Can You Incohere Me Now?
The Republicans are down. It would be a golden opportunity for the Democrats...if only they stood for something, had a message, had anything worthwhile to say. Gary Yonge writes in the Guardian:
Having supported the war and without coherent proposals for disengaging, they are ill-placed to take advantage of the Republican's current troubles.Either unable or unwilling to present a clear agenda of how they would do things differently, they have been effectively mute for several months. With no opposition, popular disenchantment with the Bush Administration's ethical failings is descending into cynicism.
Indeed, the only group that has really flexed its muscles in recent weeks has been the Christian right, which derailed Mier's nomination to the supreme court. Bush is likely to nominate another candidate later this week who will be more to their liking, thereby tipping the balance of the court against abortion and affirmative action. Unless the Democrats develop the wherewithal to challenge them, conservatives will then shape both the law and the politics of the country for a generation. And Fitzmas will be little more than a lingering reminder of what the law can do when politics has failed.
Bush Managed The White House Like The Rest Of His Failed Businesses
Krugman writes (and sorry, it's dumb, registration-required Times-Select):
One way or another, the Bush administration will stagger on for three more years. But its essential fraudulence stands exposed, and it's hard to see how that exposure can be undone.What do I mean by essential fraudulence? Basically, I mean the way an administration with an almost unbroken record of policy failure has nonetheless achieved political dominance through a carefully cultivated set of myths.
The record of policy failure is truly remarkable. It sometimes seems as if President Bush and Mr. Cheney are Midases in reverse: everything they touch - from Iraq reconstruction to hurricane relief, from prescription drug coverage to the pursuit of Osama - turns to crud. Even the few apparent successes turn out to contain failures at their core: for example, real G.D.P. may be up, but real wages are down.
The point is that this administration's political triumphs have never been based on its real-world achievements, which are few and far between. The administration has, instead, built its power on myths: the myth of presidential leadership, the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Take away those myths, and the administration has nothing left.
Well, Katrina ended the leadership myth, which was already fading as the war dragged on. There was a time when a photo of Mr. Bush looking out the window of Air Force One on 9/11 became an iconic image of leadership. Now, a similar image of Mr. Bush looking out at a flooded New Orleans has become an iconic image of his lack of connection. Pundits may try to resurrect Mr. Bush's reputation, but his cult of personality is dead - and the inscription on the tombstone reads, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
The Democrats are dimwits, but maybe it's better to have well-intentioned dimwits than a bunch of political thugs whose greatest ability is in the propaganda production department. Where, oh where, are the common-sense moderates?
The Balance Of Cower
Just posted my column -- about high-powered women with low-wattage love lives:
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” said Henry Kissinger. Sure it is -- unless you’re a woman, in which case, it’s about as man-magnetizing as mentioning “Well, yes, each of my late husbands did die under mysterious circumstances, but, heh, heh, the D.A. was never able to pin anything on me.” Research by Stephanie L. Brown and Brian P. Lewis, published in Evolution and Human Behavior (Nov. ‘04), seems to confirm what many lonely women at the top already know: When guys go for the woman in the boardroom, it isn’t the woman running the meeting but the secretary who wheeled in the coffee and croissants before it started.
The rest is at the link above.
Why Does God Hate Amputees?
From a Metafilter link, great piece by Marshall Brain of How Stuff Works, using simple logic to disprove the existence of The Big Guy In The Sky -- with individual disproving snack packs for Muslims, Christians and Jews! Start here, with Santa and move on down to your particular religion, if any. Then move on to the amputees!
...Create a prayer circle like the one created for Jeanna Giese. The job of this prayer circle is simple: pray to God to restore the amputated legs of this deserving Christian. I do not mean to pray for a team of renowned surgeons to somehow graft the legs of a cadaver onto the soldier, nor for a team of renowned scientists to craft mechanical legs for him. Pray that God spontaneously and miraculously restores the soldier's legs overnight, in the same way that God spontaneously and miraculously cured Jeanna Giese and Marilyn Hickey's mother.If possible, get millions of human beings all over the planet to join the prayer circle and pray their most fervent prayers. Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving Christian amputee. Then stand back and watch.
What is going to happen? Jesus clearly says that if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. He does not say it once -- he says it many times in many ways in the Bible.
And yet, even with millions of people praying, nothing will happen.
No matter how many people pray. No matter how sincere those people are. No matter how much they believe. No matter how devout and deserving the recipient. Nothing will happen. The legs will not regenerate. Prayer does not restore the severed limbs of amputees. You can read all the medical journals ever written -- there is no documented case of an amputated leg being restored spontaneously. And we know that God ignores the prayers of amputees through our own observations of the world around us. If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs, we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day.
Isn't that odd? Christian inspirational literature is full of thousands of stories like Jeanna's and Marilyn Hickey's. But God does not restore the legs of amputees. Whether you are a Christian or not, the situation here appears to be most peculiar.
The situation becomes even more peculiar when you look at who God is. According to the Standard Model of God:
* God is all-powerful. Therefore, God can do anything, and regenerating a leg is trivial.* God is perfect, and he created the Bible, which is his perfect book. In the Bible, Jesus makes very specific statements about the power of prayer. Since Jesus is God, and God and the Bible are perfect, those statements should be true and accurate.
* God is all-knowing and all-loving. He certainly knows about the plight of the amputee, and he loves this amputee very much.
* God answers prayers. If he is answering millions of other prayers like Jeanna's every day, God should be answering the prayers of amputees too.
* God has no reason to discriminate against amputees.
* God is ready and willing to answer your prayers no matter how big or small. All that you have to do is believe. He says it in multiple places in the Bible. Surely, with millions of people in the prayer circle, at least one of them will believe and the prayer will be answered.
Billions of people believe in the power of prayer and pray their own prayers. Not only do they pray, but they personally witness God answering their prayers every single day. They believe that their prayers are answered all the time. According to Christian believers, God is interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers. In addition, the entire industry of Christian inspirational literature is built around God's ability and willingness to have a personal relationship with us and answer our prayers. Any Sunday morning we can find thousands of ministers and priests preaching about God's grace, God's love, God's blessings and God's desire to hear and answer our prayers.
Nonetheless, the amputated legs of our devout and deserving Christian are not going to regenerate.
What are we seeing here? Simply stop for a moment and let the peculiarity of this situation sink in. It certainly is perplexing. It is not that God sometimes answers the prayers of amputees, and sometimes does not. Instead, in this situation there is a very clear line. God never answers the prayers of amputees. It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God hates amputees.
I know that God is love and therefore he cannot hate, but it does appear that something akin to hatred might be happening in this situation. How can it be that God is spreading his love and blessings by answering the prayers of millions of Christians every day, while at the same time he is cursing amputees by completely ignoring their prayers? The word "curse" is too strong, but you know what I mean. It does appear that God is trying to send some sort of a message to amputees through his actions here on earth. Either God is sending a message, or there is some other explanation for this very odd situation.
If this is the first time you have thought about the situation faced by amputees seriously, you have a set of stock answers to this paradox running through your head right now. Let's examine the stock answers one by one. (Stock answers follow at the amputee link above.)
Don't miss the bit on how god is way cool with slavery, and even with separating slaves from their families! (Three cheers for "Compassionate Conservativism, The Early Years"!)
So now we have opened the Bible and looked at it, and inside the Bible -- God's word -- we have found ten extremely clear and outrageous passages about slavery. What these passages indicate, without any question, is that the Bible supports slavery. The Bible thinks that slavery is great. According to the Bible you are free to buy slaves and you are free to beat your slaves. There is no denying that, in the Bible, slavery is perfectly acceptable.If you are a Christian, you automatically and unquestioningly believe in Jesus, the Ten Commandments, heaven and hell. Why? Because you believe that the Bible came from God.
The problem is that if you support the Ten Commandments and believe in Jesus, you must also support slavery. The same God and the same Bible that tells us about the Ten Commandments and Jesus is also telling us about slavery.
Take a moment right now to ask yourself this simple question: Do you believe in slavery? Having read how God feels about slavery in the Bible, do you now believe that in America and around the world we should repeal all anti-slavery laws and re-open the slave trade? If you are Christian, what choice do you have? God fully advocates slavery in the Bible, and you believe the word of God.
If you are going to believe that the Ten Commandments came from God because they are in God's Bible, then you must also believe that all of these slavery passages came from God. You, Justice Scalia and everyone else who believes that God wrote the Bible should be perfectly comfortable with the slave trade.
An all-or-nothing book
If you are going to believe that the Ten Commandments came from God because they are in God's Bible, then you must also believe that all of these slavery passages came from God as well. Therefore you, Justice Scalia and everyone else who believes that God wrote the Bible should be perfectly comfortable with the slave trade. Christians must believe that all the laws that forbid slavery in the United States defy God's word, and we should be actively working to repeal them.
If you do not believe that God wrote the slavery passages in the Bible, then the obvious question to ask yourself is this: How can you possibly know which parts came from God and which parts were inserted by primitive men? How can you pick and choose like that? You have absolutely no way to know whether the slavery passages came from God or primitive men.
It is when you start thinking about the Bible in this way that you understand something very important about the Bible. Either the entire Bible really is God's Word. The entire Bible is the infallible, inspired and inerrant word of God. [ref] Or the entire Bible was written by primitive men with absolutely no input from God. There are two reasons for this very strong dividing line:
1. An all-powerful God would not allow false teachings (like slavery) to get inserted into and pollute his holy message to mankind. Why would an all-powerful God take the time to write a book, and then allow ungodly material to pollute it?2. If part of the Bible came from God and part came from primitive men, how can you possibly know which is which? How do you know if Jesus really is resurrected, or if that's just a make-believe story inserted by primitive men? How do you know if God wrote the Ten Commandments or not? If any part of the Bible has been polluted by primitive men, you have to reject the whole thing. There is no way to know who wrote what, so the entire book is invalid.
There really is no middle ground. The Bible has to be an all-or-nothing book. Either the entire Bible came from God, or none of it did.
Come on, people, let's get some rigorous thinking going! Are we really going to base our lives on a bunch of inconsistent but consistently unbelievable fairy tales, many of which suggest some pretty evil, inhumane shit?
Awaiting Final Word On Smart & Final
Emmanuelle Richard commented on the utter evaporation of consumer privacy on one of my posts about the Smart & Final incident:
Amy, you would be amazed at the number of sources those people resell each other. The bad part is, that they do it (starting with your bank) and wait for you to ask to be removed. It's truly disgusting. Just start from the principle that everytime you give a phone or address, including to Sephora to receive coupons or to Pizza Hut to order a pizza that it may end up somewhere.
For anyone who hasn't read the previous entries on this, I got a recorded message annoyance call from Smart & Final to inform me that, glory be, they'd restocked their shelves! This, despite my presence on the Do Not Call List, and despite the fact that I would have to be out of my mind to write anything other than "Mrs. Klaus, North Pole, and 310-555-1212 on those "join your supermarket" cards. Still, perhaps I lapsed. Perhaps, but unlikely. I've written to Randall Oliver, the Smart & Final Director Of Corporate Communications to find out more.
Randall, Regarding your contention that I've pasted in below (in italics):Our calling list was generated from information provided to us by our customers on their SmartAdvantage Card applications. We did not obtain that information through any kind of intrusive search. The service that transmits the voicemail message checks all of the numbers against the National Do Not Call Registry prior to sending the message. We regret that your number was somehow missed in that process.It is so against my principles and utterly out of habit for me to fill out anything other than "Mrs. Klaus" on one of those intrusive, irritating cards your stores and others use to bribe customers into giving up information in exchange for savings. I absolutely cannot imagine that I put my number on that card. I just never do that. I'd like to see my application to see my number on that card. Otherwise, I'd like to know how you got it off my credit card or by what other method you might have extracted it.
I await your response. -Amy Alkon
Is it possible for a merchant to secretly suck your address and phone number off your credit card? If so, is it legal?
For any other merchants out there who'd like to call me and irritate me about the status of your shelves, etc., I will accept your calls for a fee: $100, minimum, payable in advance, for your telephoned promotional messages of five minutes or less. See the "Contact Amy" link on the left for the address to send your check or money order. I will be ready to take your call anytime between 5:15pm and 5:30pm, weekdays, as soon as your check clears. Call before it clears, and my price doubles!
Dumb Or Arrogant
Which one were they in The White House when they nominated Miers? Or was it that they were just too preoccupied with L'Affaire Plame? Naw, don't think it's that one.
When I asked my researcher boyfriend that question, he deemed it "Hitler-level arrogance," in that "Hitler had all these incredible Prussian generals -- a warrior class," but Hitler hamstrung them. "If you look at what they could have done, had Hitler not gone after the Jews...it was like Napoleon fighting a war on two fronts -- invading Russia without long johns. The ideology of anti-Semitism did them in."
"Hitler kept order. Like Saddam. A lot of people were happy with this. Like with Iraq, maybe something happened with your neighbor, but if you were a good Baathist, you didn't get fucked with."
My boyfriend was up in Canada visiting the Killshot set, and had dinner with a guy he knows from his research -- not a mobster, but a guy just on the outskirts of the mob who had what my boyfriend called "a very 'mob' take on it":
For us to think that we're gonna go in there and tell these people, these milllions of Muslims, to give it up...roll over...how stupid can you be?
My boyfriend put the combat boot on the other foot: "A couple of Jihadists walk into (Detroit church) Our Lady Queen of Peace, and say 'Tear down the cross!' It's nuts."
And, even if it's unspoken, except in the occasional slip, don't think that isn't what this is about -- a religious thing in the minds of some of the "crusaders," and in the minds many of the invaded (crusaders and the invaded alike clinging to their varying primitive religious beliefs).
On his way to Detroit, my boyfriend saw a bunch of "jarheads" on his plane, a number of whom were very visibly carrying the book Christian Truth and its Defense, with a gun-toting soldier at sunup smack-dab on the cover. A lot of these Christian funda-nutters have to secretly have "The Rapture" and all that baseless, irrational crap at heart.
"Whenever (religious) ideology invades a democracy," my boyfriend added, "When you go into battle it's a holy war. We've created the ultimate terrorist playground -- putting Afghanistan to shame."
Monty Python Goes To Court
Excellent piece by William Saletan on Slate on the "Intelligent" Design trial in Pennsylvania, and Lehigh University's professorial embarrassment, Michael Behe (who only came out in favor of witch doctor'y over science after he got tenure):
Behe offered a number of interesting criticisms of Darwinism. But it's impossible to focus on any of these criticisms, because they were so completely overshadowed by the brontosaurus in the room: ID's sophomoric emptiness.What makes Behe's non-explanation a brontosaurus rather than an elephant is its resemblance to a famous Monty Python sketch in which a television newsman interviews a theorist.
Q. You say you have a new theory about the brontosaurus.
A. Can I just say here, Chris, for one moment, that I have a new theory about the brontosaurus.
Q. Exactly. Well, what is it? …
A: Oh, what is my theory?
Q: Yes.
A: Oh, what is my theory, that it is. Well, Chris, you may well ask me what is my theory.
Q: I am asking.
A: Good for you. My word, yes. Well, Chris, what is it that it is—this theory of mine. Well, this is what it is—my theory that I have, that is to say, which is mine, is mine.
Q: Yes, I know it's yours. What is it?
A: Where? Oh, what is my theory? This is it. My theory that belongs to me is as follows. This is how it goes. The next thing I'm going to say is my theory. Ready?
Q: Yes.
A: … This theory goes as follows and begins now. All brontosauruses are thin at one end; much, much thicker in the middle; and then thin again at the far end.As though that explained anything. Which brings us to last week's cross-examination of Behe by Eric Rothschild, the lawyer opposing the school board in the Pennsylvania case.
Q: Please describe the mechanism that intelligent design proposes for how complex biological structures arose.
A: Well, the word "mechanism" can be used in many ways. … When I was referring to intelligent design, I meant that we can perceive that in the process by which a complex biological structure arose, we can infer that intelligence was involved. …
Q: What is the mechanism that intelligent design proposes?
A: And I wonder, could—am I permitted to know what I replied to your question the first time?
Q: I don't think I got a reply, so I'm asking you. You've made this claim here (reading): "Intelligent design theory focuses exclusively on the proposed mechanism of how complex biological structures arose." And I want to know, what is the mechanism that intelligent design proposes for how complex biological structures arose?
A: Again, it does not propose a mechanism in the sense of a step-by-step description of how those structures arose. But it can infer that in the mechanism, in the process by which these structures arose, an intelligent cause was involved.The interrogation goes on like this for pages and pages. Like the theorist in the Monty Python sketch, Behe throws up a blizzard of babble: process, intelligent activity, important facts. What process? What activity? What facts? He never explains. He says the designer "took steps" to create complex biological systems, but ID can't specify the steps. Does ID tell us who designed life? No, he answers. Does it tell us how? No. Does it tell us when? No. How would the designer create a bacterial flagellum? It would "somehow cause the plan to, you know, go into effect," he proposes.
Can ID make testable predictions? Not really. If we posit that a given biological system was designed, Rothschild asks, what can we infer about the designer's abilities? Just "that the designer had the ability to make the design that is under consideration," says Behe. "Beyond that, we would be extrapolating beyond the evidence." Does Behe not understand that extrapolating beyond initial evidence is exactly the job of a hypothesis? Does he not grasp the meaninglessness of saying a designer designed things that were designed?
Evidently not. "That is exactly the basis for how we detect design—when we perceive the purposeful arrangement of parts," Behe declares. The essence of science—that detection means going beyond perception—escapes his comprehension. It also escapes his interest. He says his belief that the bacterial flagellum was intelligently designed could be tested, but he's never run the test. Why not? "I'm persuaded by the evidence that I cite in my book that this is a good explanation and that spending a lot of effort in trying to show how random mutation and natural selection could produce complex systems … is not real likely to be fruitful," he says. Who needs science when you've got faith?
Joan Didion On Life
From a New York Times Books section profile by Rachel Donadio:
"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."Joan Didion
Commencement Address at UC Riverside, 1975
Got Any Stock Tips?
Hey, dude shouting into the cell phone in the otherwise perfectly quiet café on Ocean Park, you think you feel smothered?…! Maybe next time, take it outside? I found it kind of amazing that you were so unabashed in broadcasting your minidramas to seven total strangers, all futilely attempting to continue reading or working on laptops through your din.
There was some stuff of prurient interest in your cell phone call, but not enough to make it entertainment. I type a bazillion words a minute, so it was no problem (and somewhat amusing) to take your conversation down. Here goes:
Yeah. So, And Um, well, and I have a lot of work to catch up on. And the pages I need…it’s just so much work, I have to get a new car, I have to…I’m just…I’m kinda scared to live with you. Because we’ll be seeing so much of each other, at work and after work. Yeah. Um, you lost me? What did you hear last?It’s just that I’ve lived with people and been with them all the time, and it causes tension. Not necessarily because I don’t like them, it just does. I might want to cut my work time down and concentrate on music to the extent that I breathe and live it. I just fully submerge. Yeah. Yeah, but what’s minimum? Yeah…okay, okay. I mean, it’s just I feel too bad when it’s…no, I know, it’s me, it’s not you. Yeah. I know I…(listens)…Mmmhmm…Yeah.
Feel free, Mr. Loud Dude, to make any necessary corrections in the dialogue above, but do forgive us if we'd rather not "breathe and live" your personal life until your concerns get a little less mundane.
Oops, there's more!
I just downloaded the program and registered it. I was thinking about getting a pair of orange shorts. Why not? Yeah. Well, okay, well give me a suggestion right now. I don’t want to wear a dog costume. What I want to do is wear orange shorts, seamless, and that’s it.
We think those orange shorts would make a lovely gag!
Interestingly enough, one of my favorite "ladies" (the one with the well-hinged middle finger) happened into the café today as well. She was shocked to see me there. A few minutes after she arrived, I went outside to make a cell phone call (weirdo that I am, I worry about disturbing others if I make a call indoors).
Well, since this "lady" had howling children in the Rose Café not long ago, I would bet the move outside to talk on the phone is not a habit of hers, but I was most amused when that's just what she did a little later on. Heh heh...who says my efforts to civilize people have no effect?! (Hint: scroll down to the comments on that link.)
Let's just hope they haven't "shut off" my Smart & Final gift card, which came early this week!
After I'd invoiced them $63.20 for bothering me at home via telemarketing auto-dialer, I got this reply from their director of corporate communications:
Ms. Alkon: I am very sorry that we disturbed you close to your writing deadline. Our message was meant to provide a helpful update to our customers, not to irritate them. Nearly all of the responses we have received have been very positive.
Really? Did other customers call you up and say, "I'm so lonely, nothing makes my day like getting a recorded message smack in the middle of my afternoon nap!"
He continues:
Our calling list was generated from information provided to us by our customers on their SmartAdvantage Card applications. We did not obtain that information through any kind of intrusive search. The service that transmits the voicemail message checks all of the numbers against the National Do Not Call Registry prior to sending the message. We regret that your number was somehow missed in that process.
Subtext here: Because, unlike our other customers, who just lie down and take it, you're a major pain in the butt cheeks!
And now, the good part:
We value you as a customer and hope to continue to do business with you. We'd be happy to send you a check for $63.20 as requested or alternatively would be even happier to provide you a $100 Smart Card for use at Smart & Final. Please let me know which option you would prefer. Best regards, Randall Oliver Director of Corporate Communications Smart & Final
I must say, I truly resent having to "join" a store to save money. By the way, the day I give any legitimate information on any savings card application is the day you know my brain has been colonized. I always, always apply as Mrs. Klaus, North Pole, or something very close to that.
Did Smart & Final get the information off my credit card? Or did I have a one-minute lapse into some hallucinatory form of mental illness when I filled out that card, causing me to spew my personal information as if I'd just sprung a data leak? It is possible, of course. But, it's my suspicion that they either have some way of draining personal data from credit cards or they just decided to auto-dialer-harrass much of southern California.
No Crass Shortage
Think all those hikes in the price of gas were to cover the oil companies' increased costs, and maybe R&D of alternative fuel sources or searching out new sources of gas? Think again. From an LA Times story by Tom Petruno:
Even for Big Oil, the numbers have never been as big as this.When major U.S. energy companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. announce their third-quarter earnings in the next few days, the results are certain to be staggering.
Pumped up by soaring prices of oil, natural gas and gasoline in August and September, Exxon Mobil alone is expected to report quarterly profit of about $8.7 billion. That would be more than what such titans as Coca-Cola Co., Intel Corp. and Time Warner Inc. earn in an entire year.
For the energy companies, the record results amount to an embarrassment of riches — an invitation for attack by foes and even by some traditional allies.
"The question increasingly is going to be, what is the industry going to do with this money?" said Amy Jaffe, head of the James A. Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University in Houston.
On Tuesday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called on the companies to spend more to build refineries and boost production to help "ease the pain" of high energy prices.
"It's time to invest some of those profits," Hastert said at a news conference in Washington.
With oil holding above the $60-a-barrel mark, double the level of two years ago, some Democrats in Congress have another idea: Slap the industry with a windfall-profit tax like the one imposed in 1980.
Some consumer advocates, meanwhile, want Congress to mandate that a share of oil and gas earnings be plowed into alternative-energy research.
The sheer size of the industry's profit mountain makes it a tempting target. Together, the 29 major oil and gas firms in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index are expected to earn $96 billion this year, up from $68 billion last year and $43 billion in 2003.
Protest Signs Of The Times
Best of the reported protest signs seen at the recent anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C.:
"WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE HIM A BLOW JOB SO WE CAN HAVE HIM IMPEACHED?"
Miers Hot Jobs
George Bush's lukewarm candidate for the Supreme Court has held some big jobs...or has she? Mark Obbie writes on Slate that we shouldn't be too impressed about her heading up a bar association and a law firm:
The point non-lawyers may miss here is that these accomplishments don't necessarily signal astonishing professional achievement. Implicit in the president's loving assessment of Miers' résumé are these assumptions: that lawyers choose their leaders based on merit, and that leading a bar association or a law firm is a position of great respect and honor. So, let's explore each notion, in the context of Texas in the late 1980s and early '90s, a time and place in which truly outstanding lawyers pawned off their "leadership" duties on those who wouldn't be much missed from the billable-hours assembly line.First, take the bar associations. They come in two flavors: voluntary and mandatory. The Dallas Bar Association and American Bar Association are voluntary. Lawyers are not required to join, and in fact many do not. Those who pay their dues get various goodies in return: dreadful magazines, decent educational seminars, schlocky trade shows, and any number of excuses to get out of the house and tip a few. It's like that crew of thirsty Knights of Columbus on Saturday Night Live, except in pinstripes and with slightly better haircuts. Mandatory bar associations—like the State Bar of Texas—are pretty much the same deal, but in these states, lawyers have no choice about joining. They're mandatory because they serve a dual role: licensing lawyers for the state while keeping the draft beer and Scotch flowing at lawyer parties.
Guess who seeks election to such groups. Not the busiest, in-demand lions of the bar. Instead, it's usually the second stringers, the runners-up in the lawyer game. Real lawyers, for the most part, snicker about "bar weenies"—much as they did about the goofs in high school who ran for class president. Does David Boies spend his $800-an-hour time going to committee meetings and wrangling over the ABA's next convention schedule? Hardly. He might deign to give a speech at a bar gathering if he can fit it into his busy trial schedule. But bar weenies—their slightly kinder name is bar junkies—are the ones holding the Town Car door open for Boies when he arrives at the hotel. And when they're not doing that, they're jabbering endlessly about legal-regulatory policy questions that even most lawyers find stupefying.
In fairness, it was still considered revolutionary for a woman to climb this career ladder when Miers did it in Texas. But other than that distinction, she slipped right into the customary role of the bland leading the bland. What occupied the Dallas bar's time in those days? Not much worth remembering, except for the nativism on display in the local bar's horrified reaction to the arrival of a big, national law firm, Jones Day, during Miers' reign at the bar. Dallas law firms, always far smaller in size and national prominence than Houston firms, reacted with a mix of resentment and disdain to some good old competition. The bar's steady diet of seminars back in those days might as well have been renamed "Jones Day??!! Oh, crap."
The State Bar of Texas back then had similar aspirations to great consequence. Recall how Miers' presidential pronouncements in the Texas Bar Journal caused recent hand-wringing about her skills as a thinker? Well, she was only doing what little was expected of her in that role—bad writing included. The rest of the nation's legal establishment at that time was alarmed that the state of Texas was rushing convicts to execution without providing them with counsel in the latter stages of appeals. So, how did the State Bar of Texas respond? By relying on out-of-state volunteer lawyers—and grudgingly at that—to pick up the slack Texas lawyers had left by averting their eyes. Rather than impose pro bono time requirements on Texas lawyers, the state bar endlessly debated mandatory reporting of pro bono hours—in other words, we don't care how much you volunteer, but we do want you to fill out a form telling us what you haven't done. And if that nice Mr. Boies comes to town to save the life of a death-row inmate, please meet his Town Car at DFW Airport!
If this brand of public service is easy to ridicule, it's even easier to diss the business savvy of a 1990s-era law-firm manager. By the 1990s, when Miers' partners put her in charge, law firms had reluctantly concluded that they were in fact a business. Now that they were thinking outside the box, they had to figure out how to run themselves like businesses. Mostly they failed. Often it didn't matter anyhow. As recession-proof money machines, most firms could wait for clients to seek them out. "Managing" such an enterprise meant divvying up too much money among partners, paying overworked associates just enough to keep them chained to their desks, and deciding whom to admit to the partnership—mostly those who could turn a profit and not those destined to be bar weenies.
Law partnerships, at least then, weren't so much managed as they were administered. Certainly there were exceptions with strong leaders—typically firms still led by a founder who brought in all the business, held much of the equity, and made all the key decisions. But your average corporate firm, like Miers', was like a university faculty—democracy run amok. The ostensible leader had a pretty short list of duties: calling meetings at which he or she could be informed of his or her failings, and making speeches.
Among the big debates of that era in law-firm management: Word vs. WordPerfect (endlessly amusing as dinner-party banter and sure to become a Harvard Business School case study). Another biggie was whether to shorten firms' names from way too many unpronounceable surnames (e.g., Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom) to punchy brands like the giggle-inducing MoFo (for Morrison & Foerster).
Your prediction? Will she be removed from consideration? Made to go through the process to save face (Bushie's)? Or was she just a fake candidate all along? Are they that stupid and arrogant in the White House? Was it just that Rove was a bit busy trying to save the skin on his own ass? This is all-too-puzzling all the ways around.
Hey, All You New Times Naysayers...
To all you Cassandras bemoaning the deal by the alt weekly chain New Times to take over Village Voice media, here's a letter on Romenesko from Jeremy Voas, fired by Mike Lacey from his editor job at Phoenix New Times:
I should be one condemning the hegemony of the so-called New Times Evil Empire. Why? I was fired by Phoenix New Times in 2001. I'd spent nine years there, including a stint as editor in chief. I was very well paid and, for the most part, well treated. So were my colleagues. It was great fun.The criticism leveled by Bruce Brugmann and others is little more than sour grapes. At its best, New Times is a journalistic model. Fearless, resourceful journalists are royalty at New Times. Unlike typical nickel-and-dime alt-weeklies, unlike drive-by daily rags, we were given the time, the resources and the column inches to pursue any story we deemed worthy. I was expected to think big, to produce definitive literary journalism. In most cases, a piece in a New Times publication immediately becomes the benchmark for all future reportage on that topic; all future stories necessarily emanate from a New Times piece.
...It's true that New Times publications openly eschew alt-weekly orthodoxy. Good choice. How often do you see a headline in an alt-weekly and forego the trouble of reading the piece? Hey, you already know what it says. This doesn't happen much at New Times pubs. There's an aura of unpredictability. At New Times, the so-called progressives in the community are held to the same standards of accountability as the business moguls, the right wing nuts, the porcine bureaucrats.
...This is not to say that Lacey is ever easy to work for. His eccentricities are well documented. I frequently fantasized about kicking his ass. An exasperated colleague who'd felt his wrath once described him as a combination of W.C. Fields and Pol Pot. But he knows exactly what he's doing. He is, at his core, a journalist. His tics could never trump the opportunity he gave me to do the best journalism I've ever produced.
I'd encourage those who are wringing their hands over this merger to take a breath and -- here's a novel idea-- actually read New Times publications. Anyone who bothers to do so with an open mind will quickly recognize outstanding, muckraking journalism. There's no city on earth that couldn't use more of that.
By the way, my late friend Marnye told me Lacey heard she had $10,000 in medical expenses, and swooped in and paid them without a word. I've heard many other stories like this. I dare Bruce Brugmann to compare Bay Guardian salaries and freelancer pay to that of New Times papers. Somehow, the commies are always shittier to the workers than the evil capitalists they shake their tiny sticks at. Without Barrs (the editor of New Times Los Angeles before it closed down) and all the rest here, there are few checks on the crooks and assholes in this town, and usually, nothing fun to read in a paper within the city limits.
Yeah, so, woooo, New Times papers have a consistent design, town to town. More papers should be more like them. Here's Lacey (New Times owner and exec editor) on what New Times is all about:
At New Times, our writers have a virtual blank check to explore the issues in their communities without the burden of a political agenda (mine or their editor's). As a result, our reporters break stories that later rip through the mainstream media.The disgrace of the serial rapes at the Air Force Academy in Colorado first saw the light of day in our Denver paper. In Cleveland, we recently published grand jury documents that the daily sat on. In Phoenix, our writers broke the polygamy scandal in the Mormon sect on the Utah/Arizona border, as well as the stories about poor people submitting to unnecessary surgery so that doctors and patients both -- but particularly the doctors -- could swindle insurance companies. You've read about all these stories in national dailies. Bob Norman, one of our writers in Fort Lauderdale, was recently selected as the best in the country by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
We have also pursued law enforcement records through the courts in Phoenix, not for weeks or months, but for years. We have successfully pursued the right to parody the establishment all the way to the Texas Supreme Court. And our writers have pursued their stories to Sakhalin Island, Mexico, Haiti, and Cuba.
Don't confuse our growth with our jones for journalism. I got in this business in 1970 to raise a little hell. I try to stay at it by writing myself, and it usually isn't a tedious screed like this.
Jane Levine, a former publisher of the altweekly Chicago Reader, told the Boston Phoenix media columnist her opinion of New Times: "I think they're committed to uncovering wrongdoing. It is generally accepted that they don't have a political position. But I think it's pretty clear that they're bulldogs about uncovering corporate or government malfeasance. That's alternative. I don't know whether it's Republican or Democrat."
That sounds mostly correct. We here at New Times don't forgive anyone his trespasses. We like to compete. We bring our lunch bucket and our shot glass. We expect our colleagues to do the same. We hope that folks will have a mess of fun on the way.
That's not Gannett; that's New Times.
And just supposing the rumors were true. What would that mean for the Village Voice? The New York publication is a newspaper that in recent times survived owners like Rupert Murdoch, Leonard Stern, and, for the past several years, Wall Street. If David Schneiderman were to team up with a couple of Irish guys, I've got to think it's a step in the right direction. Or, at least, it is not the end of Western civilization.
Welcome To Idiot America
Come one, come all, to the creationist museum in Kentucky where the dinosaurs wear saddles! Charles Pierce writes in Esquire (as posted on Evolution Blog):
It is impolite to wonder why our parents sent us to college, and why generations of immigrants sweated and bled so their children could be educated, if it wasn't so that we would all one day feel confident enough to look at a museum filled with dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Belmont and make the not unreasonable point that it is all batshit crazy and that anyone who believes this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and his own moeny.Dinosaurs with saddles?
Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?
Welcome to your new Eden.
Welcome to Idiot America.
Pierce continues:
This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they must both be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an “expert” and, therefore, an “elitist.” Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool.
The bottom line from Pierce?
If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is here that the Gut rules. Held to this standard, any scientific theory is rendered mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. This is how there's a “debate” over global warming, even though the preponderance of fact among those who actually have studied the phenomenon renders the “debate” quite silly. The debate is about making people feel better about driving SUV's. The debate is less about climatology than it is about guiltlessly topping off your tank and voting in tax incentives for oil companies.
And from Evolution Blog's Martin Wagner:
One aspect of the character of the true believer I've noticed is the passionate desire to believe that we're all Special, and meant to be here for some Special Reason and Grand Purpose. And when science simply categorizes us as biological organisms, well, that's pretty damn rude, eh? Certainly doesn't go a long way to flattering people's egos, does it? Well, that's what science is fairly good at, I'm afraid: puncturing the balloon of human self-importance. It's no suprise that the woo-woo beliefs of supernaturalism, religion, psi, and other fancies have met with so much success, as they make it their business to inflate that balloon to super-size.
Backward To The Future
Cenk Uygur argues most eloquently against neo-primitives everywhere:
It is a chilling fact that most of the world's leaders believe in nonsensical fairytales about the nature of reality. They believe in Gods that do not exist, and religions that could not possibly be true. We are driven to war after war, violence on top of violence to appease madmen who believe in gory mythologies. These men are called Christians, Muslims and Jews.Osama bin Laden is insane. He believes God whispered in the ear of Mohammed 1,400 years ago about how he should conquer Arabia. Mohammed was a pure charlatan -- and a good one at that. He makes present religious frauds like Pat Robertson look like amateurs.
He said God told him to have sex with as many of the women he met as possible. I'm sorry, I meant to say "take them as wives." God told him to kill all other tribes that stood in his way or that would not placate him with assurances of loyalty or bribes. God told him, conveniently, that everyone should follow him and never question a word he said.
He sold this bag of goods to the blithering idiots who lived in the Arabian Peninsula at the time. If that weren't shockingly stupid enough, over a billion people continue to believe the convenient lies that Mohammed told all that time ago -- to this very day.
We live in a world full of insane people. Sanity is an island battered in an ocean of frothing delusion. The people who believe in science are the minority. The people who believe in bloody fairytales are the overwhelming majority.
George W. Bush is the most powerful man alive. He is a class A imbecile. He is far less intelligent than the average Christian. But like most of the others, he believes Jesus died for his sins. That idea is so perverse and devoid of logic it should shock the conscience. Instead, it gets him elected, and earns him the reverence of a great percentage of America. America! The most advanced country in the world -- run by a bunch of villagers who still believe Santa Claus is going to save them.
There is no damn Easter Bunny. There is no Jesus waiting to return. Moses never even existed. These were all convenient lies from the men of those times to gain power. Their actions were rational -- they wanted to deceive their brethren so that they could amass power. I get their motivations. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand our motivations, thousands of years later, still following the conmen of yesteryear into our gory, bloody, violent end.
Jesus is said to have said on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Because Jesus was insane and the God he thought would rescue him did not exist. And he died on that cross like a fool. He fancied himself the son of God and he could barely convince twelve men to follow him at a time when the world was full of superstition.
Excellent marketing by some of his followers would later rescue his botched effort. How many people saw his miracles? One? Twelve? Eighty? Why didn't he show the whole world? Not because this is some giant pop quiz by God to test us -- but because he did not perform any miracles!
Even his apostles can't agree on what miracles he supposedly carried out or when he carried them out. Or whether he returned after death or he didn't. Whether they saw him in person or just as a vision. Rational human beings shouldn't believe this kind of nonsense. Yet most of the world does.
If a man today killed his only son to show how much he loved other people, he would be considered a madman, locked in jail and earn society's contempt. Yet we think this is some sort of noble act by our Father in Heaven.
In Heaven? What, with the harps and the winged angels and the 72 virgins? My God, how stupid do you have to be to believe that?
...There are a lot of people I love dearly and respect wholeheartedly who believe in religion. I hate to do this to them. But we have killed far too many people, wasted far too much time on this nonsense for us to keep going in this direction for fear of offense.
Jesus was a lunatic. God is not coming to your rescue. He hasn't come to anyone's rescue in thousands of years, including Jesus. Mohammed was a power hungry, scam artist and ruthless conqueror. Moses and Abraham were figments of the imagination of some long dead rabbi. He would probably laugh his ass off at all of you who still believe the fairytales he made up thousands of years ago. He probably wouldn't even believe it if you told him.
Did I mention Judaism? The chosen people? Come on, get off it. People walk around in clothes from 18th century Russia, thinking they have been chosen by God when they look like a bunch of jackasses. I'm tired of all the deaths because we did not want to give offense. Orthodox Jews are wrong and ridiculous.
As are the orthodox and fundamentalists of all of the religions. It says in the Bible that it is an abomination to wear clothes made of two different cloths or to eat shellfish. If you think God will hate you because you mixed wool and linen or because you ate some shrimp, you are insane.
How long are we going to dance around the 800-pound gorilla in the room? The world is run by madmen. It's not just Bush and bin Laden. It is the leader of all of the countries in the Middle East, almost all of the Americas and most of the rest of the world.
Have I offended you? That's too bad. Stop killing each other in the name of false and ridiculous Gods and I will stop ridiculing you. Trust me, your offense is much worse than mine.
Staying Together For The Children
Kung Fu Monkey quotes his friend Jeff Rothpan's joke:
"My parents stayed together for the sake of the children. Thank God, because there's nothing better for children than fifteen years of screaming, spite and death threats."
link via the ever-amusing Defamer
All Breast Up...
What's missing from this picture, vis a vis US standards? Oh, just about three dozen church ladies protesting the evil, molded plaster of paris nakedness!
Statehood For Barbarians
Bret Stephens writes in The Wall Street Journal of those poor "prisoners of freedom," the Palestinians:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas paid George Bush a friendly visit Thursday in the Oval Office. At the Rose Garden press conference that followed, Mr. Bush stressed Mr. Abbas's responsibility to "end terror attacks, dismantle terrorist infrastructure, maintain law and order and one day provide security for their own state." Mr. Abbas himself made no mention of the words "terrorism" or "terrorists." But he did demand the release of those he called "prisoners of freedom," now being held in Israeli jails.The Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer rivets world attention the way it did a few years ago. Still it rolls along, as it has for decades and as it probably will for decades to come. And the reason for this is well-captured by Mr. Abbas's use of the term "prisoners of freedom."
Who are some of these prisoners? One is Ibrahim Ighnamat, a Hamas leader arrested last week by Israel in connection to his role in organizing a March 1997 suicide bombing at the Apropos cafe in Tel Aviv, which killed three and wounded 48. Another is Jamal Tirawi of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: Mr. Tirawi had bullied a 14-year-old boy into becoming a suicide bomber by threatening to denounce him as a "collaborator," which in Palestinian society frequently amounts to a death sentence.
And then there is 21-year-old Wafa Samir al-Bis, who was detained in June after the explosives she was carrying failed to detonate at an Israeli checkpoint on the border with Gaza. As Ms. Bis later testified, her target was an Israeli hospital where she had previously been treated--as a humanitarian gesture--for burns suffered in a kitchen accident. "I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews," she explained at a press conference after her arraignment.
Many explanations have been given to account for the almost matchless barbarism into which Palestinian society has descended in recent years. One is the effect of Israeli occupation and all that has, in recent years, gone with it: the checkpoints, the closures, the petty harassments, the targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders. I witnessed much of this personally when I lived in Israel, and there can be no discounting the embittering effect that a weeks-long, 18-hour daily military curfew has on the ordinary Palestinians living under it.
Yet the checkpoints and curfews are not gratuitous acts of unkindness by Israel, nor are they artifacts of occupation. On the contrary, in the years when Israel was in full control of the territories there were no checkpoints or curfews, and Palestinians could move freely (and find employment) throughout the country. It was only with the start of the peace process in 1993 and the creation of autonomous Palestinian areas under the control of the late Yasser Arafat that terrorism became a commonplace fact of Israeli life. And it was only then that the checkpoints went up and the clampdowns began in earnest.
In other words, while Palestinian actions go far to explain Israeli behavior, the reverse doesn't hold. How, then, are the Ighnamats, Tirawis and Bises of Palestinian society to be explained?
Consider a statistic: In the first nine months of 2005 more Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians than by Israelis--219 to 218, according to the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Interior, although the former figure is probably in truth much higher. In the Gaza Strip, the departure of Israeli troops and settlers has brought anarchy, not freedom. Members of Hamas routinely fight gun battles with members of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas's ruling political party. Just as often, the killing takes place between clans, or hamullas. So-called collaborators are put to the gun by street mobs, their "guilt" sometimes nothing more than being the object of a neighbor's spite. Palestinian social outsiders are also at mortal risk: Honor killings of "loose" women are common, as is the torture and murder of homosexuals.
...Talk to Palestinians, and you will often hear it said, like a mantra, that Palestinian dignity requires Palestinian statehood. This is either a conceit or a lie. Should a Palestinian state ever come into existence in Gaza and the West Bank, it will be a small place, mostly poor, culturally marginal, most of it desert, rock, slums and dust. One can well understand why Arafat, a man of terrible vices but impressive vanities, spurned the offer of it--and why his people cheered wildly when he did. Their dignity has always rested upon their violence, their struggle, their "prisoners of freedom."
For Mr. Abbas, the problem is that statehood and dignity are not a package. They are a choice. And if history is any guide, the choice he must make is not one he is likely to survive.
Good Morning From The Sewer Of Humanity
On one end, we've got two perky, white 13-year-old race-haters (can't imagine they like gays, lesbians or trannies much either) poised for singing stardom:
Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans.They may remind you another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate.
Known as "Prussian Blue" — a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes — the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.
"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."
Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. "I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would."
...Songs like "Sacrifice" — a tribute to Nazi Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy Fuhrer — clearly show the effect of the girls' upbringing. The lyrics praise Hess as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up."
(Here's more on the girls)
And on the other end, we've got a black former instructor at N.C. State University calling for death to whitey:
The conference at Howard was organized to discuss mainstream media coverage of racial issues after Hurricane Katrina.But Kambon's comments had little to do with that topic. He started by saying, "I'm gonna go out of bounds."
He then explained how he grew up in Brooklyn and eventually began to wonder why so many of his African-American friends were dying. He concluded that the reason was systematic oppression by a society designed and run by whites. He talked about the role of blacks in "an international plantation" and suggested that "white people want to kill you."
His address lasted about 10 minutes, and he saved his most scathing remarks for last.
"We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem. ... So we just have to just set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem, and the problem on the planet is white people."
No, the problem is primitive race-haters like those mentioned above. Wasn't it all set out pretty crystal-clearly in Sneetches? Apparently, they don't sell Dr. Seuss in racist-owned bookstores.
Nobody's Asking The Right Questions
There was a link on Men's News Daily to an article about a guy who lost his court bid to have his child support debt wiped out. He'd accrued the debt prior to getting custody of his kids, and argued that it was in the best interest of his kids that he not be forced to pay what he owed. Here's an excerpt from the story by Ann W. Parks in the Daily Record:
It was Harvey’s position, attorney Daniel L. Hatcher said Friday, that the best interest of the children standard should have carried the day — both in the court’s power to eliminate the arrearages and in the agency’s discretion to accept less than the full amount.Since Harvey now has custody of his children, his state-owed debt now hinders his ability to, for instance, send them to college, Hatcher asserted.
“The Child Support Enforcement Agency, which you would think, is about helping and supporting children, is now going to make it harder for Mr. Harvey to continue to support his children,” Hatcher contended. “The continued collection activities are now against the household.”
What I want to know is: What made this man, who makes $11 an hour as a landscaper, think he was entitled to have four children? (Of course, the guy obviously gave no thought to this at all.) I, on the other hand, waited ten years to get a dog -- until I was sure I was stable enough financially to provide for it, and could take two months out to train it.
Maybe the "best interest of the child" is not to be born to parents who can't afford to take care of them.
You're poor? Wear a condom. At best, have one child. If you really, really must. Not four.
At best.
A Page From The Church Of Reality
I'm particularly amused by people who tell me that I could spend my life giving everything I have to care for sick orphans, and if Adolph Hitler "accepted Jesus as his savior" and I didn't, he'd go to "Heaven" and I'd be relegated to "Hell" or "Purgatory." On the bright side, I'm told you don't burn in Purgatory, you just have to clean toilets or something for all eternity.
Luckily, there's a little break from the fire-and-brimstone, neo-primitive hoo-hah pervading our country with this bit from "The Church Of Reality" on what they call "altruistic atheism." Okay, so some of the language here, and the way they're compelled to imitate religion, makes me more than a little queasy. But, there's good stuff, too:
People think of Atheists as selfish people. This is in part because a philosophy called Objectivism, which is atheistic, extols greed as a virtue and selflessness as evil. Communism didn't do Atheists any good either. But the other part of why Atheists are considered selfish is the belief that if you have God that God will make you generous. God makes you generous because when his holy spirit merges into you then you become divinely inspired to be a good person. Alternatively for those who don't hear the "Word of God" clearly in their heart you have the reward of eternal life in paradise vs. eternal punishment in Hell. Quite the carrot and stick to get people to fork over some bucks to the poor. So - it's easy to see why Theists would want to be generous and selfless. And many believers believe that without a God that there is no reason to be good and therefore there's nothing stopping Atheists from being evil. Or is there?For those of you who know an Atheist personally you'll probably notice that these people are not really any different that Theists in the way they live. They don't eat their children. They tend to obey the laws and are good upstanding members of society. The donate money to feed the starving children are attend PTA meetings and they are honest hard working productive members of society. But how can that be without the promise of eternal life or the threat of punishment? Why do these people be good without God?
Atheism and Altruism are a good fit because selflessness achieves our selfish goal of survival and help us thrive as a community.
Interestingly enough the same can be asked of Christians. When you take "forgiveness of sins" and that you are saved by faith and not by works we Atheists see that as a giant loophole in the rule book. The simple view is that a Christian can get away with anything because Jesus died and bought your ticket to eternal life so you can now get away with anything as long as you have faith and keep getting forgiven. One could even argue that if you don't sin then Jesus died for nothing and that sin honors his sacrifice. But in spite of forgiveness and grace, for some odd reason Christians tend to behave themselves. Even the ones from "those denominations" that you know are probably going to Hell anyhow. (Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, etc.) So why is it that believers behave themselves?
As I stated in the last chapter, it is human nature to give. It is human nature to need to be an upstanding member of society. We are biologically programmed to for groups and work together. It is the way we are. Altruism is something that evolved that has become key to our very survival. It is as natural as eating, breathing, fear, sex, and everything else we do to survive. So in spite of what the Objectivists say, Atheists are as normal and as generous and live a life that is not that different than believers. Other than perhaps having more tattoos and more free sex we are just like everyone else. We are normal people just like you are.
If religion goes away, if tomorrow there were no believers, society would not degenerate into selfish anarchy. Morality would not go away. We wouldn't become a lawless culture. Right and wrong would still exist. Why? Because these are things that are necessary for survival. So believers need not fear that an Atheistic society is going to bring down humanity. If God doesn't exist and Realism took over the culture all the good stuff stays. People will still live in peace and harmony, love each other, take care of each other, and be generous. In fact one could say Atheist generosity is more generous than Christian generosity because we don't have a selfish reason that compels us to be generous. We just do it out of the natural goodness of our hearts.
Believers tend to believe that "man has an evil nature" and by default we are of sin. And it is only from God that goodness originates. But that just isn't so because people who are godless are just as good (if not better) than those who believe. In reality humanity has a predominately good nature but not always. Some people are selfish and take more than their share. A lot of people's behavior is learned so if we teach our children what is right then they will tend to grow up doing the right thing. Most everyone want to do what is right whether you are a Theist or an Atheist. We just don't always agree on what that is.
We in the Church of Reality however state to the rest of society that we choose to be good moral upstanding citizens and that we want all the good things that believers want. And we commit to a reality based method for determining what that is and we think that reality is something that is safe enough that a believer doesn't have to worry about moving in next door to a realist. If you read our Sacred Principles and what our religion is about you will see that if we stick with what we say we are that we are no threat to civilization. There is a reason for Atheists being altruistic and we in the Church of Reality embrace it.
Many people follow religion because they need to be told what to do. What's good about this "Church of Reality" (although it comes off a little saccharine for my taste at times), is that it seeks to take atheism beyond nonbelief, toward something somewhat like "Secular Humanism." Some of its prinicples include ideas like "Positive Evolution, Exploration, Freedom, Peace, Justice, Inclusiveness, Scrutiny, Humility, Wisdom and Personal Responsibility." (Links to specific principles are here.)
With spelled-out principles of secular ethics, people might have an easier time living rationally, and maybe the world would be a less violent, ugly, screwed-up place. Plus, think of all the good all the religious people could do if they devoted themselves to "leaving the campground better than they found it" during the hours they currently spend in their place of wor$hip praying to their particular Imaginary Friend!
Moron Calls Joan Rivers Racist
Okay, so she's no longer white, she's Botoxian, but the lady is no racist. Scott Martelle writes in the LA Times about a discussion of race she had on live London radio:
Rivers, who begins a tour of England on Friday, was a guest on BBC Radio 4's "Midweek" program with Darcus Howe, a Trinidad-born writer and black activist, and two other guests, including author Jackie Collins. Howe is the subject of a new movie, "Son of Mine," about his relationship with his son, who spent half his youth in Trinidad with his white mother.As Howe talked about the pervasiveness of race in personal relationships, Rivers interrupted to say: "I'm so bored with race."
Howe responded: "You're entitled to be bored by it. I am not."
Rivers went on to say she thought race should be irrelevant, and intermarriage should be common.
"Race doesn't mean a damn thing — it's about people," she said.
After host Libby Purves remarked that Rivers was espousing "an American approach," Howe condemned the U.S. as "the most savagely racial places in the world."
After a back-and-forth over the nature of hatred, and a discussion of the film about Howe, the discussion turned angry when Howe tweaked Rivers, referring to "Caribbean children, since black offends Joan."
Rivers exploded.
"How dare you say that! You know nothing about me," Rivers said.
Howe revised his comment to say, "the use of the term black offends you."
"Where the hell are you coming from? You have got such a chip on your shoulder," Rivers said. "Don't you dare call me a racist! I want an apology from you."
As Purves tried to mollify Rivers, saying she didn't think Howe was making a personal comment about the comedian, Rivers became increasingly angry.
"This is a problem in your stupid head," Rivers told Howe, and then accused him of abandoning his responsibilities as a father. "Where were you when he was growing up?"
You go, Joan!
Bush Bashing From Within
Brian Powell writes in the IHT about the retired colonel and current loose cannon of the Bush administration, Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for Colin Powell at the State Department from 2002 to early 2005:
The retired colonel who was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" and that President George W. Bush had left the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises...."And I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita - and I could go on back - we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time."
He suggested that dysfunction within the administration was so grave that "if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence." Wilkerson, a tough-talking former director of the Marine Corps War College, said that in his years in or close to government, he had seen its national security apparatus twisted and tortured in many ways.
But what he saw in the first Bush term "was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, perturbations."
"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues." He was equally unsparing of a top former Rumsfeld aide, Douglas Feith, saying, "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Alluding to Defense Department tensions with the State Department following the Iraq invasion, Wilkerson said Feith had been "given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves."
The retired colonel referred to Bush as someone who "is not versed in international relations - and not too much interested in them, either." He was far more admiring of the president's father, whom he called "one of the finest presidents we've ever had."
Mutiny On 65th Street
A lot of people consider psychiatry and psychology a form of witch doctor'y, and don't understand that it can actually help them. For years, because of that, I've been sending people to Albert Ellis' $5 Friday night sessions (at his nonprofit Institute on 65th Street in Manhattan) where he does therapy on a volunteer in front of an audience. This allowed these people to see that there was therapy out there that wasn't mumbo jumbo, and that they simply had to learn to think rationally and apply reason to their emotional problems to start living smarter and more contentedly. For some people, this takes guidance by an Ellis-trained therapist, but for others, reading Ellis' books, like A Guide To Rational Living, and applying his methods, is enough.
In my opinion, the form of psychology originated by Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, generally known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but in Ellis' case, specifically known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, is the fastest, smartest, most efficient type of therapy out there: Change the way you think, and you'll change the way you feel. You're disturbed because you're thinking irrationally (inspired by Epictetus' [paraphrased] "It is not events that disturb people, but the way they think of them."
This is why I'm particularly disturbed about the efforts by the board of Ellis' nonprofit institute, REBT.org, to reward him for what he built by unceremoniously throwing him out of his own Institute at age 92 -- while he's still mentally at the top of his game, despite health problems related to his diabetes. Benedict Carey and Dan Hurley write in The New York Times:
In a drama worthy of a field that thrives on conflict, a bitter feud has erupted between Albert Ellis, one of the most provocative and influential figures in modern psychology, and the Upper East Side psychotherapy institute he founded almost a half-century ago.Dr. Ellis, 92, has filed a lawsuit against the Albert Ellis Institute, after the institute kicked him off its board of directors and canceled his popular Friday evening seminars.
Dr. Ellis and his defenders claim that the nonprofit institute has fallen into the hands of psychologists who are moving it away from the revolutionary therapy techniques pioneered by Dr. Ellis in the 1960's and 1970's.
The lawsuit, reported on Sunday by The New York Post, charges that the board acted improperly in removing Dr. Ellis and seeks his reinstatement, as well as unspecified damages. But Daniel Kurtz, a lawyer for the institute, said that the board acted out of economic necessity: payouts to Dr. Ellis for medical and other expenses were jeopardizing the institute's tax-exempt status and its viability, he said.
Dr. Ellis, who lives above the institute on East 65th Street, has been in declining health since an infection that nearly killed him several years ago and has daily nursing care.
In the last year, the dispute has turned personal. Some board members have said they were uncomfortable with Dr. Ellis's confrontational style and eccentricities, and saw him as a liability, said Andy Hopson, a volunteer consultant hired by the institute at Dr. Ellis's urging.
And some of Dr. Ellis's supporters have hinted that the institute's current managers are little more than overpaid self-promoters, intent on turning the institute into an outlet for pop psychology in the style of Dr. Phil, according to Mike Abrams, a psychologist in private practice in New Jersey who has worked with Dr. Ellis.
The board also fired Dr. Ellis's assistant, whom he has now married, a fact that he has interpreted as additional evidence of personal animosity on the part of board members.
In an interview from his bedside yesterday, Dr. Ellis said that neither money nor his health was the most important issue in the dispute.
It is natural for any psychological institute to change and adapt with the times, he said, "but it's unusual for them to change and go completely against the main principles" of its founder "and still call it the Albert Ellis Institute, and say they're doing the therapy, which they are not."
...By early 2004, with Dr. Ellis in declining health, the board began to negotiate with him about his future role at the institute, Mr. Kurtz said. The two sides could not come to agreement about Dr. Ellis's payment or title, Mr. Kurtz said, and in July, institute officials canceled the Friday evening sessions that had been a staple there for 30 years.
Dr. Ellis's lawyer, Michael de Leeuw, said: "Either these people really believe he is losing it, which he is not - in which case their lack of sympathy and fairness is appalling - or it's a palace coup.
"They have created a lot of animus. It's not what anyone would want to do to a guy who's 92 and the founder of a major school of psychology, especially one from whom they have all been directly enriched."
Mr. Kurtz said that the board's action in no way challenged the importance of Dr. Ellis's contributions but that those contributions were ultimately irrelevant to the ouster.
"We had someone who was working part time by any standard and who received financial benefits in the range of $500,000 to $600,000; it was just an outrageous situation," he said, referring mostly to medical benefits.
Mr. Kurtz, an expert in the laws governing nonprofits, said that in the nonprofit world, "there's something called founder's syndrome, and this is an extreme case of that: he sees this as something he can use as he wishes, and he can't."
Michael Broder, the director of the Institute, said yesterday that the action by the board was not personal and was within the law. Dr. Ellis's lawyers responded that Dr. Broder himself earned more than $200,000 last year and that Dr. Ellis's expenses were legitimate, especially given his modest salary - less than $50,000 a year - and his years of devotion to the institute.
Mr. Hopson said that the personal friction between Dr. Ellis and top managers was evident.
"It became apparent to me very quickly in my interviewing process that the relationship between Dr. Broder and Dr. Ellis was tenuous at best," he said. "Dr. Ellis didn't trust Dr. Broder and was frustrated that even though he was president of the board, Dr. Broder often ignored his directives."
Mr. Hopson said that Dr. Ellis also believed that Dr. Broder was manipulating the board.
"He frequently lamented to me that he didn't trust Dr. Broder," Mr. Hopson said.
In his new identity as a therapist unaffiliated with the Albert Ellis Institute, Dr. Ellis said he has been seeing a few clients. He said he does not hate those who removed him from the institute, nor is he angry about it.
"I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair, that's the human condition," he said.
From a petition to reinstate Ellis:
Albert Ellis founded the Institute, founded REBT, served the Institute his entire career, took only a small salary and put the rest of his earnings back into the Institute, spoke all over the world to teach about REBT, lived at the Institute, guarded the Institute, and needs to be reinstated and keep the Institute on track in its course, as he the founder established it to be. He deserves respect from the Board and does not deserve the heartache of a lawsuit to protect his lifelong investment in the Institute. I hope the Institute will live on in his name maintaining the methods and standards of treatment he created. He gave great talks at his 90th birthday party and at a subsequent Friday night workshop I attended. He is capable of continuing his life's work, and if he needs special accommodations for his age and state of health, then the Institute needs to provide them, in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and the EEOC, which prohibits discrimination based on age.
I, personally, have sent hundreds of my readers to the Institute and REBT.org, and recommended that my readers in need of therapy see REBT fellows from the Institute's list. I don't know that I can do that anymore if I can't be sure they'll be following Ellis' methods, which are both wise and simple, and proof that one need not go through years of therapy to fix dumb, counterproductive ways of behaving.
Here is an excerpt from a message from two dissenting board members:
2. Although we commend our fellow Board members for their efforts to prevent the loss of the Institute’s tax exempt status, we maintain that removing Dr. Ellis from all positions of responsibility, including the Board, was not the correct or the respectful way to address these matters. 3. We contend that the Board was NOT “compelled” to act with the haste and the secrecy that characterized Dr. Ellis’ removal on September 18th 2005 at the last meeting of the Board.-- Where is the evidence for the necessity and immediacy of this action?
--Where is the unambiguous proof that the payments made for Dr. Ellis’ medical care are “excess benefits”?
Dr. Ellis has received minimal compensation for the last 50 years. All his income went to support the Institute and purchase its building whose value is in the millions and worth many times over the original purchase price. Furthermore, because of Dr. Ellis’ conservative fiscal policies, the Institute is financially sound
and debt free with a bank account in excess of 5 million dollars.
The only alleged “excess benefits” paid to Dr Ellis were for the purpose of medical bills incurred in the last 2 years since his illness. It was in fact the Board itself that established a trust for the purpose of covering Dr. Ellis’ medical expenses.
This is appalling and a travesty, and beyond stupid. I plan to call Michael Broder today to let him know.
You Can't Fault A Guy For Trying
A little cut-out paper tag below the painting reads "DARK RED ILLUSION, $750, CHARLIEGREER.NET."
Who's Sneaking Onto Your Computer?
Did the Recording Industry Association of America sneak onto a single mother's computer with a program called Media Sentry? Are they blackmailing innocent people, trying to coerce them into paying thousands of dollars in settlement fees for illegal downloading? This 42-year-old single mother says she doesn't even like gangsta rap, but she was accused of downloading it from the Internet, and told by the "Settlement Support Center" of the RIAA that she had to pay them thousands of dollars. Here's the story by Ryan Paul from arstechnica:
Anderson, who was accused of downloading gangster rap via the Kazaa file sharing network under the login gotenkito, claims that she has never engaged in piracy. According to Anderson, shortly after she received notice of the suit, she was contacted by the Settlement Support Center, which claimed that a company called MediaSentry illegally infiltrated her computer and found evidence of copyright infringement. Anderson, who has no interest in gangster rap, contested the accusation and even requested that the Settlement Support Center inspect her computer to verify her innocence.Brace yourselves, this is where it really starts to get freaky. In her countersuit, Anderson claims that the Settlement Support Center acknowledged the probability of her innocence, but informed her that should she refuse to settle, the RIAA would proceed with a suit in order to discourage others from attempting to defend themselves against unwarranted litigation.
...If what she says is true, it means that the RIAA is using the threat of litigation to extort monolithic amounts of money from innocent consumers. The very prospect sends shivers down my spine, but is it true? Would the RIAA really attempt to defraud a disabled woman out of her meager social security income? If the RIAA does in fact perpetrate extortion on massive scale, it would constitute one of the most horrendous acts of large scale corporate fraud ever recorded and it would utterly annihilate the credibility of the politicians that have expressed support for the RIAA's anti-piracy efforts. Is the RIAA an evil empire driven by inhuman avarice, or is 42 year old Tanya Anderson a gangster rapping pirate in search of an easy way out?
Simon Dumenco On "The V-List"
Media critic Simon Dumenco weighs in on a Seventeen section:
The V-list
Seventeen gets a special shout-out for its recent “Vagina 101: What’s normal -- and what’s not” page, with its now legendary, eerily clinical illustration. (This from a mag that had already put Paris Hilton on its cover.) The whole thing was printed in a box bordered by clip-and-save-style dotted lines (stick that in your Hello Kitty wallet!) and not only gave the lowdown on the vulva, but offered (I’m not kidding) bonus info like “Anus: The opening of the rectum, where feces come out.” I know you’re expecting some sort of punch line here, but there’s really nothing I can add to that.
Remember When Science Was A Search For Truth?
Lehigh University embarrassment Michael Behe says evolution can't fully explain biology, so he hauls off and decides "god" can. (You have to feel sorry for his Lehigh colleagues, who "are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory.") Sneaky Behe waited until he had tenure to reveal that his brand of "science" invoves evidence-free belief in a big imaginary friend in the sky:
Lehigh University Professor Michael Behe was the first witness called by a school board that is requiring students to hear a statement about the intelligent design concept in biology class.Lawyers for the Dover Area School Board began presenting their case Monday in the landmark federal trial, which could decide whether it can be mentioned in public school science classes as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
Behe, whose work includes a 1996 best-seller called "Darwin's Black Box," said students should be taught evolution because it's widely used in science and that "any well-educated student should understand it."
Behe, however, argues that evolution cannot fully explain the biological complexities of life, suggesting the work of an intelligent force.
The intelligent design theory does not name the designer, although Behe, a Roman Catholic, testified he personally believes it to be God.
Well, if we're just guessing randomly, I think it was my desk lamp. Yes, in the beginning, my desk lamp created heaven and earth. And then my shower head dropped by and noticed the place was rather underpopulated, and, in addition, lacked proper curtains...
He Was Really Good In Chaplin, Too
Somebody at CNN has it in for Robert Downey, it seems. Either that or their chyron title generator was stuck for the better part of 20 minutes -- or maybe more. Monday night, during the entire 20-minute stretch of the Larry King/Robert Downey/Shane Black confab I watched, the title onscreen rarely deviated from "ROBERT DOWNEY, JR, DRUG ABUSING FIEND!" Even when it was Larry's face or Shane Black's or footage from the movie playing. Come on, CNN, give the guy a break.
What If Somebody Sprayed Lysol In Your Eyes?
Granted, the health hazards do come a bit more slowly when somebody blows smoke in your face, but they're there just the same. Hey, smokers...don't you read any science?
My friend, the London-based Jackie Danicki, is sick and tired of people who smoke in public. She's a libertarian, so she isn't complaining about people smoking in bars and other privately owned establishments. What gets her is the smoker sitting between you and somebody else at the bus stop, or the smoker trailing their toxic fumes down the street, breathers be damnned:
I think I have reached the end of my tether with people who smoke in public in a way that proves they have no consideration for those around them. On a daily basis, I encounter someone who lights up while sat between two or three non-smokers at a bus stop, blows smoke in the direction of those standing down wind from them, or is otherwise rude in their smoking. One day last week, I was walking up Shaftesbury Avenue towards my office when a man walking in front of me flicked hot ash behind him - and straight at me. I didn’t say anything, but now wish that I had.And I think that, from now on, I am going to say something. I have always resisted such confrontations with people, strangers or otherwise, partly because I hate to live up to the stereotype of the stroppy Yank. But really, I could not care less if those with such cretinous behaviour think poorly of me.
My only remaining reservation is that embracing negativity is not my thing, and I am not the sort of person who can have an unfriendly confrontation with someone, instantly forget about it, and move on with a smile on my face. This is probably the biggest reason I have for not ever saying anything to these jerks.
That said, I feel I have a duty to show these people that they are the reason nanny staters want to bar them from being allowed to smoke in public at all. The responsibility I feel is not to the smokers, but to myself and my children and their children, for whom I want a world free of state intervention in the personal lives of individuals, and a world where people are not so unabashedly rude to one another.
So I think I may go down the Amy Alkon card route. Of course, handing someone a card that they may find patronising and nosey at best, and insulting and offensive at worst, is inviting a lot more involvement than merely sticking a card on someone’s windshield. But I really do not know what else to do, other than start a blog encouraging considerate public smoking (when in doubt, blog?). As she’s an advice columnist and a friend, I may just go ask Amy.
Here's what I emailed back to Jackie:
Smoking in public goes against the libertarian "Your right to punch me in the nose ends where my nose begins." It's a willful lapse in logic (or any thought or consideration whatsoever) on the part of the smokers. Smoking is a totally anti-science activity. These days, there's no doubt that it causes lung impairment, emphysema, and very likely, cancer, in smokers...and it's obvious that it can't be good for others sucking down the smoke in the vicinity! People who smoke would turn to you indignantly if you (well, not YOU, Jackie...I know you!) passed a big, loud, smelly cloud of gas while seated next to them on the bus stop, yet see nothing wrong with blithely forcing you to inhale their toxic fumes from their ciggies. Buttheads, indeed.I think people who smoke should go into cone-of-silence-like lucite boxes where they fume only themselves.
In the past, I've tried to reason with smokers (even trotting out the gas example) but I've been writing like mad all weekend, so I have yet to brainstorm any solutions to this. You have any ideas? One problem to consider: A public smoker is engaged in an aggressive, aggressively stupid act, and they'll often (if not generally) do just about anything to deny they're harming themselves or being rude or harmful to others.
My current bottom line on this? I think one-on-one action is probably useless and overly stressful to almost anybody who isn't me. This probably has to be a public campaign, using humor, to give public smokers a look in the mirror, revealing their remarkable resemblance to a small, puckered area found between the cheeks.
The War On Stupidity
Let's make former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper the general. He wrote an Op-Ed piece in yesterday's LA Times about the idiocy of the drug war:
Yes, I was a cop for 34 years, the last six of which I spent as chief of Seattle's police department.But no, I don't favor decriminalization. I favor legalization, and not just of pot but of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, meth, psychotropics, mushrooms and LSD.
Decriminalization, as my colleagues in the drug reform movement hasten to inform me, takes the crime out of using drugs but continues to classify possession and use as a public offense, punishable by fines.
I've never understood why adults shouldn't enjoy the same right to use verboten drugs as they have to suck on a Marlboro or knock back a scotch and water.
Prohibition of alcohol fell flat on its face. The prohibition of other drugs rests on an equally wobbly foundation. Not until we choose to frame responsible drug use — not an oxymoron in my dictionary — as a civil liberty will we be able to recognize the abuse of drugs, including alcohol, for what it is: a medical, not a criminal, matter.
As a cop, I bore witness to the multiple lunacies of the "war on drugs." Lasting far longer than any other of our national conflicts, the drug war has been prosecuted with equal vigor by Republican and Democratic administrations, with one president after another — Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush — delivering sanctimonious sermons, squandering vast sums of taxpayer money and cheerleading law enforcers from the safety of the sidelines.
It's not a stretch to conclude that our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and '90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?
...Combined with treatment, education and other public health programs for drug abusers, regulated legalization would make your city or town an infinitely healthier place to live and raise a family.
It would make being a cop a much safer occupation, and it would lead to greater police accountability and improved morale and job satisfaction.
But wouldn't regulated legalization lead to more users and, more to the point, drug abusers? Probably, though no one knows for sure — our leaders are too timid even to broach the subject in polite circles, much less to experiment with new policy models. My own prediction? We'd see modest increases in use, negligible increases in abuse.
The demand for illicit drugs is as strong as the nation's thirst for bootleg booze during Prohibition. It's a demand that simply will not dwindle or dry up. Whether to find God, heighten sexual arousal, relieve physical pain, drown one's sorrows or simply feel good, people throughout the millenniums have turned to mood- and mind-altering substances.
They're not about to stop, no matter what their government says or does. It's time to accept drug use as a right of adult Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health problem and end the madness of an unwinnable war.
I've never understood how the government has any right to tell you what you can and cannot put in your body.
Brady Westwater Invites Steve Lopez
To a walking census of LA's Skid Row. Here's his invitation below. And here's his blog post from this morning on this:
In (this) story, Steve Lopez, a recent arrival from Philadelphia who pens a column claiming to be about LA for the Times, stated he spent five nights on Skid Row. He also made the statement 10,000 people sleep on the streets of Skid Row every night.That last statement is...preposterous.
It is time we, the citizens of this city, do something about the LA Times' inability to get even the most basic facts about our city correct.
I therefore challenge Steve Lopez to spend one night with me on Skid Row. During that night, we will not tour Skid Row in a police car or in an ambulance. We will actually...walk... every street and alley on Skid Row.
We will also personally count the number of people sleeping on the streets of Skid Row. Mr. Lopez can also have Dean Baquet and a channel 5 news crew accompany us to verify our count.
If we find anything near 10,000 people sleeping there, I will remove my blog LA Cowboy from the web, issue a formal apology to the LA Times and never say another word about the LA Times, ever.
If we do not find anything near 10,000 people sleeping on the streets of Skid Row, Steve Lopez and the LA Times will issue a written apology, Steve Lopez will immediately return home to Philadelphia and he will never write another word about Los Angeles.
I am not afraid to stand behind my statements.
The question is - will Mr. Lopez have the courage to stand behind his words?
My number and e-mail are below. I await his response.
Here is my comment from Brady's blog:
I guess Mickey was wrong about the value of copy editors!I just looked up the capacity of Staples Center:
"The seating capacity at the Staples Center is 19,000 for basketball and 16,000 for ice hockey. "
If we had a skid row population equivalent to over half of a packed Staples Center laying around downtown every night...! What do the police do, come around at bedtime and stack them in piles 50 feet high so they don't block traffic?
Matching Your Handbag To Your Shoes Isn't Challenging Enough?
The Honeymoon's Over
Rupert Cornwell writes in the Independent about the hole Bush has dug himself into...and keeps digging:
This Bush, we were told, was the first president with an MBA, and his White House would hum with the efficiency of Jack Welch's General Electric. Did you hate that ditherer Bill Clinton, for whom every question had three sides? Well, the Bush promoters assured, you'll love straight-shooting George W. And so it used to be. You might not have liked the decisions - invade Iraq, pull out of Kyoto and so on - but boy, they got made.Well, they still are being made. But now it feels as if the early Clinton era has returned, when hardly a day went by without a "White House in Disarray" headline on the front of The Washington Post. The magic Bush touch of the first term has gone. Instead there is only trouble: Iraq, Katrina, and assorted scandals, including the indictment of his top enforcer on Capitol Hill, and the possible indictment of his most influential White House aide. And now Harriet.
What is going on? Mr Bush has been hauled over the coals for cronyism, embodied by the hapless Michael Brown ("Brownie" to the President) at the helm of the Fema disaster agency when Katrina struck. But when a long-anticipated vacancy on the court opens up, he names not the fire-breathing conservative he promised, but a loyal retainer from his Texas days, with no track record as a jurist.
And that is only the start of it. This Bush has advertised his opposition to quotas and affirmative action - yet he seeks to fill the O'Connor slot with another woman. A White House Counsel with similarly scant credentials whose name was Harry Miers wouldn't have been considered.
When you're in a hole, stop digging, is the first rule of politics. But last week the President wielded the shovel again, saying that his nominee's born-again Christian faith was an important factor in his choice - as if that was a proper criterion. Mr Bush's political instincts have abandoned him.
Some argue that master strategist Karl Rove has been distracted by possible indictment over the leaking of a CIA agent's name, and took his eye off the Supreme Court ball. A fully functioning Rove, it is said, would have nipped the nomination in the bud - just as, had he not been on holiday, he would have told his boss to scrap his junkets in California when Katrina struck, and get to Louisiana right away. More likely, however, Mr Bush has met the fate of every politician, sooner or later. His luck has run out.
Avian Flu
Geoffrey Lean and Severin Carrell report in the Independent about the virus, which has just reached Europe:
If, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) now believes is inevitable, bird flu turns into a human pandemic, killing many millions, the tragic tale of Sakuntala and her mother - officially reported earlier this year in The New England Journal of Medicine - will go down as the moment that one of the greatest catastrophes to hit the world began.The Journal called the story an "unprecedented warning", and said that "all prerequisites for the start of a pandemic have been met save one" - the virus acquiring the ability to spread rapidly from person to person. Professor John Oxford, of Queen Mary, University of London, says: "It sends a shiver down my spine."
Pandemics are quantum leaps in the development of flu. Normally an existing flu virus, which has been around for decades, undergoes a slight shift, enabling it to infect some people who have built up immunity from previous bouts of the disease.
But every so often, about three or four times a century, an entirely new one arrives. No one has any natural protection against it, and so - once it has developed the ability to spread between people - it is free to commit mass slaughter. So far as we know, the virus always originates in wild birds, and has come out of Asia.
Experts believe this is about to happen again. They cannot say when the bird flu virus will adapt to become extremely infectious to humans, but they say it will do so. The WHO warns that "the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic".
The latest potential outbreak goes back to 1997, when the virus first appeared in Hong Kong, infecting 18 people. The authorities reacted with admirable vigour, slaughtering all the area's 1.5 million poultry in just three days, and it seemed to disappear. But nearly two years ago it reappeared in South Korea, and by early this year had spread to eight eastern Asian countries. Slaughtering 150 million birds throughout the region has failed to halt the disease, and so far about 120 people are known to have caught it. Half of them have died - an extraordinarily high mortality rate.
Shigeru Omi, the WHO's director in the area, says: "All attempts to bring it under control in South-east Asia have failed."
Now it is spreading around the world. On Thursday, scientists at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, confirmed that tests showed poultry in Anatolia, in Turkey, had the disease. And yesterday, the Romanian government announced that it had been found in its country too.
The crucial event in this spread took place at the massive Qinghai Lake, high in the mountains of north-western China, which is a summer hub for migrating birds from all over Asia. Thousands of wild birds died from the virus there this summer, and in August infected survivors began fanning out towards their winter quarters.
A trail of infected poultry farms followed their migration route across Siberia, and has now reached Europe. It is still largely a bird disease, with only rare cases of humans catching it. But experts warn that it is only a matter of time before the critical mutation that would spark a devastating human pandemic takes place. This month, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government's Chief Medical Officer, warned that it was a "biological inevitability" it would seriously affect the health of people in Britain. Unofficially, the Government is preparing for up to 750,000 deaths.
One of the preventive measures, in the absence of a vaccine against the virus, or enough Tamiflu to minimize its effects, is stocking up on food and water so you won't have to leave the house. Then there are the 3M P100 and N100 masks, which last for 150 hours. In the absence of one of those, you're supposed to cover your mouth with a cloth.
The War On Pain Sufferers
Yep, that "war on drugs" is really something. They yanked a medical marijuana user out of bed and threw him in jail without painkillers. The army vet, whose pain started after his parachute didn't open, was jailed after checking into a Canadian hospital, having been denied asylum, writes Gene Johnson for the AP:
He then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain, attorney Douglas Hiatt said.Steven Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into federal court for a detention hearing Wednesday, Hiatt said.
"This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason," Hiatt said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Donohue ordered Tuck temporarily released so he could be taken to a hospital for treatment.
However, by the time Donohue issued his order, King County Jail officials had received a detainment request from Humboldt County, Calif., so Tuck was not released.
Sorry, but why is marijuana illegal?
via Ken Layne's Sploid
Will A Patent Be What Kills You?
Roche has a patent on Tamiflu, the drug that diminishes the severity of Avian flu (if the flu doesn't mutate too much) when taken with 48 hours of infection. Supply of the stuff is very low around the world. Should patents be lifted in times of medical crisis? Sarah Boseley writes in the Guardian:
Nobel prize-winner Sir John Sulston called for reform of the drug patent system yesterday to allow faster stockpiling and wider access to the potentially life-saving antiviral flu drug Tamiflu in the UK and around the world.He spoke as the drug company Cipla announced that it would be making its own copies of Tamiflu, which it will sell to countries in the developing world that may need it in the event of a pandemic. Generic manufacture of the drug is not permitted in the UK, Europe or the US.
Intellectual property legislation gives Tamiflu's manufacturer, Roche, a monopoly on sales and marketing of the drug, which is now in huge and urgent demand around the world as the threat of a pandemic is perceived to be increasing.
Britain has ordered more than 14m courses, but so far has 2.5m and delivery of the rest will not be completed for another year. The drug is not a cure for flu, but reduces the severity of a bout as long as it is taken within the first 48 hours of the onset of symptoms, and could therefore save lives.
Sir John, winner of the Nobel prize for medicine for his work on the human genome, said yesterday that the intellectual property laws were an obstacle to faster and wider access to Tamiflu.
"A major problem in the decision-making processes of governments is that drugs are very highly priced. This is because of the way the intellectual property system works," he said on BBC Radio 4. The system rewarded companies for the investment they made in creating drugs by allowing manufacturers to set high prices without competition, but it did not help get universal access to needed medicines.
"I think that if we can reform intellectual property so as to separate the creative process of research and development from the production of drugs, thereby making them cheaper, we will be a great deal better off," he said.
Yesterday Cipla's chief executive, Yusuf Hamied, who helped bring down the prices of Aids drugs to Africa by making generic copies, said his company would make a version of Tamiflu. "We will certainly make it and sell it at a very, very humanitarian price," he said.
Cipla would breach patent laws if he sold the drug to any of the 49 least developed countries under the World Trade Organisation's rules. Roche filed its patent for Tamiflu in 1995.
1-800-How's-My-Driving?
Well, 1-800-Pretty-Damn-Sucky. (They were practically licking my back bumper with their armored car, when I was in the far right lane on the freeway and there was no traffic in the lane next to me. Trucks, a cop told me, can drive in the two right lanes. And, I believe there were four, total, on this freeway.)
You know, boys, if you're going to menace a girl in a 1900 lb. hybrid hatchback, it's best that you first try to recall whether you have a phone number on the back of your vehicle for said girl to report what buttwads you are. Didn't think I'd follow your ass through downtown, now did you? I may be a friend to the environment, but I'm hell on wheels to creepazoids like you.
Speaking of which, I just tormented my car thief into finally starting to pay me restitution. I asked the City Attorney to give me his phone number when he didn't commence payment after his July court date. Nope, she couldn't do that. Okay, well, then there's Google! Found his name and cell phone number...called, it was him.
I left the little weasel a long message, suggesting that he start forking over immediately, lest I write a letter to the DA in January asking them to keep him in jail, running on a little hamster wheel until he pays me back for the damages and costs (such as the approximately $45 worth of tables and chairs I'd rented for a party that I had to pay hundreds of dollars for after they disappeared with my car).
And no, I'm not vengeful. I simply ask people to be accountable. And when they aren't accountable, I try to annoy the living crap out of them until they are.
UPDATE: Sometimes people confuse petty vengeance with accountability. This guy had every right to the money to fix his bumper, whether the highly-paid TV writers thought the "crease" was minor or not. And I find the auto-think that all lawyers are assholes is moronic. Does that mean all TV writers are not assholes? Clearly, these two are driving, blogging proof disproving any such thinking.
Silent, But Brain-Dead
Scientology (absent any science of course, since it's a religion based on a the "literary" ravings of a science fiction writer) advocates something called "silent birth":
That means no yelling or talking during the delivery and doctors are asked to remain quiet as well. It is believed the quiet birth reduces trauma during delivery and therefore prevents irrational fears later in life.Actress Kelly Preston, wife of John Travolta, delivered her daughter in a silent birth without painkillers and admitted to Redbook magazine that it wasn't easy.
"It got hardcore at the end because she was so big," Preston said. "I changed my mind and said, 'Throw me in the car! I want an epidural!"
Preston was too far along and had to give birth at home. The church doesn't exclusively ban painkillers, but many mothers refrain from using them.
Fellow Scientologist Brittany Wadhams refused painkillers and tried her best to stay quiet.
"About a half hour before pushing, that's when it got more difficult, and that was when I would have a contraction and then I would start screaming," Wadhams said.
A doctor who has attended silent births says medically there's nothing wrong with the practice, but adhering to it might be impossible.
...Former Scientologist Lawrence Woodcraft said he felt awkward asking doctors to go along with a silent birth when his daughter was born using the method.
"To me it was very strange and embarrassing, particularly asking the medical staff and doctors to be quiet," Woodcraft said. "They're like, 'Well, we have to do our job.' So that was stressful and difficult."
Some Scientologists say the church has recommended counseling known as "auditing" for mothers who were unable to stay silent.
"My goal was to do it as best as I could and know that what I believed in I tried to follow as close as possible," Wadhams said.
Cruise and Holmes have not announced whether their child's birth will be silent.
Luckily, prior to their child's birth, we can probably count on Cruise to be vocal in numerous moronic ways. Let's just hope his poor little conscriptee Katie doesn't have any postpartum depression. One-A-Day Plus Iron, anyone?
UPDATE: And here's another set of backward, anti-science morons -- the primitive idiot parents of three Amish children who contracted polio after going unvaccinated. Via Sploid.
Welcome To The Vomitorium!
Harriet and George, sittin' in a tree...
Harriet Hangs Herself
The New York Times' David Brooks points out that the most disturbing words about Harriet Miers' nomination are those she wrote herself -- in a column called "President's Opinion" for the Texas Bar Association:
It is the largest body of public writing we have from her, and sad to say, the quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian.Of course, we have to make allowances for the fact that the first job of any association president is to not offend her members. Still, nothing excuses sentences like this:
"More and more, the intractable problems in our society have one answer: broad-based intolerance of unacceptable conditions and a commitment by many to fix problems."
Or this: "We must end collective acceptance of inappropriate conduct and increase education in professionalism."
Or this: "When consensus of diverse leadership can be achieved on issues of importance, the greatest impact can be achieved."
Or passages like this: "An organization must also implement programs to fulfill strategies established through its goals and mission. Methods for evaluation of these strategies are a necessity. With the framework of mission, goals, strategies, programs, and methods for evaluation in place, a meaningful budgeting process can begin."
Or, finally, this: "We have to understand and appreciate that achieving justice for all is in jeopardy before a call to arms to assist in obtaining support for the justice system will be effective. Achieving the necessary understanding and appreciation of why the challenge is so important, we can then turn to the task of providing the much needed support."
I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers's prose. Nearly every idea is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided. It's not that Miers didn't attempt to tackle interesting subjects. She wrote about unequal access to the justice system, about the underrepresentation of minorities in the law and about whether pro bono work should be mandatory. But she presents no arguments or ideas, except the repetition of the bromide that bad things can be eliminated if people of good will come together to eliminate bad things.
Or as she puts it, "There is always a necessity to tend to a myriad of responsibilities on a number of cases as well as matters not directly related to the practice of law." And yet, "Disciplining ourselves to provide the opportunity for thought and analysis has to rise again to a high priority."
Throw aside ideology. Surely the threshold skill required of a Supreme Court justice is the ability to write clearly and argue incisively. Miers's columns provide no evidence of that.
Write clearly and argue incisively? On the Supreme Court? With mush like that, she wouldn't have made it out of my eighth-grade debate class!
(and sorry, Brooks is "Times Select" -- been avoiding blogging them because few people have bought access -- but these words from Miers were just too frighteningly banal and incoherent o pass up.)
Wi-Fi-way Robbery
You know all those $4.50 local calls you're no longer making when you stay at a hotel, thanks to your cellphone long distance plan? Well, the hotels are, perhaps, making up for them by gouging customers for Wi-Fi. New York Times business travel columnist Joe Sharkey writes:
A COUPLE of weekends ago, I stayed at a Hyatt Regency in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., while attending a trade show. Cost for the room for two nights: $411.26. Added cost for high-speed Internet service: $12.95 a day.O.K., a friendly "customer satisfaction" person at the front desk removed the Internet charge after I called down to complain about that and a few other things. But $12.95, when most of us resent paying even the usual $9.95?
Out in Wisconsin, Tom Hill sympathized with me about being hit for Internet service at four-star hotels when you can get it free at lower-priced competitors, not to mention a growing number of public places and, for that matter - as I noticed on my way home from the trade show - the entire Fort Lauderdale International Airport.
"I just won't pay for it," Mr. Hill said in a phone conversation. Mr. Hill, a former real estate investor, is an author and motivational speaker who spends at least 150 nights a year in a hotel. But he was not in his room when I called, even though he was on the road. Instead, he was ensconced with his laptop at a Panera Bread bakery-cafe in Milwaukee.
"You get free Wi-Fi at Panera," he said. "In some cities, it's my office away from home. Hotels charging 10 bucks for the Internet? We need to make this an issue."
Evidently, it is one, judging from the heavy e-mail response to a column on the subject two weeks ago. The backlash against charging for Internet access, whether hard-wired or Wi-Fi, has been building for years, especially among younger business travelers who have been accustomed to free high-speed Internet access since college.
"Hotels do not charge guests for electricity and light bulbs," Jonathan B. Spira, the chief executive of the research company Basex, wrote last year in a survey titled "Romancing the Road Warrior: The Case for Free Internet Access." Most business travelers, he said, "consider high-speed connectivity a basic necessity. Shouldn't that necessity be included in the cost of the room?"
Some readers, like Tom Nobles, have found ways to avoid hotel charges and tap into free Wi-Fi. Recently, after brooding about paying Internet access in a four-star Atlanta hotel, Mr. Nobles found that he could get a free Wi-Fi signal on a trip to Chattanooga, Tenn.
"I sat in the parking lot of the Wingate Inn and did my work on my laptop; also in the parking lot of a Panera Bread," he wrote.
Wingate Inns, a unit of the Cendant Hotel Group, was among the earliest budget chains to promote free Internet service. Rich Roberts, a Cendant spokesman, noted that Wingate also offers a menu of other services that business travelers look for, like free local phone calls and 24-hour business centers that do not charge for a printout or a photocopy.
Is this a righteous charge? Do you pay it? Should you?
Coffee For Morons
"A Just Cup"? Tell that to all the people murdered by Che Guevara, you buttwads. Here's an excerpt from a piece by Humberto Fontova:
Outside of Havana and in the countryside Che's murder victims often faced the firing squads untrussed, shoved in front of a recently dug pit with their hands free. "Aim right HERE!" was a favorite among some of the these as they reached below the belt. This was a favorite, they say, of the campesinos Castro and Che's firing squads were murdering during the Escambray rebellion. "Cause y'all ain't got any!" yelled these Cuban rednecks right before the volley shattered their bodies.Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets shattered his body. His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro's theft of their humble family farm.
On Christmas eve 1961 Juana Diaz spat in the face of the executioners who were binding and gagging her. They'd found her guilty of feeding and hiding "bandits" (Cuban rednecks who took up arms to fight the theft of their land) When the blast from that firing squad demolished her face and torso Juana was six months pregnant.
..."Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"
This is from Che's famous "Motorcycle Diaries," recently made into a heartwarming movie by Robert Redford. It seems that Mr Redford omitted this passage from his touching film. The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reached Guevara's nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of defenseless men(and boys.)
... One defector claims Che signed 400 death warrants during the first month of the Cuban Revolution. Another says over 600. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El Che!" that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad. In his book "Che Guevara: A Biography," Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first few years of the Castro regime.
The scope of Che Guevara's mass murder is unclear. The exact number of widows and orphans is in dispute. The number of men (and boys)who Che sent, without trial, to be bound to a stake and blown apart by bullets runs from the hundreds to the thousands. And the mass executioner's T-shirt adorns the very people who oppose capitol punishment--as Harvard Law School's faculty certainly did while clapping, hyperventilating and throwing their panties at Castro on stage.
Here's my previous entry on Che Guevara, with links to pieces by Paul Berman and Jay Nordlinger.
I Guess "ASSHOLE" Was Taken
God Didn't Mention Anything About The Sudan?
Ewen McAskill writes in the Guardian about George Bush reportedly hearing voices:
George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."
Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."
Apparently, god also put in a word for Halliburton.
An SUV In Paris
...Probably won't even carry you around the block these days. At least, not with the French enviro-pranksters known as "The Deflated" around, letting the air out of SUV tires after dark, just for starters. Now, I'm a libertarian, so I don't advocate harming other people's property. In my own battle against SUVs in America, I simply place a card on the windshield:
Still, I can't help but laugh at the approach these guys are taking to rid Paris of SUVS. Here's an excerpt from the LA Times story by Sebastian Rotella:
Under cover of night, Marrant's troops target Jeep Cherokees, Porsche Cayennes and other four-wheel-drive vehicles parked on the tree-lined avenues and cobblestoned lanes of wealthy neighborhoods. The eco-guerrillas deflate tires without damaging them, smear doors with mud and paste handbills on windshields proclaiming that the vehicles are dangerous, polluting behemoths that do not belong in the city."We use the mud to say that if the owners will not take the four-wheel-drives to the countryside, we will bring the countryside to the four-wheel-drives," said Marrant, 28, who uses an alias because angry drivers deluge his website, http://degonfle.blogg.org with e-mails threatening mayhem and questioning his manhood.
Although his nom de guerre was inspired by Subcommander Marcos, the masked Mexican guerrilla revered by leftists, Marrant insists he is not violent or even particularly serious. "Deflated" is a self-deprecating name that also means "coward" in French. The group wants to send a mischievous message while avoiding damage to the vehicles, injury and prosecution, the thin, mop-haired activist said during an interview in a corner cafe on the Seine's left bank, longtime turf of radicals and revolutionaries.
"We emphasize the comic, the burlesque side," Marrant said with the earnest, wide-eyed look of a prankster trying to keep a straight face. "It would be hard to take us to court. We don't slash tires, we deflate them. Air doesn't cost anything. As for getting cars dirty, that's nothing. I would plead guilty to that. Our rules are to never run from the police. And always run from the owners."
...Although city leaders don't condone vandalism, officials have gone as far as proposing that Paris ban sport utility vehicles. Deputy Mayor Denis Baupin, who oversees transportation programs, has called the SUV "a caricature of a car."
Baupin spoke during a recent rally of about 200 activists at a Jeep dealership where the manager had agreed to shut down early for the day. The decision drew cheers from children wearing cow and buffalo masks, cyclists hoisting bikes triumphantly aloft.
"An SUV is totally useless for Paris," Baupin said in his speech, blaming the recent devastating hurricanes in the U.S. on climate change caused by pollution. "The situation is striking: The country that refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol suffered from a climatic catastrophe…. We all feel sorry for the dead in New Orleans. But now maybe the United States should start considering that their development pattern is not to be repeated worldwide and that it causes environmental problems."
In the United States, sport utility vehicles account for one of every four automobiles sold, but in France, SUVs represent only about 5% of the market. The prices are high for middle-class families, but sales jumped about 20% last year.
"Welcome To The Hackocracy!"
So says The New Republic, digging into Bush administration patronage and coming up with a list of the ten worst examples:
To fully appreciate the virtues of this administration, we must first recall the administration that came before. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton recruited a small army of Arkansans and Rhodes scholars to the West Wing. Although there was the occasional kindergarten buddy who was out of his depth, most of these FOBs (friends of Bill) were insufferable wonks who never let you forget their dense resumés. President Bush put his finger on the smug mindset of these Clinton meritocrats when he said, "They're all of a sudden smarter than the average person because they happen to have an Ivy League degree."Now we can consider this problem solved. The Bush era has taken government out of the hands of the hyper-qualified and given it back to the common man. This new breed may not have what the credentialists sneeringly call "relevant experience." Their alma maters may not always be "accredited." But they have something the intellectual snobs of yore never had: loyalty. If not loyalty to country, then at least loyalty to party and to the guy who got them the job. And their loyalty has been rewarded: Even if they fail, they know they can move up the chain until they find a job they can succeed in or until a major American city is destroyed, whichever comes first.
Naturally, George's girl Harriet is top DOG! But there's more! For example...
6: Hector Barreto Administrator, Small Business Administration No one can accuse Hector Barreto of being unfamiliar with small business. His Los Angeles firm, Barreto Insurance & Financial Services Company, had only ten employees. Alas, now that he is in charge of a bigger operation--the Small Business Administration (SBA) has over 3,000 employees, a budget of about $600 million, and a portfolio of loans totaling $45 billion--Barreto is struggling. Last year, the SBA failed to notify Congress that it needed additional funding for its largest and most popular loan program and was forced to temporarily shutter it because, as Barreto's spokesperson explained, it was "out of money." Meanwhile, the SBA was doing such a poor job managing the $5 billion in loans the government set aside to help small businesses recover from September 11 that, according to an Associated Press investigation, the vast majority of the money went to businesses not affected by the terrorist attacks--including a South Dakota country radio station, a Utah dog boutique, and more than 100 Dunkin' Donuts and Subway sandwich shops. Last month, the Senate Small Business Committee, prompted by complaints from Gulf Coast small-business owners, held hearings on the SBA's response to Hurricane Katrina. Barreto pledged that his agency would approve Katrina-related loans in days, not months, but a SBA deputy conceded in late September that, out of 12,000 loan applications from small businesses affected by the hurricane, the SBA had so far approved only 76.3: Rear Admiral Cristina Beato
Acting Assistant Secretary for Health, Department of Health and Human Services
In June 2004, Cristina Beato admitted to her hometown newspaper that she hadn't paid much attention to the details of her resumé. That's too bad, because those silly little details seem to have stalled her confirmation for assistant secretary for health for over two years now. Beato said she earned a master's of public health in occupational medicine from the University of Wisconsin (but the university doesn't even offer that degree). She claimed to be "one of the principal leaders who revolutionized medical education in American universities by implementing the Problem Based learning curriculum" (but the curriculum was developed while Beato was still a medical student). She listed "medical attaché" to the American Embassy in Turkey as a job she held in 1986 (but that position didn't exist until 1995). She also boasted that she had "established" the University of New Mexico's occupational health clinic (but the clinic existed before she was hired, and there was even another medical director before her). For her part, Beato has offered a simple explanation: English is her third language, after French and her native Spanish, and sometimes the language barrier is just too much to handle. How does one say "pants on fire" in Spanish?2: John Pennington
Director, Region Ten, Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Pacific Northwest is a catastrophe-prone area-- from tsunamis and volcanic eruptions in Washington and Oregon to wildfires in Idaho and oil pipeline ruptures in Alaska. That's why former Washington Representative Jennifer Dunn knew that fema needed "a natural" to head its disaster response efforts in the region. And that's exactly what Dunn said she found in 38-year-old John Pennington. Pennington would have to be a natural, given his utter lack of disaster-relief experience. A former state representative who ran a coffee business with his wife in rural Washington, Pennington served as Cowlitz County co-chairman of the Bush campaign in 2000. Dunn, who had been the Bush campaign's state chairperson, approached Pennington about the fema post, to which he was appointed in 2001. Alas, in the wake of former fema Director Michael Brown's resignation, Pennington's disaster of a resumé has come under increasing scrutiny. Last month, The Seattle Times reported that, just before he was appointed to his fema post, Pennington received his bachelor's degree from an unaccredited California correspondence school that federal investigators later described as a "diploma mill." Pennington's defenders have responded to questions about his qualifications by arguing that he has surrounded himself with competent staff.
...something Mr. Bush must be finding it harder and harder to argue.
Spill, Rovie, Spill!
Arlen Specter wants to know what Rove told Dobson about how errand girl-at-law Harriet Miers would rule from the bench:
Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he will would look into a statement by James Dobson, president of the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based advocacy group Focus on the Family, that Dobson has had ``conversations'' with Rove about the woman nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and knows things about Miers ``that I probably shouldn't know.''``The Senate Judiciary Committee is entitled to know whatever the White House knew,'' Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said on ABC's ``This Week'' program. ``If Dr. Dobson knows something that he shouldn't know or something that I ought to know, I'm going to find out.'' He stopped short of saying he would subpoena Dobson or Rove to appear.
President George W. Bush's judicial pick has exposed fissures in his base of support and forced him to spend time unifying his own party. Republican senators such as George Allen of Virginia and Sam Brownback of Kansas have questioned Miers's qualifications, and conservative activists are divided in their support.
Guess "faith" only goes so far!
via HuffPo
Elmore Leonard Bleeped
The inside story on writing fiction for The New York Times. From a Detroit Free Press piece by Marta Salij:
"Comfort to the Enemy" takes the Depression-era U.S. marshal from Leonard's latest novel, "The Hot Kid," and moves him to 1944 Tulsa. There's a camp for German POWs nearby, and Carl Webster, the too-cool marshal, is looking into what might or might not be a suicide there.It's the first time Leonard has written serial fiction for a newspaper. It's the first time he's written a serial, period. The work took him all summer and really cut into his tennis playing.
And that was before the Times copy editors got it. Now, the idea of Elmore Leonard and his expletive-spouting bad guys being edited for a newspaper that still identifies women as Mrs. So-and-So is hilarious. In time, Leonard will probably think it's funny, too.
Right now, though, he's listing the things that the detail-oriented Times editors said were no-nos. "Getting laid." The Gray Lady's gatekeepers X'd that one.
"Arkansas." Arkansas? In newspaper style, it's abbreviated Ark.
But what if a person is saying "Arkansas"? You still abbreviate, because it's in the stylebook. Even if you're writing fiction, it seems.
Sutter fought the Times' copy editors on that one, and you can see his victory in Chapter 2. But Sutter's still hot about it.
"They don't realize this guy's got a sound. Every word. Ar-kan-saw. That's a big word for Elmore," Sutter says. "He sweats every word."
And then there's the matter of the Times' illustrator transforming the Mayo in downtown Tulsa into a motel. Well, it's not a motel. It's a classy hotel, which you'd know if you'd read "The Hot Kid." Leonard even kicked off his "Hot Kid" book tour there.
Too bad the illustration to go with "Comfort to the Enemy" showed it with a '50s-style neon sign flashing "Mayo Motel" out the window.
Leonard told Sutter not to bother the illustrator, unless something was way off. "And this is way off," Leonard says, still shaking his head.
"Oh, I got sideways with a few people over there," Sutter says. The new illustration -- you'll see it later -- replaces the neon with the Philcade building, which really was visible from the Mayo Hotel then. "And if one person from Tulsa goes, 'That's the Philcade tower,' he'll say, 'God, those guys really did their homework,' " Sutter says.
Elmore, by the way, turns 80 on Tuesday. This didn't stop him from dancing longer than anyone else at his birthday party Saturday night. He calls 80 "the new 60."
No Arms And No Legs And Up On Display
Putting disability on a pedestal (image here) doesn't make it beautiful. Now, this woman could be a beautiful human being, but that doesn't make being minus arms and legs attractive in any way, or anything but tragic. Is this art that belongs in the public square? Well, it does make people think, and there's far too little of that these days. I'm all for it. Here's the story by Sarah Lyall, in an IHT link:
The statue, 11 feet, 6 inches, or 4 meters, 15 centimeters, of snow-white Carrara marble, shows the naked and eight-and-a-half-months- pregnant figure of 40-year-old Alison Lapper, a single mother who was born with shortened legs and no arms. Its model is a friend of the artist, Marc Quinn, who has said that Nelson's Column, the focal point of Trafalgar Square, is "the epitome of a phallic male moment" and that he felt "the square needed some femininity."
But "Alison Lapper Pregnant" - juxtaposed as it is with the majestic figures of a king, two generals and the great naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson - has fueled a sharp discussion here about what is art, the purpose of public monuments and the appropriateness of displaying such a piece in such a singular public space.
...Some like it very much. "I like the concept of having a statue which represents the less-represented part of humanity," said Peter Waugh, a 69-year-old retired teacher from Birmingham. "Lions are all right," he said, referring to the four bronze lions that guard Nelson's Column, "but we've got quite a few of those about."
Another passerby, 75-year-old Ric Morgan, said that he wasn't impressed. "As far as I'm concerned, they could knock some of these generals down - I don't even know who he is or what he's done," he said, gesturing at Havelock. "But with all due respect," he said of Lapper, "the fact that she's disabled is not enough to make it of interest." The statue has also divided British art critics. Most of the complaints have not been head-on: It is hard to declare oneself against disability or against disabled people. That is why Robert Simon, editor of the Art Journal, told the BBC that while he has found Lapper herself to be "very brave," he considered the sculpture "just a repellant artifact." (Lapper's birth defects were caused by a condition called phocomelia.)
"It looks like overused soap on a very large scale," he said.
In The Daily Telegraph, Richard Dorment said that Quinn was "smug and self-righteous." "It's not Miss Lapper whom Quinn has put on a pedestal in the heart of London, but political correctness," he wrote. "He knows full well that anyone who dares to criticize the statue will instantly be accused of prejudice against the disabled."
What a disabled person I know wants is to not be treated "like a Sped" -- to be treated "normally." And perhaps sticking a sculpture of a woman with birth defects in a public square helps people be a bit more casual about the disabled, not feeling compelled to avert their eyes out of embarrassment, or otherwise avoiding them. Then again, if I lived in London, and passed that lady on my way to work every day, I'd probably be quick to find an alternate route.
There Is No God (And You Know It)
Sam Harris, once again, cuts to the bone:
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.
As science journalist Ron Bailey of Reason groused last night, he is not expected to identify himself as a non-believer in unicorns (in his words, "a-unicornist"), and in any number of other things that don't exist. (Hmmm...flying tuna fish sandwiches, dogs that speak Chinese?) Why should he (or I, or anyone) have to pander to the intellectually lenient and identify themself as a non-believer in a non-existent god? If the rest of the world had half a brain, and put it to any use, we'd simply be called rational or "peope who admit the obvious."
Ayatollah Rove
Cenk Ugyur (a guy whose name looks like somebody tripped and dropped the alphabet) notes what America is starting to have in common with some of the countries we look down upon:
You know which countries have their political leaders make secret decisions with their religious leaders? If you answered the Islamic Republic of Iran, you'd be right. But apparently you would also be right if you answered the United States of America.When asked why he is supporting President Bush's new nominee to the Supreme Court, Reverend Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family, said, "I can't reveal it all, because I do know things that I'm privy to that I can't describe, because of confidentiality."
This is after he admitted, "It was leaked to the media that I've had conversations with Karl Rove and the White House, which is true."
What is the White House keeping secret from the rest of the country but sharing with Reverend Dobson?
This is what religious republics do. They take counsel with their imams, ayatollahs, shamans or reverends. They share secret information, close out the public and make decisions based on strange interpretations of their religion. This isn't the America I signed up for. I signed up for a secular democracy where politicians were held to account and citizens made law, not cloaked religious figures. If that's what I wanted I could have stayed in a Muslim country.
And to be fair, at this point Turkey, where I am originally from, appears to be significantly more secular than the United States. I wonder if they'd let the US into the EU with our death penalty, fundamentalist leadership and our clerics intertwined with our government.
You think I'm exaggerating? Then answer why Reverend Dobson seems to know more about the Supreme Court nominee than our Senators.
"When you put all the other information that I have been able to gather -- and you'll have to trust me on this one -- when you know some of the things that I know, that I probably shouldn't know, that take me in this direction, you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, why I have said why I believe that Harriet Miers will be a good justice." -- Reverend James Dobson
At least, he's got one thing right -- he shouldn't know whatever the rest of us don't know, and apparently the White House is keeping secret from us. I wonder how Senator Biden is going to feel about being left out of the real decision making process. The White House has already talked to its reverends, the die is cast.
At the very least, the Senators should get Dobson in front of their committee and under oath ask him what secrets he's keeping from the American people. Likewise, for the unctuous Karl Rove, who is never far from a dark secret.
If you're afraid for our republic, don't worry, Reverend Dobson says he is open to changing his mind depending on what Zeus ... I mean God whispers in his ear. He implored God on his radio show, "If this is not the person you want on that Supreme Court, all you have to do is tell me so, and do it through any means you want to."
Presumably, the good reverend has now put on his tin-foil hat and is ready to receive Jupiter's ... I mean Jesus' message. Are these people serious? Is Reverend Dobson so arrogant as to believe that God will communicate with him directly? And to give him a message so specific as to tell him whether he should support Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court or not? I hope to God, God is busier than that.
Public Health In The Wrong Hands
Because one of my closest friends is a public health researcher, I know a bit about the years of suffering (uh, training) that go into getting a Ph.D. in the field and maintaining continuing expertise. That's why, to say I was horrified when I read who's in charge of managing any public health emergencies due to the Asian flu, is putting it mildly. Jessica Heslam has the story here:
As the United States braces for a possible avian flu pandemic, the federal government's point man on the deadly virus is coming under fire.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness Stewart Simonson lacks a medical or public health management background. He received a bachelor of arts degree in 1986 and a law degree in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin, and worked as legal counsel to Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson from 1995 to 1999 before following his boss to Washington when Thompson was tapped to be Health and Human Services secretary. According to his HHS bio, Simonson previously served as corporate secretary and counsel for Amtrak.
Simonson's record sparks concerns as flu fears spike.
"If the avian flu were to hit here, it would be like having a Category 5 viral hurricane hit every single state simultaneously,'' said Shelley Hearne, director of the nonprofit Trust for America's Health, yesterday.
To some, Simonson's resume is disturbingly reminiscent of that of disgraced former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown.
"I'm concerned with what I see as a lack of field experience in Mr. Simonson's background,'' said Massachusetts Rep. Peter J. Koutoujian (D-Waltham), the house chairman of the public health committee.
"We saw this with the former FEMA director. It looks on paper to be a political appointment. There were massive problems with that operation,'' Koutoujian said.
Does this guy even know how to read a study or coordinate large-scale response to a public health emergency? There's more to this than simply going to the right law school and having a bit of common sense.
It's Miller Time!
Great piece by Larry Miller (the comedian, actor, and Weekly Standard writer), in the Chicago Trib, about bringing this fractured mess of a country together:
We've forgotten that on any issue, especially the big ones, like war, both sides have part of the truth, and I'm tired of America being like one giant "Crossfire." You know why 5 percent of the left and 5 percent of the right spend their lives yelling at each other? Because they love it.Well, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of red, and I'm sick of blue. I like purple. I think you do too. Here's a good place to start.
I don't care what some bureaucratic pinhead in Washington renames it, we're at war. They can call it the "Struggle for niceness" or "A really big effort to stop meanies," but it's not a tug-of-war, it's a war. And I might not know anything about war, but here's the way I see Iraq going:
"All right, men, settle down and take your seats. Your mission today is to ride up and down the street until someone shoots you."
"Uh, begging your pardon, sir, but did you say we drive our tanks down the ... "
"Whoa, whoa, no one said anything about tanks. We give you a '65 Impala."
"A '65 ... At least the windows are curved, maybe the bullets will glance off?"
"That's the spirit. Good luck, men!"
I know every expert could say, "Oh, that's just stupid," but you know what? That's the way it looks to me. And I'll bet you a dollar, left or right, that's the way it's looking to you. We need one of these guys to come up with something better.
Napoleon once said, "If you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna." I bring that up for a reason: Let's take Vienna. As long as we're at it. Come on, Austria? We could do that one. By the way, that's the way to get the French with us. "Take Vienna? Again? Oui, absolument. Now we're on board. Austria. Always with the stupid Mozart festivals ..."
Silly? Of course I'm being silly. Sometimes, if you don't laugh, you feel like crying. But I have a message to Washington. Both sides. Don't you dare tell me, "Oh, you don't know what you're talking about."
No. You don't. Stop raising money and posing, and get us out of this. Make a plan, make 50 of them, make 1,000 of them. Then pick one, and tell us what it is. Clearly. Not like a 9-year-old reading out loud. And with all due respect, I don't think you can do that by clearing brush and going to sleep early. Mr. President, I need you to tell us, a lot better than you have, and not once every eight months in a hangar.
I don't know who's booking these speeches or writing them, but, not to mince words, they stink. You're losing the big bulk of the country because you're not communicating. No one's asking Bush to be Cedric the Entertainer, but please. Folks, John Kerry was stiff and wooden, but Bush makes Kerry look like Ben Vereen.
If you can't pluck the insurgents out in Iraq because they're buried too deep, fine. Surround the bad places, and sit there while the Iraqi troops learn how to button their shirts, or whatever they're doing. But stop having our guys drive up and down the street with candy. First, win.
Good grief, get enough men over there to link arms and walk across the place. Pick a plan, and say it like you mean it. God knows our soldiers do.
Our people over there are blue, true blue, and we all agree on that, and they've bled too much red, and we all agree on that too. If we're going to ask for more, I think we owe them a little purple.
Or at least Vienna.
The Oil For Food Fantasy
The subhead with the story presents a different perspective than the right wing bloggers and media venues have been screaming:
What could you buy with the proceeds of what the right calls 'the biggest corruption scandal in recorded history'? (Hint: not a Ferrari.)
...As does the story itself, by Josh Holland, on Alternet:
Routine distortions, exaggerations and unreported context about the United Nations Oil-for-Food program (OFF) makes it arguably one of the worst-covered stories of our times.That's hardly an accident. The story confirms a cherished piece of the conservative worldview, namely that the U.N. is populated by corrupt, inept and hostile anti-American bureaucrats whose sole purpose is to constrain the United States from using its unrivalled -- but wholly benevolent -- power to influence world affairs.
Oil-for-Food has been used by critics of the U.N. not only to disparage the institution as a whole, as well as the idea of multilateral diplomacy, but also to explain away opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq as being motivated mostly by craven profit-seeking.
Sometimes it's offered as direct justification for the war in Iraq, such as when an editorial in Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times reported, "There are growing questions as to whether Saddam Hussein may have directed program revenues to terrorist organizations." Those "growing questions," as far as anyone can tell, were invented from whole cloth right there at the Washington Times.
But most importantly, OFF has been used as a way of changing the subject. We're supposed to focus on "corruption" at the U.N. and ignore both the actual corruption in the program -- almost all of which was between the regime of Saddam Hussein and international bankers, energy traders and other assorted hucksters, some connected to the Bush administration -- and the moral questions raised by a sanctions program that has been blamed for the deaths of as many as a million Iraqi children under the age of five.
On all counts, the diversion has been a success. For progressives, the most instructive part of the story is how a "scandal" conceived and cultivated by a small group of writers within a small circle of conservative publications has been so thoroughly embraced by the mainstream media. While most of the right's claims about the U.N.'s supposed perfidy are readily debunked, the mainstream press repeats them uncritically.
...Generally, the right's narrative has one insurmountable problem: the scandal that they want the mainstream media to report has very little in common with what actually transpired in the OFF program.
Details (a list of the distortions) follow at the link above. More and more, the news is politics, not the facts, it seems. In more and more venues. Where's the truth? Read right, read left, it's sometimes really hard to tell.
Here's part two of Holland's investigation.
Affirmative Action For Judges
Thanks, but just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I'm interested in seeing a woman Supreme Court justice or a woman president -- or a Latino, Black, or Chinese president, for that matter. How about we simply hire the best person for the job -- man, woman, or other? Isn't doing anything else sexist and racist? (And I can't even begin to rag on proposing a justice because you like her and she sits down the hall.) Emily Bazelon writes on Slate:
Commentators on the right as well as the left—anyone, really, who thinks a Supreme Court justice should possess a record of world-class distinction—are groaning over Harriet Miers' nomination. She may turn out to have a great legal mind. She may be a thoughtful, incisive Supreme Court justice. But there's no reason to think so now. The problem isn't that Miers hasn't been a federal judge or a Supreme Court lawyer. It's that she isn't those things and she also doesn't bring with her the breadth of experience that the other justices lack. Can anyone really imagine that she'd be the nominee if she weren't a woman and the president's friend and loyal adviser? Cronyism and affirmative action: It's a nasty mix.
Come on, this is embarrassing. If you're going to nominate somebody surprising, let's at least make it Eugene Volokh, or somebody who hunkers down with the Constitution on a daily basis. (Did I mention that he clerked for Sandra Day O'Connor before he started teaching constitutional law at UCLA law school?)
Watch Yer Weenie!
Gentlemen, your bike seat probably isn't doing your sex life any favors, writes Sandra Blakeslee in The New York Times:
In a bluntly worded editorial with the articles, Dr. Steven Schrader, a reproductive health expert who studies cycling at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said he believed that it was no longer a question of "whether or not bicycle riding on a saddle causes erectile dysfunction."Instead, he said in an interview, "The question is, What are we going to do about it?"
The studies, by researchers at Boston University and in Italy, found that the more a person rides, the greater the risk of impotence or loss of libido. And researchers in Austria have found that many mountain bikers experience saddle-related trauma that leads to small calcified masses inside the scrotum.
This does not mean that people should stop cycling, Dr. Schrader said. And those who ride bikes rarely or for short periods need not worry.
But riders who spend many hours on a bike each week should be concerned, he said. And he suggested that the bicycle industry design safer saddles and stop trivializing the risks of the existing seats.
A spokesman for the industry said it was aware of the issue and added that "new designs are coming out."
"Most people are not riding long enough to damage themselves permanently," said the spokesman, Marc Sani, publisher of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. "But a consumer's first line of defense, for their enthusiasm as well as sexual prowess, is to go to a bicycle retailer and get fitted properly on the bike."
Researchers have estimated that 5 percent of men who ride bikes intensively have developed severe to moderate erectile dysfunction as a result. But some experts believe that the numbers may be much higher because many men are too embarrassed to talk about it or fail to associate cycling with their problems in the bedroom.
And, sigh, bad news for lady cyclists, too:
In women, Dr. Goldstein said, the same arteries and nerves engorge the clitoris during sexual intercourse. Women cyclists have not been studied as much, he added, but they probably suffer the same injuries....Just as many smokers do not get lung cancer, many cyclists will never develop impotence from bicycle seats, the scientists said. What makes one person more vulnerable than another is not known. Body weight seems to matter: heavier riders exert more pressure on saddles. Variations in anatomy may also make a difference.
Dr. Goldstein said he often saw patients who were stunned to learn that riding a bicycle led to their impotence. One middle-aged man rode in a special cycling event to honor a friend and has been impotent since. A 28-year-old who came in for testing, Dr Goldstein said, showed the penile blood flow of a 60-year-old. A college student who had competed in rough cycling sports was unable to achieve an erection until microvascular surgery restored penile blood flow.
"We make kids wear helmets and knee pads," Dr. Goldstein said. "But no one thinks about protecting the crotch."
Sexual Literacy
We confuse "packaged sexuality" with genuine sexuality, writes Gilbert Herdt of the National Sexuality Research Center:
Contrary to what the pundits say, Americans are not in love with sex. They are deeply ambivalent about sexual pleasure and intimacy. Parents worry about whether their teens are "doing it." We have a collective concern about unintended pregnancy, and now fear, bordering on panic, of gays and lesbians gaining the right to marry. And we should not forget that the stigma and suffering associated with sexual pleasure and AIDS still looms large.The list goes on and the fear grows because of sexual illiteracy. Sexual literacy, on the other hand, is the knowledge and skills needed to promote and protect sexual wellness—having healthy intimate relationships, being able to prevent disease, understanding sexuality beyond just the act. Sexual wellness comes from having comprehensive sexual education and then continuing to learn throughout life.
Make no mistake. The national fixation is on sex that is packaged, not on sexuality that is genuine, well rounded and healthy. Packaged sex is produced and shaped by huge market forces, far from nature. Packaged sex is the image of a curvaceous woman in lingerie plastered on a billboard, television innuendos that sell everything from cars to cell phones. Packaged Sex is pornography, reality TV shows, and the messages of conservatives opposed to sexual education. Packaged sex is commercialized—sex for sale, sex for marketing—and politicized—sex for votes—used to promote conservative morality campaigns against sexuality education, abortion rights, and HIV prevention.
...Fearing the promotion of packaged sex, parents hesitate to have frank discussions about sexuality with their children and often avoid talking about ways to avoid pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, or date rape. Meanwhile, teachers have grown fearful of any mention of sex in the classroom because of extremist organizations’ attacks on comprehensive sexual education.
...We should realize that we are in trouble when medical doctors are uncomfortable asking patients during routine physicals the most basic questions about sexual health, such as: Has your sexual relationship with your spouse changed during the past year? Such changes are often indicators of mental and physical problems that doctors need to know about.
...Because we treat "sex" as dirty, we associate it with fear and shame, and silence effective sexual education. Public opinion polls consistently demonstrate that Americans want "comprehensive" sexual education—which integrates abstinence education with information on preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. At the same time, these polls suggest public confusion about how to achieve sexual literacy. Unfortunately, public opinion is constantly manipulated through misinformation, and sexual conservatives have successfully created moral panics around issues dealing with sexuality.
Our goal in 2005 is to raise sexual wellness in the United States by promoting sexual literacy. Sexual literacy is an attitude of openness and the desire to learn about sexuality throughout life. Sexually literate people do not mistake packaged sex for genuine sexuality. We need to get back to the basics of better public knowledge and understanding to increase our happiness and enjoyment in life. Sexual literacy is a key to social progress.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
As somebody with an accidental career (I started giving advice as a joke, by setting up a cardboard sign on a Manhattan street corner with two friends), I really appreciate what Steve Jobs said in his commencement address at Stanford. Here's an excerpt, but go to the link and read the whole thing -- it's worth the trip:
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
By the way, this blog post was written on my iMac G5, which looks more like an art piece than a computer. I've had a Mac since 1982 or 1983, and I've never yet had to read an instruction book to know how to use it. My very first Mac is still in operation, in Rome, Italy, by my friends Thomas and Roberta.
You Just Can't Give The Money Away
Mickey Kaus points to a Weekly Standard piece by Henry Payne about Robert Thompson, who tried in vain to give away $200 million for charter schools in Michigan, and NBA-great Dave Bing, who joined in to try to help him. No good deed, as they say, goes unpunished:
A group named the Call 'Em Out Coalition gave Bing a "Sambo Sell-Out Award" at its annual dinner for partnering with a white businessman. The award was bestowed by Democratic City Council member Sharon McPhail. And the Detroit Federation of Teachers expressed its displeasure with Skillman by threatening to end its cooperation with the foundation on other city school projects.Nevertheless, under the Michigan charter-school law, the Skillman Foundation can now proceed to implement Thompson's plan. Detroit's poor should soon see the benefits of his gift--despite the blindness of the city's leadership.
If New Orleans is a lesson in the consequences of decades of governance that left too many destitute in the inner city, then Detroit is a lesson in how hard it is to bring reform to such cites. If Democrats continue to favor the interests of unions over those of children, the cycle of poverty will capture another generation in the inner city.
On the other hand, if they wise up, real opportunities for change exist. Across America, Thompson has counterparts, wealthy businesspeople bankrolling urban reform. The likes of Amway's Dick DeVos (another Michigan multimillionaire), Wal-Mart heir John Walton, businessman Ted Forstmann, GAP founder Don Fisher, and Netflix.com CEO and founder Reed Hastings have given hundreds of millions of dollars to the poor for scholarships and charter schools. After Katrina, cities should find a way to just say yes.
What's sad about Democratic sleaze is that it often looks less evilly machinating than violently moronic.
Duped Into Daddying?
More men should be less sanguine about the origins of their offspring. I can't find the exact study, but a researcher I know did blood tests and DNA tests on a reasonable sample of children and parents, and found that a whopping 25%!! of the children didn't come from the father who had been led to believe he was the parent. An article in The New York Times by Mireya Navarro makes the same case. Yet, few men want to even consider the possibility, probably because of ego, and maybe because it just seems ugly to them. Well, ugly it may be, but not quite as ugly as being court-ordered to shell out a chunk of your income for a kid who isn't yours:
"I think the real bottom line is that for a few hundred dollars you can buy peace of mind that the child is yours," said Randall M. Kessler, a family law lawyer in Atlanta. Still, most men resort to DNA testing only when they are pushed. Lawyers like Mr. Leving say clients often request the test when they are being denied visitation rights and become suspicious of the reasons. In other instances friends or relatives - and often a current girlfriend or wife - might raise suspicion that a child is not theirs, or the mother herself might blurt it out."It happens in the heat of an argument, and the woman goes, 'You're not even the father of the child!' " said Taron James, who formed the group Veterans Fighting Paternity Fraud in California in 2002 after he fought for years to stop child support payments for a child that was not his.
In the most recent case to make headlines, Ms. Frey went to court to set aside the paternity judgment against the man who was paying child support for her 4-year-old daughter and attached the results of a DNA test that showed the girl's father was actually someone else.
Gloria Allred, the lawyer for Ms. Frey, said her client had believed "in good faith" that the man paying child support was the girl's father and argued that while women obviously have the responsibility to establish who the father is, so do men.
"Any man who's alleged to be the father of a child born outside of marriage is entitled to take that DNA test" to establish paternity, she said. "If he did not take the test, then he needs to take responsibility for his failure to do so. He shouldn't blame the mother."
But Glenn Wilson, who represents Anthony Flores, the child's presumed father, countered that unlike his client, "she knew who she had sex with."
"They were in what he thought was a monogamous relationship," he said. Despite such serious implications, like children not knowing their actual medical history, some of the men, and even their lawyers, do not entirely fault the mothers, who say the wrong man is the father of their child for a variety of reasons. Some of the women, they said, are in denial that there could be more than one possible father. Others do not want to be seen as adulterers. And still others believe the truth will destroy relationships both with their partner and their child.
A spokesman for one mother who did not want to be interviewed explained why she had not been honest with her husband.
"The boy would have found out," he said. "She wanted to protect the boy."
But some women are more deliberate in what Mr. Leving called "father shopping," picking the best provider possible even when he is not the true father. Lawyers like Mr. Leving advise to take the test without the mother's knowledge, "that way if he's the father, he doesn't have to start conflict with the mother."
Testing is simpler and cheaper now, Navarro writes:
With costs of paternity testing down - to $500 or less per test from nearly $1,000 just 10 years ago - and with the testing so simple it can be done at home (a swab from inside the cheeks does the job), DNA testing has become more common to settle legal disputes and questions about identity. A survey by the American Association of Blood Banks showed that more than 354,000 tests to establish parentage were performed in 2003, compared with about 149,100 in 1995.Caroline Caskey, chief executive officer of Identigene, a DNA testing company in Houston that has advertised its services nationally in magazines and billboards, said that in about 30 percent of the paternity tests the presumed father turns out to be not the biological father, and that is consistent throughout the industry.
Oh, and guess what? Once a man starts paying for a kid, finding out that the kid isn't his isn't necessarily going to make the court cut off the order. Navarro notes this, too:
And the men who seek to halt child support payments - an act many of them say is an attempt to right a wrong, rather than to abandon the children they still care about - are surprised to learn that they are still required by many courts to continue to pay because it is deemed in the best interest of the child, especially if the man is the only father that child has ever known.
Gentlemen, get out your cotton swabs! And don't say I didn't warn you.
Time To Freeze?
There's another report every time you look of some new way thieves are hacking into your personal information, or of some employee who left it on a laptop on a bench somewhere along with thousands of other people's credit details. Here's an excerpt from a New York Times story on identity theft by Tom Zeller, Jr.:
It was at his sister's wedding in Portland, Ore., in the summer of 2003 that Mr. Fairchild first received a hint that something was wrong. His American Express card was declined at a tuxedo rental shop, and when he called the card company, a customer service agent told him why: he was delinquent, she said, on the corporate cards issued to his business, Ebony Passion Escort Service, in Brooklyn."I remember her telling me I was the 'sole proprietor,' " Mr. Fairchild recalled in an interview at the rented ranch-style house outside Oklahoma City where he and his wife now live with their two children, Cole, 4, and 9-month-old Mikayla. "I had this woman on the phone telling me that I was not only a deadbeat, but a pimp, too."
..."For the first four months, there's no doubt in my mind that I dedicated 40 hours a week to this," Mr. Fairchild said, reflecting the blunt reality that victims must painstakingly prove - often to disbelieving creditors - that debts are not their own.
Meanwhile, because his credit rating had been severely damaged, the interest rates on some of Mr. Fairchild's legitimate cards began climbing, while the credit limits he had been extended on his cards suddenly began to drop - even though his payments were on time.
"It seemed so unbelievably unfair," Mrs. Fairchild said, recalling one charge on the Amex account belonging to Ebony Passion Escort Service - $750 at Manolo Blahnik shoes. A pair of dress shoes she had bought for her son at about the same time, for the wedding in Portland, had cost $12 at Payless, and given the family's budget at the time, she had considered returning them.
"I think it just infuriated me that someone else was living this life, under this name, and having those kinds of insane luxury items, while we could barely afford shoes for our kid," she said.
After two years, hundreds of phone calls and reams of paperwork, the couple have managed to clear most of the debts from Mr. Fairchild's name - although new ones still crop up. Two weeks ago, SBC Communications called, asking Mr. Fairchild why he had not paid his bill for two phone numbers in Wisconsin.
Untangling themselves from the building mortgage - for which Mr. Fairchild was at one point sued by Wells Fargo Bank, one of many institutions that had bought and sold the debt - required the help of a lawyer. And Mr. Fairchild said that repeated attempts to follow up on his case with the Santa Monica police have been unsuccessful.
Consider this blog item a reminder about freezing your credit, which you can do if you live in California and some other states, so nobody can apply for anything in your name. Here's the info for Californians. Here are some other states that allow it.
Lady Viagra
What a surprise, the birth of "Female Sexual Dysfunction" coincided with the birth of the "little blue pill." It's a hot topic in an article by Anne Marie O'Connor about the Berman sisters (mainly the urologist sister Berman) in the LA Times:
John Bancroft, a senior research fellow at Indiana University and former director of the Kinsey Institute there, says marketers for pharmaceutical companies have played too great a role in dictating the direction of female sexual research. He believes the Berman sisters, in particular, have contributed to the "medicalization" of benign sexual behaviors by healthy women who are too tired or stressed to enjoy sex."It's crazy," Bancroft says. "To call anything that 43% of the population experiences a 'dysfunction' is questionable. There's been very vigorous research in this field, almost all of it funded by the pharmaceutical industry, and I think it has ended up with having a bias toward medicalizing these problems. The Berman sisters have been quite successful in getting into the media and bringing attention to themselves. I don't have a lot of respect for them scientifically…. They haven't let any scientific evidence get in their way."
Even sociologist Ed Laumann, coauthor of the article that stated that 43% of women had recently reported a female sexual dysfunction, and a Pfizer consultant since 1998, agrees that women's so-called dysfunctions often stem from everyday life, relationship troubles and, in some cases, harsh taboos about female sexuality. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they're not interested in sex when they're exhausted taking care of a kid," Laumann says. "I would see it as part of the normal human condition." He now says his findings were appropriated for other purposes. "Obviously the pharmaceutical industry was taken aback by the remarkable success of Viagra, and that's where it goes over the line. There's a process of medicalization."
But the most dogged critic of FSD is respected sex therapist Leonore Tiefer, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, who in July convened a scientific conference in Montreal on "Female Sexual Dysfunction: A New Medical Myth," where clinicians, researchers and activists decried "the hidden hand of big Pharma" in shaping perceptions of sexual health.
"The minute it was clear that Viagra was going to sell a billion dollars' worth, the industry needed [a condition] for women that they could market Viagra for," Tiefer says. "There is a constant effort to manufacture new diagnoses so people will label parts of their personalities in need of drugs."
When Berman started her Pfizer-funded research in Boston, Tiefer says, "Jennifer had some interesting scientific plans." Then "this whole PR thing exploded. As soon as [the Bermans] got [to Los Angeles], I saw much more commercialization than research. It's a shame…. "
In Jennifer Berman's view, though, "there is no such thing as too much funding for research, wherever it's coming from." She says her critics, specifically Bancroft and Tiefer, shortchange women with their narrow approach to sexual health issues. "They say we're medicalizing sex and in bed with the pharmaceutical companies," she says. "For these people to say … that all women need are happier emotional lives is doing women a disservice. I'm incorporating mental health in my practice. These people should be incorporating medical solutions."
Here's an article on the testosterone patch, and a more cautious take on it, and a recent column of mine that touches on testosterone and desire. What might side effects from testosterone over-supplementation be?
Many of the unwanted side effects of testosterone and anabolic steroids come from their androgenic properties. These drugs can raise blood levels of testosterone, causing side effects which vary from person to person.The most common side effects in both men and women include increased facial and body hair, oily skin or acne, male pattern baldness, water retention, joint stiffness, and soreness at the injection site. Lab tests may show increased levels of liver enzymes. A deepened or hoarsened voice, growth of the clitoris, and menstrual irregularities have been reported in women. The masculinizing side effects may be irreversible in women, even with short term use.
At higher doses over longer periods, increased or decreased sex drive, mood swings, aggressive behaviour, persistent painful erections, shrinking testicles, and breast growth have been reported in men. Long term use of high dose anabolics can damage the liver, causing jaundice, hepatitis, bleeding, or, possibly, cancer.
So...you'll be a woman who wants to get it on all the time, but nobody will have sex with you because you have a big, black full beard...and then you'll die of loneliness and liver failure? Mmm, sounds peachy.
