The Handicap Principle, another very interesting ev psych book I have. Here's more on The Handicap Principle from Wikipedia (sorry, it's late, and I'm on deadline again), which gives examples like the boy peacock's tail (the bigger it is, the more attractive it is to girl peahens, yet the more it adds to the likelihood that the peacock will be eaten by predators):
The central idea is that sexually selected traits function like conspicuous consumption signalling the ability to afford to squander a resource simply by squandering. Receivers know that the signal indicates quality because inferior quality signallers cannot afford to produce such wastefully extravagant signals.
My favorite example from the book is the gazelle stotting, which is also mentioned in the Wikipedia piece. It goes like this: Hyenas eat gazelles. When gazelles see hyenas arrive on the plain, the scrawny gazelles book. The biggest, strongest, fittest gazelles stay where they are and bounce up and down -- a behavior called "stotting" -- as if to say, "Yo, dawg...you are so not going to catch me that I'm going to hang around, have a cigarette and an espresso, and then maybe consider booking. And, according to research, just as signaling theory predicts, the hyenas chase the gazelles that do not stott.
Or Just Drive By, Open Your Wallet, And Let The Dollar Bills Blow Away
I guess, after "How To Pick Up Girls" (and my favorite part, "have THEM call YOU") you graduate to "How to Pick Up Topless Dancers." Here's some of what you'll learn!
* How to get "free" table dances and how to get her to show you her "bush."
* How to talk to topless dancers and opening lines that really capture her attention and make her desire you.
* How to successfully give out your phone number to dancers. This method works like crazy.
* The best days of the week for you to pick up topless dancers and which two nights to avoid.
* Why it's much easier to take advantage of the young and inexperienced topless dancer.
But, wait, there's more...from The Onion's "Hot Sexy Girls Waiting To Talk To Guys Just Like You":
VAN NUYS, CA—According to an announcement broadcast on late-night cable television Saturday, hot sexy girls are, at this very moment, waiting to talk to guys just like you...."These girls aren't looking for just any guys," Hegl said. "They are interested in a certain type of guy, namely, guys who have working touch-tone telephones and possess the motor skills necessary to dial a phone number off their television screen into the aforementioned telephone without error."
...Chat-Time employee and hot sexy girl Candi Lux agreed with Hegl's assessment. "I just love talking to guys who have cable TV and watch it late at night," she said, reclining in a bubble bath. "I just find it so attractive when they watch a phone number come up on the bottom of their screen and then dial it."
And finally, here's "How To Annoy Women Into Fucking You":
photo by Gregg Sutter
Wishful Thinking Collides With Reality
Well, who woulda thunk it...after all we've done for them in Iraq, Sunni and Shiite aren't exactly joining hands and singing Kumbayah.
Canadian MP and former Harvard poly sci prof Michael Ignatieff writes for The New York Times Magazine on errors in judgment on Iraq stemming from a failure to grasp what it's like out there in the real world:
We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.The people who truly showed good judgment on Iraq predicted the consequences that actually ensued but also rightly evaluated the motives that led to the action. They did not necessarily possess more knowledge than the rest of us. They labored, as everyone did, with the same faulty intelligence and lack of knowledge of Iraq’s fissured sectarian history. What they didn’t do was take wishes for reality. They didn’t suppose, as President Bush did, that because they believed in the integrity of their own motives everyone else in the region would believe in it, too. They didn’t suppose that a free state could arise on the foundations of 35 years of police terror. They didn’t suppose that America had the power to shape political outcomes in a faraway country of which most Americans knew little. They didn’t believe that because America defended human rights and freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo it had to be doing so in Iraq. They avoided all these mistakes.
I made some of these mistakes and then a few of my own. The lesson I draw for the future is to be less influenced by the passions of people I admire — Iraqi exiles, for example — and to be less swayed by my emotions. I went to northern Iraq in 1992. I saw what Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds. From that moment forward, I believed he had to go. My convictions had all the authority of personal experience, but for that very reason, I let emotion carry me past the hard questions, like: Can Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites hold together in peace what Saddam Hussein held together by terror? I should have known that emotions in politics, as in life, tend to be self-justifying and in matters of ultimate political judgment, nothing, not even your own feelings, should be held immune from the burden of justification through cross-examination and argument.
Good judgment in politics, it turns out, depends on being a critical judge of yourself. It was not merely that the president did not take the care to understand Iraq. He also did not take the care to understand himself. The sense of reality that might have saved him from catastrophe would have taken the form of some warning bell sounding inside, alerting him that he did not know what he was doing. But then, it is doubtful that warning bells had ever sounded in him before. He had led a charmed life, and in charmed lives warning bells do not sound.
People with good judgment listen to warning bells within. Prudent leaders force themselves to listen equally to advocates and opponents of the course of action they are thinking of pursuing. They do not suppose that their own good intentions will guarantee good results. They do not suppose they know all they need to know. If power corrupts, it corrupts this sixth sense of personal limitation on which prudence relies.
Guess Her Sweatpants Were At The Cleaner's
Saturday's eye-candy award goes to this lanky British babe I spotted in a Santa Monica café.
Unfortunately, my photo doesn't capture the sparkle of this girl's floaty dress, which was made of the kind of fabric used for eveningwear, and which nabbed quite a few eyeballs indoors.
Sex Ed Like You Never Heard It Before
You hooked on “the penis power,” girl? Alexyss Tylor talks "penis power" and “vagina power.”
“This man won’t even buy you...uh, some shrimp from Long John Silver’s, and that plate, what...$2.99? He’ll give you a mouth full of sperm, a rectum full of sperm...”
“He breakin’ her down, man..he is screwin’ her into submission, he’s screwin’ her into slavery, by using the penis as a weapon to break her ass down!”
Best Headline About Joel Sappell Front-Pager On Matt Drudge In The LA Times
Kate Coe at Fishbowl/LA writes:
BREAKING: Joel Sappell Tinkers with Large Plastic Box on Desk, Presses Buttons and Finds Matt Drudge
Just Because Your Weird Superstitions Are Older...
Doesn't mean there's any more reason to believe in them. It's all weird -- Christianity, Judaism, any belief, sans evidence, in god, and all the rest...burning bushes, the Red Sea parting into a giant sidewalk, and all the Jesus mythology taken as real. On Slate, Mark Oppenheimer writes about Scientology, "a bizarre faith invented by a sci-fi hack":
Some Americans may consider Scientology perhaps a cult, maybe a violent sect, and certainly very weird. And, like many, I find the Church of Scientology odd, to say the least. But Scientology is no more bizarre than other religions. And it's the similarities between Scientology and, say, Christianity and Judaism that make us so uncomfortable. We need to hate Scientology, lest we hate ourselves....But when it comes to Scientology, there's a hunger for the negative. I suspect that's because Scientology evinces an acute case of what Freud called the narcissism of small differences: We're made most uncomfortable by that which is most like us. And everything of which Scientology is accused is an exaggerated form of what more "normal" religions do. Does Scientology charge money for services? Yes—but the average Mormon, tithing 10 percent annually, pays more money to his church than all but the most committed Scientologists pay to theirs. Jews buying "tickets" to high-holiday services can easily part with thousands of dollars a year per family. Is Scientology authoritarian and cultlike? Yes—but mainly at the higher levels, which is true of many religions. There may be pressure for members of Scientology's elite "Sea Organization" not to drop out, but pressure is also placed on Catholics who may want to leave some cloistered orders. Does Scientology embrace pseudoscience? Absolutely—but its "engrams" and "E-meter" are no worse than what's propagated by your average Intelligent Design enthusiast. In fact, its very silliness makes it less pernicious.
And what about the "Xenu" creation myth anti-Scientologists are so fond of? Scientologists have promised me that it is simply not part of their theology—some say they learned about Xenu from South Park. Several ex-Scientologists have sworn the opposite. Given his frequent conflation of science fiction, theology, and incoherent musings, I think that Hubbard may have taught that eons ago, the galactic warlord Xenu dumped 13.5 trillion beings in volcanoes on Earth, blowing them up and scattering their souls. But I'm not sure that it is an important part of Scientology's teachings. And if Xenu is part of the church's theology, it's no stranger than what's in Genesis. It's just newer and so seems weirder.
As a regular reader of this blog writes about this piece by Oppenheimer:
It reminds me of my parents’ recent trip to Brooklyn to attend my cousin’s orthodox wedding. All they could talk about was how weird everything was about the event. I told them that, as an atheist, it’s all weird to me and they’re just splitting hairs.
Free Market-ing Your Beliefs
Sigh...seems yet another bunny hugger group is getting their membership to deluge me with their sprout-fed ire about my column, Splendor In The Wheat Grass:
From: "Carolina Animal Action"To: "ar news" Subject: [AR-News] (US) syndicated columnist urges woman to dump her veg boyfriend Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 16:36:43 -0400 Note that the writer agrees that eating meat is morally wrong and is advised to dump the guy and eat meat.
Here's my exchange with one of them. His e-mail:
In a message dated 8/2/07 1:48:43 PM, greeninkpub@sbcglobal.net writes:I do hope you're willing to see the meat-eating thing differently. If humankind had not ruined the earth for all of us, there would be no need for internat'l space stations and key boxes.
Most humans have a warped perspective on "superiority." Isn't living in peace, in a world without pollution, criminality, torture and hatred preferable to one that has been held hostage by one egocentrically controlled species?
If it helps to understand what I'm talking about, compare our species' control of the earth to the Bush administration's hold on our country..
Who are you to give this kind of advice? Smarten up...before it's (way) too late.
Max Green
Vallejo Calif.
My response:
Feel free to comment on the entry on my blog -- if you have substantive reasons why you think meat-eating is wrong. Furthermore, she (the woman who wrote for advice) didn't think eating meat was morally wrong -- people say things to "get along," as she was.You believe it's wrong to eat meat; I believe something different. If you truly believe this, why not buy up cows and other food animals and let them roam free until they die? Too costly to put your money where your mouth is? Same goes for people who are anti-choice for abortion. They're free to pay pregnant women to have their babies and then pay for the care, feeding, and education of those children, as well as placement in a loving home. Instead, they stand screeching outside abortion clinics.
I love the notion that humankind has ruined the earth. The next time you come down with some illness, and the only thing between you and death is antibiotics, ask yourself where you'd be if we'd left the medical innovation to the gazelles.
The same goes for the next time you go to the health food store to pick up those little vegan food pucks (the ones that look and have to taste like dried, pressed turds). Be sure to take the form of transportation developed by the prairie dog to get there.
Here's Lucy, in Paris, inconsolable that she has yet to invent the flying car. Well, either that, or it's because I yet again refused to share my lamb chops.
As for the rest of you, you've got to check out this page:
I was looking over a menu in a restaurant the other day when I saw a section for vegetarians; I thought to myself "boy, I sure am glad that I'm not a meat-hating fascist" and I skipped on to the steak section (because I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $15 for an alfalfa sandwich, slice of cucumber and a scoop of cold cottage cheese), but before I turned the page something caught my eye. The heading of the vegetarian section was titled "Guiltless Grill," not because there were menu items with fewer calories and cholesterol (since there were "healthy" chicken dishes discriminated against in this section), but because none of the items used animal products. Think about that phrase for a second. What exactly does "guiltless grill" imply? So I'm supposed to feel guilty now if I eat meat? Screw you.What pisses me off so much about this phrase is the sheer narrow-mindedness of these stuck up vegetarian assholes. You think you're saving the world by eating a tofu-burger and sticking to a diet of grains and berries? Well here's something that not many vegetarians know (or care to acknowledge): every year millions of animals are killed by wheat and soy bean combines during harvesting season (source). Oh yeah, go on and on for hours about how all of us meat eaters are going to hell for having a steak, but conveniently ignore the fact that each year millions of mice, rabbits, snakes, skunks, possums, squirrels, gophers and rats are ruthlessly murdered as a direct result of YOUR dieting habits. What's that? I'm sorry, I don't hear any more elitist banter from you pompous cocks. Could it be because your shit has been RUINED?
That's right: the gloves have come off. The vegetarian response to this embarrassing fact is "well, at least we're not killing intentionally." So let me get this straight; not only are animals ruthlessly being murdered as a direct result of your diet, but you're not even using the meat of the animals YOU kill? At least we're eating the animals we kill (and although we also contribute to the slaughter of animals during grain harvesting, keep in mind that we're not the ones with a moral qualm about it), not just leaving them to rot in a field somewhere. That makes you just as morally repugnant than any meat-eater any day. Not only that, but you're killing free-roaming animals, not animals that were raised for feed. Their bodies get mangled in the combine's machinery, bones crushed, and you have the audacity to point fingers at the meat industry for humanely punching a spike through a cow's neck? If you think that tofu burgers come at no cost to animals or the environment, guess again.
To even suggest that your meal is some how "guiltless" is absurd. The defense "at least we're not killing intentionally" is bullshit anyway. How is it not intentional if you KNOW that millions of animals die every year in combines during harvest? You expect me to believe that you somehow unintentionally pay money to buy products that support farmers that use combines to harvest their fields? Even if it was somehow unintentional, so what? That suddenly makes you innocent? I guess we should let drunk drivers off the hook too since they don't kill intentionally either, right? There's no way out of this one. The only option left for you dipshits is to buy some land, plant and pick your own crops. Impractical? Yeah, well, so is your stupid diet.
Even if combines aren't used to harvest your food, you think that buying fruits and vegetables (organic or otherwise) is any better? How do you think they get rid of bugs that eat crops in large fields? You think they just put up signs and ask parasites to politely go somewhere else? Actually, I wouldn't put that suggestion past you hippies. One of the methods they use to get rid of pests is to introduce a high level of predators for each particular prey, which wreaks all sorts of havoc on the natural balance of predator/prey populations--causing who knows what kind of damage to the environment. Oops, did I just expose you moral-elitists for being frauds? Damndest thing.
UPDATE: More from Max Green, the California guy who's answered the call to arms from the Carolina tofu patrol list-serve:
In a message dated 8/2/07 11:28:10 PM, greeninkpub@sbcglobal.net writes:buy up cows and other food animals and let them roam free until they die? that sounds reasonable. but you're right; it might be a bit costly. if I were a trillionaire I would most certainly do that.
re the abortion analogy - that's crazy. please consider other perspectives. it will only make you a better journalist.
thank you for inviting me to contribute to your blog.
Max Green
My response:
I've posted your e-mail. What I don't understand is your excuse here, "it might be a bit costly." So...you only stand up for what you believe in when it's cheap and easy?Why do you assume I haven't "considered other perspectives" and rejected them?
I forgot "as idiotic."
Asshole Of The Day
This guy reads me in a paper somewhere -- one which apparently chooses to run a different photo than my official masthead shot, over there on the left, by Joshua Gates Weinberg:
In a message dated 8/1/07 11:18:16 AM, derekm@wei-mecca.com writes:Hey
Whats that black thing crawling up your neck, looking like it wants to overtake your chin?
Oh, thats a Turtleneck??? Whoo wears those anymore? In summertime? Im not sure you have the kind of face you want framed liked that anyway. You might want to have that birdcage liner paper post up a fresh pic.
But I do enjoy your once in awhile when I dont feel like poneying up .50 cents for a real newspaper. It must make ya feel good being quen of the idiots.
Spoken like a man sending malicious notes from his company e-mail address! I asked him:
Do you feel small and insignificant, or is there some other reason you seem to get a little lift out of sending out e-mails intended to make others feel bad?
His response:
In a message dated 8/1/07 1:47:46 PM, derekm@wei-mecca.com writes:Im sure even big cheeses like you feel small and insignificant sometimes, so whats your point? I was just trying to give some constructive criticizsm in a funny way.
Hmmm...Sorry GODDESS, I should just leave all the judgemental, people lambasting up to you sorry fucks whom get paid for it, huh?
I write back:
It's rude to give unsolicited advice, number one, and number two, the notion that you were looking out for my welfare...is laughable. There's a name for a person who sends e-mails like this under the guise of being helpful, and it starts with "ass" and ends with "hole."
More wisdom from my new penpal:
In a message dated 8/1/07 2:15:10 PM, derekm@wei-mecca.com writes:Yeah, but in the end, you'll realize Im right and that my unsolicited advice is pretty good. If you dont your a M--ending with a N. Wether or NOT you wanna a hear it. Just take a poll of guys who care. But Im guessing you'd just prefer to tak a pole rather than a guy. There is also a name for women like you whom get mad when they hear the truth. It starts with a B and I kinda think you might be intimately familiar with the rest of it. So what, Im and asshole and your a bitch. So at least I admit being whom I am. Do you?
I felt no need to write back to convey my friend Terry Rossio's suggestion, early on, for a name for my column -- "Amy Alkon, Opinionated Bitch." I actually prefer it to "The Advice Goddess," but I realized, remembering Rachel Resnick's Go West Young Fucked-Up Chick, I'd probably never get into any dailies if I used it...and, uh, especially not with "that black thing crawling up (my) neck."
Whaddya wanna bet this guy has a hard time saying so much as hello to a woman in the real world?
And finally, what's your guess on what "If you dont your a M--ending with a N" is?
How Much Jail Time For Women Who Have Abortions?
Surprise, surprise, religious nutters who substitute faith for rationality don't really think their nonthink through. Here goes: If abortion is murder, then shouldn't women who have abortions -- think hits ordered on babies -- go to jail? Whoopsy! (I believe Crid brought this up a while ago.) But, here it is from an Anna Quindlen column on MSNBC:
Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them." Story continues below ↓advertisementYou have to hand it to the questioner; he struggles manfully. "Usually when things are illegal there's a penalty attached," he explains patiently. But he can't get a single person to be decisive about the crux of a matter they have been approaching with absolute certainty.
A new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive Health wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their tracks: how much time should she do? If the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail.
...Lawmakers in a number of states have already passed or are considering statutes designed to outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned. But almost none hold the woman, the person who set the so-called crime in motion, accountable. Is the message that women are not to be held responsible for their actions? Or is it merely that those writing the laws understand that if women were going to jail, the vast majority of Americans would violently object? Watch the demonstrators in Libertyville try to worm their way out of the hypocrisy: It's murder, but she'll get her punishment from God. It's murder, but it depends on her state of mind. It's murder, but the penalty should be ... counseling?
The great thing about video is that you can see the mental wheels turning as these people realize that they somehow have overlooked something central while they were slinging certainties. Nearly 20 years ago, in a presidential debate, George Bush the elder was asked this very question, whether in making abortion illegal he would punish the woman who had one. "I haven't sorted out the penalties," he said lamely. Neither, it turns out, has anyone else. But there are only two logical choices: hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to criminalize the act in the first place. If you can't countenance the first, you have to accept the second. You can't have it both ways.
And here, a little help for the anti-science crowd, a scraping of cells is not a person, it's a potential person. Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga writes in The Ethical Brain,:
For Gazzaniga, neuroscience tells us that “life begins with a sentient being,” around week twenty-three, or around the same time that the fetus can survive outside the womb with medical support. In Gazzaniga’s view, it is at this point, and not until then, that the fetus becomes “one of us,” with all “the moral and legal rights of a human being.” And thus Gazzaniga holds that we should allow unrestricted experimentation on human embryos up to week twenty-three.To explain his argument, Gazzaniga uses an analogy: the embryo is like housing materials found at a Home Depot. Says Gazzaniga: “When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the paper is not ‘30 Houses Burn Down.’ It is ‘Home Depot Burned Down.’” Similarly, to destroy a fetus is not to destroy a human life, but merely the “materials” of life.
MSNBC link: Thanks, Deirdre
Making It Up As She Went Along
It's the sad tale of writer-game designer Theresa Duncan and her artist boyfriend Jeremy Blake, both of whom recently killed themselves. Duncan apparently told a lot of stories about herself; some of them true. Kate Coe extracts the facts from the fiction in the LA Weekly:
IN 2001, THERESA DUNCAN was on top of the world. She had a two-picture deal with Fox Searchlight, and came to Los Angeles confident in her ability to conquer Hollywood. In July 2007, she was dead by her own hand, having washed down an overdose of Tylenol PM with bourbon in her Greenwich Village apartment. New York police say her handwritten note indicated she was at peace with her decision.News of her suicide spread on the Internet, where she had gained a small but devoted audience as a blogger. A week after her suicide, her longtime romantic partner Jeremy Blake, 35, went missing, his clothes and wallet found on the Atlantic shore at Far Rockaway with a note implying he had walked into the sea.
Online conspiracy theorists quickly repeated Duncan’s accounts of being harassed by mysterious forces, including the Church of Scientology.Others saw a twinship with poet Sarah Hannah, herself a recent suicide, and still others saw parallels to an elaborate alternate reality game. Experts, some of whom had never met her, weighed in on everything from her mental state to her sexiness.
I knew her, and I knew that much of what she wrote about her world was an elaborate tale, taken as fact by the uninitiated. Duncan blogged daily on her elegant Web site, The Wit of the Staircase, about her bohemian-chic cottage on a Venice canal, meetings of the slightly sinister and probably nonexistent Lunar Society of Los Angeles, and the turbulent love life of Kate Moss.
But her image as a player in Hollywood, albeit one with powerful enemies, was at odds with the facts. Perhaps she got tired of patching the little fissures that threatened to destroy her carefully constructed fantasy. Maybe that is why, at 40, she decided not to go on.
For years, Duncan’s storytelling made her a success, as she commingled girly creativity with the high-tech world. She made a splash with her first CD-ROM game for girls, Chop Suey, selected by Entertainment Weekly as 1995’s CD-ROM of the Year. In 1998, with the dot-com craze heating up, she told Chris Larson of Cosmopolitan, “At my old job . . . I started playing with the World Bank’s computers. The more I learned about new media, the more I saw the chance to tell stories — children’s stories, of course — in a really creative new way.”
The Cosmo piece was headlined, “Turn your obsession into your dream profession” — a title that, looking back, seems to have contained a warning about what was to come.
Most of what Duncan told Cosmo nine years ago was true — but not all of it. Even then, she indulged in embroideries, shaving a few years off her youthful age in 1995, telling Entertainment Weekly she was 27. (Born in 1966, she was 28 or 29.) And although friends thought Duncan had graduated from Wayne State or the University of Michigan, both universities tell the L.A. Weekly they have no record of her degree. Cary Logan, her friend, confirms that she worked at his bookstore while attending Wayne State; officials there say that she did, at least, attend classes.
...Duncan impressed journalists, including Anthony Ramirez of The New York Times, who repeated that she had authored a senior thesis at the University of Michigan titled “Electric Fairy Tales: CD-ROMs and Literature.” Even in recent coverage of her suicide, the Los Angeles Times repeated this iconic Duncan tale. Yet U of M spokesperson Joy Myers tells the Weekly the university has no evidence of that thesis or a degree under her name, although Duncan may have written a paper on that subject.
On a reporting note, I see things I know are wrong in books and newspapers all the time. You really can't assume anything is correct, and certainly not because it appeared in The New York Times, where, apparently, they, too, have reporters who are too lazy, lax, and/or gullible to pick up the telephone and dial the University of Michigan (734-764-1817).
I wonder if the LA Times will fix the error. Here it is in a Chris Lee story:
Duncan, 40, the daughter of an art teacher, grew up near Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan after writing a thesis titled "Electric Fairy Tales: CD-ROMs and Literature."
Don't believe everything you read -- and that goes double for you if you're the reporter who's supposed to be putting out the facts.
UPDATE: Ramirez from the NYT just e-mailed me:
In a message dated 8/2/07 8:46:31 AM, ramirez@nytimes.com writes:dear miss alkon:
error duly noted. i will start the correction process here.
but a point of information: most people don't lie to us or
need to, especially in a light feature story about children's
cd-roms. if ms. duncan had seemed emotionally troubled at the time,
or something else seemed amiss, we probably would have checked her
resume. but there are only so many hours in the day and she wasn't
exactly running for high office.so, error duly noted.
regards, anthony ramirez
My response:
Thanks for the note -- point taken. Best,-Amy
UPDATE #2, from Fishbowl LA: Duncan bragged about how she "talked rings around" reporters.
UPDATE #3: Regarding Duncan's education, from the Saturday, August 18, Los Angeles Times, a correction:
Double suicide: An article in the July 25 Calendar section about the suicides of artist Jeremy Blake and writer Theresa Duncan reported that Duncan graduated from the University of Michigan. A spokesperson for the university said Duncan was enrolled for a single semester in 1985 at the University of Michigan-Flint.
P.S. The main campus is Ann Arbor. U of M Dearborn and Flint are "away" campuses.
And finally, it sounds like this comment from The Stranger, from somebody who calls themself "wf," sums it up pretty well:
The saddest part of the story is the implication that she may have finally realized that she wasn't special, that she was talented but normal, and rather than see the collapse of her house of lies as an opportunity to finally grow up, she chose to die. What a waste of her creativity and passion.
Bunny Huggers Bare Their Fangs
Isn’t it amazing how some of the “be kind to animals” types can be such shits to people?
If I'm behind in answering your advice request, please bear with me. I'm still wading through hate mail from vegans and vegetarians about my column, Splendor In The Wheat Grass (below).
A few of the letters are polite and reasoned; most are more along these lines:
In a message dated 7/28/07 5:18:36 PM, carmela8877@yahoo.com writes:Dear goddess, I usually like your quite lengthy answers to the lovelorn. But............................................................come one, even my 12 year old would never say such a stupid sentence as " providing we give them a nice patch of grass, and kill them humanely.
Please---Either your a stupid uninformed knucklehead or your a selfish witch who only slops down her throat food if it tastes good,without thought to where it came from. This country, lady, has the most inhumane slaughter practices on earth. and you are the first columnist I have ever read who doesn't know this...Are you 9 years old.
Go on Peta or the Humane Society's website and get educated.
Better yet, stick to sex questions, your thick head cant absorb more.......
An ex-reader,Carmela
Education No 1---A chicken is raised in less room than this email, sheet, that's right, it never stands or does anything but lay there it's entire life till drowning....
Dint write about what you don't know,knucklehead.
I told her that I try to buy grass-fed beef from New Zealand, and free-range chicken, too. Then I asked her, "Do you think name-calling (with glaring inattention to spelling, grammar, and syntax) is a way to bring people around to your point of view?" Finally, I added an important P.S.:
Furthermore, there have been no large, randomized, double-blind, studies as to whether it's safe to eat large quantities of soy, and if I were you, I'd think twice about the safety of a vegetarian or vegan diet until there's conclusive evidence for the health and safety of soy.
An excerpt from my response to a polite critic (one of about three):
Animals don't have the same level of rights as humans because they cannot also have responsibilities. Also, their usage by humans is of great benefit to humans.
Here's the question from the column they're all complaining about:
My boyfriend of eight months is a vegetarian, and believes all animals are created equal, and that we, as animals, don't have a right to eat other animals. I’m very much a carnivore, and feel my body needs the protein, although I agree with him that eating meat is morally wrong. When we first met, he said he didn’t care if I ate meat. Now, when we eat out, and I mention that my food smells wonderful, he launches into a tirade about how I’ve made an animal suffer a horrendous death because of my eating habits. Consequently, I’ve stopped ordering meat when we’re together, and I’ve also stopped enjoying going out to dinner. Still, he’s a gentle, thoughtful man, so maybe dietary sacrifices are worth it. It’s amazing that eating habits can be such a problem.--Animal Killer
Here's my reply:
Like a conch shell, which supposedly sounds like the ocean, maybe if you listen closely to your burger you can hear echoes of the cow screaming when it was slaughtered. Thoughts like that must go through your head when you’re speeding away from your boyfriend’s house, reminding yourself that you, too, think it’s morally wrong to eat meat. And then…lemme guess…you make a hard right, pull up to an intercom, roll down your window, and mutter, “Bacon double cheeseburger, please.”According to your boyfriend, people and cows are born equal. Then what happens? Notice how cows have yet to build an International Space Station, or even open one of those little key-making huts outside the mall. But, does this mean we have a right to eat them? I think so -- providing we give them a nice patch of grass, and kill them humanely. Still, your boyfriend’s entitled to his beliefs, and you’re entitled to yours…if you can remember where you stashed them.
It may help you to understand that there are good reasons to eat meat. “Meat is the single best source of virtually every vitamin but vitamin C,” said Gary Taubes, an investigative science journalist whose myth-busting book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, (Sept. 07) is sure to revolutionize the American diet, proving that meat is not the health demon it’s made out to be. Taubes pointed me toward nutritional anthropologist Marvin Harris’ book Good To Eat, in which Harris explains that the ratios of essential amino acids in plant foods (except soy) are not optimal for humans. (The scientific jury’s still out on whether scarfing large quantities of soy is healthy or safe.) People have to eat huge quantities of nuts or legumes to match the nutritional value of meat “since the least abundant essential amino acids in plants are precisely the ones most needed by the human body.”
If only your boyfriend could have his Tofurky without cramming it down your throat, too. Sorry, it isn’t “eating habits” that are the problem, but his habit of berating you about yours; probably to the point where you can’t even eye a happy-hour cocktail wiener without fearing he’ll burst into tears and scream, “Murderer!” (Are we having fun yet?) If Meatless Joe can’t deal with your dietary choices, he should break up with you, not try to guilt you into breaking up with glazed pork chops. But, the real responsibility is yours -- to stand up for who you are, and find a man who’s okay with it, even if the particulars aren’t okay for him. Come on, admit it: Wouldn’t you be happier as somebody’s free-range girlfriend -- free to prefer the actual steak to the feeling of moral superiority you’re supposed to get from not eating it?
For more on the issue, here's Murray Rothbard on "The 'Rights' Of Animals." Here's Tibor R. Machan.
On the health front, here's Gary Taubes' Frontline interview. Here's Rutgers anthropology prof Lionel Tiger on why you should eat a Paleolithic diet -- long on meat, short on agro, but with a few caveats:
We evolved as hunters and gatherers. A graduate student in my Rutgers department, Matt Sponheimer, published an article in Nature in l999 showing from the micro-analysis of wear on fossil teeth that our ancestors were eating meat over 2.5 million years ago. We mainly ate meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. We have to assume our physiology evolved in association with this diet. The balanced diet for our species was what we could acquire then, not what the government and doctors tell us to eat now.We were likely hungry nearly all the time. When we had to reduce our intake of food our metabolism slowed to compensate. We didn't run after dinner for exercise, we ran before dinner -- for dinner itself. Only about 10,000 years ago did we learn how to herd animals, grow grains, and get to sit around.
Within medicine and anthropology there has been a controversy brewing for years about the possible unhealthiness of the diet made possible -- and even necessary given our crowded planet -- by agriculture. The most popular expression of sharp wariness about particular agricultural products was the 1972 book, "Diet Revolution," in which Robert Akins argued that eating carbohydrates, especially grains -- which are cheap -- made people hungry so they ate more and burgeoned. A set of endocrinological events in the body, he argued, cause the favorite foods of Current Authorities -- bread, pasta, rice, for example -- to cause hunger and overeating. Instead, they were told to eat food containing more-satisfying animal fats, including daily bacon and eggs, bacon cheeseburgers, butter sauces, no flour and hardly any fruit. The medical and nutritional establishments found this intolerable and said so very loudly. Thereafter cholesterol levels became as important personal scores as IQ and to some as net worth.
In 1987, three members of the Emory University faculty, Boyd Eaton, Mel Konner, and Marjorie Shostak, published "The Paleolithic Prescription" which analyzed what our ancestors ate (and we are still our ancestors physiologically) and recommended an appropriate modern diet which differed from the ideal food pyramid promoted by the Department of Agriculture. But there was an important difference from the Atkins-style claim, which was that they ate meat which was lower in fat than domestic animals -- grain-fed beef (grain again) may have 36% fat content while grass-fed has about 18% and wildfowl and venison about 3%-4%, like most fish. They had no salt-cured bacon. They had no easy sugar which did not emerge until relatively recently.
Getting back to the question of whether herbivores and carnivores can dwell in peace, here's an excerpt from an e-mail from a happily married vegetarian friend of mine:
My husband wanted to be a vegetarian, but I know that's never going to happen so I have never tried to convert him. He just gets too much pleasure from eating meat, and because I love him, I wouldn't want to take that pleasure away from him. I do encourage him to cook very smelly meaty things like lamb when I know I'm not going to be home so I don't feel like I'm living in a grill pan. But he pretty much does what he wants.
And finally, here's a little reportage from my vegetarian friend on how it works in France:
Once, I overheard a conversation in a cafe that I thought was very telling about the French attitude to meatless eating.
A man says to the woman with him: Je suis végétarien. (I am vegetarian.)
Woman: Tu ne manges pas de viande, alors? (You don't eat meat, then?)
Man: C'est à dire, je mangerais un steak, mais plutôt avec des algues. (I'd eat a steak, but with seaweed)
How Utterly Insane Are Our Drug Laws?
Via Reason, a guy in Florida was sentenced to 25 years in jail for drug possession -- for possessing painkillers for which he had a prescription! Colleen Jenkins writes in the St. Pete Times:
TAMPA - Mark O'Hara left jail without handcuffs Wednesday, two years after he went to prison and one week since an appeals court ordered him a new trial.He was serving a 25-year sentence for having 58 Vicodin pills in his bread truck. Jurors weren't told that it is legal to possess the drug with a prescription, which he had.
...The opinion faulted prosecutors' claims that Florida statutes do not allow a "prescription defense" in drug trafficking cases.
Using words like "absurd" and "ridiculous," three appellate judges said the state's position would make patients with valid prescriptions criminals as soon as they left the drugstore.
Tampa airport police arrested O'Hara in August 2004 after they found the hydrocodone and a small amount of marijuana in his illegally parked and unattended bread truck.
He refused plea agreements from prosecutors before trial, one for three years in prison. Instead, jurors heard from two doctors who said they had been treating O'Hara since the early 1990s for pain related to gout and auto accident injuries.
Prosecutors did not contend that O'Hara, who went to prison in the 1980s for cocaine trafficking, sold any of the 80 Vicodin pills he had been prescribed in the eight months before his arrest. Under the law, simply possessing the quantity of pills he had constitutes trafficking.
...He sold two condos, his car and his bread business to pay for the appeal. But the state took the proceeds, according to family friend Eric Mastro, to pay toward the $500,000 fine that came with his conviction.
Now, Can I Please Un-Know About Ted Turner's Sex Life?
Any information is really way too much information, thanks. Welcome to the literary world version of the guy who gives you the unabridged scoop on his spastic colon while seated next to you at a dinner party. In one of the more bizarro public breakups, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler lets it ALLLLLL hang out about his breakup with Elizabeth Dewberry. Here it is from Gawker, a piece I didn't want to read, but read anyway, word-for-word, with car crash-like fascination:
Rumors will soon be swirling around the department, so I want to tell the full and nuanced story to the five of you among the graduate students and ask that you clarify the issues for any of your fellow grad students who ask. This sort of thing can get wildly distorted pretty quickly. You can feel free to use any part or all of this email to do so. I really appreciate your help.Put down your cup of coffee or you might spill it.
Elizabeth is leaving me for Ted Turner.
She and I will remain the best of friends. She also knows about, endorses, and even encourages that I tell this much detail of the story:
She has spoken openly in her work and in her public life of the fact that she was molested by her grandfather from an early age, a molestation that was known and tacitly condoned by her radically Evangelical Christian parents. She then went into a decade-long abusive marriage. I met her when she was in a terminally desperate state from this lifetime of abuse, and we married and we truly loved each other.
I was able to help her a great deal. She says I saved her life. But de facto therapy as the initial foundation of a marriage eventually sucks the life out of a relationship. And it is very common for a woman to be drawn to men who remind them of their childhood abusers. Ted is such a man, though fortunately, he is far from being abusive. From all that I can tell, he is kind to her, loyal, considerate, and devoted to his family, and perhaps, therefore, he can redeem some things for her.
Further, Elizabeth has never been able to step out of the shadow of the Pulitzer. As you know-and she knows-I have been an avid admirer and supporter of her work. Everyone has heard me proclaim my sincere high regard for her as an artist. I often did this publicly. But she has published two brilliant novels since she's been with me and neither has gotten anywhere near the recognition that they richly deserve. That made it harder and harder for her to live with the ongoing praise and opportunity that flows to a Pulitzer winner. Not because of jealousy. She has always been very happy for me. But the multitude of small reflections of regard that came my way inevitably threw a spotlight on the absence of those expressions of regard for her. She felt as if she was failing as a writer.
Then, in March, she nearly died from an intestinal blockage in Argentina while on a trip with Ted. The trauma of that led her further to profoundly question her own identity. It became clear to her that the only way she can truly find herself is by making this change in her life.
She will not be Ted's only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous. But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly and he gives them his absolute support when he does. And Elizabeth's leaving me is as much about the three weeks a month she is alone as it is about the week a month she is with Ted. She will find her own space and her own light in which to create the great works of art she is destined to create.
I will keep my house. I will keep my dogs and cats. I will keep virtually everything. She is being characteristically generous about that. But I will lose Elizabeth. And that is very sad. But the loss has been happening through many years of our shared struggle to make her whole. In that, I've done all I can do, as has she. I wish her the best. I ask you not to think ill of her in any way.
Elizabeth and I will now conduct ourselves as if this is public knowledge. So as I suggested at the outset, you need not keep this to yourself, if the occasion arises to speak of it to someone. This is best anyway, since I am not up to the task of telling this story over and over.
I have a high regard and affection for the students in our program. I hope this will help them sort out this rather intense story in an appropriate way.Best,
Bob Butler