Cheap Whine
This Phoenix New Times blog item quoting a snarly Starbucks barrista clicked with this Drew Carey quote:
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar." -Drew Carey
And actually, I'm writing about Starbucks and Trader Joe's in my next book as companies that have a culture of niceness (feel free to let me know of any others you can think of).
At my favorite Starbucks (my favorite because the staff and many of the customers are pretty great), there's one particular barrista, Pam, who has a smile that hits you like a block off. I think of her as sunshine with legs.
via Beth Cartwright
Advice Goddess Free Swim
Got to go to bed...feel free to post on topics you want to talk about; just be sure to only post one link per comment, or your words will be eaten by the troll under the bridge, aka my spam filter.
More blog items in the morning!
Why Do Arabs Hate Israel?
Brigitte Gabriel speaks out on FLAME (scroll down from the letter at top for the entire piece):
I was raised in Lebanon where I was taught that the Jews are evil, Israel is the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.When the Muslims and Palestinians declared jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17, without electricity, eating grass to live, and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.
It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Muslim shell and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room, I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Muslims, Palestinians, Lebanese Christians, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation; they saw people in need and they helped.
For the first time in my life, I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital; those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized that I was sold a fabricated lie by my government about the Jews and Israel, which was so far from reality. I knew for a fact that if I were a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown to the ground as shouts of joy of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) echoed through the hospital and the surrounding streets.
I became friends with the families of the wounded Israeli soldiers, one in particular--Rina--whose only child was wounded in his eyes. One day, I was visiting with her and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem, Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started walking out of the room, and this mother held my hand and pulled me back in without even looking at me. She held me, crying, and said, "It is not your fault." We just stood there, crying, holding each other's hands.
What a contrast between her--a mother looking at her deformed, 19-year-old only child and still able to love me, the enemy--and a Muslim mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians.
The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It's barbarism versus civilization. It's democracy versus dictatorship. It's goodness versus evil.
...Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the whole world now suffers from a plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York, from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan.
They blame suicide bombings on the "desperation of occupation." Let me tell you the truth. The first major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred 10 weeks before Israel even became independent. On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948, in anticipation of Israel 's independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Fifty-four people were killed and hundreds were wounded.
Thus, it is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by "desperation" or "occupation," but by the very thought of a Jewish state.
So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and done nothing, allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and defeated communism, now it is time to stand up against the terror of religious bigotry and intolerance. It's time for everyone to stand up and support and defend the State of Israel, which is the front line of the war against terrorism.
No, Incessant Law-Passing Gives You A False Sense Of Security
A blog item on Consumerist asks, "Should Online Dating Sites Be Required To Do Background Checks?"
Consumerist's Chris Morran quotes somebody from a site called WomanSavers.com:
I can understand why daters are getting a false sense of security -- they're paying a fee to be on their site.
Morran continues:
Meanwhile, folks like the above-mentioned convict troll these sites, never mentioning their multiple homicides, or even the fact that their pictures are four years old and have been photoshopped to death.In 2008, New Jersey passed a law that requires dating sites that don't do criminal background checks to prominently disclose this fact on the site.
Right. Those should be about as effective as those warnings on cigarette packs. And think about this: How hard to you think it'll be for somebody to sign in on the Internet as some person whose identity they stole?
Don't all of us with IQs above the speed limit already all assume that sites don't do criminal background checks? If some site does, they can use that as a selling point to the gullible. (See paragraph just above.)
Morran reports:
One analyst thinks background checks are going to soon be a demand from the people that spend over $800 million this year on online dating sites.
You could be murdered by somebody you meet in a bar. Or, by somebody you bump into in a grocery store. Or, by that guy down the block who neighbors will later tell reporters "seemed like such a nice man."
Being safe requires having sense, and acting like it, too. People who aren't street-smart -- who are street-dim, you could say -- should manage their dating lives accordingly.
P.S. As somebody who's had her identity stolen (thank you so much, Bank of America...see "The Business of Being Rude, Part I"), I, for sure am not letting people pry around in my business, and wouldn't have any part of any dating site that made that a requirement. Also, my kind of guy would not be up for that sort of thing, either.
And finally, if you want to have a site people flock to, forget the criminal shit, and do age, height, weight, and income verification.
(Yes, I was the one who, as requested, took the photo of my guy friend with the battered Nissan -- the photo of him standing next to some other guy's Porsche.)
The Other Hayek
Russ Roberts in the WSJ on the lesser-known Hayek -- the one who isn't the Spanish hottie:
...As Hayek contended in "The Road to Serfdom," political freedom and economic freedom are inextricably intertwined. In a centrally planned economy, the state inevitably infringes on what we do, what we enjoy, and where we live. When the state has the final say on the economy, the political opposition needs the permission of the state to act, speak and write. Economic control becomes political control.Even when the state tries to steer only part of the economy in the name of the "public good," the power of the state corrupts those who wield that power. Hayek pointed out that powerful bureaucracies don't attract angels--they attract people who enjoy running the lives of others. They tend to take care of their friends before taking care of others. And they find increasing that power attractive. Crony capitalism shouldn't be confused with the real thing.
The fourth timely idea of Hayek's is that order can emerge not just from the top down but from the bottom up. The American people are suffering from top-down fatigue. President Obama has expanded federal control of health care. He'd like to do the same with the energy market. Through Fannie and Freddie, the government is running the mortgage market. It now also owns shares in flagship American companies. The president flouts the rule of law by extracting promises from BP rather than letting the courts do their job. By increasing the size of government, he has left fewer resources for the rest of us to direct through our own decisions.
Hayek understood that the opposite of top-down collectivism was not selfishness and egotism. A free modern society is all about cooperation. We join with others to produce the goods and services we enjoy, all without top-down direction. The same is true in every sphere of activity that makes life meaningful--when we sing and when we dance, when we play and when we pray. Leaving us free to join with others as we see fit--in our work and in our play--is the road to true and lasting prosperity. Hayek gave us that map.
If you haven't read "The Road to Serfdom," you should. I have the Milton Friedman edition, but that's $28 on Amazon, so here's the $9.35 version.
Facebook Founder May Face The Death Penalty
In Pakistan, under the dictates of "the religion of peace":
Zuckerberg is being charged by the Pakistani court under the Pakistani penal code Section 295-C that says, "Use of derogatory remark etc, in respect of the Holy Prophet, whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable for fine."
"Indirectly"? Oh, are you talking about my photo of my dog dressed up as Mohammed that I posted on my Facebook page? (It was Draw Mohammed Day, in celebration of Western values and freedoms, and well, I don't draw.)
Equal Pay For Equal Work...
Doesn't that mean...equal pay for equal work? Meaning...the women do the same work the men have to do?
According to a story by John Marzulli in the New York Daily News, one of the charges in a harassment suit against the NYPD accuses the department of having a female officer "perform heavy manual tasks normally assigned to males."
Sorry, but is that discrimination...or equality?
via Overlawyered
LA Press Club Awards
Got two first place awards -- one for a series of my columns, and one for my headline, "When Hairy Palms Met Sally."
My blog (and thank you all, all you regulars!) garnered a second place, and I got an honorable mention for Journalist of the Year in papers under 50K circ.
Here I am at the end of the evening. (I had to wear glasses to see the screen -- one of those post-age-40 things!)
photo by Gregg Sutter
The Restaurant-Friendly Child
Don't ask whether a restaurant is "child-friendly"; don't bring your child out until they are "restaurant friendly." Restaurant owner Melissa Fox-Revett writes in the Ottawa Citizen:
I am often asked whether my establishment is "child-friendly." Ridiculous! Inquiring whether I am "child-friendly" is like asking whether I am female-friendly, or middle-aged-friendly or brown-haired friendly. I don't care how old you are as long as you are well-behaved and spend money. When I am asked if we are child-friendly, I am always tempted to respond, "That depends. Is your child restaurant-friendly?" Most restaurants are not well pleased at the prospect of a roomful of ankle-biters, especially on a Saturday night at prime time. Leaving aside the matter of the noise and mess that most children generate, parents do not generally order lobster thermidor and Veuve Clicquot for their toddlers and, as such, children always translate to forgone revenue. Restaurateurs (as well as parents) have an obligation, however, to educate and train a new generation of diners.Children require development, training, encouragement, exposure to new experiences and the experience of your high expectations. If the restaurant industry, including fine-dining establishments in particular, is to survive, children must not only be tolerated but welcomed. Most restaurants will accommodate your family if you strictly supervise your brood, you spend excessively and tip liberally, and you are prepared to eat early and quickly. If the restaurant flat out refuses to accommodate your family (and by this I mean you are explicitly told "if you bring children we will poison them") then you should never visit that establishment again, even without kids.
...Yes, Virginia, there really is a child-friendly restaurant. It is any and every establishment to which you take your well-behaved, well-mannered, enthusiastic and voracious little diners, especially on a Tuesday night at 6 p.m.
Most of her suggestions are rather obvious (for anyone with consideration and half a brain), and others are directed at improving a restauranteur's revenue.
I will say that in France, children who go out are expected to act like short adults -- as my parents expected of my sisters and me when we were children. Regarding the French, as I write about dinnertime in France in my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society:
At home, however, the rules are numerous and strict. French children are not only expected to eat whatever is being served at the dinner table, meals are eaten with the whole family, and children are not allowed to pop up from the table until the parents excuse them at the end of the meal. From age 2, they are drilled in proper table manners, which include correct use of utensils and the appropriate tone of voice. Essentially, they're treated like shorter adults.Accordingly, my friend Emmanuelle Richard, a French journalist and mother living in Washington, D.C., said it's "super-hard" to find restaurants in France with high chairs and other paraphernalia specifically for children because, if kids come in, they are expected to "behave like adults and blend in." Should you see a young child out in a Paris restaurant with his parents and grandparents on some special occasion, chances are, he will not only be sitting still and upright in his chair, he'll have table manners to rival those of Jackie O.
Thanks, Nicole!
World Economy Collapse Explained In Three Minutes Flat
The econ version of Who's On First?
Case Dismissed!
And it was a really good case against the New Black Panther Party for violating the Voting Rights Act. The Obama Justice Department went to bat for the party -- and then covered it up, writes Jennifer Rubin in the Weekly Standard:
The case is straightforward. On Election Day 2008, two members of the New Black Panther party (NBPP) dressed in military garb were captured on videotape at a Philadelphia polling place spouting racial epithets and menacing voters. One, Minister King Samir Shabazz, wielded a nightstick. It was a textbook case of voter intimidation and clearly covered under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.A Department of Justice trial team was assigned to investigate. They gathered affidavits from witnesses--one of the poll watchers was called a "white devil" and a "cracker." A Panther told him he would be "ruled by the black man." The trial team, all career Justice attorneys and headed by voting section chief Chris Coates, filed a case against the two Panthers caught on tape. Malik Zulu Shabazz, head of the national NBPP, and the party itself were also named based on evidence the party had planned the deployment of 300 members on Election Day and on statements after the incident in which the NBPP endorsed the intimidation at the Philadelphia polling station.
The trial team quickly obtained a default judgment--meaning it had won the case because the New Black Panther party failed to defend itself. Yet in May 2009, Obama Justice Department lawyers, appointed temporarily to fill top positions in the civil rights division, ordered the case against the NBPP dismissed. An administration that has pledged itself to stepping-up civil rights enforcement dropped the case and, for over a year, has prevented the trial team lawyers from telling their story.
...On the morning of April 29, the acting deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, Steven Rosenbaum, sent an email to Coates about the case. It was the first indication by any department official that something was amiss. "I have serious doubts about the merits of the motion for entry of a default judgment and the request for injunctive relief," Rosenbaum, an Obama appointee, wrote. "Most significantly, this case raises serious First Amendment issues, but the papers make no mention of the First Amendment." Rosenbaum asked Coates a series of questions--whether "the defendants make any statements threatening physical harm to voters or persons aiding voters," for example, and what was the "factual predicate for enjoining the Party, as opposed to individual defendants"--which indicated that he was not familiar with the case and had not read the detailed memorandum accompanying the draft order.
The trial team was surprised by the email and answered Rosenbaum point by point in a response sent that same evening. They corrected his misstatements and explained in answer to his First Amendment concerns, "We are not seeking to enjoin the making of those (or any) statements. We plan to introduce them as evidence to show that what happened in Philadelphia on Election Day was planned and announced in advance by the central authority of the NBPP, and was a NBPP initiative." They pointed out that dressing in military garb did not raise First Amendment concerns when "used with the brandishing of a weapon to intimidate people going to the polling station." They concluded: "We strongly believe that this is one of the clearest violations of Section 11(b) [of the Voting Rights Act] the Department has come across. There is never a good reason to bring a billy club to a polling station. If the conduct of these men, which was video recorded and broadcast nationally, does not violate Section 11(b), the statute will have little meaning going forward."
The trial team assumed that Rosenbaum was simply confused about the applicable law. The notion that this was a problematic case would have been outlandish. With video evidence, multiple witnesses, and clear case law, it was one the easiest cases on which any of the trial team attorneys--who had more than 75 years of collective experience--had worked.
And the question for the future:
While the interference by political appointees in the NBPP case has been egregious, there is a critical issue with implications far beyond this single case: Whether the attorneys who populate the civil rights division of the Justice Department believe that civil rights laws exist only to protect minorities from discrimination and intimidation by whites.
Fun In The Kitchen!
For me, this would involve nudity (I don't cook; I heat, and I store things in my oven). But, if you actually like to prepare food, this Amazon 30 percent off sale on groovy kitchen machines may appeal to you.
From Afghanistan With Horror And Disgust
From the semi-regular commenter here, "the other beth," who's apparently in the military in Afghanistan, and who weighed in on what Islam's really about (contrary to the wishful thinking of the naive on another blog item here):
hey...haven't been on here in a while, but felt compelled to chime in on one of my favorite topics.I'm in Afghanistan now for round two and I can tell you that up close and personal--Islam is a backwards, oppressive and f*cked up religion. Not all Muslims are bad people; in fact there are a few that I count as friends, who really want to try and improve their lives and live in peace. (All want to immigrate to the US/Canada) Note, though, that these are not the Muslims that are living according to the Koran, but the ones who are wide-eyed in admiration at us Westerners, the way we act, joke around, the Hooters and VS magazines, etc. The music and movies of pop culture, etc. (The under 25 crowd; one of whom when asked his thoughts on how to fix this place said "Kill everyone over the age of 40". Bit extreme, perhaps, but he was dead serious)
Hard core, fervent Muslims, are the a$$holes blowing themselves up and killing not only us "infidels" but also their own people. The ones who not only do it, but who are coordinating, planning, supporting and not truly speaking out against such acts. It is utterly dispicable, disgusting, revolting. Islam is not a religion of peace or anything akin to it. It is a system in which a systematic reach for power is used to keep literally millions of people under its grasp. "Totalitarianism masquerading as religion" is a most appropriate description.
I cannot fathom, for the LIFE of me, why, after all of the terrorist acts even beginning with the Beirut bombing in '83--which, incidentally, is when the war on terrorism really started--and all the events leading to 9/11 and beyond, that there is still this pervasive, bleeding-heart attitude towards Islam. Fort Hood ring a bell? What the hell are we waiting for? When will our country at least (I agree that Europe's somewhat of a lost cause) take its head out of the flippin' sand and realize that the religion of Islam is not one that can peacefully coexist with our principles and that the one thing that needs to take precedence over our precious religious freedoms are the protection of our citizens. Without life, you don't stand a chance at liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe there's a very good reason for the order of that wording.
Please also, someone ask me about the complete and utter hypocrisy of the Islam religion being discriminatory against homosexuals--and I will be happy to tell you about it. This is the most gay culture I have ever experienced.
More on their gay culture -- where so many fuck young boys but where they'll push a brick wall over on you for being gay. Sick shit.
DUH!
Roger Simon's blogged what I've been thinking about L'Affaire Weigel:
I was stunned how out of touch these people are with the digital age.The most obvious, first and inviolable rule for the Age of the Digital Machiavelli: NEVER PUT ANYTHING POTENTIALLY DAMAGING IN EMAIL. Never, never, never, never. It's indelible. And stay clear of IM as well. It's also indelible with only slightly more effort for the retrieval.
Second rule, IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT TO SAY, SAY IT ON THE PHONE. And preferably a landline. Yes, I know "the government is listening in." But, hello, most of the time, they're way too busy with significant matters to concern themselves with, say, what Dave Weigel thinks about Ann Coulter. In fact, scratch the "most of the time." They're always too busy.
Ezra Klein on it here.
The "Everybody's A Winner!" Illness Strikes Again
From time to time, I quote a cranky Cathy Seipp-ism that I love. When somebody would huff to her, "Why, that's a value judgment!" she'd say, "I have values, therefore I make judgments."
That sort of thing is getting rarer and rarer. Check out the latest in school performance inflation, from a New York Times piece by Winnie Hu, chronicling how there's not just one valedictorian in many schools these days, but a gaggle of them, as administrators dispense the title to every straight-A student in lieu of making any judgments:
Principals say that recognizing multiple valedictorians reduces pressure and competition among students, and is a more equitable way to honor achievement, particularly when No. 1 and No. 5 may be separated by only the smallest fraction of a grade from sophomore science. But some scholars and parents have criticized the swelling valedictorian ranks as yet another symptom of rampant grade inflation, with teachers reluctant to jeopardize the best and brightest's chances of admission to top-tier colleges."It's honor inflation," said Chris Healy, an associate professor at Furman University, who said that celebrating so many students as the best could leave them ill prepared for competition in college and beyond. "I think it's a bad idea if you're No. 26 and you're valedictorian. In the real world, you do get ranked."
And then, commenter Karen Garcia wrote:
Last week The Times ran an article about law schools that are automatically padding students' grades to give them a boost in the job market. Elementary schools have abolished the D grade. Achievement has been rendered cheap and universally achievable. No child left behind, indeed.
And then there's Prof. Sanghvi:
I did my schooling in India where open seats are few and there are several thousand young adults competing with you for those seats. Everything in life is based on ranks, so you know exactly where you stand.From a very young age the child is taught that life is a race and if he wants to get anywhere in life, he or she needs to learn to compete and win. Parents and teachers often think it's their job to push the child harder, make him or her work more, study more, do more.
I am not saying India has the best schooling system. But the point is that in this globalized economy, the American student is going to compete with the Indian student eventually, whether it is for a job or for a patent on an invention.
Indian and Chinese companies are working hard to compete with American companies. If we don't teach our children how to compete to win, how do we plan on staying number 1?
As I wrote in my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society:
Comedian Jay Mohr wrote in Sports Illustrated about accompanying his godson to his ballgame. After the kid hit what looked like a homer, he inexplicably stopped running at second base, and just stood there waiting while the other team chased down the ball. Mohr, confused, turned to a friend, and the guy explained -- this particular league doesn't allow home runs: "Parents don't like it when their children are made to feel bad by being crushed by a home run, so all home runs in this league are only doubles.""WHAT!!! Are you kidding me?" Mohr couldn't believe it. "Do you want to know who I feel bad for? The mini man standing on second base who was denied the glorious feeling of hitting his first bomb." Mohr then went French on the coddlers: "Why not teach kids at a young, impressionable age that there are winners and losers? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That's what the game -- and life -- is all about."
Sunday is the LA Press Club Awards -- I'm a finalist for Journalist of the Year (in both large and small-circ papers!) and for a bunch of other awards. I hope I win something, but for sure somebody's going to in the categories I'm a finalist in. As Mohr noted, that's just the way life works, despite how we prepare kids for just the opposite.
Obama Administration Anti-Theft Protection
Great new developments in anti-theft protection that you can try in your own home!
No, not a big fence around your home, not new door locks. In fact, you don't have to lock your doors at all. Just put up a big sign: "Burglars, go 'way!" Or, at the very least, "Hey, peaceful, unarmed visitors, beware! There might be burglars in here!" Just as the Obama administration is doing on Arizona's borders.
You really have to see it to believe it.
via Patterico
Vegan With A Side Of Humor
It's actually a shirt for a movie -- something about the oceans, the guy said:
Me? In the words of Fran Lebowitz, "My favorite animal is steak."
Decline To State Race
I was disturbed by the race questions on the U.S. Census form, but filled the form out truthfully. LaShawn Barber blogs about declinetostaterace.org -- and declining to state race on government forms:
According to a new government report, some Census workers "incorrectly communicated" questions about race during face-to-face interviews, and others made assumptions about the race of interviewees based on appearance.
My friend Charlie, for example, is black but just a bit more tanned-looking than a rather white friend of ours. He likes to call himself "beige" or "incognegro."
Barber continues:
The story frames the problem as miscommunication and incorrect assumptions (one-drop rule redux?) about interviewees. The real problem is the government asking Americans to state their race. Not only should the government not ask about race, the more multiracial America becomes, the more difficult it will be to classify people along rigid racial or ethnic lines.
She quotes from the Census Bureau's PDF about why race is important to know:
"Information on race is required for many federal programs and is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet legislative redistricting principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks."
Her response:
Why is race critical in making policy decisions, and how does checking a box on a form "promote equal employment opportunities"? Government policy is supposed to be colorblind, and the law protects the rights of all individuals, regardless of race. If someone faces racial discrimination, he may seek redress. Checking a box on a government form doesn't protect his rights.
She also makes a very good point:
...The more multiracial America becomes, the more difficult it will be to classify people along rigid racial or ethnic lines
More at the link. She encourages you to sign the petition at the link above. I'm with her on the sentiments, but it's my guess that these online petitions don't do diddly beyond making people who sign them feel like they've done something.
Screw The Children And The Grandchildren!
David Walker interviewed by Nick Gillespie on reason.tv on our government's absolutely out-of-control spending:
Muslim Prayers Block The Streets Of New York
A friend, a Jew who escaped from an Arab country in the Middle East decades ago, has been predicting this for years. Incredible photos over at Atlas Shrugged. Check out the Muslim NYPD cops on their knees for Allah -- in uniform. Loved blogger Pamela's comment about the baby in the headscarf (actually just headscarf, not burka): "Child in burka....is she a sex object? Why the cover up?"
The Parisians, who've been subjected to this as well, have had their response, a Sausage and Booze street party, banned by the police.
Bye-bye civilization! Bye-bye enlightenment values and Western freedoms!
I know we Americans like to believe that any belief is okay, but that's not true when a belief system advocates and even calls for violence and murder against non-believers -- which Islam does. Any of you change your minds about Islam yet? By the way, it is not a religion, but a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion. The Quran is to be taken literally as the word of Allah, and it commands Muslims (Sura 9:5 and other charming 9s) to convert or kill the infidel (that would be you and me) and install the New Caliphate around the globe.
Europe is over, of course. We're protected by our vast population -- but we won't be forever.
UPDATE: My friend, the Jew who escaped from an Arab country, e-mailed me:
There are whole neighborhoods in Europe wherein life stops when Muslims pray. If you happen to live in a building that is blocked by the public prayer, you wait until the Muslims finish their prayers prior to entering/leaving your building.Draw a Muhammad days are nice but unless the populace rises up and pushes out this ideology from its midst, I guarantee that in fifty years Western democracies will be extinct concepts (not unlike the litany of other civilizations that are no longer with us). This is not hyperbole. It is cold facts.
BP Oil Rig Worker? Pack Your Pedicure Set!
It's bad enough that I can't keep my hot pink Swiss army knife on my keychain anymore. I just know I'll go through security and have TSA workers end up taking a little tour up Ye Old Intestines Avenue.
But, there are places you really need a knife, and one of them, especially, is an oil rig you're working on. Unfortunately, blogs David Kopel at Volokh, Transocean had a ban on employee knife possession -- one that nearly killed some BP drilling rig survivors by preventing them from cutting the rope attaching the lifeboat to the drilling rig.
Genius. You know, if you want to kill somebody on an oil rig, I think you can just bring down some big wrench on their skull really hard. The notion that they're somehow protecting anybody (whoops, but themselves, from litigation) is utterly ludicrous.
Details here, at towmasters:
Knives are simply tools that we need to do our jobs and, not least, to potentially save our own lives when things go badly wrong. Like all tools, they can be abused, but that is insufficient reason to do away with them. I'm well aware that sometimes humans hurt themselves, and others, with knives. Most of the time accidentally, but some of the time intentionally. But a no-knives policy for mariners and maritime workers is just stupidity of a higher order than we normally see. I wish the safety manager or management executive at Transocean that dreamed up their policy was in the liferaft that night, experiencing firsthand what happens when you are barred from having the tools you need by people who should but apparently don't know any better, whose personal physical safety isn't directly at stake, but are still in important decision-making positions nonetheless. Working on the water is no joke.....and at the risk of sounding extreme I would say that mariners faced with being stripped by company policy of their otherwise-lawful work knives should seriously consider wide-scale "civil" disobedience of those rules. This shows just how far the stupidity has permeated both our society and our profession.
Political correctness isn't just the death of sense; it can lead to the death of freedoms and actual bye-bye, "We'll see you at your funeral" death. As described in this video from 60 Minutes:
Don't Ask...
...President Obama to actually do anything to support gay rights. Just know that he supports it. Um...because he says he does.
Turns out it's conservative lawyer Ted Olson, together with his co-counsel David Boies, truly standing up for gay rights, challenging anti-gay marriage laws.
Richard Socarides writes in the WSJ about the president's all talk, no action support for gay rights:
First and most obviously, Mr. Obama has not made good on his campaign promise to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, allowing the military to continue stalling. Despite his earlier assertion that leadership was the only thing required to abolish this long-discredited policy, the administration's efforts have been lackluster....The Obama administration's stance on gay marriage is especially troubling.
In California, even Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to defend the constitutionality of Proposition 8, that state's antigay marriage law. Not so for the Obama administration on the federal version, the Defense of Marriage Act.
Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice not only have chosen to aggressively defend the constitutionality of that law, which bars recognition of same-sex marriages, but Justice Department lawyers actually cite it affirmatively to deny federal employee benefits like health insurance to same-sex couples. Where is the Civil Rights Division, which Mr. Holder has called the "crown jewel" of his department?
...When Mr. Olson's case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court in a year or more from now, will Mr. Obama be one of the few left on the wrong side of history? What a bitter irony that would be.
It won't be a surprise for me or anybody else who recognized him as the ineffective politician he showed himself to be in the Senata. Sorry...were you under the impression he was Jesus?
A Scientist Friend Needs Your Brain
One of the scientists I see regularly at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conferences is doing a online study to try to understand differences in opinion on homosexuality. It will take about 15 minutes, so if you have a quarter of an hour to give an opinion for a good cause, here is the link to the study. If you'd also kindly repost this, I'd be very grateful, and so would this scientist.
Organically Grown -- In China
Guess where Whole Foods 365 brand organic comes from? Including "California brand" produce:
You also shouldn't be too sanguine about those terms like "organic." My friend Ari LeVaux, in a column not yet posted on his Flash In The Pan website, wrote that, among other meaningless terms, "Humanely Raised, a National Chicken Council label for meat birds, presumes that anything short of waterboarding is humane."
Bayou Lady With The Inside Dope On BP "Cleanup"
They've got to "cut costs..."
Thanks, lovelysoul
Because You Can't Sue Parents Who Don't Say No
The Center for "Science" in the Public Interest is threatening to sue McDonald's in hopes of getting it to remove toys from its Happy Meals. I put quote marks around science, because it's dietary "science" that suggests that a cheeseburger is bad for you, when it's the carb-loaded shake, French fries, and bun. (Carbohydrates cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat, per the exhaustively reported evidence-based science put out by Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories.)
Sharon Bernstein writes about the threatened lawsuit against McDonald's in the LA Times:
Citing toys aimed at promoting the latest "Shrek" movie, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that the plastic promotions lure children into McDonald's restaurants where they are then likely to order food that is too high in calories, fat and salt.The organization on Tuesday served the fast food giant with a letter expressing its intent to sue if toys are not removed. The letter is legally required in several states before lawsuits can be brought under consumer protection statutes.
"McDonald's is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children," Stephen Gardner, litigation director for the advocacy group said in a statement. "McDonald's use of toys undercuts parental authority and exploits young children's developmental immaturity."
My mom had no problem exercising her parental authority. We never begged for McDonald's because we weren't going to get any. (Maybe, maybe, if we were coming back from up north in the station wagon, and didn't have any of the carrot sticks and other stuff my mom packed on our way up.)
My neighbor, likewise, does not feed her kids McDonald's. I'll have to ask how many times they've had it. I bet it's fewer than five times in their little lifetimes. Yes, parenting...still practiced in some corners of the USA. For everybody else, there's litigating against the free market.
Grow Up And Be A Bunny
American schools are training students to become docile members of a totalitarian state, writes Constitutional lawyer John W. Whitehead at Rutherford.org:
School officials at Albemarle High School in Charlottesville, Va.--ironically enough, the much-vaunted home of Thomas Jefferson--ordered the destruction of an eight-page edition of their student newspaper which had already been printed and was awaiting distribution. Why? Because school officials feared that an editorial questioning whether student-athletes need gym class might upset PE teachers. The newspaper, dubiously named The Revolution, was subsequently reprinted minus the editorial.In Norfolk, Va., two teachers at Norview High School were placed on administrative leave for distributing "unauthorized" materials to their 12th grade government students. The materials, a one-page handout and a video, advised the students about how to deal with police if stopped. Specifically, the materials explain how legal rights apply to police searches of vehicles, homes or individuals and how people can cite those rights during encounters with police.
These two situations barely scratch the surface regarding the hostile nature of today's public school environment, at least in terms of individuality and freedom. For the nearly 50 million students who are attending elementary and secondary public schools, their time in school will be marked by overreaching zero tolerance policies, heightened security and surveillance and a greater emphasis on conformity and behavior-controlling drugs--all either aimed at or resulting in the destruction of privacy and freedom. In fact, as director Cevin Soling documents in his insightful, award-winning documentary The War on Kids (2009), available at www.thewaronkids.com, the moment young people walk into school, they find themselves under constant surveillance: they are photographed, fingerprinted, scanned, x-rayed, sniffed and snooped on. Between metal detectors at the entrances, drug-sniffing dogs in the hallways and surveillance cameras in the classrooms and elsewhere, America's schools have come to resemble prison-like complexes. Add to this the fact that young people today are immersed in a drug culture--one manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry--almost from the moment they are born, and you have the makings of a perfect citizenry for the Orwellian society in which we now live: one that can be easily cowed, controlled, and directed.
In this way, with the government's power rapidly increasing while that of the individual is subject to all manner of restrictions, the public schools are a perfect microcosm of what is happening across the nation. And while the notion of free speech remains enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution, censorship--once considered taboo in our freedom-loving culture--is no longer a dirty word. Instead, it is what responsible adults must now do in order to ensure that no one is offended or made to feel inferior.
Yet not too long ago, no one would have thought twice about teachers actually teaching the Bill of Rights or students exercising their free speech rights in a written editorial. Today, such acts are looked upon as radical--even revolutionary. Unfortunately, by teaching such a sinister conformity, school officials are raising up a generation of compliant, unquestioning citizens who will march in lockstep with whatever their government dictates.
Seize The Toothpaste, Nevermind The Switchblade
Over at shanghaiscrap, the blogger has his quarter tube of toothpaste seized by airline security, and boards the plane and finds a 3.5-inch (folded, that is) switchblade on the floor under the seat in front of him:
Slightly stunned, I turned to the fellow beside me - and he suggested that I give the blade to a flight attendant. I must admit, my initial thought was: "Thanks cowboy, but I have no interest in being the guy who has to answer for finding a titanium-framed knife stowed in a magazine pocket (or beneath a seat) on an international flight operated by a US airline. You do it." But that was just my first thought, the one that happened before the good citizen sprung into action and pressed the flight attendant call button. At the time, we were still ascending, so a flight attendants didn't exactly come running - providing me plenty of time to snap a photo of the knife (later, ID'd the brand and model, which you'll find here), and speculate on just why it had been stowed away on my plane (which, as it turns out, regularly transits between North America and Asia). Conclusion: no idea.Anyway, the flight attendant eventually arrived and, after I explained what had happened, she swiped the knife out of my hand with a curt "Thank you!" and walked away. Then, over the next few minutes, several flight attendants and a gentleman whom I assume was an air marshal all made their way up the aisle, had a look at me, and returned to the place from which they came. I assume they were trying to judge whether or not I was a threat. So, in hope of enhancing my non-threatening image, I asked for a vegetarian meal (in case they had an extra one available), and a glass of white wine (seriously).
It must have worked: nobody ever asked me anything. Nothing more happened. I guess they know what they're doing, and I'm thankful, I guess.
via Virginia Postrel
Wholey Rational
Loved this Dennis Wholey quote I found on Pressman blogger Ed Padgett's site:
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.
Time-Warner-opoly
While Gregg and I were out seeing an absolutely delightful movie -- Micmacs, by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of Amelie -- Time-Warner was in massive fail mode.
As @groinksan tweeted:
Looks like a major gateway/router at Level 3 is down. Affecting Time-Warner RR and access to many major web sites.
Chase, Amazon, LAWeekly, and other sites were down as well.
My server company, Nexcess.net, which I love and highly recommend, rerouted my site so I wouldn't remain down.
But, I have to say, if I had some other choice than Time-Warner, I'd switch in a hot second.
Must go to bed. Might have to post more blog items in the morning.
P.S. About Nexcess -- they did have a rare outage the other day, probably related to storms in Michigan, but we had a hellish time with 1and1, Gregg and I, and he did a lot of research before he settled on Nexcess. They're Michigan-based, they speak English, they're very patient, and answer support tickets right away. I don't recommend books, people, or businesses lightly, and I highly recommend them.
What If They Only Sell Vegan Light Bulbs?
Those dim horrible compact fluorescents, I mean, that make you and everything around you have the aura of a dingy mental institution.
Oh, noooo...somehow, I missed the news...the governmommy is phasing out incandescents as of 2012. The dimming of America? Count me out. I'm starting now -- stockpiling lightbulbs! I'll pick them up in my extremely PC car, the 2004 Honda Insight, which I choose to drive rather than being forced to drive it by our increasingly nannyish government.
Jonathan Rauch lays out what a sham this ban is at National Journal:
...Replacing your incandescent bulbs with fluorescents is not the same as replacing your low-efficiency refrigerator with a high-efficiency one, because consumers do not regard fluorescents as a perfect, or often even acceptable, substitute. As someone who has recently made a good-faith effort to switch, I can tell you that fluorescents deserve their not-ready-for-prime-time reputation. They are slow to come on and slower to reach full brightness. They come in weird, ugly shapes, typically reject dimmers, and don't even fit in half the places where I need to put them. Their reliability is spotty. And they contain toxic mercury, making breakage and disposal problematic. That's before considering their light, which is mediocre at best and ghoulish at worst.Compact fluorescents, Sanstad points out, have been on the market for decades. "There's a lot of consumer resistance to them, which is not apparently going away. Tremendous government encouragement of CFLs has gone on for a long time, and it has been an uphill battle" -- a fact reflected all too well in a baleful New York Times headline just last month: "As CFL Sales Fall, More Incentives Urged."
In short, the compact fluorescent lamp, at least in its currently commonplace incarnations, is a lousy product. Consumers who reject it are not necessarily numskulls. Many if not most are exercising a very understandable preference.
It is certainly true that incandescents are inefficient. But you can always find some product Y that is more efficient than another product X, and that is no reason to ban X. Flat-panel televisions are notorious energy hogs. Cathode-ray TVs are much more efficient, and cheaper, to boot. Why not ban flat-panels? The answer, of course, is that they provide a more aesthetically pleasing experience. So we let people "waste" electricity on them.
By contrast, look at what the incandescent phaseout is saying: Never mind that you might be willing to raise your summertime thermostat a notch or two in exchange for keeping incandescent bulbs; you still can't have them.
UPDATE: Nick Gillespie's reason.tv video on CFL's:
The Tiniest Little Death Cultists
This sick video with Arab children joyously singing about dying as martyrs for Allah calls to mind Golda Meir's famous quote, "We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
Welcome to the religion of hate and death. For anybody who believes the bullshit claim that the Israeli/"Palestinian" conflict is merely a battle for a few scraps of desert land (turned into orchards, cities, and centers of technology and innovation by the Israelis), hop on over to my post about the Palestinian PR scam. An excerpt, in the words of PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein from 1977:
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.
Where's Our Jumbotron, Dammit?!
Why can't somebody pay for a Jumbotron so people who haven't bought tickets to the Lakers game can watch it for free, the LA Times' Sandy Banks wants to know.
Here's Banks' video accompaniment to her ridiculous column about the post-Lakers thuggery, in which a bunch of wild animals dressed up in human clothes battered then torched a poor immigrant's taxi, smashed store windows, looted merchandise, and only by a stroke of luck didn't kill anyone.
Below is an excerpt from her column -- a big boohoo for LA residents "sharing a win they didn't see," as the headline goes. And then the subhead, "L.A. deserved a victory, and the fans deserved to be welcome."
Guess what: Nobody "deserves" anything they don't pay for and/or aren't invited to. Not according to me, anyway...which is why I watched the Oscars at a friend's house instead of torching cars outside the Kodak theatre.
Sandy, sniffle-sniffle, feels differently about fans "treated like pariahs":
...It was hard not to feel unwanted. "If you don't have a ticket, go home" was the officers' message -- explicitly delivered and universally ignored.The fans I talked to were disappointed. Some people, expecting a Jumbotron, had planned to watch the game outside the arena. Instead, Chick Hearn Court was blocked off and the only public screens showed movie previews. Other fans were blaming themselves for not arriving earlier, when $20 could have landed a seat at Lawry's and The Farm still had openings at the bar.
But none of that seemed to dim their glee, or the sense of community. I talked to people like Oscar and Evelyn Lopez, who spent two hours driving in from Palmdale and $20 to park, then wound up watching the game on their iPhone, on the sidewalk at Figueroa and Chick Hearn Court.
Yes, my heart just bleeds for these poor disenfranchised souls, watching the game on their phone right out of the Jetsons.
Of course, it has to be the lack of a taxpayer-financed Jumbotron that makes a thug a thug...not, say, the fact that the thug was almost surely the product of a single parent home. Here's Michael K. Carlie on who joins gangs:
All of the mothers of gang-affiliated children were single when the gang-affiliated children were born. (Campbell, 1992, pp. 54-55) The majority of the mothers were between 16 and 19 years of age when they gave birth. (ibid., 1992, p. 55) To a significant degree, family instability contributes to the commission of crime. (ibid., 1992, p. 56)Through a review of literature, a link is shown between family structure and delinquent or gang behavior. There is a strong positive correlation between gang affiliation and single female-headed households. (ibid., 1992, p. 22) Children who grow up in a single-parent household headed by the mother appear to be most at risk. (ibid., 1992, p. 33)
Although the factors that lead individuals to join gangs may vary, the backgrounds of these individuals are similar. The majority are minorities that are from poverty-stricken areas. They are primarily from low income or poverty households. Most are from broken homes or homes without any male role models. Many of the youths feel unwanted and unloved by their immediate families and are searching for a sense of belonging. (ibid., 1992, p. 33)
The study found that the families of gang members ... tended to be less involved with the church which, it is noted, is a very important part of the black community.
Both groups agreed in attributing gang involvement mainly to peer pressure and the need to belong (ibid., 1992, p. 57) but the mothers of gang members were much more likely also to blame the inability to find jobs. (ibid., 1992, p. 58)The study participants were asked to rate themselves on 11 parenting skills. The gang mothers appeared to have a lack of confidence in their parenting abilities. They rated themselves lower in their abilities to cook, to motivate their children and assist them with school work and to develop and maintain friendships. (ibid., 1992, pp. 1 and 52-53)
Because of the increase in the number of teenage unwed mothers, the number of [Black single female headed] households is growing. More than one million American teenagers each year become parents without the benefits of adequate income, parenting skills, or other supports necessary for the optimum functioning of a family unit. It is only natural that a disproportionate number of unstable family units emerge in these communities. (ibid., 1992, p. 56)
Campbell asked the mothers of gang members in his study why their children joined a gang. "Three of the top four items - need to belong, to feel protected, and insecurity - are strongly interrelated. These factors represent age-specific developmental needs of adolescents." (ibid., 1992, pp. 49-50) Maslow's hierarchy is once again confirmed.
Here's Heather Mac Donald from 2006 on "Hispanic Family Values":
Nearly half of the children born to Hispanic mothers in the U.S. are born out of wedlock, a proportion that has been increasing rapidly with no signs of slowing down. Given what psychologists and sociologists now know about the much higher likelihood of social pathology among those who grow up in single-mother households, the Hispanic baby boom is certain to produce more juvenile delinquents, more school failure, more welfare use, and more teen pregnancy in the future....Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent of white births and 15 percent of Asian births. Only the percentage of black out-of-wedlock births--68 percent--exceeds the Hispanic rate. But the black population is not going to triple over the next few decades.
As if the unmarried Hispanic birthrate weren't worrisome enough, it is increasing faster than among other groups. It jumped 5 percent from 2002 to 2003, whereas the rate for other unmarried women remained flat. Couple the high and increasing illegitimacy rate of Hispanics with their higher overall fertility rate, and you have a recipe for unstoppable family breakdown.
Along with the fatherlessness, and the rise of the welfare culture, there's been a disappearance of shame. I think we need to bring it back, and we'll need a non-PC judge or two to do it. My idea? Thugs need to be publicly humiliated as the overgrown boy brats/pus pimples on society's ass they are.
Those LA rioters who are caught should be made to wear pink flowered uniforms and carry pink dustpans and hammers and clean up downtown...while also wearing a sandwich board announcing something humiliating about what they've done.
All convicted criminals, in fact, should get a work sentence along with their prison sentence...instead of being sent to cool their heels and very likely build up their gangs at some facility with a better TV than yours or mine.
Crime pays as long as the rest of us have to pay for it.
Radio Head
Quick radio show appearance today -- Tuesday morning on KABC (Tuesday, June 22, 6:30 to about 6:40 am PST) -- joining the hilarious and always-sharp John Phillips, in for Tilden again.
Talk Radio 790 KABC for all you Angelenos, or kabc.com for live streamed audio.
On Twitter, follow Phillips: @johnnydontlike - follow me: @amyalkon
All They Have Is Hate
Shelby Steele on what the Palestinians really want in the WSJ:
Our problem in the West is understandable. We don't want to lose more moral authority than we already have. So we choose not to see certain things that are right in front of us. For example, we ignore that the Palestinians--and for that matter much of the Middle East--are driven to militancy and war not by legitimate complaints against Israel or the West but by an internalized sense of inferiority. If the Palestinians got everything they want--a sovereign nation and even, let's say, a nuclear weapon--they would wake the next morning still hounded by a sense of inferiority. For better or for worse, modernity is now the measure of man.And the quickest cover for inferiority is hatred. The problem is not me; it is them. And in my victimization I enjoy a moral and human grandiosity--no matter how smart and modern my enemy is, I have the innocence that defines victims. I may be poor but my hands are clean. Even my backwardness and poverty only reflect a moral superiority, while my enemy's wealth proves his inhumanity.
In other words, my hatred is my self-esteem. This must have much to do with why Yasser Arafat rejected Ehud Barak's famous Camp David offer of 2000 in which Israel offered more than 90% of what the Palestinians had demanded. To have accepted that offer would have been to forgo hatred as consolation and meaning. Thus it would have plunged the Palestinians--and by implication the broader Muslim world--into a confrontation with their inferiority relative to modernity. Arafat knew that without the Jews to hate an all-defining cohesion would leave the Muslim world. So he said no to peace.
And this recalcitrance in the Muslim world, this attraction to the consolations of hatred, is one of the world's great problems today--whether in the suburbs of Paris and London, or in Kabul and Karachi, or in Queens, N.Y., and Gaza. The fervor for hatred as deliverance may not define the Muslim world, but it has become a drug that consoles elements of that world in the larger competition with the West. This is the problem we in the West have no easy solution to, and we scapegoat Israel--admonish it to behave better--so as not to feel helpless. We see our own vulnerability there.
Blame Tossing
Don't toss it around; stick it where it goes, like a commenter did, on Free Swim:
First, there's no way I could have married a woman so savage and horrific as the monsters often described by men here as having once been the loves of their lives. And secondly but more importantly, there's no way I could discount my own enormous responsibility in forming the sour union to begin with. This wasn't some freaky fate like a bolt of lightning on a sunny afternoon: I went out and brought this error into my life, eagerly.
My response:
Exactly, exactly, exactly.This is the accountability that's missing from so many bleats by divorced men about how ALL women are "feminazis"...bleats designed to draw your attention and theirs away from the fact that they closed their eyes, jumped in, and hoped it would all turn out just peachy with one particular woman.
P.S. Of course, it's not just men who do this sort of thing.
Lots Of Tolerance For Absurdity
Zero tolerance in a Rhode Island school district for the tiny plastic guns carried by tiny plastic soldiers on the hat a little boy made for his school's "hat day." (Make that "asshat day" when nonthinking school-o-crats are involved).
That decision has now been reversed by the school superintendent, reports the AP (photo at the link):
David Morales, an 8-year-old student at Tiogue School, made the hat after choosing a patriotic theme for a school project last week. He glued plastic Army figures to a camouflage baseball cap. But school officials banned the hat, saying the guns carried by the Army figures violated school policy.The decision prompted criticism of the school and support for David. On Friday, the boy received a medal from Lt. Gen. Reginald Centracchio, the retired head of the Rhode Island National Guard. Gen. Centracchio said David should be thanked for recognizing veterans and soldiers.
"You did nothing wrong, and you did an outstanding job," Gen. Centracchio told the boy.
Thugs Attack The Working Man
It's utterly sickening, what they're doing to somebody's taxi after the NBA finals. I'm late to seeing this because I was at an evolution conference in Oregon, but I'm compelled to post it for anyone who hasn't seen it.
Click on the video to watch it in larger format. If anyone can identify any of the scum in this video, please call the LAPD at 213-485-6095. Please link to this and post the number. Hope they catch these fuckers.
Great critique on Pajamas Media by LAPD cop "Jack Dunphy" on the department's mishandling of the post-game riots:
But what these celebrants encountered once out in the fresh air, no doubt to their great disappointment, was phalanx upon phalanx of helmeted LAPD officers stretching in every direction. There are few sights more demoralizing to the aspiring rioter than that of a few hundred cops ready and eager to have a good whack at you at your first toss of a brick.And so it was that for those first few minutes after the game the atmosphere on the streets was one of jubilation, not destruction. But what those aspiring rioters soon discovered, as they ventured out from the immediate area of the Staples Center, was that those phalanxes of police officers that had at first glance seemed to stretch for miles, in truth extended only for a block or two, or perhaps three depending on which route they took. And beyond that suffocatingly secure perimeter: blissful freedom, with abundant supplies of large windows just begging to be shattered and a wide assortment of other property at their disposal to be stolen, broken, marked with graffiti, or set ablaze to suit their whims.
On a side note, how many of you think these thugs have both a mommy and a daddy in the home?
The Palestinian PR Scam
From JihadWatch, the words of PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein from 1977:
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
Just Say Maybe To Drugs
As in maybe do 'em, maybe don't -- legally. You're less likely to have the hots to do them if they're legal. That's how it works with pot in the Netherlands. So writes Stossel in reason in an anti-drug war piece that isn't all that novel, but lays out the various idiocies pretty well. An excerpt:
I understand that people on drugs can do terrible harm--wreck lives and hurt people. But that's true for alcohol, too. But alcohol prohibition didn't work. It created Al Capone and organized crime. Now drug prohibition funds nasty Mexican gangs and the Taliban. Is it worth it? I don't think so.Everything can be abused, but that doesn't mean government can stop it, or should try to stop it. Government goes astray when it tries to protect us from ourselves.
Many people fear that if drugs were legal, there would be much more use and abuse. That's possible, but there is little evidence to support that assumption. In the Netherlands, marijuana has been legal for years. Yet the Dutch are actually less likely to smoke than Americans. Thirty-eight percent of American adolescents have smoked pot, while only 20 percent of Dutch teens have. One Dutch official told me that "we've succeeded in making pot boring."
By contrast, what good has the drug war done? It's been 40 years since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, government has spent billions and officials keep announcing their "successes." They are always holding press conferences showing off big drug busts. So it's not like authorities aren't trying.
We've locked up 2.3 million people, a higher percentage than any other country. That allows China to criticize America's human-rights record because our prisons are "packed with inmates."
Yet drugs are still everywhere. The war on drugs wrecks far more lives than drugs do!
Need more proof? Fox News runs stories about Mexican cocaine cartels and marijuana gangs that smuggle drugs into Arizona. Few stop to think that legalization would end the violence. There are no Corona beer smugglers. Beer sellers don't smuggle. They simply ship their product. Drug laws cause drug crime.
The Difference Between Free And A Gift
Seth Godin writes:
One or two readers asked me why my book Linchpin costs money. After all, they ask, if gifts are a cornerstone of the new era, why not give it away free, as a gift?Free doesn't make something a gift. Free might be a marketing strategy, free might make a generous present, but free doesn't automatically make something a gift. Gil Scott Heron's new album isn't free, but it's a gift. He's exposing himself. Taking a risk. You listen to the album and you feel differently when you're done... it's not a product, it's a very personal statement. Keller Williams approaches his entire craft as a chance to give gifts, but that doesn't mean he can't charge for some elements of his work. What it took him to create the music is so much greater than what it cost you to consume it that he is giving gifts without doubt.
The way I understand gifts is that the giver must make a sacrifice, create an uneven exchange, bring himself closer to the recipient, create change and do it all with the right spirit. To do anything less might be smart commerce, but it doesn't rise to the magical level of the gift. A day's work for a day's pay is the win/lose mantra of the industrial era. More modern is to view a day's work as a chance to generate gifts that last.
Do You Believe?
At dinner tonight (at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference in Eugene, Oregon), Randy Thornhill told us that in the last 20 years in the USA, the number of people in each state identifying as atheists or agnostics has gone up 20 percent. (And yes, of course, I asked him if I could blog this.)
Why The Government Shares Blame With BP For The Oil Spill
From Wes Benedict, executive director of the Libertarian Party:
When the CEO of BP appeared at a Congressional hearing yesterday, Republicans and Democrats predictably engaged in finger-pointing and blame-ducking, trying to score political points. Their fingers should have been pointed at themselves.When President Obama gave his Oval Office speech on Tuesday, there was one important word missing: the word 'liability.' The president never mentioned that, thanks to liability caps provided by the federal government, BP was able to engage in riskier activities than it would have otherwise. If BP had known in advance that it would be fully liable for all damages related to an oil spill, it probably would have taken greater safeguards. When you know that your liability will be strictly limited, cutting corners becomes a lot more attractive.
... The president has apparently convinced BP to put $20 billion in some kind of compensation account. He said in his speech that it will be 'administered by an independent third party.' Will this third party be able to decide what 'legitimate claims' are, and how much they should receive? Assessing damages should be done by courts, not by political bureaucrats appointed in backroom deals between the president and a large corporation.
The president could have taken the opportunity to talk about getting government out of the energy industry, and allowing the free market to guide the future of energy production. Unfortunately, he instead blamed the free market for government failures, and discussed his hopes of increasing government interference in the energy industry.
For decades, Libertarians have warned against putting trust in government regulatory bureaucracies like the Minerals Management Service (MMS). While costing the taxpayers a lot of money, these agencies generally fail to deliver the kind of protections they promise, they tend to become corrupt, and they discourage vigilance on the part of citizens by lulling them into a false sense of security.
Sad Scam Artists Have An Edge
On Saturday, at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in Eugene, Oregon, Michele K. Surbey, talking on "Cheerful Cheaters Beware!" mentioned the Randy Nesse theory that depression is "low mood," and adaptive (to slow you/make you stop doing unproductive activity).
Surbey hypothesized cheaters who seem depressed are more likely to be forgiven and/or excused by others because:
1. People identify more with depressed compared with cheerful cheaters
2. People are more likely to attribute their cheating to external situations
3. People more likely to deem them less Machiavellian
4. People are more angry at cheerful rather than depressed cheaters
Surbey's research finding: People are more likely to forgive or overlook cheating by depressed-seeming individuals (rather than cheerful).
The takeaway for scammers: Be sure you cheat with a scowl!
Costner's Machine To Be Used To Fight Oil Spill
Aishwarya Bhatt writes at Thaindian.com about Costner's oil-separating invention (backed financially by Costner, designed by his scientist brother):
He demonstrated his machine in Port Fourchon in southern Louisiana, and the oil giant BP is going to take the aid of 32 such machines in their endeavor to fight the ballooning spill. BP has signed a deal with Kevin Costner's company - Ocean Therapy Solutions....Kevin Costner said that, "At its core, my dream, this machine, was designed ... to give us a fighting chance to fight back the oil that's got us by the throat. When you are in a fight, anybody knows you go to confront it right where it is. You don't wait for it to come to your door". Kevin also added that the machine is called V20, and it is capable of separating 210,000 gallons of oily water in a day.
The Evolution Of Stalking
"Men who cannot let go choose women who cannot say no."-Gavin de Becker quoted by David Buss in his presentation on stalking at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in Eugene, Oregon, on Friday morning.
He quoted the legal definition of stalking: "A course of willful, malicious, repeated conduct that has the consequence of inflicitng costs and instilling fear in a reasonable person."
"The legal definition is not adequate for our purposes," he said (meaning evolutionary psychologists), but it seems the legal definition is also lacking. As Buss put it, "Sometimes, a victim is not even aware they're being stalked."
Other times, the victim wasn't afraid of the stalker -- and maybe not even aware of the stalking until after the event. "Should fear be a definitional component?" Buss asked.
Who gets stalked? Personality traits of the stalkable, per Buss:
-extraversion, openness, agreeableness
-lack of "bodyguards"
-low physical formidability
Some features of stalking:
-repeated phone calls
-unwanted messages
-exaggerated affection
-unwanted gifts
-intruding in life
-invading personal space
-following around
-persistent pursuit in threatening manner
Previous theories of stalking are pathologies theories -- that it stems from personality disorders. In Attachment theory, it stems from a dysfunctional relationship psychology.
"We don't deny that there are pathologies involved," said Buss, but stalking is a fairly common mating strategy, and the weakness of the previous theories is considering it always abnormal or dysfunctional, since mating motives underlie stalking:
-Mate acquisition
-Mate poaching
-Mate reaquistion after breakup
-Sexual predation
-Mate guarding
The estimate is that 8 percent of women and 2 percent of men have been stalked at some point in their lives. With women who are stalked, the stalking often starts when she gives the indication she wants out of the relationship. Women, on average, are stalked for 120 days, and men, for 90. Stalking to try to remate with individual tends to go on longer, Buss said.
Six percent of stalkers are sexual predator stalkers, according to statistics on stalking. Stalking prior to rape is probably much greater, but if there's a rape preceded by stalking, the perp gets charged with rape, not stalking.
Stalkers who are former partners of their stalkees, according to the research of Buss and colleagues, are perceived by their victims to be much lower in mate value, and also, perceived by their victims to have a lot of trouble getting a new mate.
Over and over, "If I can't have you no one else can" comes up from stalkers. Daly and (the late Margo) Wilson find it in their work on homicide. Stalking often precedes homicide.
There's also what Buss called "The Triadic Sexual Confict" -- that's the triangle of the former mate, the stalker and the new potential mate. For the stalker, their stalking solves two adaptive problems simultaneously: imposing costs on both the new mate and the old mate. It often breaks up the new relationship.
In short, Buss said mating motivates most stalking. It's a strategy for solving problems of sexual conflict -- and often a successful one.
"Restraining orders are just another way of saying I love you," Buss quipped.
And Guess What: The Milky Way Doesn't Have Actual Milk In It
Or that weird, sweet nougaty stuff, either.
From the YouTube posting:
Dallas county commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments.Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."
That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster's, is perhaps "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."
Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling, after all.
And here's the "black hole is a racist term!" -- Hallmark card version:
Dallas one via @WalterMooreInLA
Seniority Over Merit
Look who got the ax at the LA Public Library, in layoffs based on the seniority of librarians. Blogger Cook and the Books, the librarian in charge of the Central Library's cookbook collection, who was among those laid off, posts:
Some of the system's best librarians lost their jobs. In fact, the youngest, freshest, most enthusiastic librarians lost their jobs. If these layoffs had been based on performance, it would have been an entirely different group of workers who were laid off. The injustice saddens me more than the job loss.
UPDATE: A commenter on Cook and the Books' site says, "I know the MC layoffs were not based on seniority and it was quite a lottery for who would lose their positions." Even if this is the case, how stupid still.
via LAObserved
Why We Need To Be More Like Elephants Than Bunnies
As I do every year, I'm attending the annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference to keep up on the latest in research for my column and books. This one's in Eugene, Oregon, at the University of Oregon.
Life History Theory, per Gangestad and Kaplan (PDF), "provides a framework that addresses how, in the face of trade-offs, organisms should allocate time and energy to tasks and traits in a way that maximizes their fitness." Time and energy used for one purpose diminish the time and energy the person or organism can put to another.
Fast life history involves "early reproduction, reduced investment in each offspring, and high reproductive rate." AJ Figueredo, who talked yesterday, explained to me that rabbits have a fast life history (pumping out offspring fast, small, and in volume), where elephants have a slow life history, with a long gestational period and have one big baby that's protected by all the other female elephants.
AJ, who's a meticulous researcher, found that slow life history makes a positive difference in humans. It's linked to low levels of sexual coercion, fewer anti-female sentiments, reduced levels of negative feelings toward other groups, fewer disordered eating behaviors, reduced levels of socially deviant behavior, higher levels of executive function (the chief executive part of your brain), and reduced levels of intimate partner violence.
From my notes on AJ's talk, slow life history strategy people are more likely to engage in reciprocal altruistic relationships with both kin and non kin. They prefer long term cooperative relationships, which are easier to maintain in the more more stable, predictable controllable slow life history environments.
AJ's data showed a few things the feminists aren't going to like: first, that intimate partner violence doesn't seem to be gender-specific: slow life history as a predictor of intimate partner violence showed no difference between males and females. As AJ put it, "Interperosnal aggression toward same sex and opposite sex are highly correlated."
In other words, people -- men and women -- who are violent in relationships are violent fuckers in general. In AJ's words, "People who are not very nice to the opposite sex are not very nice to people of the same sex, either."
They aren't just going after their partners -- they don't particularly like anyone. In fact, says AJ, they break down the world into two sets of people: sex objects and sex rivals. And they are violent toward both.
UPDATE: Sent this to AJ to make sure I didn't screw anything up (I was typing notes as fast as my little fingers could), and he wrote back: "No errors detected, although I am not quite as partisan (pro-Elephant) as implied: both strategies are adaptive, each in their own appropriate environment."
Free Speech And Islam Are Bad Neighbors
Keith Yost writes in MIT's student newspaper:
The line seems to keep getting pushed back further and further. With van Gogh, we discovered that we cannot criticize Islam. With Jyllands-Posten, we found that we cannot criticize our inability to criticize Islam. And now with South Park we find that we cannot even criticize our inability to criticize. Forget Islam for a moment how is it that our society, which enshrines free speech as a fundamental right, came to self-censor a debate on self-censorship?There are many out there, myself included, who believe that the war on terror will not end with a bomb being dropped or a gun being fired, but instead will be won by the power of our democratic system, our ability to discuss and persuade others of the validity of our ideas. There can be no lasting victory through the force of arms -- until we create a level of mutual respect between our societies, until we win the debate being held at the kitchen tables of moderate Muslims, there will always be fresh bodies for the grist mill.
But how can we engage in such a debate when we restrict ourselves from participating? How can we pretend to preach tolerance and human rights when we betray our own ideals? I am not calling for offending for offense's sake there is a reasonable argument to be had that responsible institutions should take measures, including self-censorship, to avoid inspiring animosity between Islam and the West. In the course of this balancing act, we will find some criticism that is important to a full and honest exchange but potentially inflammatory -- such criticism falls into a grey area that we as a society should continue to debate. South Park however, did not even come close to this grey area. There was no criticism of Islam beyond its indirect and disturbing effects on our free speech. Theirs was an attempt to participate in the debate about where self-censorship should draw the line.
Muhammad in a bear costume (as South Park pseudo-portrayed him) may sound silly, but with this censorship what we are looking at is our core democratic principles under attack. Our citizens have the right to satirize Muhammad without fear of retribution, just as they have the right to declare themselves gay or to let their religious beliefs be known. A violent minority has, through the threat of violence, caused us to surrender this right. It is one thing for someone to decide, of their own volition, whether or not to say something. It is an entirely a different matter when someone wants to say something, but fears they will be harmed as a consequence.
We would never accept this attack on our political discourse if it came from any other source.
via ifeminists
How You Know You're Not In Los Angeles Anymore
The view out my hotel room window in Eugene, Oregon, where I arrived on Wednesday for the annual Human Behavior & Evolution Society Conference.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
I've been out picking brains all night, and I have to go to bed now, so have at it! Whatever you want to talk about. (I'll post more later on Thursday, and maybe even live blog some of the sessions at HBES, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference.)
One link per comment, please, or you'll get drop-kicked to my spam folder.
Culture Changes Everything
An evolutionary psychologist I talked to last night (at the annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference) told me the Israelis were far outnumbered by the Arabs in the Six Day War, but the Arabs could never get their shit together to get all their armies to attack all at once. Had they, they would surely have wiped out the Jews.
Don't Ass, Don't Tell
I'm a skeptic in general, but I know one thing we can all be pretty sure of: Anyone who uses the word "logocentrist" is an asshole.
Hypocrisy Is Free
Good piece by Dan Akst in the LA Times about internships. Way back when, he couldn't get one -- he needed the money he made from being a doorman. Akst writes on the LA Times op-ed page:
The reality is that unpaid internships are a great way of giving the children of affluence a leg up in life. If they really do help young people get permanent jobs in desirable fields, then the current internship system has the effect, however unintended, of reserving this advantage mainly for well-to-do families -- families that happen to be disproportionately white. (Unpaid internships are No.105 on blogger Christian Lander's hilarious list of "stuff white people like.")Yet unpaid internships seem to be especially prevalent in show business, journalism, the arts and at nonprofits, most of which are hotbeds of liberal ideals. Denizens of this world, I daresay, would mostly defend state and federal labor laws (to say nothing of labor unions) as a crucial bulwark for the protection of workers against exploitation by vastly more powerful employers.
But unpaid interns don't fall under such protection. They do not get minimum wage, or enjoy legal safeguards against discrimination, sexual harassment or wrongful termination. And they do not pay Social Security or Medicare taxes to support the safety net so many of their employers cherish. Unpaid interns at nonprofits qualify as volunteers, but hiring people without pay at a business isn't even legal unless the arrangement meets federal standards requiring that the employer "derives no immediate advantage" from the arrangement. In other words, it's supposed to be pure altruism.
...In fact, unpaid internships have become such a staple of privilege that some families pay thousands of dollars to for-profit placement firms to land a spot for their kids, something lower-income families can't possibly afford. The practice of requiring interns to pay for college credit -- which some employers hope will keep them from running afoul of labor laws -- only adds to the inequity by raising the price of admission. Interns, particularly in Washington, may find themselves saddled with additional expenses for travel and housing.
At the end, he adds:
If you're a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, perhaps you can justify hiring unpaid interns as precisely the kind of activity between consenting adults that the government shouldn't meddle with.
I am a libertarian and anti-regulation, but do we really need to be regulated to behave well? While all these big businesses have kids doing scut work for free (or making them or their parents pay tuition and/or their parents pay big fees at charity auctions for internships), if you work for me, Amy, the middle-class newspaper columnist, you'll get paid. It's just the fair way to do business.
Dumb And Dahmer
We have too many dumb laws, and too many pandering dummies making them without a thought as to how they might play out (just as long as they're sparkly on the surface to the voters!).
In that vein, meet your sex offender neighbor, writes Stephen Benedict Mason at Psychology Today. It's a letter from a woman who wrote him:
My husband is on the sex offender registry in Illinois, for 15 years for having a consensual relationship with me, his wife, when I was 16. He is lumped in with pedophiles, rapists and the worst kind of perverts.We have three children and my husband cant keep a job (he has a P.H.D), he cant pick up our kids from school, we've been thrown out of our home twice because we live by a school and police monitor our home.
Why in Gods name isn't any common sense prevailing around this issue and when do we start letting people off the registry who are not a public threat? This is destroying our family, our children's well-being and my father in law (a decorated war veteran) has depleted his pension supporting us.
We have testified before Illinois congress, had several favorable articles on us from the Chicago Tribune, yet they wont let my husband - Mark - off the registry. He only has a misdemeanor for being with me, his devoted wife of 5 years now. We were married by the same judge,(Thomas E. Nowinski,) who gave Mark the misdemeanor.
Please, please someone help us. Neighbors stare at our home; people think a rapist lives in the home. Mark's oldest son (from a previous marriage) was assaulted in Hyde Park, defending Mark from fellow classmates calling Mark a rapist!! This is ruining my children's welfare and I, the "victim" am begging some one to take his name off the sex offender registry!!
To verify what I've said, look Mark Perk up on Google...we live in Crestwood IL, zip code 60445. Please, someone help my family from this horror. We have been pulled over by police and Mark detained (while our children scream in the car) so many times I can't count.
This is profoundly unfair. We need your help immediately, please help us!!!!! This law (Megan's laws) was designed to protect children, not ransack and destroy families and put a Scarlet Letter around someone's neck who does not deserve to be labeled as a sex offender. Someone please, please help us. The ACLU completely ignores cases like this. You are our last hope!!!!
The One Kind Of Kidnapping That Isn't Punished By Law
That's Parental Alienation -- keeping a parent away from (usually) his or her children. Finally, a judge is sending a Long Island woman to jail for it. Kieran Crowley and Leonard Greene write in the New York Post:
Lauren Lippe is a vengeful roadblock, the barbed wire standing in the way of her two daughters and their desperate dad, Judge Robert Ross said.Lippe often went nuclear, launching foul-mouthed tirades at Ted Rubin in front of the girls -- calling him a "deadbeat," "loser," "scumbag" and "f - - - ing asshole."
Ross said Lippe, 47, was a scheming manipulator who deliberately planned last-minute trips and events when her ex was scheduled to visit the girls.
"He was compelled to consent or risk disappointing the girls," Ross wrote in his ruling, which found Lippe in contempt for violating the couple's joint custody agreement.
If Rubin protested, Lippe berated him mercilessly.
"We all hope you die from cancer," she once blared at him, the court papers said, with both daughters in her arms.
Lippe even had the nerve to smirk in court when an emotional Rubin described the agony of missing out on Hanukkah with his children. Ross said Rubin was relegated to visit at the end of his ex's driveway, where he lit a menorah with his daughters in his truck and watched them open presents from their grandparents.
But the worst, Ross wrote, was "the crescendo of the plaintiff's conduct" involving false accusations of sexual abuse.
Lippe charged in 2008 that Rubin had fondled the breasts of one of his daughters. Lippe later conceded that she knew nothing sexual had occurred.
"The evidence before me demonstrates a pattern of willful and calculated violations of the clear and express dictates of the parties' Stipulation of Settlement," Ross wrote in a decision handed down last week.
The judge was also annoyed, the story reports, that Lippe had punished the children for wanting to spend time with their dad.
Further details here.
And some thoughts on Parental Alienation on a posting about this case by Robert Franklin, Esq., at GlennSacks.com:
It's worthwhile to look closely at what parental alienation really means, and this case, and Judge Ross' findings allow us to do just that. Above all, parental alienation is an attack on children. It is an attack on their relationship with the other parent. It is a sustained effort to deprive children of the love, affection, security, guidance and protection of the other parent. If it succeeds, the child will not only miss those things, he/she will be afraid of the other parent who can provide them. Beyond that, the child loses the many benefits of the extended family of the alienated parent. Thus, paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. will also be denied to the child.That's what Judge Ross meant by saying Lippe placed "her own interests above those of the child." What long-term damage has been done to the two girls by their mother's campaign against their father won't be known for some time. With luck, Ted Rubin nipped that in the bud by virtue of his refusal to give up in the face of the most humiliating tactics employed by his ex-wife.
A Former Terrorist Speaks
He was from a wealthy family, was in medical school, and was commanded by Islam to use violence against non-Muslims. Suppressing women's rights was the first order of business. And, by the way, he says, the West represents women's rights for them.
He makes a point we need to remember: you don't win against the Islamists with concessions or shows of weakness. To the Islamists, they are invitations to attack again.
Government I Can Get Behind
Radley Balko blogs at reason:
Kansas GOP gubernatorial candidate Sam Brownback is proposing an "Office of the Repealer," tasked with seeking out bad or repetitive laws, wasteful programs, and archaic state agencies for elimination. As a general rule, the media venerates politicians who propose new government programs as bold and visionary, while anyone daring to suggest perhaps there might be cause to eliminate an agency or two is depicted as some fringe draconian nut. Or just quaint and silly.
Thief Stoppers
Before you're robbed:
Fulcrum Products Light-It 6 LED Porch Light with Motion Sensor
Tracking the thief down afterward:
Zmodo Wireless Network Camera with 80' Night Vision
Do They Call It "Cartonned Water"?
Picture by a friend of mine, window of Los Angeles convenience store, in the wake of all the BPA in plastic bottles/endocrine disrupter stories.
Well, I guess it's better than trying to drink out of some stranger's hose. (Oops...you know I mean garden hose, right?)
Woody Or Wouldn't He?
Excellent post at Psychology Today on why men use porn by Dr. Mark Goulston:
For women, verbally venting their frustrations is a great stress reliever. No one knows why; it just is. Well, for men, an orgasm is a great stress reliever (not to say that that isn't also the case for women)....There are two kinds of sex -- sex with love and sex just for sex's sake. Many husbands feel guilty about having sex just for sex's sake with their wives, because they feel like they are using her as a thing (as opposed to making love to the person they care about). So instead of using their wives as things, many men use pornography and masturbation (and often feel ashamed or even pathetic for doing so - one man in a couple's session when confronted yelled in embarrassment, "Meet Hilda!" and pointed to his right hand). I'm not advocating it or saying it's a wonderful practice, I'm just saying it's fairly common and not always unhealthy. Pornography and masturbation (in moderation) have probably saved more marriages than they have hurt. I think it's pretty sad, but it's just a fact of modern life. The trick of course is to do it in moderation rather than letting it become a full time substitution for real sex.
To give you an idea of the stress men feel, one man asked me a few months ago if I knew what the definition of a shower was. I told him I didn't. He told me: "A shower is the place where grown men go to cry when they're afraid they can't keep the promise they made to their wives and children to always take care of them and don't want their family to see how afraid they are."
Sometimes a guy just wants to get off. If it's to Svetlana and her udders, it's really none of your business unless you aren't getting it thanks to Svetlana and friends, or unless he's beating off so much that he stops eating, sleeping, and going to work.
Let me say it again, for those who didn't read/see/hear it the first 300 times: Male sexuality and female sexuality, and males and females, are different. The differences play out in a number of ways -- for example, just above and just below.
A churlish newcomer commented the other day on a column:
Women are idiots. you want it both ways. A strong man to "take care of business" and a sensitive man to look after your needs.
My reply:
The idea that men aren't "sensitive" is bullshit. They just don't express it like women, nor should they be expected to. It's related to brain structure, it seems, and hormones. Testosterone isn't exactly "the chat hormone."
The Chores Of The Presidency
Juan Williams, quoted in the WSJ, feels the Obama administration isn't quite up to the task:
I think the problem here is this is an administration that, as Hillary Clinton famously pointed out, you may not want to have answer the 3:00 a.m. call. These are guys who have tremendous vision about legislative achievements and specific things like health care, going forward on immigration, those difficult issues. . . . But when it comes to the crisis, when it comes to the gulf oil spill, the wars, the recession, they feel as if it's being imposed upon them, rather than taking the helm. That's what Americans are sensing right here. . . . Are you able to handle a crisis in a convincing way that inspires confidence? And so far, the president hasn't done that.
Congressman Smacks Around College Kid
Meet Rep. Bob Etheridge and the back of his hand:
The Congressman's a little confused about his "rights," too. You have no "right" to know who anyone is, although you are entitled to ask, and you're entitled to refuse to speak to anyone who won't tell you.
That said, I do agree with commenter Dazed, from the reason site:
Freedom of speech aside, this trend of anyone with a flip cam waiting to jump anyone on the street to get a reaction is becoming disturbingly out of hand.
Still, you have a right to walk away, not smack a kid around.
How The Government Runs Small Business Out Of Business
Phebe Phillips had to stop making her stuffed plush toys, she writes on her toy website (see photos of her toys there):
CURRENTLY, NO PHEBE CHARACTERS ARE AVAILABLE FOR SALE. PLEASE READ PHEBE'S LETTER TO YOU LISTED BELOW... Currently, and sadly, there is nothing available for sale. I have heard from many customers inquiring about why my characters are not in the store. So, here's the story. In August of 2008, President Bush signed CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) into action. It is an end-component test of ALL products marketed to a child twelve and under regardless of where it is made. It affects products made in China, the U.S and yes, even in your own sewing room at home...if your intention is to market or sell to a child age twelve and under.Now, what is an end component test and why is there not a "Phebe" available for sale right now? It more than doubles the cost of my toys! It is approximately a $300.00 per component test of every thread, fabric or color change involved in my designs. Some pieces can have as many as 20 to 40 components. I always order in small volumes because I try to keep integrity of design and my availability limited to special stores and customers...so the combination of small volume and high components causes a drastic change to my pricing.
Since 1983, when my company started, my toys have always been tested by the standards that were required at the time, with costs being several hundred dollars per style...the new CPSIA ruling now makes the testing costs as high as ten-thousand dollars or more per large size style (as in Dancing Tutulina Rose Rabbit pictured to the right)...and the test is not done just once, but on each group that is reordered even if the exact same fabrics are used. So, to answer the question; Why are there no Phebe characters available for sale right now? Simply stated, I just do not have the volume of sales to support the quantity that I need to produce that would absorb this cost and keep my retail prices in the range that you are accustomed to.
Unfortunately, the companies that started the problem are so big and mass market, that they can absorb the cost and go on. However, because smaller companies cannot absorb this cost, the customer with be left with less of a selection of artistic and creative products and worst of all many moms with dreams of new inventive products will have a more difficult challenge bring their designs to the world! Just like me, many small and special companies are also taking a break to figure out how to deal with the costs and how this will pass onto YOU the customer.
As a reference, there was a story in the Dallas newspaper about an educational company, twenty-something-years in business, absolutely no problems...and it is over a year of their revenue just to test.
More here, at Safety And Common Sense. (As my lawyer likes to say, "If it were common, more people would have it.")
via Overlawyered
"Three Reasons Obama Should Kick His Own Ass"
From reason.tv, with Nick Gillespie:
The Misery In Gaza
A video.
Absentmindenfreude
When a friend means to send you your book to autograph and mail back, but mails you 1,000 of her blank checks instead.
That's the sort of thing I'm likely to do, so I felt much better having company -- especially this particular woman, who's somebody I've always thought of as very together.
(I hope the guy at the bank is enjoying my book!)
Confess your great moments in absent-mindedness below.
Never Mind How Many Children You Can Afford
Reproduce like bunnies! Tibor Machan asks the right questions about a couple, earning $55K a year, complained about how strapped they are:
They had children already, in their early thirties, plus "one on the way." Which brought up the issue, at least for me, if they believe they are so strapped, what business do they have bringing yet another child into their home?Of course, the reporter covering this heart wrenching scene did not pose such a question. That would have been heresy. No, instead the reporter got sympathetically on board with the drift of the couple's laments, suggesting nothing about the possibility of parental malpractice involved in bringing a new child into the world when by their own understanding they are economically unprepared for this. Never mind that having children in 21st century America surely is something over which people have considerable control. A simple question like, "If you are so strapped financially, why did you decided to have another child?" could have focused the issue quite nicely, but no such luck.
Instead the CNN reporter and the anchor both looked reproachfully not upon the parents with the financial wows but upon "American society" that on their view failed to do justice to the helpless, victimized couple.
Exactly when have journalists decided that children just pop into existence for couples who then must be seen as victims of various economic contingencies? OK, so in some cases the couple's religion will not permit family planning of some type but surely if that's so, one can deploy some alternative methods, maybe even abstinence. Yes, Virginia, you are free to say "no" if the other options are ruled out by your convictions. And that, indeed, would be the responsible thing to do, by all appearances, if it doesn't seem like you can care for another child in your home.
I wanted a dog my whole life, but I waited until I was in my 30s to get Lucy so I could be sure I could handle her care and any medical expenses. It's absolutely astonishing to me that people pop-pop-pop out children without the means to care for them. ("Betcha can't have just one!"...to borrow from Lays Potato Chips.)
via ifeminists
What A Fool Believes
Unfortunately, a lot of people think this particular fool is laudably smart. In Macleans, Mark Steyn shows what a deluded child of a thinker Nicholas Kristof can be, vis a vis Kristof's ridiculous review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Nomad (a brilliant and insightful work I just mowed through):
"She has managed to outrage more people--in some cases to the point that they want to assassinate her--in more languages in more countries on more continents than almost any writer in the world today. Now Hirsi Ali is working on antagonizing even more people in yet another memoir."That's his opening pitch: if there are those who wish to kill her, it's her fault because she's a provocateuse who's found a lucrative shtick in "working on antagonizing" people. The Times headlines Kristof's review "The Gadfly," as if she's a less raddled and corpulent Gore Vidal. In fact, she wrote a screenplay for a film; Muslim belligerents threatened to kill her and her director; they made good on one half of that threat. This isn't shtick.
But Kristof decides to up the condescension. Of the author's estrangement from her Somali relatives, he writes: "I couldn't help thinking that perhaps Hirsi Ali's family is dysfunctional simply because its members never learned to bite their tongues and just say to one another: 'I love you.' " Awwwww. Group hug! Works every time.
But maybe not so much in Somalia. This isn't a family where they bite their tongues but where they puncture their clitorises. At the age of five, Ayaan was forced to undergo "FGM" (female genital mutilation), or, in the new non-judgmental PC euphemism, "cutting." When she had her first period, her mother beat her. When she was 22, her father arranged for her to marry a cousin in Canada. While in Germany awaiting the visa for her wedded bliss in Her Majesty's multicultural utopia, she decided to skip out, and fled to the Netherlands.
All she wanted was a chance to do what Nicholas Kristof takes for granted--to live her own life. What difference would saying "I love you" in a Lifestyle Channel soft-focus blur accompanied by saccharine strings make? As they see it, the perpetrators of "honour killings" love their daughters: that's why they kill 'em. Would Kristof wish to swap his options for the set menu served up to Muslim women? How would he like it if, just as he was getting ready to head to Oxford on his Rhodes Scholarship, his dad had announced that he'd arranged for him to marry a cousin? Oh, and in Canada.
...Deploring what he regards as her simplistic view of Islam, Nicholas Kristof rhapsodizes about its many fine qualities--"There is also the warm hospitality toward guests, including Christians and Jews."
Oh, for crying out loud. In the Muslim world, Christians and Jews have been on the receiving end of a remorseless ethno-religious cleansing for decades. Christian churches get burned, along with their congregations, from Nigeria to Pakistan. Egypt is considering stripping men who marry Jewesses of their citizenship. Saudi Arabia won't let 'em in the country. In the 1920s, Baghdad was 40 per cent Jewish. Gee, I wonder where they all went. Maybe that non-stop "warm hospitality" wears you down after a while . . .
Hirsi Ali, page 129 of the hardcover:
It's true that I have had to pay a price for leaving Islam and for speaking out. For instance, I have to pay for round-the-clock security because of the death threats against me. But because Islam demands that anyone who leaves the religion be punished by death, this constant fear is to some extent shared by all Muslims who leave the faith as well as those who practice a less strict form of it.
And read this sick stuff, page 153, about how women, in Islam, are:
"the breeders of men, and women's honor lies in their purity, their submission, their obedience. Their shame is to be sexually impure, and it is the worst shame of all, because a woman's sexual disobedience defiles herself, her sisters, and her mother, as well as the male relatives whose duty it is to control her.No Muslim man has any standing in society if he does not have honor. And no matter how much honor he builds up through wise decisions and good deeds, it is destroyed if his daughter or his sister is sexually defiled. This can happen if she loses her virginity before she's married, or if she engages in sexual intercourse outside of the marriage -- and that includes rape. Even the rumor that she may have had sex is reason enough to label her "defiled" and lead to loss of honor for her whole family. A father who cannot control his daughters, a brother who cannot control his sisters, is disgraced. He is bankrupt socially and even economically. His family is ruined. The girl will not fetch a bride-price, and neither will her sisters or her cousins, because the mere suspicion of independent feeling and female action in their family taints them too.
Page 164:
When well-meaning Westerners, eager to promote respect for minority religions and cultures, ignore practices like force marriage and confinement in order to "stop society from stigmatizing Muslims," they deny countless Muslim girls the right to wrest their freedoms from their parents' culture. They fail to live up to the ideals and values of our democratic society, and they harm the very same vulnerable minority they seek to protect.
You Know What They Say About The Size Of A Man's Feet
"Big feet, big shoes."
This blog post inspired by one of the wild things I saw somebody here bought off Amazon from my Amy's Mall:
Bravo-fit Men's Shoe Stretchers - Large Size 9-14 width and length stretching.
And thanks to all of you who've shopped there or bought stuff through my Amazon links to help me survive the downturn in newspapers and support this site.
And Dumb Women Aren't Welcome At NASA
Ugly women aren't welcome at American Apparel, internal documents reveal. From a Gawker post, with copies of the docs.
And in Michigan, writes Steve Neavling for the Freep, two former Hooters waitresses in Roseville filed weight discrimination lawsuits against the chain, claiming they got the ax for porking up:
It's one of the first cases to test the state's weight discrimination law, which is part of the broader Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act that bars other types of discrimination, such as race, gender, height and age.Mike McNeil, Hooters' vice president of marketing, said the state law is "one of the long list of things that make it harder for us to do business in Michigan than in our 45 other states."
The law was passed after lawmakers heard from women who said they couldn't land auto, police and fire jobs that men dominated because of height standards.
Some employment and legal experts say the Hooters lawsuit is just one example of how employers often discriminate based on appearance. Others say one's appearance, including weight, can be a legitimate factor in hiring decisions.
Although Michigan has a rare law that bans discrimination based on weight and height, employment still is a lot easier to find if you're thin, lawyers and advocacy groups say.
Sadly, chickies, all things are not open to all people, and the world is not always going to be your oyster. Figure out what the old genes dealt ya, and work with it.
(And, no, they're not going to hire you at the strip club or to head up some elite team at JPL because you have a winning personality.)
James Randi On Crapthink
via Bad Astronomy
Are Muslims Censoring Sexy Posters In Londonistan?
Look, if Western culture doesn't work for you, hop on back to Saudi Arabia, and all the places without freedom of thought and expression and all the other freedoms. Sophie Taylor writes on TheFirstPost:
A series of posters featuring models in bikinis have been defaced or torn down in east London in what appears to be a targeted campaign. Police have not yet linked it to any religious group, but the use of black paint is reminiscent of attacks on billboards in Peshawar, Pakistan, reported by The First Post.The east London targets include street-level bikini ads for the popular chain store H&M and the Australian swimwear brand Sea Folly, as well cinema posters for the recently released Bollywood film Kites.
The H&M bus shelter ads are behind perspex cases, which have been daubed with black paint, covering the models' faces and bodies. At street level, they present an easy target compared to the huge billboards defaced in Pakistan, where women's faces have been carefully painted out by campaigners who believe the depiction of uncovered women is un-Islamic.
P.S. I wouldn't buy property in the UK (aka Englandistan) if I were you, unless you'd like to chance living under Sharia law. And yes, I'm serious. England will be over in my lifetime. It'll be Saudi Englandia or something like that.
The best solution to I've heard so far to the totalitarianism masquerading as religion that Islam really is, is Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, in Nomad. She says that atheists like me are not the ones to show Muslims the barbarity of their religion. You don't replace god belief with belief in science and reason. She says moderate Christians need to be the ones ministering to Muslims, showing them that "turn the other cheek" and all that is a better way.
Of course, trying to convert Muslims could probably leave you dead, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a fatwa against her. "Religion of peace," my pasty white ass!
Feminism Has Become Like The Mean Girls Clique In Junior High School
I don't call myself a feminist because I'm for fair treatment for all people, and against demands for special rights under the guise of equal rights (as I find too many feminists are)...and then there are those who are worshippers of ideology over evidence of how men and women are (Different! Whaddaya know!).
reason's Cathy Young writes in the Boston Globe that the left-wing litmus test of feminism risks cutting out a lot of women:
Many feminists are incensed when the label is appropriated by women who question the Violence Against Women Act, or who argue that the pay differential between women and men is due largely to women's more family-focused personal choices, not discrimination. Yet critiques of the conventional feminist paradigms of such problems as domestic violence and the gender gap in pay have been made both by many dissident feminists and by many scholars and researchers. To reject them out of hand as incompatible with feminism is not only ideologically intolerant, it also suggests an unwillingness to even consider factual claims that are at odds with dogma.Above all, Valenti is incensed that women who don't believe women are oppressed dare call themselves feminists. Feminism, she says, is "a structural analysis of a world that oppresses women, an ideology based on the notion that patriarchy exists and that it needs to end'' -- presumably in America and not, say, Afghanistan. But this definition dismisses out of hand the can-do feminism that celebrates female strength and achievement and appeals to vast numbers of women. It also suggests that feminism has an interest in portraying women as oppressed to perpetuate itself.
Palin may not be a particularly good spokeswoman for conservative feminism. Earlier this year, when giving a talk on politics and women's issues at a conservative Christian college, I found that most women were disappointed in Palin, seeing her as ill-informed and lacking in ideas (as opposed to incendiary sound bites). But let's not fool ourselves: feminists like Valenti would not be any more tolerant toward a conservative woman of Margaret Thatcher-level qualifications.
Yet the audience for a different kind of feminism -- one that seeks individualistic and market-oriented solutions, rather than big-government-driven ones, and focuses on women's empowerment rather than oppression -- is clearly there. The women who embrace it are likely to transform both feminism and conservatism. The feminist movement ignores them at its peril.
There's A Lot We Can Learn From Islam
So says the royal nitwit of England, Prince Charles, who grew up worlds and worlds away from the harsh, horrible realities of Islam that Ayaan Hirsi Ali lived through growing up.
Dan Hearn writes in the Oxford Mail about the prince's multi-culti worship:
The Prince told the audience the West could learn from the Islamic approach to nature.He said: "The Islamic world is the custodian of one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity.
"It is both Islam's noble heritage and a priceless gift to the world.
"And yet, so often, that wisdom is now obscured by the dominant drive towards Western materialism - the feeling that to be truly modern you have to ape the West."
Luckily, right under the article, there was another cartoon character speaking some sense:
BartSimpson, Springfield says...
11:21pm Wed 9 Jun 10We could also learn from Islam is that if someone don't agree with your views, you can kill them.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of the incredible book I just finished, Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, about her escape from Somalia and Islam to Western freedom and free thought, knows better:
Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalized patronage, nepotism and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better.
Details on why? More from her book:
Working my way through university as a Dutch-Somali translator, I met many Muslims in difficult circumstances: in homes for battered women, prisons, special education classes. I never connected the dots - I could not see the connection between their belief in Islam and their poverty, between their religion and the oppression of women and the lack of free, individual choice. It was, ironically, Osama bin Laden who freed me of those blinkers. After 9/11, I found it impossible to ignore his claims that the murderous destruction of innocent (if infidel) lives is consistent with the Qur'an. I looked in the Qur'an, and I found it to be so. To me, this meant I could no longer be a Muslim. In fact, I realised then that I had not been a Muslim for a long time.
Eau, It's You!
My crime novel-writing friend Denise Hamilton asked me about classic French fragrances a while back, and it happens that I wear a little-known recent classic (from the 80s): Scherrer 2, by Jean Louis Scherrer.
I hate vanilla and anything sweet smelling, and find few scents appealing. I like to smell like a grownup, but not one who's 80. My picks aside from Scherrer, are these spicy, sensual fragrances:
•Opium, by Yves St. Laurent (longtime fave)
•Coco (NOT Mademoiselle Coco), by Chanel
•Fendi (second-string fave, for variety)
Your favorites?
Denise e-mailed me:
I am a huge fan of vintage fragrance. I especially love the old Guerlains and Carons because they used ingredients back then that are no longer available to perfumers --natural Indian sandalwood, civet, musk, oakmoss, ambergris, nitro-musks. Opening a well-preserved vintage bottle that has sat in a dusty corner or closet for 50 years is like letting a genie out of a bottle, or a visit in a time machine. Pull out the cut crystal stopper and out roars a glamorous beautiful elegant woman clad in crepe de chine and furs, ready to hop in a roadster, drive down country lanes at midnight and dance all night.
Who's Going To Pay?
Can't anybody add anymore? Stossel on how Medicare and Social Security are putting out more than they take in:
Think of the burden: When I was a kid, there were five workers for every retired person. Now, there are only three. And soon there will only be two young workers to fund each baby boomer's Social Security and Medicare checks.Veronique de Rugy, an economist at the Mercatus Center, points out that Social and Medicare right now consume almost half the federal budget. In coming years, if nothing changes, they will swallow nearly the whole thing. But since Congress will want to spend money on all the other things it now buys -- not to mention a new medical entitlement -- the government will either have to raise taxes to stratospheric heights, borrow like crazy or inflate the dollar. Whichever it chooses, we'll have serious problems.
Higher taxes are not a good solution because taxation suppresses economic activity by transferring capital to politicians. Yet our only hope is a sustained economic boom.
...De Rugy asks: Why can't people take care of their own retirement by investing the money government now takes? Had we done this all along, the looming problem would have been averted. Instead, "We're about to witness the biggest, most massive transfer of wealth from the relatively young and poor people of society to the relatively old and wealthy people in society."
Our forefathers would be appalled. After the American Revolution, when the new government was debating how to pay its bills, George Washington said this about a national debt: "We should avoid ungenerously throwing upon posterity ... the burden we ourselves ought to bear." Well, we sure are dumping my generation's debt onto posterity. I wish we had more politicians like George Washington.
A Thief Is A Thief Is A Thief
Do you steal CDs from a store? Do you or have you engaged in illegal downloading? Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America, lays it out:
When we do or say something that might not square with our image of ourselves as 'good people,' we quickly adopt some form of the belief that our victim "had it coming." The operant concept behind this phenomenon is "cognitive dissonance," which is defined as, "an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously."...Once people adjust their thinking to justify their behavior, it is practically impossible to change that behavior. It is just too painful to admit when you have knowingly been doing something inexcusable. It is much easier to continue making excuses.
For example, Carnes' top 10 rationalizations to avoid:
1. Artists aren't getting paid anyway.
2. Artists and songwriters are all rich, and don't need the money.
3. Record labels need a new business model.
4. Stolen music promotes live shows.
5. Stolen songs don't displace a sale, (the perp wouldn't buy it anyway.)
6. I want it all my way, and I want it now (convenience).
7. Destroy the 'gatekeepers' and the little guy wins.
8. Information wants to be free!
9. Illegal downloading is 'sticking it to the man!'
10. The copyright term of protection is too long.
A song or piece of writing or cartoon is somebody else's property, same as a TV. If you wouldn't steal a TV, why do you think it's okay to steal somebody's intellectual property?
Good Video About Gaza Flotilla: What Really Happened
Goods and food get into Gaza just fine -- the Israelis just inspect shipments to see there are no rockets, etc., to be used against them:
Don't Call Me And I Won't Call You
As I write in my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, political robocalls are no less interruptive than any other kind of call.
Like telemarketing calls, they're a form of theft -- making you pay with your time and the hijacking of a phone line you pay for for the promotion of somebody else's political point of view.
I'm all for free speech -- but, don't make me the one paying for yours. A call demands that I give my attention to your message right now, where a letter is more polite: I can ignore it or read it at my convenience or, as I wrote in my book, "use it to pick up the little Tootsie rolls my Yorkie drops."
Hey, all you politicians and political lackeys, enough with the rudeness, with invading our lives with your messages whenever it works for you, and using telephones that don't belong to you to do it.
By the way, that's basically what I said when I phoned up the lady whose name and voice were on a political robocall I got in the thick of my work day on Monday. I phoned her up at home, that is, after looking up her home number on zabasearch.com, and left her a message about all the stuff I wrote above.
And then, there's Peter Thottam, some creep who's running for California assembly. Here's the e-mail I just sent him:
SUBJECT: Your phone calls for your campaignGive me your home number because you've been calling me at home so I want to call you at home, and whenever would be most inconvenient. I was on the phone on an important call with an anthropologist and I got call waiting interruptions from your robodialers FIVE times throughout the call, interrupting my train of thought and our conversation FIVE times. And this after I'd gotten numerous calls from your campaign on other days.
You're a parasite, hijacking a phone line I pay for and stealing my time to make your marketing costs cheaper. And I'm serious about demanding your home phone number. E-mail it back to me.
Candidates who aren't parasites send letters instead of making the rest of us pay to make their campaign costs cheaper with their time and phone lines. -Amy Alkon
If you have or can find Peter Thottam's home number, please send it to me.
Wait...unbelievable...it's 7:41 pm on Monday night and I just got yet another Peter Thottam robocall. My e-mail to him:
SUBJECT: you creep - I just got yet another one of your robocallsYou're a parasite. But, I'm going to help you stop being one, per the prices posted on my blog for creeps who interrupt my life with their calls.
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2003/09/11/telemarketers_t.html
INVOICE: to Peter Thottam
Dinner interruption with political robocall: $3,761.23.
Payable on receipt, to:
Amy Alkon
171 Pier Ave #280
Santa Monica CA 90405
UPDATE: Turns out political robocalls are illegal in California. Shaun Dakin writes:
Robo calls are illegal in California...California Political Utilities Code Sections 2871-2876 clearly prohibits any form of auto-dialer calls or robocalls being made in California unless the call is preceded by a live voice and states: "only after an unrecorded, natural voice announcement has been made to the person called by the person calling."
Robo calls are a bi-partisan invasion of voter privacy. All sides make them and all voters hate them.
Warren Beatty On Monogamy
For me, Beatty's words are reminiscent of what economist Robert H. Frank says about "moral emotions," and love as a commitment device, making you stick with a person when there's a newer, shinier candidate on the horizon:
A "rational" person would dump his partner as soon as he finds a better partnership. Emotional attachment gives more long term meaning to the relationship. Poetically "Those sensible about love are incapable of it."
Jane Boursaw writes at Popeater:
"Being a celebrity in a monogamous marriage is like being a dieter who lives in a bakery," says Alisa Bowman, author of the upcoming book 'Project: Happily Ever After.' "The dieter is trying to live on salads, but she's surrounded by eclairs and cheesecake and profiteroles all day long. Beautiful women throw themselves at celebrity men multiple times a day. Rock stars, sports stars and actors have sexy women flashing them and offering sex at every turn. The rest of us might have the random person interested in us every so often, but that random person usually isn't quite so yummy looking as the types of random people who throw themselves at celebs."So how do they resist the temptation? Maybe they grow out of it and realize there's something beyond one-night stands and serial dating. Warren Beatty was the biggest playboy around, but he seems to have figured it out. In a 2007 story in The Independent, he said of his 18-year marriage to Annette Bening, "She has a great capacity to be happy, which is a great gift to me and an even greater gift to her children ... For me, the highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship. I would hate myself if I failed to live up to it."
Lovely sentiments, but do you believe him on the sexual excitement part?
They Never March Against People Who Will Behead Them
Peace activists are clever about where they direct their protests, writes Dennis Prager:
We are told ad nauseam that Rachel Corrie was a "peace activist." So let it be said once and for all that most of these people are moral frauds. Why? Because "peace activists" routinely protest only against peaceful countries. Has there been one Evergreen State or other "peace activist" in Sudan during its Islamic government's slaughter and enslavement of millions of blacks? Are there any "peace activists" in Tibet to protect its unique culture from being eradicated by the Communist Chinese? Did you notice any "peace activists" trying to save the millions of North Koreans dying at the hands of their lunatic government? Of course not. Rachel Corrie and other "peace activists" only target peace-loving Israel and America.Why do they do so?
Here is one answer.
The world is filled with evil, and young idealists like Rachel Corrie don't like it. Which is lovely. But they don't confront real evil because they know they will get hurt. That's one reason there are no "peace activists" or "human shields" confronting Islamic terror, North Korean totalitarianism, or Chinese Communist despotism.
I Don't Usually Like Public Proposals
This one was an exception:
via @msamywallace
I See London, I See France
I see a sale on men's underpants. 24% off or more on Calvin Klein briefs, etc., at Amazon.
(I think these are sexy.)
How To Vote For Mickey Kaus
Hey, California residents, if you're an independent like me, you can vote for Senate candidate Mickey Kaus in the primary today by requesting a Democratic ballot at the polls.
Eeek, It Smarts!
If you want to be on TV, you might have to have an "ouchie" moment or two when somebody makes a crack about you, maybe in the "chicks are no good at this sort of thing" vein.
Danny Shea writes on the HuffPo that (gasp!) "Mark Haines Makes Sexist Comment On CNBC, Refuses To Apologize." (Does this sound like an episode out of some kid's day in nursery school or what?) Shea reports:
CNBC anchor Mark Haines made a sexist comment towards Erin Burnett Thursday (via SportsGrid).In a discussion of the blown call during Wednesday night's almost-perfect-game, Burnett argued that the umpire and pitcher's "graciousness" were so "beautiful" that it made for a "more memorable moment" than a perfect game would have.
"See, this is why women aren't in charge of sports," Haines shot back.
A shocked Burnett then transitioned to a panel, while making a joke about punching Haines and turning CNBC into the UFC.
"Shocked"? Is it just me, or is that one of the mildest possible cracks?
Now, maybe I'm just atypical. I love being teased by people in my life. Gregg does it all the time, and it makes me laugh, which is preferable to being all shocked about everything all the time. (I also get to hear some really good dirty and awful jokes.)
By the way, research (detailed by Helen Fisher in The First Sex) and life experience tell me that men, generally speaking, tend to be competitors where women are more likely to be conciliatory and consensus builders.
The idea that women are being victimized by being teased comes out of a denial of human nature, a denial that male and female natures are different, and a push to feminize public speech to make women more comfortable.
In short: Eeeuw.
My take? Ladies, if you can't play the nines with the boys, stay home and play house.
Personally, when I'm on NBC/LA's The Filter with Fred Roggin, I do my best to make fun of my usual debating partner, Leo Terrell, because I think it makes for more fun-to-watch TV. Regarding some issue where I didn't think he had the facts straight, I goaded him, "You'd better make more money, Leo, so you can afford Google at home."
P.S. Leo's a radio host on KABC and a lawyer. I'll bet you six cents that he makes piles more money than I do.
How To Jump-Start Detroit
Newt Gingrich suggests a 10-year tax holiday for business expansion and investment, writes Daniel Howes in The Detroit News:
Too hard, Gov. Jennifer Granholm tells WJR. Too divisive, say people weighing competing regional interests. Too fraught with rival political ideology.How 'bout this: Too important not to give it a try, too much potential (given the success of film-industry credits and Michigan's cameo role in a slew of movies) not to run the numbers and identify which areas across the city might be rehabilitated by some honest-to-goodness commerce. Property values are shockingly low; the cost of doing business in Detroit is dropping, not rising; and under- and unemployed talent is plentiful.
The statement such an aggressive move would make about Detroit, its mayor and the new City Council? Priceless. This voguish talk of being "bold," about breaking bad old habits, about changing the conversation of Detroit means you actually have to do something beyond balancing budgets (as required by law) and fighting over smaller pieces of government.
"All the tax incentives are highly motivating to firms looking to where to locate," Tim Bryan, chairman and CEO of GalaxE.Solutions, a New Jersey-based software development company, told me Thursday at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference.
He should know: He's making Detroit an integral piece of his 20-year-old company's expansion plans, bringing 500 tech jobs to renovated offices in the 1001 Woodward building at Campus Martius. "You get business to locate here and you bring downtown back into play."
His firm calculates that total costs for running an IT firm in Detroit could be within five percentage points of Brazil, which would give a whole new meaning to the phrase "insourcing." A broader package of tax incentives that would lure businesses otherwise headed elsewhere could be a net-net win for Detroit and the firms willing to take the risk.
"We see this as a business opportunity," Bryan said. "We think this could be a center of outsourcing inside the United States, coming to Detroit instead of someplace else. The message from Detroit needs to get out better than it is. We came up with this on our own."
Arthur Laffer writes in the WSJ:
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.
Flotilla Choir Presents: We Con The World
In case you have yet to see it:
Details on Islamic hatred toward Jews here, at aish.com:
Throughout history, religious wars have been fought in the name of different gods. The premise of the Oslo Accords was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not an irreconcilable religious war, but one over borders. However, the Palestinian religious leaders, all appointees of the PA political leadership, are publicly preaching that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is part of Islam's eternal religious war against the Jews. Jews are portrayed as the eternal enemies of Allah, and the killing of Jews as Allah's will. On the national level, Allah prohibits acceptance of Israel's existence and will destroy it.This ideology is preached in sermons and religious lessons that are broadcast every Friday on official Palestinian TV and radio, and from the religious lessons appearing in PA newspapers and children's textbooks.
...The religious ideology of the Palestinian Authority religious leaders can be summarized by eight essential principles:
Regarding the Jews:Jews are the enemy of Allah.
Islam is fighting a continuous religious war against the Jews.
The killing of Jews is a religious obligation.
Palestinians are the vanguard in this war against the Jews, and all Islamic nations are obligated to assist in this war.
(Floating) Animal Farm
Mark Steyn hits on how Orwellian it is to present those on the Mavi Mavari as "humanitarian" "aid" workers:
In contrast to the general directions of Helen ("Go back to Germany and Poland") Thomas, the peace-lovers aboard the Mavi Marmara were more specific:In response to a radio transmission by the Israeli Navy warning the Gaza flotilla that they are approaching a naval blockade, passengers of the Mavi Marmara respond, "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz" and "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11."Such amusing conversationalists.
These are not "humanitarian" "peace" "activists". These are, in any objective sense, a party to the conflict. They're not trying to bring "peace", they're trying to help their side win. That's their choice, and may the best man win, but the media collusion in presenting them as "humanitarian" "aid" workers is Orwellian - and all the more so in a world in which the Turkish Prime Minister accuses Israel of killing children on the beach and in which the doyenne of the White House press corps no longer recognizes Israel's "right to exist".
Now the Israeli navy is beseeching the MV Rachel Corrie (an Irish ship funded by the Malaysian government) to land in the port of Ashdod, where the authorities will deliver the (entirely unneeded) "humanitarian aid" to Gaza. The Rachel Corrie is flipping 'em the bird and saying "Gaza, here we come."
This ship is merely the latest memorial to Miss Corrie, a foolish young American killed while enjoying the frisson of vacationing in someone else's despair. There's never been a better time to read Tom Gross' piece on "The Forgotten Rachels":
Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002....But Rachel Thaler, unlike Rachel Corrie, was Jewish. And unlike Corrie, Jewish victims of Middle East violence have not become a cause célèbre in Britain. This lack of response is all the more disturbing at a time when an increasing number of British Jews feel that there has been a sharp rise in anti-Semitism.
Thaler is by no means the only Jewish Rachel whose violent death has been entirely ignored by the British media. Other victims of the Intifada include Rachel Levy (aged 17, blown up in a grocery store), Rachel Levi (19, shot while waiting for the bus), Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband, son and father while at home celebrating a Passover meal), Rachel Charhi (blown up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children), Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 16 while at home), Rachel Ben Abu (16, blown up outside the entrance of a Netanya shopping mall) and Rachel Kol, 53, who worked at a Jerusalem hospital and was killed with her husband in a Palestinian terrorist attack in July a few days after the London bombs.
Corrie's death was undoubtedly tragic but, unlike the death of these other Rachels, it was almost certainly an accident. She was killed when she was hit by an Israeli army bulldozer she was trying to stop from demolishing a structure suspected of concealing tunnels used for smuggling weapons.
Therapy-Speak
Brit journo Jenny McCartney writes in the Guardian of people babbling therapy-tinged excuses for their behavior (Sarah Ferguson being the most recent example):
Sarah, Duchess of York appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to explain how she came to accept a £27,000 bung from an undercover reporter as a down payment on £500,000 in exchange for "access" to the Duke of York.After warning Oprah about her personal potential for hyperventilation, Fergie was made to watch the video footage of the embarrassing deal. It triggered a flood of therapy-babble. "I feel sorry for her, bless her. I feel really sorry. She looks exhausted. Sad, really," she said. It slowly became clear to the appalled audience that Fergie was talking about herself in the third person.
She was drunk when she struck the deal, she said: "I'd tried to be perfect for 25 years or even longer, I tried to do everything right and little Sarah got lost along the way." I'm not sure where little Sarah has got to now - possibly a yacht with free cocktail bar, somewhere in the Maldives - but big Sarah should really stop this kind of talk. It went down disastrously with the American public, who rightly perceived it as a woolly attempt to dodge blame.
When it comes to the public admission of wrongdoing, there are only two ways to hang on to your frayed dignity: either brazen it out and say you enjoyed every darn minute, or give the impression of being honestly sorry, and then shut up.
Unfortunately, therapy-babble has spread like a virus across the world, and it's often the first language that springs to mouth when public figures are caught out.
When Michael Douglas cheated on his first wife, he revealed that he was being treated for "sex addiction". Tiger Woods, in a fulsome apology for compulsive infidelity, explained that he had lost touch with his Buddhist faith, and was heading for "more treatment and more therapy". Here, when the married Lib Dem MP Mark Oaten was caught doing unspeakable things with a rent boy in 2006, he attributed it to dramatic hair loss in his thirties, which had triggered a mid-life crisis. He failed to explain why he hadn't simply bought a fancy sports car, like everyone else.
The alternate approach reminds me of something Joan Didion wrote in "On Self-Respect," in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:
...People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent.
McCartney gives a few examples -- like this one:
Alan Clark, when revealed to have bedded the wife of a South African judge and her two daughters, simply said: "I deserve to be horsewhipped... I probably have a different sense of morality to most people." For that, and many other indiscretions, he was feted after his death as an irreplaceable character.
As I wrote in a column about Tiger Woods:
Of course, Tiger had to publicly apologize for the bimbo malfunction because he isn't just Tiger the guy who plays golf, but a role model who has countless people depending on him for their livelihoods. If he weren't, he could either have said nothing or said what I suspect is the truth: "I'm not sorry for having sex with all those models, escorts, and busty wafflehouse waitresses. I loved every minute of it. I'm sorry I got caught. But, I'd do it again. And, hope to in the future."
Pat Condell On The Ground Zero Mosque
Can you believe they're going to have their opening ceremony on September 11? Do you really think it's an accident that they're building it in spitting distance from Ground Zero?
Here's Robert Spencer at Human Events on the placement of mosques:
The placement of mosques throughout Islamic history has been an expression of conquest and superiority over non-Muslims. Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in order to proclaim Islam's superiority to Judaism. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was built over the Church of St. John the Baptist, and the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople was converted into a mosque, to express the superiority of Islam over Christianity. Historian Sita Ram Goel has estimated that over 2,000 mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples for the same reason.
Excerpt From Nomad, Intro, Page xvii
In her new book, Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, Ayaan Hirsi Ali gets into the obstacles of integrating Mulims into Western society and turning them into citizens:
All Muslims are reared to believe that the Qur'an, as "revealed" to Muhammad, is infallible and must be obeyed without question. This makes Muslims vulnerable to indoctrination in a way that followers of other faiths are not. Moreover, the violence that is endemic in so many Muslim societies, from domestic violence to the incessant celebration of holy war, adds to the difficulty of turning people from that world into western citizens. I can sum up the three obstacles to the integration of people like my own family in three words: sex, money and violence.
This is an amazing book -- a great read. She's wise, insightful, humble, and courageous.
Plastic Surgery For The Singing Voice
Welcome to "Auto-Tune." TIME Mag's Josh Tyrangiel on it, from February, 2009:
If you haven't been listening to pop radio in the past few months, you've missed the rise of two seemingly opposing trends. In a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a lot of pop vocals suddenly sound great. Better than great: note- and pitch-perfect, as if there's been an unspoken tightening of standards at record labels or an evolutionary leap in the development of vocal cords. At the other extreme are a few hip-hop singers who also hit their notes but with a precision so exaggerated that on first listen, their songs sound comically artificial, like a chorus of '50s robots singing Motown.The force behind both trends is an ingenious plug-in called Auto-Tune, a downloadable studio trick that can take a vocal and instantly nudge it onto the proper note or move it to the correct pitch. It's like Photoshop for the human voice. Auto-Tune doesn't make it possible for just anyone to sing like a pro, but used as its creator intended, it can transform a wavering performance into something technically flawless. "Right now, if you listen to pop, everything is in perfect pitch, perfect time and perfect tune," says producer Rick Rubin. "That's how ubiquitous Auto-Tune is."
A friend has bootlegs of the Temptations in studio, unmixed -- just the vocals -- and the voices are truly incredible. Vive la difference.
What Do You Think Of "Blind" Book Titles?
For example, Seth Godin's Purple Cow, which you might think transcends being "blind" because it does have the subtitle, "Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable."
The thing is, people generally refer to books with the title alone. I didn't even know the subtitle of Godin's until I looked for it now.
Godin blogs:
Is the purpose of the cover to sell books, to accurately describe what's in the book, or to tee up the reader so the book has maximum impact?The third.
It's the third because if the book has maximum impact, then word of mouth is created, and word of mouth is what sells your product, not the cover.
Tactically, the cover sells the back cover, the back cover sells the flap and by then you've sold the book. If those steps end up selling a book that the purchaser doesn't like, game over. So you have to be consistent all the way through and end up creating a conversation after the purchase. Books are better at creating conversations than most products (when was the last time you talked about a pool cue), but there's lots of opportunity here, no matter what you make.
I'm asking because I'm working on the title for my next book, which is blind but unusual, and something that I think will make people pick up the book and turn to the back to see what the book's about. I've gotten both complete raves and "I dunno, could be better"s.
Why Couples Split 40 Years In
Deirdre Bair, author of Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over, wrote the op-ed "The 40-Year Itch" in The New York Times:
For my book, I interviewed 126 men and 184 women who divorced after being married 20 to 60-plus years. And what surprised me most was the courage they showed as they left the supposed security of marriage. To them, divorce meant not failure and shame, but opportunity."People change and forget to tell each other," Lillian Hellman said. Still, many couples seem to have an "aha!" moment when they realize that it's time to split up. No matter how comfortably situated they are, how lovely their home and successful their children, they divorce because they cannot go on living in the same old rut with the same old person.
Men and women I interviewed insisted they did not divorce foolishly or impulsively. Most of them mentioned "freedom." Another word I heard a lot was "control"; people wanted it for themselves for the rest of their lives. Women had grown tired of taking care of house, husband and grown children; men were tired of working to support wives who they felt did not appreciate them and children who did not respect them. Women and men alike wanted time to find out who they were.
One spouse might have wanted to keep working while the other wanted to retire. Often, there was an emotional void; one would say that the other "doesn't see me, doesn't know who I am," while the other hadn't a clue: "I thought everything was just fine; we never argued, we don't fight." One grew disenchanted with the wrinkled person across the dinner table and wanted someone new and exciting.
I talked to men who were serial marry-ers with trophy wives they abandoned, as one of them put it, the minute the woman "got broody and wanted babies." And I found women who wanted a man who would take them dining and dancing, but then go home to his own bed and leave them alone until the next party.
Many stories ended with some rendition of, "It's my time and if I don't take it now, I never will." No matter whether they had spent years gearing up for divorce or decided on the spur of the moment after one minor disagreement too many, few had regrets. Men who wanted new companionship easily found it, and women who wanted new partners had them within two years.
Krauthammer On Israel's Refusal To Commit Suicide
From the Seattle Times, an excerpt from Krauthammer's column:
Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
Israel has already twice intercepted weapons-laden ships from Iran destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?
...The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.
Energy Healing Your Car
I got yet another e-mail from this PR chick Ashley -- subject line: "Pills are passe at X Medical Group" -- asking me if I'd like to check out the "energy medicine" ("medicine" being their word for it) at a Medical Group.
I write back:
Thanks - not of interest at all. I'm for evidence-based medicine. Best,-A
In a message dated 6/3/10 3:39:48 PM, ashley@deleted.com writes:
Energy Medicine is based on quantum physics.
I write back:
Ashley, there has to be actual evidence that it works. Read the blog Respectful Insolence if you'd like to understand better. Sadly, the public tends to believe stuff like you wrote me above. It could be based on Einstein's theory of relativity, and that wouldn't mean anything, either.I'm waiting for somebody to come out with "energy car repair" and see how many people can be persuaded to go for that.
A link for you. Marcia Angell on why people believe in unproven crap.
A Long Handshake Goodnight
What do you girls think of a guy who doesn't kiss you on the first date? And what if there are still no moves made on date two?
(And let's assume that the date doesn't take place at high noon at Starbucks, and that it seemed to go well.)
Feel free to add in related suggestions/experience, about tongue, timing and other details.
And, while I'm keeping mum on my thinking on this for now, I do have to say: Guys, never, ever ask a woman if you can kiss her.
Because I'm The Mom! -- Er, Cop -- That's Why!
Jack Cafferty blogs on CNN.com that, per the Ohio supreme court, Ohio cops can now charge you with speeding just by eyeballing you and deciding you were going too fast -- no laser gun or radar needed:
The court says an officer's visual estimate will work as long as the officer is trained, certified by a training academy and experienced in finding speeders.Supporters say that officers undergo extensive training where they have to visually estimate the speed of vehicles within one or two miles per hour of the actual speed.
Nonetheless, law enforcement officials insist they won't be getting rid of their speed guns; and that it's rare for officers to give tickets based solely on their observations. But the state's highest court says if they want to, it's quite all right.
The case stemmed from the appeal of a traffic ticket issued near Akron, Ohio in 2008.
In that case, a police officer ticketed a driver because he said it looked like the driver was going too fast.
Without any technical assistance, the cop determined that the motorist was going 70 miles-per-hour when the speed limit was 60. The driver says the court's decision "stinks." The driver is right.
It's getting far too easy in this country to become a criminal, with too many laws and removals of rights and protections.
Everything Is Racist
Claudia Schiffer appeared in a number of poses for a fashion spread by Karl Lagerfeld, a secretary, Marie Antoinette, and a disco era black woman with a huge fro. Naturally, as Simon Cable writes in the Daily Mail, somebody popped up to find it racist:
But Shevelle Rhule, fashion editor at black lifestyle magazine Pride, said the images of Miss Schiffer were tasteless.She said: 'It shows poor taste and it's offensive.
'There are not enough women of colour featured in mainstream magazines. This just suggests you can counteract the problem by using white models.
'I don't believe they deliberately set out to offend, they obviously see it as being arty and feel that they are pushing boundaries.
'But clearly no thought has been given to the history behind what they have done and the comparisons it draws with minstrel shows.'
Of course, the assignment here seems to have been "dress up Claudia Schiffer," not model 80s fashion. Would it be "racist" to dress up Naomi Campbell as an Asian woman?
People don't have a responsibility to hire black models any more than they have a responsibility to hire redheaded ones.
On the spotting victimization everywhere front, I had a little back and forth with a woman on Twitter a nasty tweet she'd made about how she couldn't believe any woman would want so and so on the right. I told her I was sick of the low-blow stuff on both sides...couldn't she just attack the guy's ideas?
There was more back and forth, and I mentioned a guy on right and a guy on the left: Thomas Sowell and Josh Micah Marshall.
Weirdly, she accused me of being racist for bringing in "other black people." I didn't quite get that. "Other black people"? Well, Thomas Sowell is black, but I think of him as a thinker, not a black guy. And Josh Micah Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, is about as white as I am.
Then it occurred to me -- I went back and clicked on her Twitter name. Yes! She was black. Well, I'm 46, and I have a hard time seeing those tiny twitter pictures. I told her I didn't know she was black...can't see that small -- just thought she had a pretty smile. But, she immediately went to being victimized, at my mere mention of a thinker who happens to be black.
Enough of this already.
How To Offend A Woman Into Bed
AskMen.com has one of those pickup chicks pieces -- "12 Golden Rules For Picking Up Women" (hit "print" to make it all come up on one page).
So, are these going to charm you out of your panties, ladies -- or will they have another effect?
For example, instead of using pickup lines, you're supposed to use ickup lines like this one:
"I was just noticing how well your shoes show off your calves, and although I'm sure you're already aware of this, sometimes it's nice to get outside confirmation."
I'm particularly interested in what women think of the idea of "negging" -- saying something insulting to women to get them into bed.
For example, "I guess you're trying to join the (insert celebrity name here) club when it comes to hairstyles. I've seen a lot of women with a similar style, but I must say it suits you a lot better than most."
Me? I've never been interested in the kind of guy who is such a loser that he has to trick me into bed. Much better suggestion for picking up girls -- I think -- is developing into somebody interesting and decent who people want to talk to.
Information Might "Want To Be Free"
But, in some states, you can be jailed for videotaping the actions of a police officer. Wendy McElroy writes:
In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland), it is now illegal to record an on-duty police officer even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.
Massachusetts attorney June Jensen represented Simon Glik who was arrested for such a recording. She explained, "[T]he statute has been misconstrued by Boston police. You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want." Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley agrees, "The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law -- requiring all parties to consent to being taped. I have written in the area of surveillance law and can say that this is utter nonsense."
The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.
In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law -- aka recording a police encounter -- the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2. In dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall stated, "Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police. Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals...." (Note: In some states it is the audio alone that makes the recording illegal.)
The selection of "shooters" targeted for prosecution do, indeed, suggest a pattern of either reprisal or an attempt to intimidate.
Glik captured a police action on his cellphone to document what he considered to be excessive force. He was not only arrested, his phone was also seized.
On his website Drew wrote, "Myself and three other artists who documented my actions tried for two months to get the police to arrest me for selling art downtown so we could test the Chicago peddlers license law. The police hesitated for two months because they knew it would mean a federal court case. With this felony charge they are trying to avoid this test and ruin me financially and stain my credibility."
What's With The Chocolate Shortage? Again!
Because I eat really low-carb, I don't eat dessert often -- maybe once every week and a half -- and when I do, it has to be really good.
There's an ice cream store I like with really good fresh-made gelato, N'ice Cream, and twice in the past month, I've gone in there for chocolate, and twice, they've been out of it.
Gregg and I went in the liquor store next door, and they, too, were out of my backup flavor -- Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip, and my backup, backup flavor, Haagen-Dazs chocolate. And no, I don't want sickeningly sweet weird-flavored ice cream with little pieces of Ben & Jerry's underpants in it, or whatever it is they jam in it. That stuff is ice cream for unrepentant potheads, not people with normal tastebuds.
Anyway, what I want to know is WHY THE HELL DON'T THESE ICE CREAM SELLERS, FROM N'ICE CREAM TO EVERYBODY ELSE...whoops...I'll stop yelling now...
...As I was saying, being in the business of selling ice cream, why don't they figure out that many, many, many people LOVE chocolate, and stock up on it? Maybe order double or triple the chocolate, or make double or triple in the case of N'ice Cream.
Why do you think people in the business of selling ice cream so don't get -- or so refuse to believe or bow to -- what their customers want?!!
Gore-ing Apart
Why call it quits after a decade of marriage, CNN.com asks in the wake of Al and Tipper Gore's announcement that they are divorcing?
There's a tendency to overvalue tenure. I'm not for people divorcing when their kids are growing up (due to the extreme negative effects on children of non-intact families) But, people grow apart. Staying together on the pretense they haven't is pretty wasteful and anti-life.
From the CNN.com piece:
Break-ups among long-term married couples -- who have invested 30, 40 or more years into a relationship -- is an uncommon phenomenon compared to the skyrocketing divorce rates among naive newlyweds or parents overwhelmed with children, marriage experts say. But the number of long-term relationships headed toward separation -- like the Gores -- is becoming more frequent with longer life spans and a growing acceptability of divorce, they say."Staying in exactly the right relationship to one another is a very hard thing to maintain every decade," said Pepper Schwartz, professor of sociology at the University of Washington. "People think you only get closer over time, but that's not necessarily true."
I'm guessing the Gores are probably parting as friends, and can appreciate the good years they had together. Nothing lasts forever. Pretending it does doesn't make it so.
Dumb "Security" Measures
Loved this tweet from @jckiedncki
Dear security engineers: Not everyone has a mother who's above trying to break into our online accounts...and she knows her maiden name.
Also, as an identity theft victim, I'm particularly fond of businesses that ask for my social security number as "for (my) protection."
Me: "Oh, you mean the one the women who stole my identity and $12K of my money and tried to open charge accounts in my name have?"
People Not Only Lack Manners...
They lack manners about lacking manners. Sign posted at kitchen supply store, reported on list-serve:
"In order to respect your privacy, we are not able to help you while you are on the phone."I aksed the ladies at the counter: "Does this translate to: we'll refuse service as long as you behave like an impolite jerk?". The ladies concurred that yes, it meant that, only they couldn't print it like that; but customers got the gist, as some people actually got angry about it.
Word to cell phone rudesters lining up to yammer into their phones/pay at businesses everywhere -- that's a person behind the counter, not a giant adding machine with realistic human features.
Shut up, shut off your phone and...yes...say hello.
What Really Happened In Israel
Ralph Peters in the New York Post puts out the real story:
Yesterday's "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel.It was about Turkey's determination to position itself as the leading Muslim state in the Middle East.
Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government -- led by Islamists these days -- sponsored the "aid" operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians.
And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react -- and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated.
The lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, just happened to have an al-Jazeera TV crew on board to film Israel's response. Ironically, the early videos would've been counterproductive, had world leaders and journalists not been programmed to blame everything on Israel.
Those videos showed Israeli commandos rappelling onto the ship with both hands on the rope (making it rather hard to use a weapon), yet activists claimed the Israelis opened fire as they descended.
Purely by coincidence, dozens of "peace activists" waited with sharpened iron bars, clubs, slingshots -- and rifles. Of course, the nine dead in the melee were all Israel's victims.
The first wave of Israeli commandos reportedly were armed only with paintball rounds for crowd control. Inspect those videos of maddened peaceniks assaulting the soldiers as they landed on deck. You don't see any Israelis pointing rifles -- they're fending off blows.
But the claims of pro-terrorist "peace advocates" are given instant credence.
NYPost commenter rum and coke makes a good point:
On March 7 2010 Nigeria Muslims killed about 500 Christians between 0300 and 0600. At Dogo Nahawa Village In Jos South Local Council. Not a word from Obama the United Nations or the so called peaceful muslims Why?
Video:
More here at Slate.
Hey, Music Fans! Help Amy With Her Homework
What's a well-known(-enough) band that's really uncool right now?
Some suggestions: Dave Matthews (who is possible re-cool, according to a source) and Limp Bizkit.
If possible, explain why your suggestion fits the bill.
Thank you.
Slaving over a hot computer on final approach to deadline.
Kaus: Dems Kidding Selves On Immigration
Milton Friedman said you can't have open borders in a welfare state. Mickey Kaus, blogger and dark, dark-horse candidate for California Senator, has similarly sensible ideas on illegal immigration, writing in the OC Reg:
Democrats' dogma on immigration -- they've never met an amnesty they didn't like -- is at odds with common sense. After all, why don't we have free, unfettered immigration - so-called "open borders"? Because half the world would happily move to our country if given a chance. Los Angeles and the Bay Area would soon look like Rio de Janeiro, with vast communities of shacks and slums.Americans used to working for at least the minimum hourly wage would find themselves competing with good, hard-working people for whom our minimum wage seems like a good daily wage. Or maybe a good monthly wage. Earnings for low-skilled work would plunge, and the disparity between those workers' lives and the successful rich at the top would be almost intolerable in a modern democracy.
These reasons why we don't want completely "open borders" are the same reasons why we need a more secure border than the one we've got. Waves of unskilled illegal immigrants have a negative effect on wages of working Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder. Economists argue about the size of that effect, but whatever the size, it's pushing down instead of up.
...Why do I get the feeling that too many Democratic politicians -- and businessmen eager for cheap labor -- wouldn't really mind if border enforcement failed again? After all, then there would be a new group of illegal immigrants to legalize -- more potential Democrats. A new way to rev up the Latino "base" vote. And more ways to call anyone who wants to break the cycle of amnesties "anti-immigrant." Or worse.
There's an obvious, alternative common sense solution that Democrats (and Bush-style Republicans) are trying to avoid: Tell undocumented immigrants living here that they will have to wait. Amnesty isn't happening anytime soon. Get control of our borders first through steps including:
• A requirement that employers verify the legal status of new hires
• Stiff sanctions if they don't
• A system for tracking legal visitors who overstay their visas
• An actual, physical border fence
• Greater avenues for legal immigration, including immigration from Mexico
If these measures actually work, survive the inevitable lawsuits, and send a clear message to the world that the game has changed -- you've got to come here legally --then in a few years we can start talking about some sort of legalization illegal immigrants already here. Not now.
When politicians conspire to exclude common sense solutions, is it any wonder voters get angry?
How Well Are Those Statins Working For You?
A Business Week chart.
Yes, that's right, your doctor has you on a drug that has little chance of having any benefit for you.
Oh, and did you know that statins have some ugly side-effects?
via Dr. Eades
The Wussy Presidency
Obama and the BP disaster, and how he went to the oil companies for advice on what to do about it, by Christopher Brownfield on The Daily Beast:
The oil companies stood together and advised President Obama that BP's plans for the crisis response were the best of all available options. If this sounds kosher to you, then please contact me and I'll sell you a bridge in Brooklyn at a very special price. Historically, oil companies are remarkably consistent in supporting each other when the industry is threatened by political forces and a popular backlash. Only on rare occasions are there exceptions to the lock-step unity of petrol power. For example, in the 1950's, an Italian oil executive named Enrico Mattei broke ranks and decided to undercut the deals that other oil companies enjoyed throughout the Middle East. When Mattei offered his host countries a 50/50 split on the revenues, the oil industry erupted in anger. The 50/50 deals had broad normative appeal that paved the way for other oil-rich countries to demand equal treatment. But fairness can have consequences in a den of thieves; poor Enrico was killed in a mysterious plane crash in 1962. One doesn't need to be a Nobel laureate to do that math.The problem with this BP spill response is that President Obama asked the oil companies for their advice instead of ordering them what to do to stop the spill. BP's response would not look the same if President Obama threatened to nationalize their assets and take charge of the situation. I know that the Bush administration gave aggression a bad name, but sometimes it's ok to be aggressive. It was a mistake for President Obama to construct a team of advisers so intelligent and accomplished, yet so green with casualty response and so susceptible to oil company coercion. It would be far better for our president to pick up the red phone and call Vladimir Putin for a lesson on ninjapolitik than to leave BP in charge of the ineffectual plans that it's bringing to the table.
Mickey Kaus, the dark, dark-horse candidate for California senator against our presently elected hairdo, Barbara Boxer, was asked whether he'd consider running for governor or mayor and he said he wouldn't -- because those are jobs that require a lot of administration, and that's not his skill. Senator is a job that's more brains than organization; ideally, that is (if you forget the nimwits we actually elect). Am I wrong, or is Barack Obama not much of an administrator, either? And, you think he is not, are the people he has to do the administrating for him not really making up for it?
Islam Means Killing Apostates
Among other equally barbaric things. From MinivanNews, from the Maldives:
The Islamic Foundation has called for self-declared apostate Mohamed Nazim to be stripped of his citizenship and sentenced to death if he does not repent and return to Islam.Nazim claimed he was "Maldivian and not a Muslim" during a public question-and-answer session with Islamic speaker Dr Zakir Naik, the first time a Maldivian has publicly announced he is not a Muslim.
According to the Maldivian constitution all citizens are required to be Muslim, and the country is always described as a "100 percent" Muslim country....
Today the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives issued a press statement calling on judges to give Nazim the opportunity to repent "and if he does not, then sentence him to death as Islamic law and Maldivian law agree."
"The Islamic Foundation believes that the person who announces apostasy should be punished according to Islamic laws," the NGO said, warning that Nazim represented "a disturbance to the religious views and the religious bonds that exist with Maldivians."
"Hereby if this man does not do his penance and come back to the Islamic religion, the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives calls to take the citizenship away from this man as mentioned in the Maldivian constitution."
More here on Nazim. In other charming news, a woman in the U.A.E. reported being raped. Naturally, she was accused of consensual sex and is facing lashes and a possible life sentence to prison.
Sorry, but how do the multi-culti types manage to get beyond this stuff to defend Islam?
A guy at a party called me a "xenophobe" for my view that Islam is a great danger to western freedoms and society and our very lives, and he ranted about the Nazis killing millions of people. I noted that the Nazis are not murdering people at the moment -- I'm concerned with those who are: Muslims, as commanded by their religion.
I've become pretty informed about Islam, I told him, and can quote from passages in the Quran and Hadiths (I mentioned the convert or kill the infidel stuff from the Quran, along with the charming Hadith about the trees and rocks pointing out the Jews for Muslims to murder).
Yet, here's a guy -- a lefty playwright -- who clearly knew little about Islam but told me I'm "evil" for my views on it. Oh yeah...he knows Muslims, he said, and they're good people (i.e., not the types to do the stuff I was talking about). Well, then they're not good Muslims, I told him; they're more like Christmas Christians. If he's right, like many Muslims (a great many of whom out of the USA are illiterate), they haven't read the Quran, which is to be taken literally, and don't know that Mohammed's actions are to be emulated (Mohammed, the greedy mass murderer who sent his men off to kill when he wanted the wealth or women of other tribes...Mohammed, the pedophile, who married Aisha at 6 and had sex with her at 9).
I get it...and it scares me -- Americans want to believe that everybody can believe whatever they want, and it's okay. But, it's not okay. Go to church, and you'll likely hear messages about turning the other cheek. Maybe some or many mosques are very Americanized and focus on nice verses from Islam. The truth is, Surah 9:5, the Verse of the Sword, abrogates those that come before it:
"Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."
Yeah, live and let live...as long as you can, missing your head. In the words of Robert Spencer on FrontPage:
But most government and media analysts dare not even question the assumption that the Koran is peaceful, for they believe that any insinuation to the contrary is racist, bigoted, and effectively brands all Muslims as terrorists. In other words, they think the implications of the possibility that the Koran teaches warfare against unbelievers are too terrible to even contemplate. Thus, many policymakers simply assume the Koran teaches peace without bothering to study the text. They do this to their own peril - and ours.FP: What, in your view, is the Koran?
Spencer: It is the primary religious text of one of the world's most prominent and influential religions. For more than a billion Muslims, the Koran is the unadulterated, pure word of Allah, eternal and perfect, delivered though the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad. For Infidels, it is a threat, a call for their destruction or subjugation. Consequently, every Infidel needs to know what is in it, and plan accordingly to defend himself.
I think people need to inform themselves about Islam as the first line of defense. An excellent source is Robert Spencer's JihadWatch. Here's a link to his book, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion. And here's a link to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, which I have, and I'm about to start reading.
P.S. She, herself, was a victim of the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation at age 5, and speaks about it here.
Unlike people who criticize Judaism and Christianity, she has to have bodyguards round the clock. As Tunku Varadarajan writes about her at the Daily Beast, "She would be dead if she did not."
via Eugene Volokh
Mickey Kaus Has My Vote
(For U.S. Senator, in the race against our currently elected hairdo, Barbara Boxer.) And his commercial's funny, too:
FYI, I don't agree with him on a number of the issues posted on his site, but I heard him talk about many of his plans and beliefs, and I've read him for years, and I find him to be highly intelligent and principled and knowledgeable about what to do to fix the messes the pandering suckups we've elected for so many years have gotten us in.
Electronic Breadcrumbs Just Got Cheaper
Get unlost for less. Regular price, $229, now $99, for the Garmin nüvi 260W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator.
And thanks to everybody who's been helping me survive the downturn in newspapers by buying stuff through my Amazon links on my blog and on Amy's Mall.
I just figured out what my next book will be (although I have to work on the title and sell it to my agent), and I'm guardedly optimistic about my ability to continue as a writer instead of as a table-waiter who writes. (A big thanks to all the newspaper execs who stood around with their thumbs up their asses while the Internet ate their lunch.)