March 19, 2010

Women With Mustaches
In my world, a friend is somebody who tells a woman friend when she's got spinach between her teeth, her dressed tucked into her nylons, or a strip of fur doing a little march across her upper lip. Friends who are really acquaintances keep silent. Avoiding discomfort means more to them than clueing their friend in.

Of course, letting a mustachioed friend know would be something you'd do tactfully -- maybe taking your friend for a girls-getting-their-nails-done session, and working in a suggestion for a lip wax; maybe from one of the nail-ticians.

There's also the gentle mention -- "Hey, did you know you have the faintest line of hair just above your lip?" (Saying it that way even if it's "faint" like the African bush.)

Anyway, I thought to post this because sometimes you see women out there who you're pretty sure don't have mustaches on purpose, but have mustaches just the same.

Now, maybe these mustachioed women have eye issues and can't see their 'staches, but what about all their friends? You really have to wonder, HOW DO ALL THEIR FRIENDS LET THEM WALK AROUND WITH NOTICEABLE FACIAL HAIR?!

The Food-Stamp Gourmands
Attend art school instead of accounting school? Not a problem. Not one that you should let stop you from enjoying the finest organic baby vegetables. Check out "Hipsters on Food Stamps" from Salon, by Jennifer Bleyer. An excerpt:

Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding -- and her usual gigs -- to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she's used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.

"I'm eating better than I ever have before," she told me. "Even with food stamps, it's not like I'm living large, but it helps."

Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.

"I'm sort of a foodie, and I'm not going to do the 'living off ramen' thing," he said, fondly remembering a recent meal he'd prepared of roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes. "I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it's great that you can get anything."

Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.

Food policy experts and human resource administrators are quick to point out that the overwhelming majority of the record 38 million Americans now using food stamps are their traditional recipients: the working poor, the elderly and single parents on welfare.

But they also note that recent changes made to the program as part of last year's stimulus package, which relaxed the restrictions on able-bodied adults without dependents to collect food stamps, have made some young singles around the country eligible for the first time.

So, wait...I'm "sort of a foodie," too, but buying the old vegetables and cheap meat at the Ghetto Ralph's supermarket...and my tax dollars are going to support Magida's raw honey habit and Mak's fondness for tarragon roasted rabbit? I'm tempted to track these two down and invoice them. Not that I'd imagine them paying. But, if she did, I'd turn over the money to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association.

And yes, even if you don't have a job or much of a job, there is an alternative to forcing other taxpayers to buy you a gourmet dinner. It's called "eating beans."

March 18, 2010

Dangerous Me
Richard Metzger interviews me about I See Rude People for the UK show Dangerous Minds:

Soviet-Style Medicine, North American-Style
A Canadian's tale of what it's like to try to get care under socialized medicine. Cathy LeBoeuf-Shouten, of Hudson, Quebec, writes:

Imagine that you and your spouse, and three children under the age of six move to a new city and must find a family doctor. You are told at the local clinic that the doctors there are not accepting any new patients. (Canadian price controls have created shortages of everything when it comes to healthcare). The receptionist suggests that you go through the yellow pages and try to find a physician whose practice is not "full." You spend days, and weeks, doing this, and are repeatedly told "Sorry, we are not accepting new patients." You put your name on several waiting lists and persist in calling doctors' offices.

Finally, a receptionist tells you that, while the doctor is still accepting new patients, he requires a full medical history and an interview with each family member before you can be added to his roster of patients. Based on the questions asked during the interviews, you come to understand that he is screening out sick or potentially sick people. You are all healthy, fortunately, so he takes you on as patients. Others are just out of luck.

There is a chronic shortage of doctors in Canada because price controls on doctors' salaries have resulted in a "brain drain" where the best and brightest practice medicine in the U.S. and elsewhere, after being educated in Canada. In addition, the Canadian government cut medical school enrollment in half in the 1990s as a "cost-cutting measure," making the problem of doctor shortages much worse.

Next, her son gets an appendicitis attack:

You tell the nurse that your son must be seen by a doctor immediately - it's an emergency! - as his condition is worsening by the minute. The nurse tells you, stone-faced, to go and sit in the waiting room to wait for a triage nurse. Having no choice, you do what you are told and join twenty or so others in line in front of you. You are given nothing to help make your son more comfortable - no damp facecloth, no bedpan for the vomit, nothing.

When a triage nurse finally strolls in a half hour later your son is too weak to respond to her and you begin to panic. Finally, a doctor appears and says it's just a "bug" and that you should not be playing "armchair doctor" by "diagnosing" appendicitis. He orders some time-consuming tests anyway, because you have shown him that you are very, very angry. Six hours later the test results come back positive for appendicitis.

Your son is whisked away for an emergency appendectomy, after which the surgeon tells you that, had the surgery been delayed by another few minutes, he would probably have died. Your son's appendix was gangrenous and on the verge of bursting. It reminds you of reading in the local news of three other people who were sent home from the emergency room, only to have their appendices burst and die. You are grateful that you were much more persistent and ornery than they apparently were.

It's naive adult children who think government is going to provide some sort of medical utopia.

Yes, we need health care reforms -- like untying health care from the workplace and lifting prohibitions on competition that keep people across a state line from saving large sums of money every month simply because they're on the wrong side of a state border.

In case you'd like a preview of what's to come under Obamacare, here's a bit of Canada down here in the USA: Washington state Walgreens refusing to fill Medicare patients' prescriptions as of April 16.

I know, I know, there's a simple solution: The government will pass legislation to force them to do this.

And they will either go out of business or pass the costs on to the rest of us:

"Can of Diet Coke? That'll be $13.50, sir."

Canada link via Dr. Eades

Follow That Porkulus
This made my blood boil. John Dunbar writes at American U's Investigative Reporting Workshop that lobbyists are keeping the public in the dark about broadband:

The government is spending up to $350 million of taxpayer money to create a map that will show where there is high-speed Internet service in the United States and where there is not.

Despite the large expenditure of taxpayer funds, it will display no information on price or subscriber numbers. Internet connection speeds will be averaged over an entire metropolitan area and an as-yet unknown portion of the data collected to make the map will be off-limits to the public.

And in an odd twist, state grantees getting paid to collect the information are expected to get some of their data from the Federal Communications Commission, begging the question - why not require the FCC to create the map and save $350 million?

The mapping program is being paid for by the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus package, which includes $7.2 billion for broadband projects. The text of the plan, though, comes from a different piece of legislation: the Broadband Data Improvement Act, a 2008 law passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Republican president, George W. Bush.

The lack of a requirement for robust, public data in the legislation is no accident.

It is a testament to the lobbying power of the nation's providers of high-speed Internet service, which for the past decade have stifled government efforts to collect and make public data that could help the nation determine the width and depth of the so-called digital divide.

Here's telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick at Nieman Watchdog on how we're all being rooked good by the cable monopolies:

AT&T and Verizon claim there's plenty of competition, but you can't select your own Internet provider over the broadband networks and local phone prices have gone up -- 90% in New York and New Jersey, for example -- over the last 5 years. If there was competition, prices couldn't increase like that. The absence of competition has also raised Net Neutrality issues, as a provider's ability to block or degrade or favor its own service over others wouldn't be a problem if you could simply leave and go somewhere else.

But the real kicker is this: By 2010, America should already have been rewired. Taxpayers have spent about $320 billion for fiber-based networks since the 1990s but have nothing to show for it. In fact, in many states, all schools, libraries and hospitals should have been rewired with fiber optic service as part of changes to state laws that gave AT&T and Verizon billions per state to remove the old copper wiring with new fiber optic wiring. Worse, the money is still being collected today in the form of rate increases, tax breaks and other perks the companies got.

So what now? The FCC's plan is to increase your taxes yet again, by adding broadband to the Universal Service Fund Tax -- rewarding the same companies that harmed you by giving them more of your money and a free pass.

...No one is investigating the monies currently or previously collected by AT&T, Verizon et al, nor their failure to properly upgrade the utility phone networks they were paid to upgrade. No one is going to confront the 900-pound gorillas. There will be no mention of serious competition, but there will be billions more for the companies that already overcharged you. The FCC's plan is a vision of the year 2020 that is antiquated today.

With the 2020 remark, he's talking about the very-high-speed broadband that other countries have today -- with our goal to match them being a decade out.

Doesn't anybody understand that this and so much other lobbyist-driven sleaze, as of late, has far-reaching implications for our country's survival?

Helloooo? Helloooo? Anybody out there?

Warren Buffet Plays Axl Rose
Geico Ad, longer YouTube version. Look closely for Buffett (he's on stage, bandana, long hair):

via @MHBusiness/@markwmann

March 17, 2010

$315 Stroller, And She Steals Milk
"But, I'm buying something. And I'm just taking a little bit," the mother said to me at Starbucks, as she poured milk from the fixins bar into her baby's bottle.

The mother, a pretty Asian woman in stylish clothes, filled up the bottle halfway, and then went up to buy a coffee. (Perhaps because the coffee, which is behind the counter, is much harder to steal.)

Sorry, Lady, but just because you buy a couch at the furniture store doesn't mean you get to steal a chair on your way out.

*I only don't have a picture of her and her baby in her $315 Maclaren Techno XT Stroller because I don't think it's right to take photos of people indoors. Believe me, I was way tempted to get a shot of the cute tot drinking her stolen milk.

Can't wait for Mommy to teach her kiddie ethics.

Addiction Is Not A Disease, But A Choice
I've long been in favor of the work of Stanton Peele, who said the above and has been saying it for decades. Now, Sally Satel writes at TNR of a new book, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, by Gene M. Heyman:

In a most impressive display of brain technology, scientists have used scanning technology to observe metabolic activity of the brain in action. In a typical demonstration, addicts are shown drug-related videos that depict people handling a crack pipe or needle. Brain scans capture the viewer's reaction to these provocative images and represent it as glowing technicolor splotches of color that represent activation in drug-sensitized brain regions. (Videos of neutral content, such as landscapes, induce no such response.) Even in users who quit several months ago, neuronal alterations may persist, leaving them vulnerable to sudden, strong urges to use. But addiction is not a brain state, it is a behavior. As philosopher Daniel Shapiro of West Virginia University puts it, "You can examine pictures of brains all day, but you'd never call anyone an addict unless he acted like one."

Furthermore, as Heyman says, much of the public, and a dismaying number of psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuroscientists, mistakenly believe that if a behavior is influenced by genes or mediated by the brain then the actor cannot choose his actions. While every behavior has a biological correlate (and a genetic contribution) and every experience that changes behavior does so by changing the brain, the critical question, Heyman wisely says, is not whether brain changes occur (they do) but whether these changes block the influence of the factors that support self-control.

In fairness, the scientists who forged the brain disease concept had good intentions. By placing addiction on equal footing with more conventional medical disorders, they sought to create an image of the addict as a hapless victim of his own wayward neurochemistry. They hoped this would inspire companies and politicians to allocate more funding for treatment. Also, by emphasizing dramatic scientific advances, such as brain imaging techniques, and applying them to addiction, they hoped researchers might reap more financial support for their work. Finally, promoting the idea of addiction as a brain disease would rehabilitate the addict's public image from that of a criminal who deserves punishment into a sympathetic figure who deserves treatment.

March 16, 2010

The Office Of Civil Wrongs
Forget all that hoohah about judging people by the quality of their character. The Office of Civil Rights, under the Obama administration, is about to start judging 'em by their skin color.

The WSJ, in "Civil Rights Overreach," speculates that there could very well be racial quotas to be met for college prep courses. Quoting Ed Secretary Arne Duncan:

In a speech last week, Mr. Duncan said that "in the last decade"--that's short for the Bush years--"the Office for Civil Rights has not been as vigilant as it should have been in combating racial and gender discrimination."

He cited statistics showing that white students are more likely than their black peers to take Advanced Placement classes and less likely to be expelled from school.

Is that because there are a lot of haters in teaching, or because white students are less likely to, say, come from homes with poor, unwed mothers? Children of non-intact families have the worst outcomes across the board, including in school.

Therefore, Mr. Duncan said, OCR "will collect and monitor data on equity." He added that the department will also conduct compliance reviews "to ensure that all students have equal access to educational opportunities" and to determine "whether districts and schools are disciplining students without regard to skin color."

Isn't that what most are doing now? And have done? We had a few black kids in my class when I was in school in suburban Detroit, and they were top students, taking AP classes. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they, like me, had both a mommy and a daddy.

Commenter "Diogenes the Cynic" remarks on the WSJ site:

Perhaps an example closer to the subject - why do 1st and second generation children from Africa and the Caribbean ALSO do well? again because their parents make sure they do their homework and work hard. And those studies DID control for household income and not just broad statistical findings which this recent focus will now employ.

The WSJ piece continues:

The OCR under the Bush Administration rightly focused on reacting to actual complaints of discrimination and issued guidelines to help school districts comply with the law.

Can we stop foaming at the mouth about the Bush administration for a moment, and admit that their approach here was the right one? I was against the Iraq war, and, as a fiscal conservative, no fan of Big Spender Bush, but they were reacting to actual complaints -- as it should be. Not checking to see if they should give three white kids and three Asian kids detention because three black kids got it last week.

By contrast, Mr. Duncan plans investigations based on the disparate impact of a school policy, even if no one has alleged any discrimination. Schools and districts that don't have enough blacks taking college prep courses, or don't suspend enough whites for fighting, could face litigation or have federal funding withheld.

Inevitably, pressure will be put on districts to get their numbers right and avoid federal scrutiny. Safety is already a major problem in many larger urban schools, where it's not uncommon for students to pass through metal detectors each morning. If districts are afraid to suspend students for fear of an OCR probe, a bad situation is made worse. And if AP classes will now be monitored for racial balance, schools will resort to quotas, lower standards or no longer offer the courses.

Again, from my experience, as somebody who speaks pretty much monthly at an inner-city high school (recently, to a class of 11th graders reading at the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade level...which is not unusual at this school), what kids really need is not government policy that discriminates by skin color, but a home with a mommy and daddy in it.

Oh yeah, and let's add a school board prez who can write a sentence in comprehensible English. But, hey, the illiterate guy they have running the horrendous Detroit Public Schools is the right color. And that's what really counts, right?

Rules Are What The Little People Play By
Glenn Reynolds interviews Scott Rasmussen for PJTV. The text about the interview is here, by Mark Tapscott, in the WashEx. An excerpt:

Reynolds and Rasmussen analyze an emerging issue of singular importance that is highlighted by the insistence of President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress ramming Obamacare down the throats of the American people despite their clear and consistent opposition to the proposal.

But it's not simply one big bill or even a few big bills, it's a growing sense throughout Middle America - which is to say most citizens who are not part of the political class of elites in New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. - that there are two sets of rules.

As Rasmussen describes it in the context of the TARP program and government using tax dollars for bailing out failing corporations:

"The American people have a clear understanding of this. Seventy percent believe that government and big business tend to work together against the rest of us and there is a sense that there are two sets of rules. There is one set of rules that most Americans play by, small businesses, churches, community groups, that has a lot of accountability, and then there is a whole separate set of rules for a political and corporate elite that doesn't want to be bound by such petty things as accountability."

This is no mere populist anti-elistist posturing. Reynolds and Rasmussen base their analysis on the idea that self-governance is not simply about how we pick presidents, senators, mayors, and so forth. It goes to the basic concept underlying our society, which is that we are freedom to live our lives without government interference, but there are all kinds of accountability measures built into our system.

As Rasmussen points out, the traditional understanding is that a business that does well by serving its customers prospers, while the business that doesn't, goes out of business. But when the political and business elites get together, they use tax dollars to bail out failing businesses and establish regulatory regimes to prop them up, keep out competitors, and insure continued revenues.

That way, the political elites get more power and jobs, while the corporate elite gets more income and "market stability." Another word for this arrangement is spelled C-O-N.

Rasmussen's new book: In Search of Self-Governance. Glenn's earlier, related piece, "Consent of the governed -- and the lack thereof":

Not long ago, the federal government enjoyed a stellar reputation for honesty and competence. Now, according to a recent CNN poll, three-quarters of Americans think federal officials aren't honest . (There's no separate survey here on what the "political class" thinks, but I suspect that its numbers would be sunnier, but still appalling, as above). So what do we do with a federal government that many voters think is illegitimate and dishonest?

Well, the Declaration of Independence allows for the prospect of altering or abolishing the government we have in order to get a government that's closer to what we want. That needn't involve anything as violent as the American Revolution or the Civil War, but the need for change -- real, structural change as opposed to campaign-slogan "change" -- is becoming more obvious.

In the past, America has managed to reinvent itself without transformations as wrenching as the Civil War or the Revolution. As the legitimacy of our current arrangements becomes increasingly threadbare, it is perhaps worth thinking about how this might be accomplished again.

What gets me is people who are offended by the Tea Parties. I find dissent against government, no matter whether I agree with those dissenting, highly patriotic and an essential element of democracy.

March 15, 2010

Government WasteWaste
The wasteful jerkwads at the Census Department sent me a letter to tell me they're sending me a letter for the Census.

I'd love to see heads roll every time that happens. It won't. Not until we all refuse to elect only fiscally responsible legislators, who get as irate as I do at government waste.

Loved this suggestion from the witty Andrew Malcolm (@latimestot) at the LA Times (which he, by the way, tweeted, along with this link):

Imagine a fed govt msg of 140 chars max; GSA official sez fed Tweets advisable

The Savage Savage
I write in my book, I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society:

People don't just blame technology for social problems, they idealize living without it. The more high-tech and complex our world gets, the more people tend to romanticize "the simple life." Now, maybe you're a better person if you live in a cabin in the woods with no TV, electricity, or running water -- or maybe you're Ted Kaczynski. Kacynzski, a.k.a. "The Unabomber," now lives in more modern surroundings -- a federal prison where he's serving a life sentence for maiming and murdering numerous people to sound the alarm about the "tyranny" of a high-tech society.

We have a tendency to get all misty-eyed about early men and women, painting them as "noble savages," living in Bambi-like harmony with nature while selflessly looking out for each other. The reality? They had the same genetically programmed tendencies to lie, sneak, steal, cheat and behave like thoughtless buttwads that we do today. But, back then, being seen as greedy or narcissistic or being caught scamming another member of your band could get you voted out of the cave and forced to go it alone -- very likely a death sentence in an environment not exactly rife with Motel 6's and 7-Elevens.

Steven Pinker, too, dispels the myths about how wonderful our ancestors were, in this TED video:

Why Isn't Obama Afraid To Take On The Teachers' Unions?
Greg Foster writes for PJM:

A critical mass of the "social justice" folks are realizing that the unions have been taking them to the cleaners for a generation. For decades, the unions have screamed about how schools are desperately underfunded and they need more money. For decades, the social justice folks bought this story and put themselves on the line to extract more taxpayer money for schools. For decades, the school-monopoly blob absorbed the money and nothing got any better.

The social justice folks are wise to this now. And they're not happy about it.

I can't see into Obama's mind. But the way things look from where I sit, this is the parsimonious explanation that covers all the facts. Obama realizes that the social justice folks are angry at the unions, and he wants to position himself to benefit from that.

Boob-al Warming
Boobs have been blowing up in size like bread in the oven, and now, bras are, too, and not just at big-boobed-girl specialty stores. Tamara Cohen writes for the Daily Mail:

For years well-endowed women have struggled with a lack of support from major retailers.

Now, finally, one department store is stocking bras large enough for even the most bountiful bosom.

Selfridges is selling a K-cup brassiere made by luxury brand Fantasie. The £32 model was previously only available at specialist outlets.

Each cup of the K bra measures one and a half foot at its widest part. In total, it is over 4ft in circumference.

It uses extra-thick straps with three hooks to ensure the required level of support.

Lingerie industry experts have dubbed the products 'wind socks' because they are so large.

They would be too big even for former page three model Katie Price, whose
breasts peaked at 32FF before she had reduction surgery.

But they still wouldn't be big enough for 27-year-old Donna Jones from Milton Keynes who claims to have Britain's biggest breasts, sized 40M.

Fantasie said 10,000 women have already bought the K- cup bra from specialist stores.

Commenters on the DM site recommended Bravissimo. Me? I like Empreinte. Expensive, but worth it ("The elasticity of Empreinte bras is reduced to 30%, instead of 50% for a standard strap. This specific elasticity guarantees a longer life for the bra.")

And wisely pointed out in the article:

Many women underestimate their cup size and go for a higher back size. A woman should ideally be measured every two years and more frequently if she has lost or gained weight or had a baby.

Big boobs in the US seem to mean a back like a longshoreman -- or, perhaps that thinking by customers drives what the industry produces and sells. I discovered that I actually wear a 30 back (80 in France), with, um, rather large cups. Figuring that out meant bras that fit. Finally. No more 34-anything.

Thanks, Jay J. Hector!

March 14, 2010

Imaginary Frienders Cut Thomas Jefferson From Texas Curriculum
James C. McKinley, Jr. writes for The New York Times about religious conservatives' rather disgusting influence on the Texas social studies curriculum. As a fiscal conservative who's socially libertarian and an atheist, I wish people wouldn't paint all conservatives with the same brush (as they do in the headline and as McKinley does in the piece). An excerpt about the Jefferson bit:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term "separation between church and state.")

March 13, 2010

Customer Service Is Becoming An Issue Everywhere
I hate those customer service lines that are clearly all about anything but serving the customer.

When the recorded voice comes on, I typically say "fuck you," "shit," "motherfucker" -- even if I'm not mad, which I usually am, when I have to call -- because that seems to trigger something in their software that puts you right through to an operator.

What really annoys me is when I have to punch in my number and other information only to be forced to re-give it to the person on the phone. Every time, at some companies (it's not like it's a glitch).

And then there are the record-a-lies, meant to placate me while I'm waiting on the phone for 20 minutes, about how much the company values my business, blah blah blah. If my call were "very important" to you, you'd have a goddamn human on the phone relatively pronto, and without making me go through sixteen forms of tele-acrobatics.

On a related note, I got an e-mail from a suicidal guy the other day. I ended up getting his number and calling him (as I will do with people who write me that they're suicidal), but he wrote in his e-mail that he couldn't get through on the suicide hotline. I'm imagining something along these lines:

Your call is very important to us. We're experiencing a heavy call volume. Please don't jump.

I got him the number of another suicide hotline, of course, just in case. And, things seem under control. Beyond the stuff I said, sometimes, I think it makes enough of a difference, knowing that there's a stranger out there who cares enough that you won't kill yourself that they'll pick up the phone and call you to ask you to stay alive.

Advice Goddess Free Swim
I'm in Tucson, speaking/reading at the book festival, and I'll post some blog items when I can. In the meantime, have at it. (One link per comment, or you'll get kicked to my spam folder. If you want to post another link, post another comment, and so on.)

Oh, and if you're in Tucson, Elmore Leonard's session is 10 am on Saturday, and mine's 10 am on Sunday, and lots of cool authors are here, like my friend Lenore Skenazy, author of Free Range Kids (the book and the blog).

March 12, 2010

I SEE RUDE PEOPLE On reason.tv
My interview by Ted Balaker on reason.tv is up:

"I don't like regulations," says Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist who blogs daily at AdviceGoddess.com. "I like to shame people into behaving better."

Blondes Have More Fund
A Walmart has a black Barbie (aka Theresa) on sale, half-off, while a white Barbie is not, and people are screaming racism.

Could there be...another explanation?

Like, say, that there are more white people than black people, and people tend to buy their children dolls that look like them?

Meaning that maybe not as many black mommies were buying the dolls, and when things don't move in retail, they price 'em to move. (photo here)

Story on ABCNews.com. Alice Gomstyn writes:

A Walmart spokeswoman, who could not verify the exact store shown in the photo, said that the price change on the Teresa doll was part of the chain's efforts to clear shelf space for its new spring inventory.

"To prepare for (s)pring inventory, a number of items are marked for clearance, " spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien said in an e-mail. "... Both are great dolls. The red price sticker indicates that this particular doll was on clearance when the photo was taken, and though both dolls were priced the same to start, one was marked down due to its lower sales to hopefully increase purchase from customers."

"Pricing like items differently is a part of inventory management in retailing," O'Brien said.

But critics say Walmart should have been more sensitive in its pricing choice.

"The implication of the lowering of the price is that's devaluing the black doll," said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.

"While it's clear that's not what was intended, sometimes these things have collateral damage," Dye said.

Other experts agree. Walmart could have decided "that it's really important that we as a company don't send a message that we value blackness less than whiteness," said Lisa Wade, an assistant sociology professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the founder of the blog Sociological Images.

Oh, please. It's retailing, lady. You want to send coded messages through doll purchases, get a bunch of people to go buy up all the black dolls, and it'll be the white ones that get marked down.

A few remarks from the comments on ABC. First, this one:

What is the probem. I am a black-american with 2 daughters. If I could find the dolls marked down I would by a couple of them. With so much else going on in the world is this really a controversy???? Maybe I am missing the point.!!!!!

Another comment:

I have a 3 year old daughter that loves Barbie...ALL BARBIES. Her 4th birthday is coming up and it is all about Barbie. In this case, she would have chosen the light skinned Barbie over the dark skinned Barbie simply because she had the PINK outfit on. If the dark skinned Barbie had the pink outfit on, then she would have chosen her. Does product selection always have to be about race?

For me, it was always about hair color. I had Raggedy Ann & Andy because they were the only dolls that looked like me. (I had a little black beady eyes and a red button nose as a child.)

Blame The Bigots
Instead they're blaming the lesbians, who just wanted the high school experience all the other kids are allowed to have -- taking one's boyfriend or girlfriend to prom. Sheila Byrd writes for the AP that a Mississippi school board cancelled a high school's prom rather than let two lesbians go to it together:

On Thursday, a day after the Itawamba County school board did just that, the 18-year-old lesbian high school senior reluctantly returned to campus to some unfriendly looks, she said.

"Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year.'" McMillen said.

The district announced Wednesday it wouldn't host the April 2 prom. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it violated students' rights. And the ACLU said the district not letting McMillen wear a tuxedo violated her free expression rights.

Which high school student goes to prom with which high school student is the school's business why?

Thanks, Patrick

What Women Want
More than men, I think women want not just love, but a great story behind it.

It's why the regular Sunday New York Times Weddings piece on some couple that (typically) couldn't stand each other at first, but finally came together, is like The Superbowl for girls.

And, by the way, I think that longing for a great romantic story make women -- some women -- act needier when dating, wanting to see what's maybe not there, wanting things to happen to fast.

In these cases, guys have a tendency to get overwhelmed and beat it.

Also, it's no fun to chase someone who's already thrown herself at you.

Fraud And Abuse-a-care
Our president is changing his tune -- but unfortunately, not from the soundtrack to his presidential Titanic, Obamacare, to fixing the economy. The president, writes Cheri Jacobus, on The Hill, is now busy, busy, busy spinning his "unpopular, extraordinarily expensive, colossal healthcare reform bill" as being all about waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid:

The president has already schooled us in creative budgeting and claims the projected savings from eliminating waste, fraud and abuse will pay for the bulk of his healthcare plan, providing roughly $900 billion in savings. There is legitimate reason for skepticism, not the least of which is the big question,

"If these two government-run healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are eating up $900 billion in waste, fraud and abuse, how will adding even more government-run healthcare programs make things better?"

I am all for President Obama trying to prove his projections and achieving those savings first, making his plans to cut waste, fraud and abuse a reality and a success. He will find out soon enough that $900 billion is too ambitious and cannot be reached without cutting services in those programs.

However, cleaning up Medicare and Medicaid will give Washington an idea of what we can actually afford, and perhaps then we can stop with the creative budgeting and loopy cost guesstimates. Both Democrats and Republicans can demand this without actually changing their positions on healthcare reform one way or the other.

Personally, my dream is that Obama will do on health care what he did in the Senate -- where his voting record often (or more often than not) read, not Yay or Nay, but "Not Voting."

And here, Obama's doctor-cousin writes about what a colossal mistake Obamacare would be:

Obamacare proponents would have us believe that we will add 30 million patients to the system without adding providers, we will see no decline in the quality of care for the millions of Americans currently happy with the system, and -if you act now!- we will save money in the process. But why stop there? Why not promise it will no longer rain on weekends and every day will be a great hair day?

America has the finest health care delivery system in the world. Let's not forget that and put it at risk in the name of reform. Desperate souls across the globe flock to our shores and cross our borders every day to seek our care. Why? Our system provides cures while the government-run systems from which they flee do not. Compare Europe's common cancer mortality rates to America's: breast cancer - 52 percent higher in Germany and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom; prostate cancer - a staggering 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway; colon cancer - 40 percent higher in the United Kingdom.

Look closer at the United Kingdom. Britain's higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States. But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom's, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year. This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan. And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes. Whatever we do, let us not surrender the great gains we have made. First, do no harm. Lives are at stake.

He gets into the cost fallacies, too.

Consider the implications of Obamacare's financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently - no matter how valid the reasons - he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother's shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.

Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they've been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives - for me, 13 years of school and training - to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.

March 11, 2010

Where The Septic Tanks Are Cutest
Topanga Canyon, of course. Photo by Gregg Sutter.

Putting Back What You Took
A "despicable asshole" makes amends.

I got an e-mail I found pretty amazing:

Hi, I enjoy your column very much. You seem to me to be one of the more sensible folks offering their 2 cents.

30+ years ago I did a really despicable thing that most certainly caused a group of folks considerable pain, embarrassment and financial hardship.

There is no way I can make amends to the specific folks I harmed, who happened to be musicians.

But by making a significant contribution to a local non-profit music academy it seems to me I can atone a little bit for being such an asshole.

So I'm thinking an anonymous contribution to the scholarship fund would be the way to go. No one but me knows what I did and some kids benefit.

But a BIG part of me doesn't want to just mail that check or just hand the envelope to the secretary with a terse "For your scholarship fund."

I want to say to some living person, "I behaved really badly and I'm really sorry for that. I'd like to help someone to try to make up for having harmed someone. Please accept this in that spirit."

Your thoughts, please.

My response:

I think you sound like a great person. This is exactly the sort of thing I advise people and do myself. You can't always make it up to the exact people you've harmed, but you can try to be a part of putting some nice into the world instead of more of the mean that so many people do. Congrats on being the sort of person who not only feels compelled to make amends, but does so.

And about what you're saying, that you want to say, "I behaved really badly," etc., I actually think that might be a good thing. I think it helps people to know that other people not only make mistakes but make amends for them. We're all human. I'm rude, same as everyone. I behave badly, speak sharply, and do other things I shouldn't. If people know that you're making amends like this, maybe they'll be inspired to do the same.

In short, you rock. All the best,-Amy

UPDATE - The person writes back:

Thought I'd give you some follow-up and my, my, the comments on your blog!! 

I go to the CU, get a cashier's check and toddle off to the music academy.

Walking down the main corridor I spy an administrative outpost wherefrom an admin. asst. sort immediately makes eye contact and asks if she may help.

I reply "Can you accept a donation to your scholarship fund?"

She replies, "Of course."

And I reply, "May I take a few moments of your time to tell you a story?"

She agrees and I start into my tale and after a moment her eyes sort of change and she says, "You must want the MUSIC academy!"

I confirm that, yes, indeed, the MUSIC academy is exactly what I want.
Amy, I'm dying. Amused at fate's whimsy, but dying.

So she leads me off down the hall and I say, "Man, I've gotta start this confession all over."

She says, "I'm 'fraid so and I'm gonna have to ask the director to tell me how it ends."
"No, that's cool. Stick around."

on the music academy's director's door and in we go.

"Bob, this gentleman would like to make a donation to the scholarship fund."

I hand Bob the envelope and begin my tale again.

She takes off, he invites me to share the specifics which I do (I doubt blog commentator Crid would have been mollified) and he thanks me and kindly and graciously acknowledges my intentions. Furthermore he offers to help introduce me to the local musical community when I am ready to start playing again.

So, there it is. 

My supporters and detractors aside, I'M convinced I did the best I could and that is quite enough for me.

Best regards...

What's With These Annoying Fan Pages On Facebook?
Or rather, the annoying fan page requests? Every day, I get a bunch of Facebook e-mails: "Be a fan of Tom's Motor Oil" or "Ginny's Diaphragm."

Okay, they usually aren't that gross, but what's the deal?

If I were a fan of these things...I'd track them down and hang on their every posted word. I am not, and I don't have time -- or interest. And I find it kind of egotistically amazing when people write me to tell me I should be a fan of...them!

Again, if I were your fan...you wouldn't have to ask me to "fan" you. (Did Mick Jagger run around tapping people on the shoulder and asking them to please like him?)

Jihadwatching Jihad Jane
Robert Spencer posts at jihadwatch that the "Jihad Jane arrest raises fears of 'homegrown terrorists,' but no one really wants to do anything about it":

The one thing that can and should be done would be to call American Muslim groups to account, and demand that they institute in mosques and Islamic schools comprehensive, honest, inspectable programs teaching against the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism. But officials will never do this. They would prefer to pretend that the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism do not exist. And so we will see many more Jihad Janes.

The Meat Eater Visits The Vegetarian
Hilarious video from UK's Mitchell & Webb:

March 10, 2010

New York: Bring Your Own Salt
Absolutely unbelievable. New York meddling idiot/Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has introduced legislation to ban the use of salt in the preparation of restaurant food.

And if you cook with salt? Expect a $1,000 fine.

Here's Stossel on salt:

I put salt on just about everything but ice cream, and I have the blood pressure of an elite athlete. You can avoid salt if you need to, but thanks, I'll keep mine.

"The Devil Came On Horseback"
A commenter, who sent me this link, writes:

I just saw a pretty disturbing film about Darfur called "The Devil Came on Horseback." I found this clip which I thought you might consider for the blog, as it confirms much of what you have discussed in the past. He asks the important questions/makes the key statements after the two-minute mark.

In short, they are Muslim, but they are black Muslims, and they receive nothing from Arab Muslims. We Americans are the people this poor guy is grateful for:

Why are the Arab Muslims railing about the Palestinians while they are silent about hundreds of thousands of Muslims being slaughtered in Darfur?

As I've pointed out before (and sorry for those who prefer not to believe it), Arab Muslims are quite racist. Tarek Fatah gave a speech, "How internalised racism has permitted lighter skinned Muslims to slaughter their darker skinned co-religionists." An excerpt from the photo of dead bodies at the top:

The latest manifestation of racism leading to a genocide is in Sudan where the Arab Janjaweed militia and the Arab government in Khartoum has resulted in the killing of 500,000 Darfuri Muslims whose only fault is that they are Black and thus considered as inferior to the ruling classes of that country.

The mistreatment of Black Muslims by those who feel they are superior because of their lighter skin colour has been historical. Only in the Middle East can one get away by addressing a Black man as "Ya Abdi", which translates to the horrible words, "Oh you slave".

An excerpt from his speech:

The acceptance of racism among the dominant community in the Arab world has today resulted in not just the genocide of Darfuris, but also the celebration by the Arab League of the man charged by the International Criminal Court, President Bashir of Sudan.

It is time that the medieval doctrine of the inferiority of non-Arab Muslims to Arab Muslims is laid to rest. It is necessary that Arab countries and leaders of Arab NGOs denounce this doctrine that has led to the discrimination of darker skinned Muslims by Arab governments in counties as far apart as Dubai to Darfur.

Behind the genocide of Bengal and Darfur, separated by 30 years, is the unchallenged doctrine of racial superiority of one ethnic group over another that has gone unnoticed and unpunished by any institution anywhere in the world.

This doctrine of racism has brought untold misery on the victims of this cancer, but this becomes worse when such racism is given a religious validation. In this day and age, we have fatwas from contemporary Islamic scholars who maintain that a non-Arab Muslim like me would be committing an act of sin if I considered myself equal to an Arab.

Fatwas from the 14th century have been dusted off the shelves, re-furbished and published on on-line Islamist forums to justify the superiority of one group over the other. This has provided the moral justification to the mass murder being committed on the Black Muslims of Darfur, which unfortunately, has gone unmentioned even at this conference.

Who, besides the Americans, has rescued refugees from Darfur? The Israelis, of course!

Yes, that's right -- they rescue black Muslims fleeing murder by Arab Muslims. Olmert even granted citizenship to 500 black Muslim refugees from Darfur.

Belief Blower
Related to recent conversations about god belief, from Gary Marcus' Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind:

Religion in particular enjoys the sway that it does in part because people want it to be true; among other things, religion gives people a sense that the world is just and that hard work will be rewarded. Such faith provides a sense of purpose and belonging, in both the personal and cosmic realms; there can be no doubt that the desire to believe contributes to the capacity to do so. But none of that explains how people manage to cling to religious beliefs despite the manifest lack of direct evidence. For that we must turn to the fact that evolution left us with the capacity to fool ourselves into believing what we want to believe. (If we pray and something good happens, we notice it; if nothing happens, we fail to notice the non-coincidence.) Without motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, the world might be a very different place.

What's often behind people's unfounded beliefs is a lack of understanding about common human cognitive errors, like the tendency to look on the bright side rather than the dingy one.

Another book on the subject that I really like: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.