LA Times Festival Of Books
This is the panel I moderated Sunday afternoon: "Memoirs: Lessons Learned," with...
Karen Stabiner
The Empty Nest: 31 Parents Tell the Truth About Relationships, Love, and Freedom After the Kids Fly the Coop
Aimee Liu
Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders
Jessica Hendra
How to Cook Your Daughter: A Memoir
and Arianna Huffington
On Becoming Fearless.... in Love, Work, and Life
Hours before:
One very cool development for one of my panelists -- Jessica Hendra's book is being made into a movie by my friend David Bottrell, a very talented writer/director who was in the audience at my panel, and who has a very familiar face to some through his accidental side job as the creepy peeping Tom on "Boston Legal."
Attention Hollywood: They have a great star attached (not sure I'm allowed to say who, but she's hot, and a really good actress), and they just need a few more bucks in financing to put the deal together.
The Puppy Dog Theory Of Terrorism
Richard Clarke, counterterrorism adviser to both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, writes at NYDailyNews.com of the idiotic propaganda about fighting terrorism on Middle Eastern soil so we won't be fighting it on ours:
Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq.The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities."
Remarkably, in his attempt to embrace the failed Iraqi adventure even more than the President, Sen. John McCain is now parroting the line. "We lose this war and come home, they'll follow us home," he says.
How is this odd terrorist puppy dog behavior supposed to work? The President must believe that terrorists are playing by some odd rules of chivalry. Would this be the "only one slaughter ground at a time" rule of terrorism?
Of course, nothing about our being "over there" in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists.
Some 100,000 Iraqis, probably more, have been killed since our invasion. They have parents, children, cousins and fellow tribal clan members who have pledged revenge no matter how long it takes. For many, that revenge is focused on America.
At the same time, investing time, energy and resources in Iraq takes our eye off two far more urgent tasks at hand: one, guarding the homeland against terrorism much better than the pork-dispensing Department of Homeland Security currently does the job; and two, systematically dismantling Al Qaeda all over the world, from Canada to Asia to Africa. On both these fronts, the Bush administration's focus is sorely lacking.
Yet in the fantasyland of illogic in which the President dwells, shaped by slogans devised by spin doctors, America can "win" in Iraq. Then, we are to believe, the terrorists will be so demoralized that they will recant their beliefs and cease their terrorist ways.
In the real world, by choosing unnecessarily to go into Iraq, Bush not only diverted efforts from delivering a death blow to Al Qaeda, he gave that movement both a second chance and the best recruiting tool possible.
via Bruce Schneier
Iran Promotes The Mono-Brow
The Neanderthal look is in! Not a surprise, considering the spread of primitivity in Iran; for example:
Specifically in Iran, sexual discrimination and violence is rampant, and its effects are unimaginable. Women play an incredibly small role in government affairs. In fact, discrimination is so bad, only 6% of Iranian women are employed. Some public facilities are segregated, and some professions are literally unavailable to females. Domestic abuse is sometimes considered a husband’s right when brought to court, and often, before a virgin woman is executed, a prison guard rapes her, in an effort to make sure she is unable to go to "paradise." ("Prime Victims") Her crime may have been something as simple as trying to become more politically involved. Women are even turned against each other like the girl who set her divorced mother’s bed on fire after being told by her grandmother that her mom was destroying the honor of her family by dating (Prusher). Although it is clear to see that women desperately want to be a significant part of society, they are scared to try.The most disheartening part of the plight of women in Iran is the rapidly growing rate of suicide and infanticide. Daily, women are abandoning their children because they have no means of supporting them. In an effort to please their husbands, they have conceived so many children, thus disregarding their health and the fact that there is no way that they can take care of each and every one. Simply resisting the opinion that a woman’s purpose in life is to produce and raise more Muslims has actually condemned women to death (Schemla). The physical and mental abuse has literally pushed thousands of women over the edge. No human being deserves to live in such conditions.
From CNN.com, no area of an Iranian Muslim's life is too petty to micromanage. Now, Iran has made the well-managed brow on men illegal:
Iranian police have warned barbers against offering Western-style hair cuts or plucking the eyebrows of their male customers, Iranian media said Sunday.The report by a reformist daily, later confirmed by an Iranian news agency, appeared to be another sign of authorities cracking down on clothing and other fashion deemed to be against Islamic values.
"Western hairstyles ... have been banned," the newspaper Etemad said in a front-page headline.
It came a week after police launched a crackdown against the growing number of young women testing the limits of the law with shorter, brighter and skimpier clothing ahead of the summer months.
Under Iran's Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obligated to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures.
Violators can receive lashes, fines and imprisonment.
No word on whether women are still allowed to manage theirs, or whether they, too, are expected to grow out a mono-brow.
Here Comes The Sludge
I recently spoke before the zoning board about a neighborhood issue. The West L.A. judge, to whom our neighborhood's brought a case once before, has both times impressed me with his wisdom, humor, fairness, and the way he brings opposing parties together.
Wouldn't it be nice if the person hearing the cases in court was actually expected to be wise, fair, and mature? Shouldn't that be...dare I say...a requirement for a judge? (And don't get me started on therapists -- there are herds of them out there whose level of wisdom should qualify them only for a position on one of those road crews picking up trash along the highway.)
Amazing story in Marc Fisher's Washington Post column about a lawyer and administrative law judge for the District of Columbia who is suing his dry cleaner for -- get this -- $65 million dollars for a misplaced pair of his pants.
Administrative law judge? Yes, and here's the job description for the Office of Administrative Hearings (oah@dc.gov / 202-442-9091) for the District of Columbia:
MissionThe Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) enhances the quality of life in our city by providing residents with a fair, efficient and effective system to manage and resolve administrative litigation arising under District of Columbia law. By developing innovative reforms for the District of Columbia's system of administrative justice, OAH fosters public confidence in that system and promotes higher levels of voluntary compliance that ensure greater health, safety and well-being in our community.
Vision
A national model of high-quality administrative adjudication that provides a just system for both the public and the government agencies it serves, thereby helping to support a healthier, safer and more vibrant community.
Um, would the last person you'd pick for this job maybe be a guy, who, in the breakdown of his obscenely ridiculous lawsuit, asks for $15,000 so he can rent a car every weekend for 10 years to take his clothes to another dry cleaner? (Poor dear doesn't own a car, and there's no other dry cleaner in the neighborhood, and this is the "solution" he proposes.) Just hearing that detail alone, I'm compelled to call the number above and suggest that every case this guy ever tried get reviewed (and that they fire his ass, of course, too).
The whole thing started in 2005, when the plaintiff, D.C. administrative law judge Roy Pearson, dropped off a pair of pants on May 3 so he could wear them on May 6, to his new job. May 5, the pants weren't ready. Dry cleaner Soo Chung promised them for early the next morning, but when Pearson arrived, the pants weren't there. Fisher writes:
At this point, I should let you in on the subject of hundreds of pages of legal wrangling. Custom Cleaners at that time had two big signs on its walls. One said "Satisfaction Guaranteed," and the other said, "Same Day Service."Pearson relied on these signs. Deeply.
He was not satisfied. And he did not get his pants back on the same day or, for that matter, on any day.
This, he says, amounts to fraud, negligence and a scam.
A week after that routine mishap -- pants go astray all the time at cleaners -- Soo Chung came up with gray trousers that she said were Pearson's. But when the judge said that he had dropped off pants with red and blue pinstripes, there was no joy in Fort Lincoln.
Pearson's first letter to the Chungs sought $1,150 so he could buy a new suit. Two lawyers and many legal bills later, the Chungs offered Pearson $3,000, then $4,600 and, finally, says their attorney, Chris Manning, $12,000 to settle the case.
But Pearson pushes on. How does he get to $65 million? The District's consumer protection law provides for damages of $1,500 per violation per day. Pearson started multiplying: 12 violations over 1,200 days, times three defendants. A pant leg here, a pant leg there, and soon, you're talking $65 million.
The case, set for trial in June, is on its second judge. The Chungs have removed the signs upon which Pearson's case rests.
"This case shocks me on a daily basis," Manning says. "Pearson has a lot of time on his hands, and the Chungs have been abused in a ghastly way. It's going to cost them tens of thousands to defend this case."
A judge in the case has admonished Pearson about his take-no-prisoners tactics. When Pearson sought to broaden the case to try to prove violations of consumer protection laws on behalf of all District residents, D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz said that "the court has significant concerns that the plaintiff is acting in bad faith" because of "the breathtaking magnitude of the expansion he seeks."
Pearson has put the Chungs and their attorneys to work answering long lists of questions, such as this: "Please identify by name, full address and telephone number, all cleaners known to you on May 1, 2005 in the District of Columbia, the United States and the world that advertise 'SATISFACTION GUARANTEED.' "
In the world.
The answer: "None."
In a closet of a lawyer's office in downtown Washington, there is a pair of gray wool pants, waiting to be picked up by Roy Pearson.
"We believe the pants are his," Manning says. "The tag matches his receipt."
Now, I'm not a lawyer hater. I think people who complain about their own lawyers should choose more wisely in the future. My own lawyer is my lawyer because she's not only smart as hell, but always on moral high ground, which I believe gives me and her other clients an edge.
But, there are those who are just, well, anti-life, in the way they practice law. How many hours of time has this guy sucked out of these cleaners who, if they're like Korean business people I've known, are very hardworking, and maybe relatively recent immigrants who've made it in America in a relatively short time?
Now, maybe they're big old jerks. It's possible. Maybe they screw over all their customers. That's possible, too. But, even if they purposely took his pants outside, laid them in traffic, let them get good and wrecked, and then tossed them in a passing dump truck...$65 million?
For lawyers like this guy, clogging up the legal system and life with this crap, there's this joke in the comments over at the Washington Post link:
Q: What is black and brown and looks good on a lawyer? A: A Doberman.
As for the $65 million sum, I later came upon this comment from "P.A." over at Overlawyered:
For $65million, my dry cleaners can publicly burn my suit while calling me a baby rapist.
via Consumerist
It Could Be Worse
When you're having a bad day at work, just be glad you're not an anal wart researcher:
Yes, there really is such a thing. Dr. Denise Galloway of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle is one of the country's leading scientists in the field. While she describes her work as creative, challenging, and fun, she also admitted to the Tacoma News Tribune that her mother is so embarrassed by it that she tells people her daughter is a cancer researcher.
For a real shit job, try being a cage cleaner at the zoo. Or, for a change of pace, also at the above link (the Discovery show, Dirty Jobs), try "braving oncoming traffic while picking up all manner of smelly dead creatures. Benefits include working outdoors." Yes, you, too, can earn your keep as a roadkill picker-upper.
Today Would Be An Unwise Day To Act Undercivilized Around Me
I came out this morning to find a little present left on my car.
Taking Appropriate Legal Action?
Well, it appears to me that would be "sit on it and rotate" -- in what seems to be legal bullying of the person who runs awfulplasticsurgery.com, apparently counting on them to not know what constitutes libel/slander and fair use.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, so I could be wrong. But, I know the defenses against libel (at the EFF link below), and I'm pretty sure this can't be counted as libel for a number of reasons; first and foremost, that it's clearly opinion. Check out this description of threatened "legal action" against the webmaster at awfulplasticsurgery.com (posted by the webmaster of awfulplasticsurgery.com):
April 27, 2007Almost two years ago, I commented that Hunter Tylo's boobs had shelf-like qualities. I am now being threatened with a lawsuit due to that comment. Here is the legal letter I received today.
RE: Defamation on Awfulplasticsurgery.com website
Relating to Hunter TyloDear Sir or Madam;
This firm represents Hunter Tylo in litigation matters.It has recently come to our attention that your Internet website at http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com has posted at least one false and defamatory statement about Ms. Tylo. Specifically, an article entitled "Hunter Tylo and her shelf boobs." That article is replete with false statements that would tend to harm Ms.Tylo's reputation in her profession. As such, you are directly liable for the libelous statement contained on you site.
A review reveals that the false statements about Ms. Tylo were made with a reckless disregard for the truth. These statements are false and amount to libel per se. Thus, Ms Tylo is entitled to recovery without proving any special damages sustained from the defamatory statements.
Moreover, given the article's complete lack of truth, it is only reasonable to conclude that the false statements were made with a specific intent to injure Ms Tylo and her reputation.
Immediately remove the article from your Internet website and refrain from publishing any further false statements or information about Ms Tylo. We are preparing a subpoena that will force Domains by Proxy to disclose your identity and will execute such if we have not received by the close of business on April 30, 2007 your confirmation that the article has, in fact, been removed from the website. After such date we will take appropriate legal action to protect our client's rights.Sincerely,
Connie Gondek, RP
Grecon AssociatesThis is what I wrote about Hunter Tylo:
By popular demand, I present to you soap actress, Hunter Tylo. Requests for her to be featured topped those of even Bree Walker. I don't believe that anyone besides Stevie Wonder would describe Hunter Tylo's seemingly enhanced bosoms as 'proportional'. Indeed, they jut out like a shelf and look strangely out of place on her small petite frame.This is a link to the article where the commentary appears. Click here.
Are there any lawyers out there that believe that I am within my freedom of speech rights? Please email me at webmaster ( a t ) awfulplasticsurgery.com. Media can also email me at the same address for further info.
On a personal front, I just had a breast reduction surgery last week and don't need this crap at the moment.
I encourage any sharp legal minds to comment on this, and I encourage other bloggers to blog about this.
Interestingly, I Googled Grecon Associates and got zippo.
If you go to the site behind the e-mail address (greconassoc.com) the webmaster got the Connie Gondek e-mail from (I corresponded with the webmaster a bit), it's actually Hunter Tylo's website.
From a soap opera Usenet, I found this:
Both Hunter (Taylor, B&B) & Michael (ex-Blade, Y&R; Quinton, GL) Tylo are regularly sent printouts of anything related to them on r.a.t.s.c., through the computer representative for the "Michael and Hunter Tylo Official Fan Club" (Connie Gondek).
And I found this, on online defamation law, at the EFF...which I sent to the webmaster to ease his or her mind. I'm no lawyer, but it isn't hard to read this and feel that the lawyer (if Gondek is a lawyer) is bullying in the absence of a real case.
The Difference Between Sunni And Shiite
Why is it significant that Osama is a Sunni? To understand that, you have to understand the two main branches of Islam. Here's some help -- from the History News Network, sponsored by, but operating independently of, George Mason University:
The Sunni branch believes that the first four caliphs--Mohammed's successors--rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims. They recognize the heirs of the four caliphs as legitimate religious leaders. These heirs ruled continuously in the Arab world until the break-up of the Ottoman Empire following the end of the First World War.Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. In 931 the Twelfth Imam disappeared. This was a seminal event in the history of Shiite Muslims. According to R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, "Shiite Muslims, who are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, [believe they] had suffered the loss of divinely guided political leadership" at the time of the Imam's disappearance. Not "until the ascendancy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1978" did they believe that they had once again begun to live under the authority of a legitimate religious figure.
Another difference between Sunnis and Shiites has to do with the Mahdi, “the rightly-guided one” whose role is to bring a just global caliphate into being. As historian Timothy Furnish has written, "The major difference is that for Shi`is he has already been here, and will return from hiding; for Sunnis he has yet to emerge into history: a comeback v. a coming out, if you will."
They link to a special 9-11 edition of the Journal of American History, in which Appleby explains, in their words, "that the Shiite outlook is far different from the Sunni's, a difference that is highly significant":
...for Sunni Muslims, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim world, the loss of the caliphate after World War I was devastating in light of the hitherto continuous historic presence of the caliph, the guardian of Islamic law and the Islamic state. Sunni fundamentalist leaders thereafter emerged in nations such as Egypt and India, where contact with Western political structures provided them with a model awkwardly to imitate ... as they struggled after 1924 to provide a viable alternative to the caliphate.In 1928, four years after the abolishment of the caliphate, the Egyptian schoolteacher Hasan al-Banna founded the first Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Sunni world, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Al-Banna was appalled by "the wave of atheism and lewdness [that] engulfed Egypt" following World War I. The victorious Europeans had "imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theatres, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices." Suddenly the very heart of the Islamic world was penetrated by European "schools and scientific and cultural institutes" that "cast doubt and heresy into the souls of its sons and taught them how to demean themselves, disparage their religion and their fatherland, divest themselves of their traditions and beliefs, and to regard as sacred anything Western."14 Most distressing to al-Banna and his followers was what they saw as the rapid moral decline of the religious establishment, including the leading sheikhs, or religious scholars, at Al-Azhar, the grand mosque and center of Islamic learning in Cairo. The clerical leaders had become compromised and corrupted by their alliance with the indigenous ruling elites who had succeeded the European colonial masters.
From the History News link, about Osama:
Osama bina Laden is a Sunni Muslim. To him the end of the reign of the caliphs in the 1920s was catastrophic, as he made clear in a videotape made after 9-11. On the tape, broadcast by Al-Jazeera on October 7, 2001, he proclaimed: "What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. ... Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more [than] eighty years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated."
Here's the Cliff's notes version, with notes on subgroups and other factions at the link:
The death of Muhammad in Medina provoked a mayor crisis among his followers: The dispute over the leadership resulted in the most important "schism" in Islam: "Sunnis" and "Shiites:- The Prophet's preference to follow him was Ali, the husband of his daughter, the Egyptian Fatima, and the father of his only surviving grandsons Hasan and Husayn. But, while the family was busy burying the Prophet, the leaders of Medina elected the aging Abu Bakr, the father of the Prophet's favorite wife, as the successor ("caliph"), even before the burial of the Prophet. Ali and his family were dismayed but agreed for the sake of unity, and because Ali was still young... however, after the murder of the third caliph, Ali was invited by the Muslims of Medina to accept the caliphate, with the mayor schism of Islam:
- The "Sunnis", followers of Abu, the majority, with 800 million Muslims.
- The "Shiites", followers of Ali, with 100 million Muslims (Iran, Iraq, Palestine).
Despite the differences in detail and politics, the various branches do accept the basic tenets laid down in the Koran.
1- The "Sunni": 800 million:
The followers of Abu, called "Sunni" because they accept the "sunnas", the oral traditions and interpretations of the Koran after Muhammad's death, called the "sunnas", and later the "Hadiths".
They are usually more liberal.
They belief the "caliph" ("successor" of Muhammad) should always be elected, not conferred by heredity. They claim they are the true followers of the faith, and until 1959 they refuse to recognize the Shiites as true Muslims. They believe in "predestination".
During the Ottoman Turks, the Caliphs were called "Sultans".
2- The "Shiite": 100 million:
The "Shiite ("partisans"), are the followers of Ali, more orthodox and militant, mainly in Iran, Iraq, and Palestine. In 656, Ali and Fatima's son Hussein led a fight against the Sunnis. Hussein was torture and beheaded, and today the Shiites of Iran honor the memory of Hussein's death with an annual procession in which marches in a frenzied demonstration beat and whip themselves with chains and branches.
The "Iman" and "Mahdi" (Messhiah):
Shiites created the office of the "Imam" ("leader" or "guide"), who were infallible, one for each generation, the only source of religious instruction and guidance, and all in direct descendence of Ali. There were 12 Imams since Ali; the last one, the 12th, went into hiding in 940, and he will emerge later to rule the world as "Mahdi" ("Messiah"). For this reason they are also called the "Imamites" or "Twelvers".- The present "Ayatollahs", ("signs of God") see themselves as joint caretakers of the office of the Imam, until he returns at the end of time. The "Ayatollah Khomeini" claimed that he was a descendant of the 7th Imam, and hence the rightful ruler of the Shiites.
Also at the link directly above is a piece about the Wahhabi. I've frequently heard Osama referred to as a Wahhabi. Who are the Wahhabi?
A small group founded by al-Wahhab in the eighteenth century, but it was the primary force in the creation of the state of Saudi Arabia in 1932, the country of the cities of Mecca and Medina, and from them, the Wahhabi have influenced Muslims throughout the world who go into the pilgrimage to Mecca.They are the Puritans of the Muslims, with the most strict, severely enforced moral standard of conduct, and their call for a pure Islam regulated by a literal interpretation of the Koran.
For them, it is a polytheism to visit the graves of the saints, and they are against observance of the feast of the Birth of the Prophet... and they discourage such Western innovations as cinema and dancing.
And then, there's this, The Wahhabi Myth (2nd Edition) - Dispelling Prevalent Fallacies and the Fictitious Link with Bin Laden By Haneef James Oliver, quoting an article by Karen Armstrong in The Guardian:
“Bin Laden was not inspired by Wahhabism but by the writings of the Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by President Nasser in 1966. Almost every fundamentalist movement in Sunni Islam has been strongly influenced by Qutb, so there is a good case for calling the violence that some of his followers commit "Qutbian terrorism." Qutb urged his followers to withdraw from the moral and spiritual barbarism of modern society and fight it to the death.Western people should learn more about such thinkers as Qutb, and become aware of the many dramatically different shades of opinion in the Muslim world. There are too many lazy, unexamined assumptions about Islam.”
Qutb is a nutwad who came to the U.S. as a scholarship student to Greeley, Colorado, and was horrified by a church dance and a bad haircut, among other things. In Joe's words, posted on this blog entry:
People would laugh at the reasons why Sayyid Qutb despised America. It covers 3 basic areas:1. Our obsession with lawn care.
2. He attended a church dance in 1951, and went completely nuts when the slow dances began. The couples touching and the movements. Especially, to the song, "Hey Baby, Its Cold Outside."
3. The time and money we spend on our pets.These are just some of the references that are omitted out of the translated versions of his books. Of course, those 3 examples would make perfect sense in the M.E. mentality. Qutb didn't live in Hollywood or New York City, but a small town in Colorado and he thought it was the most hedonistic place on earth.
So in defiance of Islamic extremism:
1. Mow your lawn or go to Home Depot.
2. Slow dance with someone.
3. Spoil your pet.
Oh, That's Just Twisted
I don't dress Lucy up much these days...since it's suddenly become trendy (or now, post-trendy) to dress your dog, but when she is dressed, it's in an entirely secular way! This insane outfit, however, is available here.
via Kate Coe, who was overwhelmed with gratitude for her doggie doctor, who is an observant (capital "O") Jew.
Getting There Is More Than Half The Trip
No, I was not suffering from a high fever, nor was I kidnapped and spirited away there in the trunk of somebody's car. I actually went to a Dodger game of my own volition -- invited by my friend Debbie, who's had season's tickets there her whole life.
She's an actual native Angeleno: Her grandfather was Chaplin's cameraman...hence the rather fabulous seats -- although we used to sit three rows up, right behind the dugout, until some new dude bought the team and put in the three rows of "corporate seats," as Debbie's boyfriend Glenn called them.
It took, and I'm not kidding, three hours to get to Dodger Stadium from the beach. I think we spent a 20 minutes on just one block downtown, at the base of the Chinatown subway stop.
Somebody's got to do something about this traffic already!
Doesn't this guy look like he was born to work in a ballpark?
I called him "Mr. Nuts," because he was selling them. For the record, he hates George Bush and recommends that everyone read John Dean's book, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
.
Here's the guy everybody came to see:
His name's Barry Bonds, and he plays for the other team.
And here's Alyssa Milano and a guy with a weird eight-ball cane.
And no, I did not know it was Alyssa Milano, and would not know if she bit me on the ass with tiny sharp teeth...and would not have known except that the lady sitting behind me told me before my butt even hit the chair.
Poison Uncontrolled
Christopher Hitchens writes on Slate about how religion poisons everything -- the first excerpt of three from his book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the "meaning" of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet—the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what "he" demands of us—from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction—itself composed of mutually warring factions—has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude "belief" from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted.
He Remembers The First Time He Had Sex -- He Still Has The Receipt
A paen to prostitution from a Brit on the Boston Craigslist. An excerpt:
The worst things in life are free. Value seems to need a price tag. How can we respect a woman who doesn't value herself? When I was young I used to think it wasn't who you wanted to have sex with that was important, but who you were comfortable with socially and spiritually. Now I know that's rubbish. It's who you want to have sex with that's important. In the past I have deceived the women I have been with. You lie to two people in your life; your partner and the police. Everyone else gets the truth.Part of me used to enjoy the deception. There was something about the poverty of desire with one's girlfriend. Sex without betrayal I found meaningless. Without cruelty there was no banquet. Having a secret life is exhilarating. I also have problems with unpaid-for sex. I am repulsed by the animality of the body, by its dirt and decay. The horror for me is the fact that the sublime, the beautiful and the divine are inextricable from basic animal functions. For some reason money mitigates this. Because it is anonymous.
What I hate with women generally is the intimacy, the invasion of my innermost space, the slow strangulation of my art. The writer chained for life to the routine of a wage slave and the ritual of copulation. When I love somebody, I feel sort of trapped. Three years ago I was saved. I found a girl whom I could fall in love with ... and sleep with prostitutes with. She sends me to brothels to sleep with women for her. I buy her girls for her birthday and we go to whorehouses together. I am free forever from the damp, dark prison of eternal love.
A prostitute exists outside the establishment. She is either rejected by it or in opposition to it, or both. It takes courage to cross this line. She deserves our respect, not our punishment. And certainly not our pity or prayers.
Of course, the general feeling in this country is that the man is somehow exploiting the woman, but I don't believe this. In fact, the prostitute and the client, like the addict and the dealer, is the most successfully exploitative relationship of all. And the most pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no squalid power game. The man is not taking and the woman is not giving. The whore fuck is the purest fuck of all.
Why does a sleazy bastard like me like whores so much? Why pay for it? The problem is that the modern woman is a prostitute who doesn't deliver the goods. Teasers are never pleasers; they greedily accept presents to seal a contract and then break it. At least the whore pays the flesh that's haggled for. The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
But it is more than this. What I want is the sensation of sex without the boredom of its conveyance. Brothels make possible contacts of astounding physical intimacy without the intervention of personality. I love the artificial paradise; the anonymity; using money, the most impersonal instrument of intimacy to buy the most personal act of intimacy. Lust over love, sensation over security, and to fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands.
Having an instinctive sympathy for those condemned by conventional society, I wanted to cross the line myself. To pay for sex is to strip away the veneer of artifice and civilisation and connect with the true animal nature of man. Some men proudly proclaim that they have never paid for it. Are they saying that money is more sacred than sex?
via DBCooper
Okay, We Broke It. They Keep Breaking It.
I was never for going into Iraq. Flattening the mountains of Afghanistan to get Al Qaeda, yes. But, now that we're in there, we're in there. And we're making a further mess of it by having inadequate troops there -- turning the troops we do have into Islamist nut fodder. Very sad. But, you can't stick it all on us -- a wise observation Henry Porter makes in the Observer/UK, in a piece that starts with the horror that is chlorine bombs:
So we are talking about civil war and the convergence in Iraq of a number of opportunistic death cults, the most crazed and narcissistic of which is probably al-Qaeda, though the Shia death/torture squads fielded by Muqtada al-Sadr run a pretty close second. Is this Bush and Blair's fault? Ultimately, yes because they opened the fissure that released the superheated gases of Islamist fanaticism.But we cannot leave it at that. Somewhere in Iraq, for example, there is an individual who allowed two young children to travel into Baghdad as passengers in the back seat of car that was loaded with explosives. Naturally enough, the children's presence lowered suspicion at the checkpoints. The car entered the city, the adults hopped out and detonated the bomb with the children still inside.
That is badness of a high order and you would expect it to have offended every loving parent across Islam. You would certainly expect to hear some stern religious voices in Middle East calling for the cessation of such barbarity in the name of one or other sect or tribe or, indeed, Allah. There are murmurs of disquiet, even horror, but in a way, the Americans and British have become everyone's alibi or at least plea of mitigation.
Our catastrophic blunder has removed the need for any moral calibration in Islam of what Muslims are doing to Muslims in Iraq. In the West, there are many, who, because they were passionately against the war, fail to see that they ought to refine their judgment on the men who thrill to the idea of perfecting a chlorine bomb that will maim, blow apart or asphyxiate the workman who has just got off shift, the housewife loaded down with groceries, the student waiting to meet a friend. The chlorine bombers are not freedom fighters
There is nowhere for us to go on Iraq. There is darkness but no hint of dawn. The surge of troops that has put such a strain on the US military has reached the halfway mark with about 15,000 deployed. In the same period, the civilian death toll has risen by 15 per cent. More troops mean more deaths, but fewer troops may mean even more deaths: a sprawling civil war that could last five to 10 years and change the course of world history on a very grand scale indeed.
There may be just a few opportunities to save the region. The first comes in early May when the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, meets the Foreign Ministers of Iraq's neighbours in Egypt. The era of what has been called Bush's 'moralising foreign policy' is over and Dr Rice is said to be on a mission to listen.
It is hoped that bilateral talks with Syria and Iran will take place afterwards, but America and Britain need to show much more penitence for the ungodly mess we have created. Among the Middle Eastern powers, there has to be recognition that many of the demons let loose in Iraq are the product of religious fanaticism.
The Muslim world has to find its own way of speaking up for humanity and civilisation and, for a start, to condemn the chlorine bombs.
Religion: Just Make Shit Up...
...And say god said so.
The latest idiocy is the debate on where unbaptized babies go, to heaven or "limbo" -- some no-man's land probably invented by some priest trying to scare up a few baptismal bucks for the church. Michelle Tsai writes on Slate:
The Vatican announced on Friday the results of a papal investigation of the concept of limbo. Church doctrine now states that unbaptized babies can go to heaven instead of getting stuck somewhere between heaven and hell. If limbo doesn't exist, what happened to everyone who was supposed to have been there already?They've probably been in heaven all this time, but no one knows for sure. Until the recent announcement, the limbo crowd was thought to include anyone who hadn't been baptized but would otherwise deserve to go to heaven—like infants (including aborted fetuses), virtuous pagans, and pre-Christian Jews. Those who had been baptized, on the other hand, either joined God in heaven, made up for their sins in purgatory, or suffered forever in hell.
If limbo never existed in the first place, you might assume that these souls passed straight through St. Peter's gates. But the carefully worded document from the Vatican's International Theological Commission stops short of certainty in this regard, arguing only that there are "serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope," rather than "sure knowledge."
Next topic for up for debate: Whether or not invisible men wear scarves. A better topic: Why the church protected all the kiddie diddlers instead of all the kiddies. (It's business, Gertie.)
photo by Gregg Sutter
Lollapa-Loser
Got a blamer lady writing in to me in the Advice Goddess column I just posted. It's my fault, it's his bad childhood, her bad childhood...no, maybe it's karma!
Here's her letter:
My boyfriend, who shows signs of narcissism and misogyny, enjoys your column, and no wonder, as you often indirectly side with men by making women look like jealous shrews. Even if you are right, maybe these women who write you need somebody to be nice to them. As for my boyfriend, his mom is a lifelong nut job, which has to affect how he sees women. It probably doesn’t help that I didn’t have very positive role models growing up, either. He can be a real jerk, but he’s hot, sex can be great, and we both enjoy going to alt. rock venues. I guess I’m in a love/hate thing with this “piece of work,” as an astrologer called him. Maybe he’s my karmic payback for not wanting kids?--Torn
And here's my reply:
"Torn”? Of course you’re torn. You’re a woman dating a misogynist -- a woman-hater. This is like being a black girl dating a guy whose leisurewear is a pointy white hood, or a Jewish girl with a thing for neo-Nazis, or, better yet, Elie Wiesel on a dinner date with Eva Braun. This isn’t to say there’s no love in your relationship, as your boyfriend’s also a narcissist -- probably prone to blurting out “I love you so much, it hurts!” while you gaze deep into his eyes and he gazes over your shoulder into the mirror.Luckily, you’ve pegged the real problem here, which is…me? And then there’s the moon in Aquarius, Mommy retrograde, and/or what looks to be a guy flipping you the bird in Saturn. Or, maybe it’s “karmic payback” -- the ridiculous notion that, behind the scenes of the universe, there’s some cross of Buddha, Santa, and a tax accountant calculating who’s been naughty and nice, and doling out jerk boyfriends to the intentionally barren. In reality, evidence points to “fate” being pretty random: 4-year-olds sometimes die horribly in car accidents -- and probably not because some balance sheet showed them sneaking cake before dinner or committing a cold-blooded triple murder.
Maybe your real-real problem is blaming everything short of acid reflux for your current situation. Come on, you aren’t with this guy because you lacked “positive role models” growing up, but because you lack a sense of personal responsibility now that you’re grown up (or, at least, taller). Lots of people have rough childhoods. At 6, I’d already killed Jesus, or so I was told -- which made me rather unpopular, and about as assertive as lettuce well into my 20s. That wasn’t working, so I went off and worked on myself -- until I could toss off the punch line, “Yeah, I whacked him, and I got away with it, too!”
The last thing anybody writing me needs is for me to be “nice” so they can feel better about draining their life into a dismal relationship. Many of the life-wasters are men. Many more are women. And, if I had to pinpoint the single biggest misery-maker in relationships, it’s women who see having a relationship as a substitute for having a self. The runner-up? People loath to admit that their relationship isn’t exactly a hailstorm of bliss, and it’s time they exercised a little control over what they let into their lives, and what they let stay. Granted, there can be extenuating circumstances, like when your partner seems unique and irreplaceable; you know, like one of those rare men who’s into sex and rock ‘n’ roll. It could be tough landing that again -- unless, of course, you’re willing to pull on a tight T-shirt and spend 10 seconds in a beer line at a Weezer show.
The original posting is here.
Who Owns Our Water And Why That Matters
I became friends with André-Tascha Lammé through his telemarketer-stopping site killthecalls.com, but I marvel all the issues he takes on in his community. One of them is the Sacramento water rates, and overcharging by the German company that actually owns the Sacramento water utility! The site he built for that is sacwaterrates.com. Today, there was a story about the issue by Tara Lohan on Alternet. Here are a couple of excerpts:
It turns out the United States is an attractive place for multinationals looking to make inroads in the water business. The three main players are the French companies Suez and Veolia (formerly Vivendi), and the German group RWE.The companies first pushed water privatization in developing nations. "But in many instances, those attempts didn't pan out as planned, it being difficult to gouge governments and customers that don't have a lot of money," Public Citizen reports. "The U.S., by contrast, presented the promise of a steady, reliable revenue stream from customers willing and able to pay water bills."
The companies that already controlled the small percentage of U.S. water held privately were bought by the big three: Veolia picked up U.S Filter, Suez got United Water and RWE took over American Water Works.
The results have been disastrous, as "Thirst" shows -- rates are increasing, quality is suffering, customer service is declining, profits are leaving communities and accountability has fallen by the wayside.
In Felton, Calif., a small regional utility ran the water system until it was purchased in 2001 by California American Water, a subsidiary of American Water, which is a subsidiary of Thames Water in London, which has also become a subsidiary of German giant RWE. Residents in Felton saw their rates skyrocket, "Thirst
" reports. A woman who runs a facility for people in need saw her water bill increase from $250 to $1,275 a month.
RWE also bought the company controlling the water system in Urbana, Ill., and locals have been unhappy with the service it provides. "A few months ago, I got a notice on my door saying the water was turned off, and that when it came back on, I needed to boil it before I used it," said the city's mayor, Laurel Prussing. But when she called the number, the company didn't know what was going on -- and it was no wonder, because the call center was located in Florida.
As somebody who doesn't like a lot of government intervention, this is an area government belongs in -- seeing to it we have clean, reliable public water source:
Corporate interest in water systems in the United States exists for very good reason -- we have a water crisis. Our drinking and wastewater systems were largely designed a hundred years ago and in many places, little improvements have been made.Aging systems combined with the pressures of increasing population, development, and pollution have left many communities close to disaster.
As a result, corporations have swooped in to offer public officials an easy out -- not only will they run these aging plants, but they'll save the city millions of dollars in the process. At least that's the promise. So far, it hasn't panned out.
In 2005,"Thirst" reports, 200 mayors of large and small cities said they would consider privatization if it would save money. In addition to lobbyists, publicists and ad campaigns, the corporations have also directly gone after public officials to sell their wares.
"The U.S. Conference of Mayors has become an engine of water privatization through its Urban Water Council," they write in "Thirst." "One mayor described a Conference of Mayors session he attended as a kind of feeding frenzy, with companies bidding to take over everything from his city's school-lunch program to its traffic lights and water services. Financed by the private water industry, staffed by former industry officials, the UWC works hard to give its corporate sponsors 'face time' with mayors."
And the federal government is not doing anything to help -- in fact, it's doing the opposite. "The administration has backed language in legislation to reauthorize existing federal water funding assistance programs that would require cities to consider water privatization before they could receive federal funding," reports Public Citizen. "And in lockstep with private industry's goals, the EPA is increasingly playing down the role of federal financial assistance while actively encouraging communities to pay for system upgrades by raising rates to consumers -- exactly the strategy the industry hopes will drive cash-strapped and embattled local politicians to opt for the false promise of privatization."
I Thug Therefore I Am
Maybe part of the reason there's so much black on black crime is how little black-on-black going to the police there is in inner-city communities.
Now, before you rail at me for being racist, in light of the zipped lips/"we take care of our own" attitude in other immigrant communities (especially where there's a strong mob element), check out how pervasive this seems to be in this community -- and scroll down to see how obscenely ridiculous.
Here's the printed version of the 60 Minutes/Anderson Cooper piece I saw part of on Sunday night about how "snitching" is condemned in the black community:
Reluctance to talk to police has always been a problem in poor, predominantly African-American communities, but cops and criminologists say in recent years something has changed: fueled by hip-hop music, promoted by major corporations, what was once a backroom code of silence among criminals, is now being marketed like never before.The message appears in hip-hop videos, on T-shirts, Web sites, album covers and street murals. Well-known rappers talk about it endlessly on DVDs. It is a simple message heard in African-American communities across the country: don't talk to the police.
"When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching…. It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters," says Geoffrey Canada, a nationally recognized educator and anti-violence advocate. "It was not for regular citizens. It is now a cultural norm that is being preached in poor communities."
Canada has been working with children in Harlem for more than 20 years. He grew up poor in a tough New York neighborhood, but says the message kids are getting today is very different and dangerous.
"People are walking around with shirts. People are going out making, making music. People are saying things that if you're a snitch it's like being an Uncle Tom was when I was growing up," Canada says. "It's like you can't be a black person if you have a set of values that say, 'I will not watch crime happen in my community without getting involved to stop it.'"
"So this slogan, this 'stop snitchin'.' It now extends to rape, robbery, murder, really any crime?" Cooper asks.
"Any crime," Canada says. "It's like we're saying to the criminals, 'You can have our community. Just have our community. Do anything you want, and we will either deal with it ourselves, or we'll simply ignore it.'"
Cooper also interviewed rap star Cameron Giles, who got shot in both arms in 2005. Despite the fact that the shooting happened right in front of members of his entourage, to this day, not one of them has cooperated with police -- and neither has Giles:
Asked if he thinks there is any situation when it's okay to talk to the police, Cam'ron tells Cooper, "Yeah, definitely. Say 'Hello, how you feel, everything alright?' Period.""That's it?" Cooper asks.
"There's nothing really to talk about with the police, I mean, for what?" Cam'ron says.
"If there's a serial killer living next door to you, though, and you know that person is, you know, killing people, would you be a snitch if you called police and told them?" Cooper asks Cam'ron.
"If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me?" Cam'ron asks. "No, I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him. But I'd probably move… But I'm not gonna call and be like, you know, 'The serial killer's in 4E.'"
Does it get any stupider? How long will people in the black community be duped into thinking this little-boy posturing is a sign of manhood, or anything but pathetic and destructive? And, finally, with role models like this...who needs racism to keep black people down?
Kidnapped By Snickers, Not Strangers
When freelance writer L.J. Williamson proposed at a PTA meeting that kids ride their bikes to school, it was as if she'd "suggested we stuff the children into barrels and roll them into the nearest active volcano." Apparently, there's supposed to be a predator hiding around every corner. Williamson writes for the LA Times about parental paranoia, and how people are afraid of all the wrong things:
Although statistics show that rates of child abduction and sexual abuse have marched steadily downward since the early 1990s, fear of these crimes is at an all-time high. Even the panic-inducing Megan's Law website says stranger abduction is rare and that 90% of child sexual-abuse cases are committed by someone known to the child. Yet we still suffer a crucial disconnect between perception of crime and its statistical reality. A child is almost as likely to be struck by lightning as kidnapped by a stranger, but it's not fear of lightning strikes that parents cite as the reason for keeping children indoors watching television instead of out on the sidewalk skipping rope.And when a child is parked on the living room floor, he or she may be safe, but is safety the sole objective of parenting? The ultimate goal is independence, and independence is best fostered by handing it out a little at a time, not by withholding it in a trembling fist that remains clenched until it's time to move into the dorms.
Meanwhile, as rates of child abduction and abuse move down, rates of Type II diabetes, hypertension and other obesity-related ailments in children move up. That means not all the candy is coming from strangers. Which scenario should provoke more panic: the possibility that your child may become one of the approximately 100 children who are kidnapped by strangers each year, or one of the country's 58 million overweight adults?
In 1972, 87% of children who lived within a mile of school walked or biked daily; today, just 13% of children get to school under their own power, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a significant parallel, before 1980, only 5% of children were obese; today that figure has tripled, says the CDC.
The next generation of grandparents won't even need to harangue their progeny with tales of walking seven miles to school in the snow; it'll be impressive enough to say that they walked at all. My neighbor was right — the world is a very different place.
Amy At LA Times Festival Of Books
I'll be moderating a panel at 3pm on Sunday, April 29, on "Memoirs: Lessons Learned," with Karen Stabiner (The Empty Nest: 31 Parents Tell the Truth About Relationships, Love, and Freedom After the Kids Fly the Coop
If anybody has any memoir-oriented questions they want me to ask (even though all these books aren't technically memoirs, since they aren't entirely personal, first-person accounts), comment away below!
LAT Festival Of Books info here.
Blasting Baldwin Basinger
I'm not a fan of Alec Baldwin. But, when I heard about the voicemail message he left for his daughter, my first thought was, "What kind of parent makes that sort of thing public?" And the answer is, a mother who less about her child than she does about getting revenge.
I listened to the voicemail and I heard what sounded to me like a guy who's been terribly frustrated that he'd been kept away from his daughter. Still, no matter what went on, the name-calling at the end is inexcusable. As are all efforts, from his side and hers, to draw the kid into the conflict.
The kid is a pawn here. And both parents are guilty of a form of child abuse -- the "parental alienation" that Baldwin tries to excuse himself with. Here's a description from the Parental Alienation Awareness website:
Parental alienation involves the mental manipulation of children with the sole purpose of destroying a loving and warm relationship they once shared with a parent.Parental alienation and hostile aggressive parenting deprives children of their right to be loved by and showing love for both of their parents. These selfish, vindictive and malicious actions by the alienating parent (the parent who is responsible for the mental manipulations) is considered a form of child abuse - as the alienating tactics used on the children are disturbing, confusing and often frightening, and rob children of their sense of security and safety.
Here's what Baldwin had to say for himself, via AP/CNN:
"Although I have been told by numerous people not to worry too much, as all parents lose their patience with their kids, I am most saddened that this was released to the media because of what it does to a child," he wrote. "I'm sorry, as everyone who knows me is aware, for losing my temper with my child. I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now. You have to go through this to understand. (Although I hope you never do.) I am sorry for what happened. But I am equally sorry that a court order was violated, which had deliberately been put under seal in this case."The tension between Baldwin and his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, had erupted earlier when an angry phone message from Baldwin to his daughter was made public. The couple has been involved in bitter custody disputes over their daughter, Ireland, since their divorce in 2002.
..."In such public cases, your opponents attempt to take a picture of you on your worst day and insist that this is who you are as a person," Baldwin wrote. "Outside the doors of divorce court, I have friends, I have respect from people I work with and I have a normal relationship with my daughter. All of that is threatened whenever one enters a court room."
Neither one of these people seems to be a fit parent for a child. For a better approach for divorcing parents, the "cooperative coparenting" in Constance Ahrons' The Good Divorce
I don't care what your damn problem is, if you've got kids, it's your duty to put it aside, no matter what that takes, and act in their best interest. And yes, sometimes their best interest will conflict with your own.
Scarface, The Abridged Version
On YouTube.
Just Another Day In The "Religion Of Peace"
Three Protestants at a Christian publishing house in Turkey were horribly tortured before they were killed, reportedly by members of a cell of nationalist-Islamist fanatics. A doctor and hospital spokesman describes one of the victims:
"He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum and his back," Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone. It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said.The two others who were killed, Necati Aydin, pastor of Malatya's tiny Protestant community, and German Tilmann Geske, a Malatya resident with his wife and three children since 2003, were also tortured, press reports said.
The abuse lasted for three hours as the five men detained at the crime scene interrogated the three on their missionary activities, they said.
"We tied their hands and feet and later gagged them," the mass daily Sabah quoted one of the suspects as telling police.
"Emre slit their throats," said the youth, who was not identified, referring to Emre Gunaydin, the alleged leader of the gang, who is at the same hospital in serious condition after jumping out of the publishers' third floor office in a bid to flee police.
Gunaydin, 19, had reportedly made several visits beforehand to the publishing house to gain the confidence of the people working there, papers said.
The daily Radikal said the German was the first to die and the two Turks were slaughtered only when police arrived at the door after receiving a call from a member of the Protestant community who grew suspicious when he found the office door locked.
Proselytizing is not banned in Muslim, secular Turkey, but is generally viewed with suspicion.
via JihadWatch
Are You Agnostic About Talking Tomatoes?
Sam Harris writes on The Washington Post's blog about how silly it is, and how damaging it is, to believe in Pascal's Wager:
...Pascal suggested that religious believers are simply taking the wiser of two bets: if a believer is wrong about God, there is not much harm to him or to anyone else, and if he is right, he wins eternal happiness; if an atheist is wrong, however, he is destined for hell. Put this way, atheism seems the very picture of reckless stupidity.But there are many questionable assumptions built into this famous wager. One is the notion that people do not pay a terrible price for religious faith. It seems worth remembering in this context just what sort of costs, great and small, we are incurring on account of religion. With destructive technology now spreading throughout the world with 21st century efficiency, what is the social cost of millions of Muslims believing in the metaphysics of martyrdom? Who would like to put a price on the heartfelt religious differences that the Sunni and the Shia are now expressing in Iraq (with car bombs and power tools)? What is the net effect of so many Jewish settlers believing that the Creator of the universe promised them a patch of desert on the Mediterranean? What have been the psychological costs imposed by Christianity’s anxiety about sex these last seventy generations? The current costs of religion are incalculable. And they are excruciating.
To me, it's tragic, and tragically stupid, to waste a moment of your life praying to an imaginary diety. (Also, it's kind of embarrassing -- or should be.) And I'm with Harris on all of the examples he gives above. As for the Israel example, Jews are supposed to believe that the greatest virtue you could practice is saving a single life. Well, as I've blogged before, think of all the lives that could be saved if the Israeli Jews said, "We're blowing this pop stand," and, as Ken Layne suggested, relocated the state of Israel to Baja (they can afford it -- they'll just buy it, or part of it), leaving the Middle East to the Arabs.
But, it's bullshit, this lifesaving thing, like so much of religion, or the Jews would be hotfooting it out of there for Mexico, now wouldn't they? I mean, what are a few old pots and a crumbling wall vis a vis some 5-year-old's life? Apparently, we have our answer: they're much, much more valuable.
Harris continues:
...If the wager were valid, it could be used to justify any belief system (no matter how ludicrous) as a “good bet.” Muslims could use it to support the claim that Jesus was not divine (the Koran states that anyone who believes in the divinity of Jesus will wind up in hell); Buddhists could use it to support the doctrine of karma and rebirth; and the editors of TIME could use it to persuade the world that anyone who reads Newsweek is destined for a fiery damnation.But the greatest problem with the wager—and it is a problem that infects religious thinking generally—is its suggestion that a rational person can knowingly will himself to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence. A person can profess any creed he likes, of course, but to really believe something, he must also believe that the belief under consideration is true. To believe that there is a God, for instance, is to believe that you are not just fooling yourself; it is to believe that you stand in some relation to God’s existence such that, if He didn’t exist, you wouldn’t believe in him. How does Pascal’s wager fit into this scheme? It doesn’t.
...Pascal’s wager suggests that a rational person can knowingly believe a proposition purely out of concern for his future gratification. I suspect no one ever acquires his religious beliefs in this way (Pascal certainly didn’t). But even if some people do, who could be so foolish as to think that such beliefs are likely to be true?
Look Who's Watching
Public Wifi may be more public than you think. David Colker writes for the LA Times of "sniffer" programs people can use to hack into your connection:
"When people are on a public wireless connection, they have the same expectations about privacy as when they are on the Internet at home," said Cheung, 32, a computer security expert and an editor for TG Daily, a technology news website."But it doesn't work that way. Someone could be listening in."
Cheung was using a "sniffer" program that intercepted online signals as they flew back and forth from the laptops to a wireless modem hidden somewhere amid the coffee paraphernalia.
Mostly, the monitoring was limited to tracking the websites being visited. Numbers correlating to Web addresses flew across Cheung's computer screen, allowing him to see that the couple were viewing pages belonging to a wedding planning site.
The man a few tables away started with sites selling high-speed broadband service. He went from there to a page about managing websites.
Like in a mystery yarn, the clues kept coming in. "You start to get a story about someone," Cheung said.
Suddenly, the line "LLCs in the state of California" popped up on the screen. An LLC is a limited liability company, a type of business structure often used by small-business owners.
"He's in Google," Cheung said. "That's a search he typed in."
Sure enough, the next stop was a California secretary of state site with information about forming LLCs.
When approached, the man, Alex Auzers, 20, of Pasadena, confirmed that he was doing research on starting a business.
Asked if he had searched the exact phrase, "LLCs in the state of California," Auzers looked stunned. Then he shook his head.
"Is someone using a sniffer program?" he asked.
Gregg's getting me the USB version of the air card, so maybe I'll be a little bit safer. But, if anybody knows of any encryption programs for Mac, or ways to be safer, I'd love to hear them. (The LAT offers tips for Windows users only...the geniuses.)
Tie A Yellow G-String...
We Value Your Bullshit
In addition to studying French, I study the language of business bullshit. For example, "We value your business." (Translation: "We're fucking you up the ass.")
Friday afternoon, I got a letter that started out "We value your business" from Blank Of America (I'm calling it that since a big blank is what they seem to have have in place of customer service).
My accountant told me at the beginning of April that I needed to put money in my IRA no later than April 17. On Wednesday, April 12, to leave plenty of time before tax day in case there were any screwups, I did this over the phone with "Mitchell." He gave me a "confirmation number" (which turned out to be confirmation of not much in particular, except that I'd waited on hold almost 20 minutes to talk to Mitchell, and then bent over and gave him a lot of personal information).
I'm on deadline Monday and Tuesday, so Wednesday, April 20, I toddled over to pick up my mail, and saw I had a Blank Of America envelope waiting for me. Oh, good...confirmation of my transaction. I opened it. I was shocked to find a letter informing me that they "regret to inform you that we will be unable to fulfill this request through our written or telephone channels."
When I called back, the rep told me that it turns out that they do credit checks when you contribute money to your IRA (I guess because all those Afghanistan-bound suicide bombers have a habit of contributing to a tax-free fund for their old age.) Anyway, I have a freeze on my credit to prevent identity theft -- lest, say, some dumb monkey from BofA or some other company take home a laptop with a lot of personal data on it, then have it stolen.
I now find out that, because they couldn't check my credit, I have to go into a branch and show them my driver's license, and they'll retroactively make the deposit. Forgive me, but I have full Internet access, multiple home telephone lines, and a cell phone. Couldn't one of their customer "service" reps have picked up the phone and given me a little yoohoo? The Blank guy informed me that they simply can't make such calls. Nope, instead they sent me a form letter -- dated April 17, the day my taxes were to be mailed, postmarked April 18 in San Francisco, and received April 20.
Best of all, it was totally generic: "In order to open this account," etc. -- never saying which account exactly, although I had a pretty good idea, since I'd only opened one account in the past week. At the end before it was signed by "Brina Mata, Lead Operations Representative," it did say "thank you for your continued business." Sorry, Brina, I'm not really looking for thanks, just good customer service. That said, I'd even settle for adequate customer service...like the 20 seconds it would take to make a phone call and leave me a message on my answering machine in a timely manner.
I'm a little busy to be changing banks right now, and I need a bank with locations all over the place in our country, plus a corresponding ATM system in France (I can currently get money without a charge at Bank Paribas), but it sure is tempting. At the moment, I'd settle for a little truth in customer servicing, such as, "Hi, this is Mandy, how can I fuck you up the ass today?"
The God Squad
The abortion ruling shouldn't come as a surprise. Everything's going according to plan. Krugman writes in The New York Time$:
The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda -- which is very different from simply being people of faith -- is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It's also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to ''dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.'' And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.
Kay Cole James, who had extensive connections to the religious right and was the dean of Regent's government school, was the federal government's chief personnel officer from 2001 to 2005. (Curious fact: she then took a job with Mitchell Wade, the businessman who bribed Representative Randy ''Duke'' Cunningham.) And it's clear that unqualified people were hired throughout the administration because of their religious connections.
For example, The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department's civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.
Or consider George Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web site designer to add the word ''theory'' after every mention of the Big Bang, to leave open the possibility of ''intelligent design by a creator.'' He turned out not to have, as he claimed, a degree from Texas A&M.
One measure of just how many Bushies were appointed to promote a religious agenda is how often a Christian right connection surfaces when we learn about a Bush administration scandal.
...There's the case of Claude Allen, the presidential aide and former deputy secretary of health and human services, who stepped down after being investigated for petty theft. Most press reports, though they mentioned Mr. Allen's faith, failed to convey the fact that he built his career as a man of the hard-line Christian right.
...The Bush administration's implosion clearly represents a setback for the Christian right's strategy of infiltration. But it would be wildly premature to declare the danger over. This is a movement that has shown great resilience over the years. It will surely find new champions.
Next week Rudy Giuliani will be speaking at Regent's Executive Leadership Series.
I think everybody sells out to get elected. Personally, I'd rather go for the sellouts to anything but primitive religious belief.
Ayn Rand Institute's Alex Epstein points out what the religious nutters are shoving us into -- which is not, as they claim, "a culture of life":
President Bush has praised the Supreme Court's upholding of a ban on so-called partial birth abortions as a victory for a "culture of life" and a step toward "the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law.""Since Bush and other religious conservatives regard embryos as 'children' from the moment of conception," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "this is an open declaration of his goal to ban all abortions. And it is an indication of the true meaning of the 'culture of life' that the Religious Right says we must embrace--a culture in which abortion, assisted suicide, and embryonic stem-cell research are all illegal in the name of 'the sanctity of human life.'
"Think about the reality of such a culture. Pregnant women who rationally desired to abort--whether because of accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, or danger to their lives--would be forced to attempt dangerous, 'back-alley' abortions, the kind that crippled or killed untold numbers of women before Roe v. Wade. Individuals with incurable and unbearable diseases would not be able die with dignity at a time of their own choosing, but would be subjected to a protracted existence of often unspeakable agony. The potential millions who could be cured by treatments derived from the promising field of embryonic stem-cell research would instead suffer and die.
"To call this a 'culture of life' is a colossal fraud. In reality, it is a culture of suffering--of living death--in which actual human lives are sacrificed because 'God's will' commands it. It is a culture that consistently accepts the Christian ideal that human life is properly lived in sacrifice to God, and that suffering is proof of virtue.
"A true 'culture of life' would leave individuals free to pursue their own happiness--free from coercive injunctions to sacrifice themselves to religious dogma. Such a culture is what we must seek to create, as we do everything possible to fight religious conservatives' culture of living death."
Justice Alito And My Gallbladder
Your Honor, what do you think of my gallbladder? Should I get it removed? Maybe mount it on a little wooden base (after having it bronzed?...or do you think bronzing is kind of tacky?)
I only ask because you and some of your fellow Supremes have taken it upon yourself to make medical decisions for a whole lot of American women. Linda Greenhouse writes for The New York Times about the Supreme Court reversal, backing of the ban on partial-birth abortion:
In describing the federal law’s justifications, Justice Kennedy said that banning the procedure was in fact good for women, protecting them against terminating their pregnancies by a method they might not fully understand in advance and would come to regret later.
Hey, Justice Kennedy, perhaps if Justice Alito is too busy, you could weigh in on a few of my medical questions. You don't do dermatology, do you? Knee surgery? Rotate tires?
Slate's Dahlia Lithwick puts Justice Kennedy's condescension into perspective:
Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion is less about the scope of abortion regulation than an announcement of an astonishing new test: Hereinafter, on the morally and legally thorny question of abortion, the proposed rule should be weighed against the gauzy sensitivities of that iconic literary creature: the Inconstant Female.Kennedy invokes The Woman Who Changed Her Mind not once, but twice today. His opinion is a love song to all women who regret their abortions after the fact, and it is in the service of these women that he justifies upholding the ban. Today's holding is a strange reworking of Taming of the Shrew, with Kennedy playing an all-knowing Baptista to a nation of fickle Biancas.
...His opinion blossoms from the premise that if all women were as sensitive as he is about the fundamental awfulness of this procedure, they'd all refuse to undergo it. Since they aren't, he'll decide for them.
Aww, gee thanks...that's so sweet. About this suspicious mole I have...
The Scum Of Its Parts
What are all these lovvvvely guys doing in the terrorism business? Robert Spencer writes for FrontPage about all the simply faaaabulous people who turn out to be terrorists:
According to former Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Eddie Green, Kifah Jayyousi is “a great guy, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” While Green was superintendent, Jayyousi oversaw the Detroit school district’s capital improvement program, which had a $1.5 billion budget.Jayyousi is now charged, according to the Detroit Free Press, with “conspiring to kidnap, maim and murder by providing money, recruits and equipment for Islamic struggles in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya from 1993 to 2001.” He could get life in prison.
Christopher Paul, a martial arts instructor at a mosque in Columbus, Ohio, is also a terrific guy. Ahmad Al-Akhras, vice chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in Columbus, said: “From the things I know, he is a loving husband and he has a wife and parents in town. They are a good family together.”
Yet now Paul, a Muslim, has been charged, according to Associated Press, with “providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.” He is accused of training with Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, training people for violent jihad attacks on targets in Europe and the United States, and more.
But another one of Paul’s friends, Hisham Jenhawi, was skeptical: “I don’t think it’s even close to his personality to act upon something like that. He’s a very kind person. You would meet him on the street and he would want to hug you with the heart that he has.” One of his neighbors, Mike James, added: “He seemed like a nice guy, always waving…”
This kind of thing is nothing new. A friend remembered Gokhan Elaltuntas, a Muslim who carried out a suicide bombing on a synagogue in Istanbul in 2003: “We went partridge hunting together. I still cannot believe how such a quiet person could have been involved in an incident like this.” A friend of Naveed Haq, the jihadist killer who murdered one and wounded five at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in July 2006, described him as “pretty much just a normal guy….He was the kind of guy when you talked to him he was always laughing.”
...Great guys all. Some partied and some embarked on a spiritual search, but they all ended up in the same place, committing acts dedicated to furthering the cause of jihad, or facing charges of having done so.
Spencer compares these Islamic nice guys to the nice guys of the SS:
Today’s jihad terrorists are likewise the adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that teaches them that murders committed under certain circumstances are a good thing. And those murders, here again, are not committed for their own sake, but for the sake of a societal vision hardly less draconian and evil than that of Hitler, but one also that portrays itself as the exponent of all that is good – as the Taliban showed us. But the continued reference to such people as “terrorists” pure and simple, and the refusal of the media and most law enforcement officials to examine their ideology at all, only reinforces the idea that these people are raving maniacs, interested solely in chaos for its own sake. The society they want to build, and the means besides guns and bombs that they are using to build it, so far remain below the radar screen of most analysts. These people are just “terrorists,” interested only in “terror.” And so we’re continually surprised when they turn out to be nice guys after all. Decent fellows. Like the SS.
Who Are You, And What Are You Doing Without Your Shoes?
The Pint Of No Return
I just posted a new Advice Goddess column -- a response to an irate female reader who was critical of my advice to the woman who slapped the man in the bar. Here's an excerpt from my response:
A woman who’s convinced of the idea of men as oppressors -- especially one who’s been brain-snatched by the Victim-Industrial Complex feminism has become -- will see everything through victim-vision. An extreme case is “feminist vegetarian theorist” Carol J. Adams, who claims eating meat promotes the subjugation of women, and, according to “The Harvard Crimson,” “called asparagus a phallic symbol and said parsley was representative of pubic hair.” (No word on what it means if your mashed potatoes resemble Betty Friedan.)So, some drunk asks your bra size. You can outsmart him, out-funny him, or treat him like a bar snack stuck to the bottom of your shoe. But, delivering a lecture in women’s studies at the top of your lungs, then smacking him one? You don’t do this because you feel powerful, but because you have the self-image of “Squash me, I’m a bug.” If you’re looking to effect change, consider the difference between “losing your temper” and directing your temper like a laser. Rage is toxic. Stress hormones shut off your ability to reason, and turn your body into a little shop of poisons. This is your idea of empowerment? Well, that, and the notion that men who hit women are guilty of assault, but women who hit men are worthy of…applause?
Life is a hostile workplace. Approach it accordingly. The woman in question wrote, “The last thing I wanted was attention from men,” but proceeded to run off to a pickup joint. This makes about as much sense as going to a packed stadium for a little solitude, or holding your A.A. meeting in the corner liquor store. As for whether women should expect to be raped in a dodgy part of town, well, admitting it’s a possibility seems a better defense than celebrating your freedom to jog in a short skirt through dark alleys shouting, “Take back the night!” and “No means no!”
The entire thing is here.
Guns Weren't Allowed On Campus
That rule worked really well for them at Virginia Tech. Kind of like that piece of paper otherwise known as restraining order against a violent thug. When he comes to kill you, what do you do, hold up the piece of paper and point to the line that says he's supposed to stay 500-plus feet away? About the Virginia tech incident, Daniel C. Vock and Pauline Vu write for Stateline.org:
Virginia state Del. Todd Gilbert (R), who attempted to override Virginia Tech’s gun ban last year, said Monday: “Anybody who’s going to go on a murder spree and then kill himself is not going to be deterred by a law or regulation. He’s only going to be deterred by the end of another gun.”
In the past, Virginia Tech officials defended their gun ban as a way to promote an academic environment free of fear. They noted that other legal items, such as candles, are also prohibited in campus dormitories.
I'm not saying I like the idea of a lot of idiots running around with guns, but either we have a free country and live according to the dictates of the Constitution, or we decide to live without "risk" and risk having a police state. I don't really want my neighbors to have a stockpile of Uzis, but, the truth is, somebody could just as well run you over with a car if they want to kill you as they could shoot you with a gun.
1600 Propaganda Avenue
As an atheist, I guess I'm sometimes kind of naive. I don't understand how all these people -- people who profess to be driven by some superior set of morals they got from religion -- can govern by sleaze and lies, without reservation...like, if the real story behind some issue doesn't work for the party, not to worry -- just trump it up to better meet your political needs. At least that's the M.O. the White House seems to have been working under for quite some time, according to a pretty shocking New York Times editorial:
When the public first learned about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, administration officials piously declared that many of the prosecutors had ill served the public by failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud cases (against Democrats, naturally). But the more we examine this issue, the more ludicrous those claims seem.Last week, we learned that the administration edited a government-ordered report on voter fraud to support its fantasy. The original version concluded that among experts "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud." But the publicly released version said, "There is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud."
It's hard to see that as anything but a deliberate effort to mislead the public.
Sound familiar? In President George W. Bush's first term, a White House official, who had been the oil industry's front man in trying to discredit the science of global warming, repeatedly edited government reports to play down links between climate change and greenhouse gases. And then there was the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which turned reports on old, dubious and false tales about weapons of mass destruction into warnings of clear, present and supposedly mortal dangers.
It's obvious why the Bush administration would edit those documents, but why the voting report? Because charges of voter fraud are a key component of the Republican electoral strategy.
If the public believes there are rampant efforts to vote fraudulently, or to register voters improperly, it increases support for measures like special voter IDs, which work against the poor, the elderly, minorities and other disenfranchised groups that tend to support Democrats. Claims of rampant voter fraud also give the administration an excuse to cut back prosecutions of the real problem: officials who block voters' access to the polls.
There is one big catch, as Eric Lipton and Ian Urbina reported in The Times last week. After a five-year crackdown, the Justice Department has not turned up any evidence that voter fraud actually is a problem. Only 86 people were convicted of voter fraud crimes as of last year - most of them Democrats and many on trivial, trumped-up charges.
The Bush administration was so determined to pursue this phantom scourge that it deported a legal Florida resident back to his native Pakistan for mistakenly filling out a voter registration card when he renewed his driver's license. And it may well have decided to fire most of the eight federal prosecutors because they would not play along.
No word on what will become of Ann Coulter for her voting transgressions. I suggest deporting her to the West Village, and lashing her to a telephone pole on the tranny row section of Christopher Street.
Art Of The Intestine
This stop, Venice -- next stop, The Museum Of The Spastic Colon.
Very General Aviation
All those taxes and fees on your airline ticket for flying out of a regular airport? Billions of dollars in revenues from those taxes and fees are going to small airports used mainly by private pilots and corporate jets. Bob Porterfield writes for the AP:
"They're making out like bandits," said Bob Poole, director of transportation studies at Southern California's Reason Foundation and author of several studies on air transportation costs. "It's not only that airline passengers are paying more than their fair share, but they're being overtaxed to give private jets a free ride."Passengers pay as many as six separate taxes and fees on a single airline ticket, adding up to more than $104 billion since 1997, the AP found. Yet these assessments often are overlooked by the millions who click the "buy" button to purchase tickets online, even though they can exceed 25 percent of the total airfare.
Travelers deal with more hassles than ever. In 2006, more passengers were bumped, their flights delayed or their bags lost than in 2005, according to the annual Airline Quality Rating report released earlier this month.
"What are people getting for their money?" said Kenneth Button, a professor of transportation at George Mason University's School of Public Policy and an expert on air transit taxation. "Delays are increasing. How can consumers make a sensible assessment on how the money is being spent? You need an abacus to figure out all the costs."
Congress will decide later this year whether to curtail the huge public subsidy for small airports, while pilots' associations, airport managers and other interested groups are fighting to keep it.
Ed Bolen, president of the National Business Aviation Association, which represents 8,000 operators of private jets and other aircraft, said all Americans benefit from the proliferation of small airports throughout the country. They aid emergency preparedness and critical services such as medical evacuations and mail delivery, he noted.
Without help from the federal government in the form of passenger taxes, many would be unable to survive, Bolen said.
"Not all aircraft are the same nor do they impose the same costs on the system," he said. "If we were grounded tomorrow, the system would cost the same."
Mark Cooper of the Washington-based Consumer Federation of America said the key question is whether passengers are paying for something and getting nothing in return.
"It costs me more to park my car at National Airport than it costs to park a corporate jet," he said.
Here's how it works:
• J.T. Wilson Field in Somerset, Ky. got more than $12 million since 2001, much of it through the influence of local Rep. Hal Rogers, a longtime Republican member of the House Appropriations Committee who uses the airfield for trips home. Wilson Field is home base to 26 small planes and one jet. Despite millions in improvements, including a passenger terminal, the airport has yet to see scheduled commercial service.• California's Napa Valley Airport collected $6.3 million in taxpayer dollars over the past two years, even though it mainly serves private jets and small planes in addition to being a pilot training base for Japan Air Lines.
• Sardy Field, in the ultra-rich mountain playground of Aspen, Colo., has received $27.2 million in funding since 2005. While Aspen does offer service by major airlines, private jets and other general aviation aircraft make up the majority of its traffic, airport officials said.
• Austin Municipal Airport, about 90 miles south of Minneapolis, is home base for 25 small planes and three jets, at least two of which are owned by Hormel Foods, a Fortune 500 company with headquarters nearby. Since 2000, the airport received nearly $16 million in federal funding. More than two-thirds of the takeoffs and landing are by small, private planes.
• Greenville Municipal Airport, on Maine's Moosehead Lake, received $4.1 million over two years despite being the home airport to eight small planes and seeing fewer than 6,000 takeoffs and landings per year.
And so on...
via Consumerist
Either You're Clueless Or You're Lying
Hint: Clueless is better. A letter to the ed in The New York Times:
Darwin's GodA reader writes, “God may be invoked because the explanatory power of science ultimately breaks down, leaving a vacuum that must be filled” (Letters, April 1, in response to “Darwin’s God,” by Robin Marantz Henig, March 4). But why should God be invoked in the face of the unknown? Is it not enough to say, “I don’t know”? Imagining supernatural answers precludes the possibility of finding verifiable answers. This makes God and ignorance synonymous.
John Greenwald
Lowell, Mass.
The difference between science and religion? Here’s an Albert Einstein story I found in some old notes I’d taken that illustrates it pretty well. A reporter supposedly asked him, “How do you feel, knowing that so many people are trying to prove you are not right?” Einstein responded, “I have no interest in being right. I am only concerned with discovering whether I am or not.”
Baaa-aaaad Company
A Sudanese man was forced to marry a goat after he had his way with her. Per a BBC story, a Sudanese court even made him pay the goat's owner, Mr. Alifi, a dowry of about $50:
"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.Mr Alifi, of Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.
"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up."
Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.
"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper.
Amy Passes For White
Pre-wig, I guess Imus would've called me (Thanks, Treach!) "a JAP-py headed ho."
I always wanted long, straight black hair, like Asian girls have, instead of a frizzy, red (verging on) Jewfro. Is this because I wanted to pass for white? Doubtful! (Could I get any whiter?)
Lots of American women, of all races, now spend hundreds of dollars to get a special Japanese hair-straightening process. Why? Because bone straight hair looks nice. On white women, black women, and Asian women.
Perhaps black activists, from Malcolm X on, are off-base in suggesting it's about wanting to pass for white, as he does in the story, "My First Conk," in The Autobiography of Malcom X:
The mirror reflected Shorty behind me. We both were grinning and sweating. And on top of my head was this thick, smooth sheen of shining red hair — real red — as straight as any white man's.How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking "white," reflected in the mirror in Shorty's room. I vowed that I'd never again be without a conk, and I never was for many years.
This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man's hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are "inferior"—and white people "superior"—that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look "pretty" by white standards.
Look around today, in every small town and big city, from two-bit catfish and soda-pop joints into the "integrated" lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, and you'll see conks on black men. And you'll see black women wearing these green and pink and purple and red and platinum-blonde wigs. They're all more ridiculous than a slapstick comedy It makes you wonder if the Negro has completely lost his sense of identity, lost touch with himself.
...I don't know which kind of self-defacing conk is the greater shame--the one you'll see on the heads of the black so-called "middle class" and "upper class," who ought to know better, or the one you'll see on the heads of the poorest, most downtrodden, ignorant black men. I mean the legal-minimum-wage ghetto-dwelling kind of Negro, as I was when I got my first one. It's generally among these poor fools that you'll see a black kerchief over the man's head, like Aunt Jemima; he's trying to make his conk last longer, between trips to the barbershop. Only for special occasions is this kerchief-protected conk exposed — to show off how "sharp" and "hip" its owner is. The ironic thing is that I have never heard any woman, white or black, express any admiration for a conk. Of course, any white woman with a black man isn't thinking about his hair. But I don't see how on earth a black woman with any race pride could walk down the street with any black man wearing a conk — the emblem of his shame that he is black.
To my own shame, when I say all of this, I'm talking first of all about myself — because you can't show me any Negro who ever conked more faithfully than I did. I'm speaking from personal experience when I say of any black man who conks today, or any white-wigged black woman, that if they gave the brains in their heads just half as much attention as they do their hair, they would be a thousand times better off.
Sorry, but sometimes hair is just hair -- not a tool for self-victimization. Just ask white or Asian women with bone-straight hair who wish for curly or wavy hair. Just a guess, but it's probably not because they're hoping to pass for black!
photo by Gregg Sutter
"Stop" Is Another Way Of Saying "Stop"
Is there something in the water? Eau Asshole? Because I've had quadruple my share of them in the past few weeks.
I had just pulled out of a parking place on my street. I drive a dinky hybrid, and I get better MPG if I don't exactly haul off from zero to 60 from a dead stop, so it takes me a while to get to cruising altitude, let's just say.
Also, I drive defensively at all times -- meaning, as if everybody else on the road is on the phone, applying mascara, drinking a beer, and asleep behind the wheel at all times.
And a good thing that is, because as I got a half block from my house, had I not been going very slowly and paying my usual eagle-eyed attention, my 1900 lb toy car would have been squashed like a bug under this big truck.
The guy had a stop sign, but hey, why let that stop him? "Can't you see I'm on the phone?" he seemed to be saying...as he held the phone in one hand and the wheel in the other, and totally ignored the stop sign.
I honked at him as I stopped to avoid a crash...but, from him, no stop, no wave of "sorry!", nothing...he just kept going. Grrr. I followed him to 7-11.
Unfortunately, there were no cops in the parking lot -- they often hang there --- but I got his photo as he came over to see "What's your problem?"
"You ran a stop sign and would have hit me," I said.
"You weren't stopping," Mr. Genius informed me.
ME: "I didn't have a stop sign."
Details, details.
HIM: "You weren't paying attention."
ME: "You were on the phone! The fact that I was paying attention is the only reason I'm not on a gurney in an ambulence right now."
HIM: "You're crazy!"
Yes, it's nuts to expect people to stop at stop signs when they're in the middle of an important call.
The Meaning Of Christmas (Presents)
Mommy's goes a little wacko when she finds out sonny boy doesn't believe in god! YouTube.
via Machines Like Us
Abstaining From Abstinence Programs
To appease the religious nutters, government has thrown piles of money at abstinence programs. Here's yet another study that says they don't work:
The study, conducted for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was authorized by Congress in 1997 to evaluate the effectiveness of programs funded under Title V, Section 510 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Nationwide, more than 700 Title V, Section 510 programs receive up to $50 million annually from the federal government in order to teach youth about abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage. Additional funding from state matching block grants brings annual spending for Title V, Section 510 sexual abstinence education programs to $87.5 million.The study found that youth in the four evaluated programs were no more likely than youth not in the programs to have abstained from sex in the four to six years after they began participating in the study. Youth in both groups who reported having had sex also had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same average age.
Contrary to concerns raised by some critics of federal funding for abstinence education, however, youth in the abstinence education programs were no more likely to have engaged in unprotected sex than youth who did not participate in the programs.
“This is the first study of multi-year abstinence programs, and it is one of the few that has tracked its sample members for as long as six years,” notes Christopher Trenholm, the project director and a senior researcher at Mathematica. “The study finds that the sexual abstinence of students in four programs selected for the study was much the same as that of students who did not participate in these programs.”
“Some policymakers and health educators have criticized the Title V, Section 510 abstinence education programs, questioning whether the focus on abstinence puts teens at risk of having unprotected sex,” says Barbara Devaney, one of the study's principal investigators and vice president and director of Human Services Research at Mathematica. “The evaluation findings suggest that this is not the case. Participants in the abstinence education programs and nonparticipating youth had similar rates of unprotected sex at first intercourse and over the past 12 months.”
Living Out Louder
It's not bad enough that we all have to endure terrible drivers, loud cell phoners, and other Me! Me! Me! Generation types when we leave the house -- sometimes rude delivers.
These photos and the little movie of the incident at the bottom have taken me a while to put up because Gregg had to do something to the audio/video.
But, about a week ago, I had a really hard day and I'd fallen asleep on the couch at around 9:30 p.m. when I was awakened by my house shaking.
Earthquake? No. Asshat quake.
Some girl, already booming her car radio really loud, decided it would be appropriate to open her car doors (about four feet from houses and apartments) so her music could be our music.
I came out to ask her to turn it down -- "Excuse me, but did you notice the houses four feet from your car?" -- and she lectured me on how I should ask respectfully! Well, that pissed me off, so I told her I was going to photograph her and put her on my blog as a loud, rude, neighborhood disturber.
Hilariously (except for the fact that our community policing people don't need any more calls than they already have) she called the cops.
I said to her: "I'm sorry you're too stupid to understand the First Amendment, but it's not the slightest bit illegal for me to take your picture."
"She looks about 27," the loud cur said into her phone, (apparently to a police operator on the other end).
I dooo? Suddenly, being awakened wasn't quite so bad. (I'm 43.)
I thought maybe she was bluffing about calling the cops, but I grudgingly called 1-877-ASKLAPD, the police non-emergency number, to be sure, just to protect myself.
The idiot. She had actually called, and a car was coming. I told the operator nothing threatening was going on, and I was the neighborhood point person for the community policing cops (Officer Skinner laughed when I later told her the story -- apparently, the woman waited over an hour, maybe more, for the police to arrive.)
Anyway, I thought they'd call when they got there and ask me to come out and talk to them, but they didn't -- perhaps because they were too busy searching and impounding the chick's car?
I'm not saying they necessarily did that, but, well...lady, next time you call the cops on somebody because you're a rude asshole, consider your wardrobe!
P.S. Gregg jokes that he's regretted every piece of technology he's ever given me. He'd just reminded me that my camera takes little movies. Poor Gregg. Here's a pitch black movie (with good audio, though), of me going off on the girl.
Lionel Tiger On Why Black Men Call Black Women "Ho"
Lionel Tiger, a Rutgers anthropology professor who's always interesting, has a piece in The Wall $treet Journal about Imus' remarks, but the part that interested me was his speculation on the use of the word "ho." (I did find this piece to be written in strangely stuffy language -- which is kind of atypical for Tiger [read him in New York Press for years, and I heard him speak a couple of times at an evolutionary psych conference at Rutgers]):
Perhaps because I was raised in Victorian Canada, I have always found the casual use of the H word perplexing, offensive and violent. Whatever its etymological derivation, the fact is that it's understood to be shorthand for "whore." The term appears to have achieved currency and seeming acceptability initially and mainly in the community of people with dark skin. Just take a look -- if your stomach is settled -- at any number of MTV video spectacles of Rapper Princes surrounded by wholly compliant and nearly nude women grinding their lives away. But this is of course no alibi at all for any people with any pigment to describe any woman or group of women in a manner which deprives them of their sexual autonomy and paints them with the sign "commodity for purchase."The thoughtless use of such language is bad enough. Far worse is the situation which provoked and appears to support it -- the comparative ineffectiveness of some African-American males in achieving stable and rewarding statuses in the wider society.
Perhaps as a dramatic antidote, that culture has produced a galaxy of tight-rope heroes embedded in the largest black or white SUVs with a weapon on the floor as they float from misogynist performance to performance. They and their managers have not had to endure sermons from Rev. Al Sharpton and don't get threatened with losing their record contracts or concert venues.
The coercive trend is that ordinary African-American males earn decreasing amounts of money compared to women of their community. They are more accident-prone, more imprisoned and have frailer family lives than women do. Is this why they smoothly call them whores, out of desperate resentment at their own ineffectuality?
By "accident prone," I think he's talking about something studies have shown -- that men, in general, are many more likely to risk their lives -- ultimately, to get chicks. If it looks like they're doing it for, let's say, land, okay, but why do you think they want the land? The answer: To have resources and status, and ultimately, to get chicks.
There are a couple chapters about this in my pal Howard Bloom's book, The Lucifer Principle, entitled "The Expendability Of Males" and "How Men Are Society's Dice." In other words, on a strictly objective level, evolutionarily speaking, women are more valuable than men. As How puts it:
If you did away with the vast majority of men on the planet, but preserved the women, you would scarcely even dent our species' reproductive capabilities.
By the way, Tiger's wrong about Al Sharpton, as somebody pointed out in my blog comments on Thursday. Here's a piece by Sharpton, "The Hip Hop Generation":
This hip-hop culture must use their music, their influence to correct what's wrong, not to continue to perpetuate what's wrong, not continue to promote what's wrong. They have the power to do that. And if they really want to have an impact on society, they must change their focus and show America the best of us instead of the worst.I went to a hip-hop conference in New York, and one of the main topics of discussion was a fight for the right to use bitch and ho in lyrics. They wanted the right to call a woman a bitch - something the slave master called black women with impunity.
With all the stuff going on in this world, all they're worried about is being able to call a woman out of her name?! That's their cause? First of all, it's wrong. But second, it is insulting. These rappers and "hip-hop impresarios" weren't worried about unemployment or the financial conditions of those who support their records and made them stars. They weren't worried about the education system that keeps too many of their fans and families in poverty. They weren't worried about voting rights. They didn't have any conferences on any of that. There wasn't one seminar entitled "Economic Empowerment" or "Jobs for the 21st Century."
No, they want the right to call somebody a ho or a bitch - somebody who brought them into this world. As far as I'm concerned, they are low-down devious things who aren't worth the millions of dollars young people spend t o make them stars.
When I look at the hip-hop generation I am disappointed, but I also see promise. I see potential unrealized. I see tremendous power. These young people have created a culture. Their words, their spirit is so powerful that their voices have penetrated the mainstream culture to the point where America's culture is intertwined with the hip-hop culture, from its language to its clothing to its music. You cannot turn on a television or watch a movie and not see the influence of hip-hop. Even suburban America has been bitten by the hip-hop bug.
Unfortunately, much of what they're selling is a fraud. They spew hedonism, misogyny, and self-hate. They glorify the prison culture, the pimp culture, and drug culture. They tell the young that they're not worthy unless they're "rocking" Chanel, Gucci, or wearing platinum and diamonds. Not only is this message immoral, but it is also flawed. It's a lie.
Hello, Mother, Hello Fodder...
That's cannon fodder for Allah we're talking about, which is what mentally handicapped children in Iraq become.
Via IRIN:
The dreams 13-year-old Barak Muhammad (not his real name) had of leading a normal teenage life were dashed when his father sold him to al-Qaeda militants. Being mentally handicapped, he said he was considered a burden by his family and was told he would be better off sacrificing his life for his country."I don't have a mother and never went to school. I was dreaming of a day that I would go to school like my other brothers, but I was considered different. My father was always telling me that I was a mistake in his life, a boy that was just bringing expenses and problems," Barak said.
Barak's father sold him to al-Qaeda in Iraq for US $10,000 to support his remaining five children. Now, Barak is in training to fight US and Iraqi troops.
"Today, I help some men who say they are from al-Qaeda group. They fight people who are occupying Iraq and they said that if I do my work well, God will protect me and make me be a healthy boy," Barak said, adding that fighters promised him that he would soon join his mother in heaven.
Carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle, Barak said he accompanies insurgents during night time raids and when needed acts as a decoy to divert the attention of US or Iraqi forces in the run-up to an attack.
Abu Ahmed, who claims to be a spokesman for al-Qaeda in Iraq and Barak's trainer, said they were giving him a better life.
"We're doing a favour to Barak. We're giving him the chance to be useful and not suffer daily beatings from his father. Here, with us, he gets Islamic lessons and is soon going to be a good fighter and maybe one day even become a suicide bomber in the name of God," Abu Ahmed said.
A question: If your god is so great, how come he needs retarded children to do his business?
What Price False Accusation?
The falsely accused Duke lacrosse players, now exonerated, are calling for reforms in the justice system. I heard one of them -- I believe it was Ryan Seligmann -- on CNN, wondering what would happen to falsely accused people who don't have the resources these kids' parents did for their defense. Another player, Evans, was quoted on CNN.com:
"Many people across this country, across this state, would not have the opportunity that we did, and this could simply have been brushed underneath the rug just as another case and some innocent person would end up in jail for their entire life," Evans said. "It's just not right."Evans also criticized how news reports characterized him and his teammates.
"A great disservice has been done to the sport of lacrosse, and the stereotypes aren't true," Evans said. "They sell magazines and newspapers, but they're not anything that represents us as a sport, as a school, as a university and as a team. And they are wrong."
Finnerty thanked his family, friends and fellow students for their support.
Evans' attorney, Joe Cheshire, admonished the media not to judge suspects before the legal system does:
"Roy Cooper said a word today; the word is I-N-N-O-C-E-N-T. I wanted to make sure everybody got that."
The players and lawyers urged reform in the legal system.
"There seem to be some flaws in the legal system that should be addressed," Finnerty said. "The fact that in North Carolina there are no recordings of the grand jury, and to establish checks and balances on district attorneys."
Here's a check and balance from me: I'd like to see those who can be proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have made a false accusation of rape, to serve the time that would have been served by their victim or victims, the falsedly accused.
Hmmm...speaking of which, it seems the feminist blog Pandagon is strangely silent. Went over there (to the land of irrationality and art theft) to look for recent entries and searched "Duke"...then "Nifong" (nothing at all), and then "lacrosse," and came up with this March 9 tidbit posted by some courageous anonymous blogger called "Sheelzebub":
I realize we should all be weeping and gnashing our teeth over the Duke lacrosse players, who are of course! Suffering just like Emmet Till! but I just can’t.Let’s compare, shall we, the plight of men who have money, who have truckloads of sympathy from people and the media, and who have defense attorneys who have turned them into saints. The plight of men who can have their day in court.
Compare that to women who are lied about, harassed, and stalked online.
Wow. To not have a drop of empathy for what these guys were going through, especially when there was so much evidence that they weren't guilty and were being railroaded...I don't know how you get to that place. And to equate it with being "lied about" online. I've been lied about online, and it is, well, underfun, but I can't imagine ever comparing it to being falsely accused of a crime in my early 20s, vilified in the international press, and looking at a serious threat of serious prison time.
I can, however, understand, why this Pandagon chick, so clearly lacking in humanity, would want to remain anonymous.
Diversity Training For The Marathon
Let's see, one's black, one's Asian, and one is...suffocating?
A Loaf Of...Whatever!
So Rudy Giuliani doesn't know the price of a loaf of bread. This, not his politics, becomes the story?
Campaigning in Alabama on Tuesday, the former New York City mayor portrayed himself as a fiscal conservative and an aggressive fighter of terrorism who has a lot in common with the Deep South state.But when asked about more mundane matters -- like the price of some basic staples -- Giuliani had trouble with a reporter's question.
"A gallon of milk is probably about a $1.50, a loaf of bread about a $1.25, $1.30," he said.
A check of the Web site for D'Agostino supermarket on Manhattan's Upper East Side showed a gallon of milk priced at $4.19 and a loaf of white bread at $2.99 to $3.39. In Montgomery, Ala., a gallon of milk goes for about $3.39 and bread is about $2.
Later Tuesday, the Giuliani campaign pointed out that the national average for bread is $1.17 per pound, as listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government agency also lists milk as costing, on average, $1.60 per half-gallon.
Guess who else doesn't know the price of a gallon of milk or loaf of bread? That would be me. First of all I don't go to the grocery store very often (I live near what people call "The Ghetto Ralphs," so it's a bit of a trek to Gelson's, Trader Joe's, or Whole Foods.) And I buy bread when I need it -- I really don't look at the price. And I don't drink milk, so I never buy milk. Woooo! So, I, an ordinary middle-class citizen, am equally clueless about the prices of both.
Hmmm, what does that say about me? Not fucking much of anything.
There's more:
Giuliani was closer to the mark on the price of a gallon of gasoline."Gas, I think, is $2.89," he said.
His difficulty with grocery items recalled another Republican's supermarket run-in. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush expressed amazement at a high-tech supermarket scanner, prompting critics to argue that he was out of touch with average Americans. The White House cried foul, pointing out that during a grocers' convention Bush had been impressed by a special scanner that could read torn labels.
These are rich guys who don't go to the grocery store often. Do we really believe the "populist" labels just because Bush seems like a guy people want to have a beer with and Giuliani is a New Yawkuh?
Oh, and P.S. I haven't a clue as to how much a gallon of gas is either. Haven't bought it for a long, long time. Kinda like a guy who lives in New York City -- although I'm just a girl who lives in Los Angeles and drives a really fuel-sippy hybrid.
Every Witch Way But Loose
I just posted another Advice Goddess column. This one's from a woman who suspects her husband, stepdad to two girls from a former relationship, of cheating because he seems to be...a really good dad? Here's an excerpt from my answer:
Crime of the century! Right up there with genocide, roadside bombings, and slapping around old ladies. Go ahead, accuse him, based on all the damning evidence at hand: “Why, you…you…really good dad!”You don’t mention finding lipstick on his collar, or a bill for three hours at a motel. Maybe what’s really getting to you is a crayon you pulled out of his jacket pocket, along with a charge slip from Toys “R” Us. You can get away with accusing him of having an affair with the mom, but it’s a little too Wicked Witch to scream at him for maintaining a relationship with the kids: “Admit it! Admit it! I know you bought her a Happy Meal! And her sister, too!”
Sure, he’s sneaking calls to them. Consider this: Guys sneak beers, and maybe cigarettes, but never broccoli. They don’t usually double back from work to mow the lawn, or tiptoe out in the dead of the night to return library books. But, when decency gets criminalized, the decent get sneaky. Chances are, you made it clear that you weren’t willing to share this guy’s attention, not even with a couple kids. That’s probably what made him pull back to self-preservation mode, the diplomacy of “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt me.”
The whole thing is here.
My Other Car Is A Car
Mar Vista hot rod. Give the guy a big "A" for "aspiring."
Hey, I Made The List!
Famous atheists. In pretty good company, too. Here's my neighborhood:
Marilyn Manson, Napoleon Bonaparte, James Watson, Hu Jintao, Jamie Hyneman, Francis Crick, Frank Zappa, Jawaharlal Nehru, James Joyce, Peter Singer, Vardis Fisher, Henry Louis, Amy Alkon, John Lennon, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Olof Palme, Mano Singham, Margaret Sanger, Harry Harrison, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ibn Warraq, Denis Diderot, Alfred Hitchcock, Douglas Adams, Karl Popper, Richard Burton, Irving Berlin, George Orwell, Robert A. Heinlein, Sam Harris...
There's another list I'm not on...yet:
Fatwaworthy in the BloggerspherePossible fatwaworthy sites in the Bloggersphere are many due to the array of sites that contain writings that slander Islam, therefore when I come accross particularly Islamophobic sites I bookmark them under ‘Fatwaworthy?’ Some will be well written while others will be an illogical mess, however, the common denominator between them is that they exist in part or full to spread Islamophobic opinions. Brothers and Sisters, please fell free to suggest additions to the list.
Some may ask ‘What is a Fatwa?’, while others may wonder what had made them worthy as with those deviants whom have recently linked to me in this respect. A fatwa is an Islamic religious ruling, a scholarly opinion on a matter of Islamic law. Therefore, when the Shari’ah again rules the world (inshAllah) the importance may be placed on a fatwa requiring acceptance that Islamophobic sites be peacefully shut down and no longer be permitted to exist. Untill this occurs it may be considered our duty to list such sites and even write/contact websites, media outlets and relevant officials in order to campaign for such sites be closed.
I suggest lots and lots of bloggers link to material that "offends Islam," like that it's evil to murder in the name of religion, backward to treat women worse than pets, and all the rest. In the name of freedom of speech and a show of appreciation for The Enlightment and modern western values.
Hmmm, I wonder, will the new nannyish cry for a blogger's code of conduct apply to people who wish violent ill to others on their blogs, or at the very least, a cessation of freedom of speech?
Personally, I've always been of the mind that the commenters police the commenters. And I welcome bad language, and all language, in fact. If you're racist, or ugly, or stupid, bring it on -- somebody will slap you around. And that's a good thing. Unfree speech doesn't protect anyone -- it just sends the ugly under the rug where it's sure to send you flying when you least expect it.
Feloniously Clean
I don't think I've ever heard a more absurd tale from the War On Sense (more commonly know as the "War On Drugs"). You know that Dr. Bronner's soap?
Well, it's made with hemp, and Don Bolles, drummer of the LA punk band the Germs, reportedly got arrested for possessing it. (They don't say there's any evidence he had a soap bubble pipe and/or was cutting the Dr. Bronner's with dishwashing liquid and selling it to schoolchildren.) From punknews.org:
The net has been abuzz these past few days with rumors that Don Bolles, drummer of legendary LA punk bands the Germs, was arrested on drug charges for posessing hemp-derived soap.While we're still waiting on more official confirmation, here's the bulletin making the MySpace rounds, purportedly from Bolles' recent musical collaborator Nora Keyes.
This past Wednesday night Don Bolles suffered a bizarre and unfortunate interception with the Newport Police Department. He was stopped for a broken tail light. We believe his unconventional looks and old army green van made him the victim of police profiling in this very affluent, quiet town. They searched his van. The only thing they found was a bottle of Dr Bronner’s soap. If you are a good friend of Don’s, you know this is the only cleaning agent he uses for every thing from tooth paste to laundry detergent. The police ran a drug field test on the soap and it came up positive. Dr. Bronner’s is made with hemp seed oil. Maybe this is the reason behind the arresting officer’s error.I spoke with someone who is familiar with forensic drug tests. They said the field test is not absolutely accurate. There are two other drug tests that need to be conducted on the soap. Also, the drug they are ascertaining that Don is in possession of is unusable in a soap base. He is being charged with a felony. His bail is $25,000. He could get up to 20 years in prison. This is very serious. Through a bail bonds company it is 2,500 dollars. Currently we have roughly 1,000 dollars. He is now being held at the Orange County jail. This is not a safe place for Don. With all my heart I do believe Don is innocent. I talked to the Police yesterday at the holding facility.
Their attitude was harsh. This is truly a horrible and sad incident. I spoke with Don a number of times. He is in utter disbelief that this is happening to him. We are asking friends if they could make a contribution of 10-20 dollars or more to help get him out of jail as soon as possible so he can seek legal assistance. Please make contributions to the paypal account below. Also, if anyone knows of a lawyer that can donate their services, please contact me as soon as possible. I spoke with criminal lawyers yesterday and their fees are unbelievably high. Please repost this on your bulletin if your network of friends can help. - deernora@yahoo.com
My Other Car Is A Broom
Check out the sexy bitches, uh, witches. (I think that's me going up the chimney, last time I was in France.)
We see the witches arrive, being anointed, flying up the chimney, flying over Paris (?), and arriving at the sabbat, where the devil is waiting in an ancient circle of standing stones.
Via Metafilter, cackle, cackle.
Sneaking Jesus Into Government
And no, we're not talking about the chocolate one. Dahlia Lithwick writes on Slate about Monica Goodling -- just yet another one of the flock from Pat Robertson's law school flooding into key positions in the Bush administration...in hopes of getting rid of that silly notion of separation of church and state:
Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent's Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that "approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work." And that's precisely what its founder desired. The school's motto is "Christian Leadership To Change the World," and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a "lie of the left," according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.The law school's dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his "vision" statement that students reflect upon "the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system." Jason Eige ('99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: "Your Résumé Is God's Instrument."
This legal worldview meshed perfectly with that of former Attorney General John Ashcroft—a devout Pentecostal who forbade use of the word "pride," as well as the phrase "no higher calling than public service," on documents bearing his signature. (He also snatched the last bit of fun out of his press conferences when he covered up the bared breasts of the DoJ statue the "Spirit of Justice"). No surprise that, as he launched a transformation of the Justice Department, the Goodlings looked good to him.
A request: Can we, in the future, make an effort to put people into the office whose goal is upholding the Constitution and our laws (or rightly challenging wrong laws on constitutional grounds) -- not those whose main aim is ripping them all up and replacing them with their primitive religious texts?
A Speaking Engagement Worth Going To
Thursday at UCLA -- "Totalitarian Islam's Threat to the West," with Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; Yaron Brook, president of Ayn Rand Institute; and the most courageous Wafa Sultan, outspoken critic of Islam and author of the forthcoming book, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster":
What: A panel discussion on the threat of Islamic totalitarianism and how to deal with itWhere: UCLA Campus: Moore 100, Los Angeles, CA
When: Thursday, April 12, 2007, at 7:00 PM
Admission is FREE.
Description: From the Iranian hostage crisis to September 11 to the London subway attacks to the Iraqi insurgency--it is clear the West faces a grave threat from a committed enemy. Conventional wisdom holds that the enemy is a rogue group of fanatics, who have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their crimes. It tells us there is no way to permanently eliminate these violent groups, that we have entered an "age of terror" and that we must give up the desire for a decisive victory.
But is the conventional wisdom right?
A distinguished panel of Middle East experts will provide new and illuminating answers to the most important questions of our time: Is the West ready to concede victory so easily? Are the terrorists a fringe group of fanatics, or are they part of a much wider ideological movement? What threat do they pose to the West? What can the West do to ensure victory? Is peace possible?While the experts will answer these complex questions from diverse points of view, they all agree on one thing: Islamic totalitarianism is a real threat, and the right response necessitates engaging in a principled, ideological battle to defend the West from the jihad declared against it.
Speakers' Biographies:Dr. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle-East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle-East issues. Dr. Brook has served in the Israeli Army and has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, including FOX News (The O'Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, At Large with Geraldo Rivera), CNN's Talkback Live, CNBC's Closing Bell and On the Money, and a C-SPAN panel of experts on terrorism.
Dr. Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. He taught history at the University of Chicago and at Harvard University, and lectured on policy and strategy at the Naval War College. He currently teaches at Pepperdine University. Dr. Pipes is the author of twelve books and numerous articles. He is a columnist for the New York Sun and he appears weekly in Israel's Jerusalem Post, Italy's L'Opinione, Spain's La Razón, and monthly in the Australian and Canada's Globe and Mail. His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is among the most accessed Internet sources of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. Mr. Pipes has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Reports, Crossfire, Good Morning America, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, O'Reilly Factor, The Today Show, the BBC and Al Jazeera.
Dr. Wafa Sultan is a secular Syrian-American writer and thinker, Dr. Sultan is known for her participation in Middle East political debates, widely circulated Arabic essays and television appearances on Al Jazeera, CNN and Fox News. Dr. Sultan was shocked into secularism by the atrocities committed against innocent Syrian people by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1979, including the machine-gun assassination of her professor in front of her eyes at the University of Aleppo, where she was a medical student. On February 21, 2006, she appeared on Al Jazeera, where she scolded Muslims for treating non-Muslims differently and for not acknowledging the accomplishments of non-Muslim societies, including their greater freedom and capacity for producing wealth and technology. She named the Islamic threat to the West as "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose." A video of her appearance, widely circulated on Web logs and through e-mail, has been viewed an estimated 12 million times. Her outspokenness has brought her both threats and praise. Dr. Sultan is currently working on a book to be called "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."
No, I Don't Want To Press "One" For English
As I have to do in almost every municipal or government venue, and when I call any utility or health care facility in Los Angeles, I had to choose between English and Spanish in the automated library book checkout at the downtown LA Public library. (I raced there from Santa Monica at 4:30pm to pull some stats from an obscure book after I realized that this public institution would be closed for the [grrr!] religious holiday on Sunday.)
About the Spanish everywhere thing (not to mention the travesty of Beverly Hills ballots printed in Farsi), I'm with Newt Gingrich on the need for all Americans, including new Americans, to speak English.
The more we coddle immigrants with bilingual services at every turn, the less likely they are to learn English. And, yes, it's hard. It's terribly hard to learn a new language. Sometimes it's just awful. I know because I've gone through some pretty frustrating times in France, but it just compels me to work harder on my suckyass French.
Gingrich, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (and probably a come-from-behind candidate for prez) advises in the LA Times that we should replace bilingual ed programs in public schools with intensive English instruction, and abolish federal mandates requiring multilingual ballots and government docs. An excerpt from Gingrich's piece is below:
...Mastering the language of a country opens doors of opportunity, plain and simple.In the United States, English is by no means our only language, but it is the language of economic success and upward mobility. More important, it is the language of our national unity and political discourse. And just as opportunity is the birthright of all native-born Americans, it becomes the inheritance of all new Americans. But this is nothing more than a nice sentiment if we don't do all we can to encourage and help new Americans learn English.
America is supposed to be a melting pot. If melting doesn't work for you -- "melting" to the degree that you become an American citizen, down to speaking the language -- maybe stay home?
And I've got a little bitchy left for some of you native-born Americans. I was listening to Leykis on Friday when some dumbshit woman from New York was on who didn't know a single potential nominee for president. She couldn't name one. Unfortunately, I find that sort of thing more common in women than men. And hey, I like shoes and frippery as much as the next girl (probably more). But, it doesn't take genius to know what's going on in the country. Just concern and attention. (No, the newspaper isn't simply a giant paper wrapper around the horoscope and Sudoku.)
Saudi Primitivia Opens A Tiny Door For Women
Saudi women are gleeful not to be barred from every sector of their primitive society. Karen Elliot House writes in The Wall $treet Journal that Saudi Arabia has, for the first time, allowed its third-class citizens (women) to enroll in law school:
In a country famous for not letting women drive or reveal their faces in public, the change has some young female students almost giddy with optimism...."We are going to help women know their rights," adds her classmate Sara Alayyaf, 19, looking like an American college girl in tennis shoes with no laces. "Everything is going to change."
It can't change soon enough for Fatima Mansour. While the young law students in Riyadh live their dream, Ms. Mansour sits in jail in the city of Dammam with her 1-year-old son, caught in a Saudi Catch-22.
After her father died a few years ago, Ms. Mansour's half-brothers declared themselves her guardians, even though she was married. They accused her husband of lying to the family about his tribal background before the marriage. As her guardians, they took her to Islamic court and persuaded a judge to force her to divorce her husband.
He has the couple's other child, a 4-year-old daughter, and Ms. Mansour wants to rejoin him. But to do so, now that they have been divorced, would make her guilty of adultery, a grievous crime here. She refuses to go back to the home occupied by the half-brothers who ended her marriage, and there is no other place for the court to send a woman for her protection. So even though there are no charges against the 33-year-old Ms. Mansour, she waits in jail, caught in a system that seems to offer her no escape other than going to her half-brothers, who she fears might kill her.
...As Saudi society tiptoes gingerly into the 21st century, its women remain largely left behind, in a system that tightly limits their independence under the rubric of protecting them. That said, a monthlong visit here finds mounting pressures for liberalization, pockets of surprising change, and optimism, perhaps naive, among younger women that their lives will be far freer.
...Saudi women pressing for change focus chiefly on increasing career opportunities, not on challenging this sex separation. In practical terms, this means persuading workplaces to establish separate sections for women.
"The issue isn't about working so much as creating the proper protected environment in which women can work," says Haifa Jamalallail, dean of Effat College in Jidda, named for a queen who helped bring girls' education to the kingdom in the 1960s.
King Abdullah issued a royal decree last year that women must be encouraged to work in all fields. The decree said government ministries should form women's sections, so that women can represent themselves at government offices rather than have a brother or father or husband do so. So, it is seen as progress here that women now can work as salespeople at Al Faisaliah Mall, a sprawling three-story shopping center in Riyadh, even though they're confined to a floor for women shoppers only.
Playground Insults With Bombs And Guns
Many Muslims in the Middle East are taught, based on a passage in the Koran, that the Jews are descended from apes, and the Christians from pigs.
Nice, huh? At a panel discussion of a bunch of psychologists and scholars of Islam transcribed on FrontPage, professor, psychoanalyst, and author Nancy Kobrin says:
Teaching Saudi children that Jews and Christians are apes and pigs is incitement to violence. It is also teaching them to split off their own aggression and rage and to project it on to targeted dehumanized “others” who are unconsciously associated with the denigrated female. This kind of splitting and projecting is at the core of the Arab shame honor culture. Blaming the other does not permit a space for empathy, which is necessary if you are going to promote change.
David Gutmann, Emeritus professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Med School, and a researcher who's done psychological studies of the Druze and Bedouins, has an explanation:
I am primarily interested not in what these Arabic epithets say about Jews, but what they reveal about the self-image of contemporary Arabs.I suggest that many Muslims believe themselves to be Apes and Pigs - low, shameful creatures who no longer merit Allah's favor.
Bear in mind that contemporary Arabs, a people who are terribly vulnerable to the experience of humiliation, are suffering a crisis of almost unbearable shame.
Global economics, communications and education have dumped them into a modern world in which they are at best second class players. As Arthur Koestler once remarked, save for rugs and dirty postcards (and recently, innovations in suicide bombing), nothing new by way of science, industry, philosophy, literature or art has come out of the Arab world in the past 500 years. The Arab response to their recently exposed backwardness is to feel excruciating shame, and then to project or "export" their shame onto those who in their eyes have inspired it.
And who better than the Jews? The Jews and particularly a relative handful of Zionists have been humiliating the Arabs since the onset of modernity. They have turned Arab deserts into fertile croplands, they have built flourishing cities where there were once Arab hovels, they have recovered from a great butchery to create science, industry and literature as well as a working democratic state with a first-rate army - an army that routinely crushes "the four corners of the (Arab) world in arms."
No wonder that a large proportion of suicide bombers and jihadists come from the ranks of college-educated rather than proletarian Arabs. When young Arabs attend Western academies, who are the great minds that they are introduced to? Answer: among other infidels, a lot of brilliant Jews, including Marx, Einstein and Freud, but - save for the heavily hyped Edward Said – almost no Arab thinkers. Arab students have been dealing with their resulting sense of humiliation by bringing Jihad and intimidation of Jews to any campus where they have attained a critical mass.
So no wonder that too many Arabs readily stigmatize Jews as apes and pigs. In the absence of any reliable evidence that Jews form such a menagerie, this accusation is a clear example of projective thinking ("fetishistic" thinking in Dr. Raddatz' terms) and clinicians know that a projection reveals much more about its source than about its target.
Via these epithets and delusions, the Arabs are telling us that their failure to keep up with the modernizing world makes them feel less than human: in Allah's eyes. They see themselves as pigs who cannot control their baser appetites, and like apes who still walk erect, but who can no longer build and support civilization.
Once formed, this largely unconscious and intolerable self-accusation is - in classic Arab fashion - projected on, exported to the Jews. Using fetishistic thinking, in which symbol ("Pig") is confounded with substance ("Jew") they hope magically to turn us Jews into the animal that is most abhorrent to us. Fused with the person of the Jew, the Pig and the Ape will be "out there"; and the Arab soul will be cleansed, made acceptable to Allah.
You Could Have Gilbert Gottfried Read You The Collected Works Of Chaucer
Or, via Machines Like Us, you could just crucify yourself like a bunch of asshats in the Phillippines. Karen Lema writes for Reuters:
More than a dozen Filipinos were nailed to crosses and scores more whipped their backs into a bloody pulp on Friday in a gory ritual to mark the death of Jesus Christ.The voluntary crucifixions in the northern Philippines were the most extreme displays of religious devotion in this mainly Catholic country, where millions are praying and fasting ahead of the Easter weekend.
In the small village of Cutud, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Manila, seven men cried out as nails the size of pencils were driven into their hands and feet before they were hoisted up in the scorching heat.
Up to 20,000 people watched the spectacle, which has grown from a village production started in 1962 to a media and tourist attraction copied in other parts of the country.
The atmosphere was festive, with hawkers selling beer, ice-cream and souvenir whips. Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" blared out from speakers before the penitents approached the crosses.
If you find cruxifiction and arranging Gottfried too painful and/or inconvenient, check out this link: everything you never wanted to know about "Stairway to Heaven."
"Access To A Waiting List Is Not Access To Health Care"
It seems so simple. Just give everyone health insurance! But, forgetting about who pays (wanna be taxed like the French?), think about who gets served, and how slowwwwwly. Michael Tanner and Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute write in the LA Times about "Universal health care's dirty little secrets":
AS THEY TACK left and right state by state, the Democratic presidential contenders can't agree on much. But one cause they all support — along with Republicans such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and California's own Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — is universal health coverage. And all of them are wrong.What these politicians and many other Americans fail to understand is that there's a big difference between universal coverage and actual access to medical care.
Simply saying that people have health insurance is meaningless. Many countries provide universal insurance but deny critical procedures to patients who need them. Britain's Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year. In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than a year. Many of these individuals suffer chronic pain, and judging by the numbers, some will probably die awaiting treatment.
...Supporters of universal coverage fear that people without health insurance will be denied the healthcare they need. Of course, all Americans already have access to at least emergency care. Hospitals are legally obligated to provide care regardless of ability to pay, and although physicians do not face the same legal requirements, we do not hear of many who are willing to deny treatment because a patient lacks insurance.
You may think it is self-evident that the uninsured may forgo preventive care or receive a lower quality of care. And yet, in reviewing all the academic literature on the subject, Helen Levy of the University of Michigan's Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured, and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago, were unable to establish a "causal relationship" between health insurance and better health. Believe it or not, there is "no evidence," Levy and Meltzer wrote, that expanding insurance coverage is a cost-effective way to promote health. Similarly, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year found that, although far too many Americans were not receiving the appropriate standard of care, "health insurance status was largely unrelated to the quality of care."
photo by Gregg Sutter
Pope On The Ropes
Loved this one from Ayn Rand Institute about the immorality and backwardness of the Pope, leader of, among other things, the barbaric organization that spreads death through lies about and opposition of condom use to people in the developing world:
The Enemy of Prosperity
April 5, 2007
Irvine, CA--In his forthcoming book, the Pope claims that the West, in its pursuit of earthly prosperity, has "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions. "We see how our lifestyle, the history that involved us, has stripped them naked and continues to strip them naked," he writes.
"Contrary to the Pope's statements, the Third World is not impoverished because of Western 'exploitation,'" said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is impoverished precisely because it has failed to embrace Western ideals--the very ideals rejected by Christianity.
"The root of the West's prosperity is its distinctive values of reason, science, and capitalism. Rational minds, free to pursue material prosperity, have produced an explosion of wealth and technology--from electricity to automobiles, from medicines to personal computers--that has improved our lives and extended our lifespan.
"It is obvious that the third world has failed to embrace these values, and has instead remained mired in mysticism and tribalism. But Christianity rejects them as well; it teaches us to scorn science and earthly success in favor of prayer and religious asceticism. As Jesus counseled his followers, 'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.' It is bizarre to suggest that the solution to the third world's rampant poverty is a philosophy that idealizes poverty.
"In rejecting the preconditions and goal of prosperity, the Pope makes it clear that his aim is not to see the Third World advance--it is to condemn the West for its commitment to improving and enjoying life on this earth.
"Those who desire better lives for themselves and their families should reject the Pope's immoral message and embrace the values of reason and freedom."
Correction: "In rejecting the preconditions and goal of prosperity"...except when it comes to gathering and protecting the riches of the church.
Gee, Thanks!
Wow..that made my day. Thanks so much to the anonymous person or people who left me all these $50 payments on Amazon; I guess, in appreciation of the work I do on my blog...and another one for $4.50. It's all appreciated. It was a great surprise. I had no idea, and I opened the e-mail from Amazon and thought it was a mistake! Total of 504.50 in Amazon dollars since January 12, 2007, with a slew of $50 payments on the 31st of March, plus the $4.50 one, too. I'm floored!
In other nicenesses happening to me recently, I hadn't had time to wash my car for pretty much all of March. I'm just getting the little things back in gear...clothes to the dry cleaner, etc., and washing the car and Lucy were on the list. Well, I came out of the house on Wednesday and somebody had washed my car! Wow.
Thank you! All!
Welcome To The Security Circus!
Let's hope the terrorists put the bomb in their toothpaste in their carry-on (and the toothpaste isn't 3 oz. or packed in a Ziploc sandwich baggie) -- because it's probably the only way the TSA toons at the airport are going to find it.
It turned out the TSA missed 90 percent of the bombs in a test at the Denver airport. From Colorado's 9News.com:
"It really is concerning considering that we're paying millions of dollars out of our budget to be secure in the airline industry," said passenger Mark Butler who has had two Army Swiss knives confiscated by screeners in the past. "Yet, we're not any safer than we were before 9/11, in my opinion."The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners failed most of the covert tests because of human error, sources told 9NEWS. Alarms went off on the machines, but sources said screeners violated TSA standard operating procedures and did not hand-search suspicious luggage, wand, or pat down the undercover agents.
"The good news is we have our own people probing and looking and examining the system," said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat in the 7th congressional who sits on the House Homeland Security and transportation committees. "The bad news is they're finding weaknesses."
Oh, please. Speak human, not politician, asshat. Here's an example of how that sounds, from the guy whose team snuck all the bombs through the checkpoints:
"There's very little substance to security," said former Red Team leader Bogdan Dzakovic. "It literally is all window dressing that we're doing. It's big theater on TV and when you go to the airport. It's just security theater."Dzakovic was a Red Team leader from 1995 until September 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, Dzakovic became a federally protected whistleblower and alleged that thousands of people died needlessly. He testified before the 9/11 Commission and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US that the Red Team "breached security with ridiculous ease up to 90 percent of the time," and said the FAA "knew how vulnerable aviation security was."
Dzakovic, who is currently a TSA inspector, said security is no better today.
"It's worse now. The terrorists can pretty much do what they want when they want to do it," he said.
Well, at least they confiscated my itsy bitsy teenie weenie (2.5 inch) scissors!
Also, a Denver woman who carries a Taser for personal protection, told 9NEWS she carried it on board airplanes last year six times. Her Taser shoots 500,000 volts of electricity. She says the TSA never caught it and stopped her.
What's the most outrageous thing you've had missed by the TSA?
via Consumerist and BoingBoing
Johnny's Got A Shun
Law prof Jonathan Turley writes in The Washington Post of parents who drag their kids away from the Turley children -- because the Turley children are allowed to play with toy guns:
My wife and I are hardly poster parents for the National Rifle Association. We are social liberals who fret over every detail and danger of child rearing. We do not let our kids watch violent TV shows and do not tolerate rough play. Like most of our friends, we tried early on to avoid any gender stereotypes in our selection of games and toys. However, our effort to avoid guns and swords and other similar toys became a Sisyphean battle. Once, in a fit of exasperation, my wife gathered up all of the swords that the boys had acquired as gifts and threw them into the trash. When she returned to the house, she found that the boys had commandeered the celery from the refrigerator to finish their epic battle. Forced to choose between balanced diets and balanced play, my wife returned the swords with strict guidelines about where and when pirate fights, ninja attacks and Jedi rescues could occur.When I began to research this issue, I found a library of academic studies with such engaging titles as "Longitudinal Stability of Personality Traits: A Multitrait-Multimethod-Multioccasion Analysis." The thrust was that gender differences do exist in the toys and games that boys and girls tend to choose. The anecdotal evidence in my neighborhood (with more than 60 young kids in a four-block radius) was even clearer: Parents of boys reported endless variations on the celery swords. There seems to be something "hard-wired" with the XY chromosome that leads boys to glance at a small moss-covered branch and immediately see an air-cooled, camouflaged, fully automatic 50-caliber Browning rifle with attachable bayonet.
Many parents can relate to Holley and Warren Lutz, who thought that after their daughter Seeley, they could raise her little brother, Carver, in a weapon-free house. Holley realized her error when she gave 10-month-old Carver a Barbie doll and truck one day. The little boy examined both and then proceeded to run Barbie over repeatedly with the truck. By 2, he was bending his sister's Barbies into L-shapes and using them as guns.
One of my neighbors, Tracy Miller, a child psychologist and mother of three girls and a boy, found that her son instinctively gravitated toward improvised weaponry from an early age, while her girls, who are temperamentally more assertive, never showed the slightest interest. Miller resolved that it was better to allow this type of channeling of aggression, while keeping tabs on how it manifested itself in her son's games.
Her view is supported by a recent flurry of studies looking at boys and their development. Michael Thompson, a psychologist and coauthor of "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys," writes that parents often overreact when confronted with toy guns and other games: "Play is play. Violence is violence." The key is making sure that kids distinguish between the two in their play.
Oh, that parenting thing again. Wouldn't it be a nice thing if parents showed their kids by example, that it's a really good idea to bring rational thought into choice-making, instead of just flying into a tantrum?
Getting At Cancer Before Cancer Gets Us
It was hard to believe Cathy Seipp, who joked about cancer putting a crimp in her "usual Nietzschean sense of physical superiority" would get struck down by the disease. I asked a question in the comments of one of my favorite blogs, cancer surgeon Orac's Respectful Insolence.
As for so many cancers -- can you talk about why they get as far as they do? Are there any advances being made in detection?
I was kind of dejected when nobody -- none of his doctor or researcher readers -- posted any comments in response. Then, one deadline day, I woke up to find this -- Early detection of cancer, part 1: More complex than you think. It's an extraordinarily detailed answer Orac gives, and you should read the whole thing, but here are a few essential points:
It's a common assumption (indeed, a seemingly common sense assumption) that detecting cancer early is always a good thing. Why wouldn't it always be a good thing, after all? It turns out that this is a more complicated question than you probably think, a question that even many doctors have trouble with, and in this post and a followup, I'll try to explain why....The bottom line is that the ever-earlier detection of many diseases, particularly cancer, is not necessarily an unalloyed good. As the detection threshold moves ever earlier in the course of a disease or abnormality, the apparent prevalence of the disease increases, and abnormalities that may never turn into the disease start to be detected at an increasing frequency. In other words, the signal-to-noise ratio falls precipitously. This has consequences. It leads, at the very minimum, to more testing and may lead us to treating abnormalities that may never result in disease that affects the patient, which at the very minimum leads to patient anxiety and at the very worst leads to treatments that put the patient at risk of complications and do the patient no good.
...In other words, early detection makes it appear that fewer people die of the disease, even if treatment has no effect on the progression of the disease. It will also make new treatments introduced after the lower detection threshold takes hold appear more effective.
...Does all of this mean that we're fooling ourselves that we're doing better in treating cancer? Not at all. It simply means that the question of sorting out "real" effects from new treatments from spurious effects due to these biases is more complicated than it at first seems.
...Unfortunately, it is very difficult to convince patients and even most physicians that, if we can detect disease at ever lower thresholds that we shouldn't and that if we can treat cancer at ever earlier time points or ever smaller sizes that we shouldn't. For some tumors, clearly we need to do better at early detection, but for others spending ever more money and effort to find disease at an earlier time point will yield ever decreasing returns and may even lead to patient harm. It is likely that each individual tumor will have a different "sweet spot," where the benefits of detection most outweigh the risks of excessive intervention.
The Pig Picture
I just posted a new Advice Goddess column. Very interesting question, which I answered based on research on the brain (no, men and women aren't the same). Here it is:
Are all guys who aren’t gay gross slobs? So often, when a guy’s invited me over after the second or third date, I’ve discovered such a disgusting disaster area that I wish I’d worn hip-high wading boots. The specifics: dirty, wadded-up towels on the floor, a week’s worth of dirty dishes in the sink, decades of crud on the fixtures, and a bathroom so vile that I put off using it until my bladder’s ready to burst. Do guys simply not see this stuff? Do they see it and just not care? And does it not occur to them that a woman might be turned off by such slovenliness and filth?--Totally Repulsed
My answer starts here:
It isn’t that guys don’t notice the filth, it just takes them a little longer -- like until the crud impedes access to the bathroom or the fuzz on the dishes evolves to the point where it hisses at the dog.Now, not every straight guy is a slob, and not every gay guy is fastidious, but there’s a reason the TV hit was “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” and not “Straight Eye For The Queer Guy” -- the home makeover show to help all the gay men whose living spaces have been featured in “Architectural Digest.” And, sure, there are squalor-dwelling chicks out there, but when a woman apologizes for her “disaster area” it’s likely she’s telling you she’s run out of color-coordinated Kleenex and forgotten to pick up fresh flowers.
Because many women can’t imagine that a man would think differently than they do (thanks, in part, to the toxic mold that is radical feminism) they often take it personally when a man invites them into what looks to be a one-bedroom/one-bath Petri dish decorated in a landfill motif. The perceived insult may be magnified if he’s a guy who typically looks shaved and bathed, and like he picked his clothes out at a department store, not out of a dumpster. I mean, jeez, in honor of your presence, couldn’t he have at least hosed the place down?
The truth is, as you suspected, straight guys just don’t have the filth and disarray vision that women and gay men do. Studies show gay men’s attention to environmental detail is similar to that of straight women...
The rest of my answer is here.
Note: comments on my columns will no longer require approval. I'm not quite sure why they ever did!
You Never Know When You'll Encounter A Unitarian Terrorist
In another idiotic P.C. move, the European Union has drawn up guidelines for government spokes-tools to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism when they make a statement. After all, they wouldn't want to give the utterly true impression that the Koran is filled with statements advocating violence against non-Muslims!...and, which barbarians, whose only hope of sex is probably 72 virgins in a place there's no evidence exists, carry out! From a Telegraph/UK story by Bruno Waterfield, in Brussels:
Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers "non-offensive" phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.Banned terms are said to include "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist".
The word "jihad" is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.
One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term "Islamic terrorism" to be replaced by "terrorists who abusively invoke Islam".An EU official said that the secret guidebook, or, "common lexicon", is aimed at preventing the distortion of the Muslim faith and the alienation of Muslims in Europe.
"The common lexicon includes guidance on a number of frequently used terms where lack of care by EU and member states' spokespeople may give rise to misunderstandings," he said.
"Careful usage of certain terms is not about empty political correctness but stems from astute awareness of the EU's interests in the fight against terrorism.
Luckily, one guy gets it:
...UK Independence Party MEP Gerard Batten claimed that the EU was in denial over the true roots of terrorism."This type of newspeak shows that the EU refuses to face reality," he said. "The major world terrorist threat is one posed by ideology and that ideology is inspired by fundamentalist jihadi Islam."
Excuse me, but I don't think Theo Van Gogh was killed by a Tibetan monk, a little old Jewish grandmother, or an astrology buff. As for the Unitarians, lemme know when somebody blows himself up in a mall after quoting liberally from fellow Unitarian, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
George Bush In China
Click here.
Why Learn From History When You Can Just Erase It?
From the AP, Japan's putting out high school textbooks with a sanitized version of history:
Japan's government ordered changes to seven history textbooks that said the country's army forced civilians to commit mass suicide at the end of World War II, amid moves by Tokyo to soften brutal accounts of its wartime conduct....In one of the key correction orders announced Friday, seven history textbooks were ordered to modify sections that said the Japanese army — faced with an impending U.S. invasion in 1945 — handed out grenades to residents on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa and ordered them to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Americans.
"There are divergent views of whether or not the suicides were ordered by the army, and no proof to say either way. So it would be misleading to say the army was responsible," said Education Ministry official Yumiko Tomimori.
The publishers of the textbooks, slated for use in high schools next year, have been asked to make relevant changes and submit them for approval by a government-appointed expert panel, said.
Accounts of forced group suicides on Okinawa are backed up by historical research, as well as testimonies from victims' relatives. Historians also say civilians were induced by government propaganda to believe U.S. soldiers would commit horrible atrocities, thereby killing themselves and their families to avoid capture.
But in recent years, some academics have questioned whether the suicides were forced — part of a general push by Japanese conservatives to soften criticism of Tokyo's wartime conduct.
In the UK also, history is being cleaned up (No more Holocaust! Bye-bye, Crusades!) to keep from offending Muslims whose beliefs include Holocaust denial, and for whom lessons about the Crusades might contradict what they're taught in local mosques. And even the Christians got into the revisionistic act! From a story by Laura Clark in the Daily Mail:
The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."But Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: "History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable."
The researchers also warned that a lack of subject knowledge among teachers - particularly at primary level - was leading to history being taught in a 'shallow way leading to routine and superficial learning'.
Lessons in difficult topics were too often 'bland, simplistic and unproblematic' and bored pupils.
You know, if you can't deal with real life in the post-Enlightenment west, with freedom of speech and free and open societies -- perhaps you belong elsewhere...in those special societies where there's tight control over "history," textbooks, and the press.
A Girlfriend Who Appreciates A Boyfriend's Sense Of Humor
Gregg was working on my site last night and did this to "Amy's Book Picks" to make me laugh.
P.S. And Gregg's the mature one in the relationship. Scary, huh?
Did "God" Create Homer Simpson?
On MSNBC, in a little debate with all-too-rare rational human being Sam Harris, silly author and pastor Rick Warren just knows there's a god! Why? Because he sees "the finger prints of God everywhere" (hmmm...or does Matt Groening have really big hands?). About those fingerprints, supposedly of god:
WARREN: I see them in culture. I see them in law. I see them in literature. I see them in nature. I see them in my own life. Trying to understand where God came from is like an ant trying to understand the Internet.
Um...I see no actual proof there is a god, so I don't really worry about where "god" "came from." When I see evidence there's a god, I'll start trying to trace the trail back to its source. Until then, I'll leave the arrogance of certainty and the idiocy of "faith" to the business of relgion.
Warren continues:
...Even the most brilliant scientist would agree that we only know a fraction of a percent of the knowledge of the universe.
Yes, which doesn't mean we get to just make the rest of the shit up.
Warren's a real smart guy. Check this out:
WARREN: If you're asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don't.
Yo, genius, listen to Harris:
HARRIS: I'm doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience; I'm very close to the literature on evolutionary biology. And the basic point is that evolution by natural selection is random genetic mutation over millions of years in the context of environmental pressure that selects for fitness.WARREN: Who's doing the selecting?
HARRIS: The environment. You don't have to invoke an intelligent designer to explain the complexity we see.
WARREN: Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions. I'm willing to admit my presuppositions: there are clues to God. I talk to God every day. He talks to me.
HARRIS: What does that actually mean?
WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, "God, I need you to help me with this," as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, "I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case." Now, if that happened once in my life I'd say, "That is a coincidence." If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.
HARRIS: There must have been times in your ministry when you've prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.
WARREN: Oh, absolutely.
HARRIS: So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.
WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I've had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional.
Yeah, I'm emotional: I find it tragic so many people believe in what is, essentially, witchdoctory, but with better architecture.
Eeeeuw! A few webpages later, Warren shows what a creepy little person he is. Now, all the evidence I can see points to the fact that I'll die, then I'll become worms. There's no evidence of anything beyond. So, I live hard, as this appears to be the only life I've got, and I try to "leave the campground better than I found it." Good for good's sake, basically. Not because it's my ticket to "heaven" -- a place there's no proof of whatsoever.
Here's creepy Rick Warren's take on it:
WARREN: ...If death is the end, shoot, I'm not going to waste another minute being altruistic.
Lucky thing, we have irrational thought to thank for keeping primitive Rick Warren moral.
Another Question About Tipping
This one's about tipping the maid in hotels. I'll tell you what I said after you tell me what you think. Here's the question from a reader:
This is about the folks who service the rooms in Motels. I usually leave a tip when the room has been serviced for me -- when I stay more than one night. But what about the times that I arrive in the evening -- fully expecting the room to be clean and made up, and leave the following morning. At that point I have had no contact with the service staff. I know they are overworked and underpaid, but is it really my job to pay their wages?
I Don't Think Terrorists Have Hollywood Agents
(It's hard enough to get one if you're a screenwriter with credits.)
I've known Zak, mostly in passing, for the better part of a decade, because he plunks away on his computer at many of the same So Cal coffee shops I do. I think we first met about seven years ago at the coffee shop near 11th and Montana -- I can't even remember the name now -- when he was in film school. I hadn't seen him for a while, and suddenly he reappeared at my Saturday haunt, and explained why. He'd been stuck in Britain, his re-entry to the USA postponed, as he was targeted as a potential security risk. Zak, a security risk? What for, explosive dialogue?
Zak tells his story in LA Weekly:
I had an entire life back in L.A. that I had put on hold. I had rent and medical insurance to pay, two cars to maintain, not to mention business meetings I’d had to cancel and an increasingly frustrated agent. Even my girlfriend, vehemently opposed to long-distance relationships, threatened to leave me.My lawyer eventually figured out that my name appeared on a State Department watch list. He concluded the authorities may have mistaken me for a terrorist.
We found out that the man sentenced to death in Pakistan for abducting and helping to kill the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had a scarily similar profile to me: We shared the same name (Ahmed) and similarly spelled last name (Shaikh). He had attended the London School of Economics, where I was an undergraduate. Even spookier, he had attended Forest School, a rival high school to my own alma mater, Chigwell Boys.
It didn’t seem to matter that this guy had grown a beard, bought an AK-47 and joined the Kashmir Liberation Front, while I had gone to L.A. to purchase a Starbucks loyalty card and write movies. In the eyes of the U.S. authorities, it appeared, we might as well have been the same person.
Three months passed and I still had no word. Given that I’d attended USC film school, paid taxes to the U.S. government for years, and lived and breathed that all-American institution of Hollywood, I did ask the obvious question: “Why me?” Was it simply because of my British Muslim background?
Now, this guy has a screenplay in production -- an adaptation of the book Yardie, plus other Hollywood credits, and a Hollywood Foreign Press Association award for a screenplay he wrote in USC. Here's his bio from a short he produced:
Zak Shaikh graduated from USC's MFA Writing for Film and TV program. He is currently attached to produce the feature film 'Yardie', the screenplay of which he adapted from the best-selling novel. He has worked at Dreamworks Animation, and as an Assistant Producer on the HBO film 'Lackawanna Blues'. Zak hails from London where he was a journalist after graduating from the London School of Economics.
How much genius does it take to figure out he isn't Osama bin Screenwriter? I mean, don't these government agents have telephones, computers...Google? If this is the level of "intelligence" we've got working for us...well, it's a bit scary.
A Wine Column For Regular People
I know a few things about wine -- about three things, that is:
1. I like white better than red.
2. You're not supposed to chill red.
3. I forget the third.
Karen Page is an over-achieving, self-made woman from Michigan (like me), married to chef Andrew Dornenburg. Together, they're award-winning food writers (James Beard Award, Georges Duboeuf Award, and Gourmand World Cookbook Award), and a lot of fun, and the two of them just started a wine column in The Washington Post for people like me. Here's an excerpt from their first:
Wine isn't the first thing that might come to mind when you think about eggs. After all, it's bad form, not to mention a warning sign of alcoholism, to drink before noon. But since egg-based dishes, despite their breakfast connotations, play so well in other meals, especially this time of year, the question arises: What wine should you drink with them?Joshua Wesson of the Best Cellars retail chain once told us memorably: "Wood and eggs are an awful combination. If you want to make someone suffer, serve them barrel-aged chardonnay with an egg salad sandwich!"
Of course, then we had to taste the combination of a particularly oaky chardonnay and egg salad for ourselves. It struck us as a cross between tinfoil and one of Harry Potter's more distasteful Every Flavor Beans. Our tongues still haven't forgiven us that research.
In general, savory egg dishes such as omelets, frittatas and quiches are well-matched by a dry champagne, especially blanc de blancs (that is, 100 percent chardonnay), or sparkling wine. Chardonnay -- unoaked or very lightly oaked, of course (as if you could forget) -- works, too.
A general rule of thumb for identifying an unoaked chardonnay: The lighter the color and the lower the price, the less likely it is to have spent time in expensive oak barrels. More important, check the label. While some indicate the wine is "unoaked" or "oak free" (as does the smooth-textured St. Supery Estate Oak Free Chardonnay), wineries sometimes have fun with their wording. For example, Trevor Jones christens its unoaked chardonnay "Virgin," and Four Vines describes its own as "Naked."
