Red Sky At Night
Better late than never -- photos from the LA Press Club Awards a few weeks ago. I got a second place for my column and a first place for my headline "From Beer To Eternity."
Above we have my friends French journo Emmanuelle Richard, now writing mainly for Madame Figaro, and former Angeleno Nancy Rommelmann, who took first in both the LA Press Club Awards and the alt weekly awards for her JT Leroy/Laura Albert piece in the LA Weekly.
Nancy and I posed for our lesbian closeup here:
Nancy/Amy photo by Emmanuelle Richard
Equal Protection, Unless You're Black Or Latino, Then You Get More
The Supreme Court and the WSJ sneer at the Ricci decision by Sotomayor and company:
The Supreme Court closed an otherwise unremarkable term on a high note yesterday, rejecting the notion that one kind of racial bias can be remedied by another. On the last day of opinions before the Court is potentially joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Justices overturned one of her most closely scrutinized cases on workplace discrimination. The effect was to take an important step away from the practice of divvying up jobs by race.Writing for a 5-4 majority in Ricci v. deStefano, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the city of New Haven violated civil-rights law when it threw out firefighter promotional exams because more whites than blacks or Hispanics had passed the tests. New Haven claimed it had to junk the tests because certifying the results would lead to an avalanche of lawsuits by black candidates who hadn't passed. In other words, the city claimed it had to intentionally discriminate against white candidates out of fear that the tests unintentionally had a "disparate impact" against minorities.
But the Court found no evidence that the tests were flawed or that better alternatives for promotion existed. On the contrary, employment tests are an important tool against the very kind of racial discrimination that civil-rights laws were designed to prevent. "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Kennedy wrote. The Supremes created this "disparate impact" reverse discrimination incentive with its 1971 Griggs decision, since codified into law, but at least five Justices are still able to object to this kind of blatant racial injustice.
In the opening of her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes that "the white firefighters who scored high on New Haven's promotional exams understandably attract this Court's sympathy." To which Justice Samuel Alito replied in a majority concurring opinion that "'Sympathy' is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law -- of Title VII's [of the 1964 Civil Rights Act] prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today's decision, has been denied them."
By a "wise Latina," who puts empathy before the law. Personally, I felt sorriest for Ricci, the white guy with dyslexia who spent a lot of money prepping for the test then had his good score yanked out from under him.
And, most absurdly, while she'll probably get on the Supreme Court, she probably couldn't get on a jury. Andy McCarthy writes at NRO:
Let's say she forthrightly explained to the court during the voir dire (the jury-selection phase of a case) that she believed a wise Latina makes better judgments than a white male; that she doubts it is actually possible to "transcend [one's] personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law"; and that there are "basic differences" in the way people "of color" exercise "logic and reasoning." If, upon hearing that, would it not be reasonable for a lawyer for one (or both) of the parties to ask the court to excuse her for cause? Would it not be incumbent on the court to grant that request?
The Vagina Gang
Christina Hoff Sommers isn't one of them -- the ladies who stand first for "feminist scholarship," and second for the truth. She writes on AEI:
Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K. D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.Her reply began:
"I appreciate and share your concern for veracity in all of our scholarship. However, I would expect a colleague who is genuinely concerned about such matters to contact me directly and give me a chance to respond before launching a public attack on me and my work, and then contacting me after the fact."I confess: I had indeed publicly criticized Lemon's book, in campus lectures and in a post on FeministLawProfessors.com. I had always thought that that was the usual practice of intellectual argument. Disagreement is aired, error corrected, truth affirmed. Indeed, I was moved to write to her because of the deep consternation of law students who had attended my lectures: If authoritative textbooks contain errors, how are students to know whether they are being educated or indoctrinated? Lemon's book has been in law-school classrooms for years.
One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack.
That's just a start. She gives unbelievable examples. Read the whole thing -- and note this, especially:
The critical work of 21st-century feminism will be to help women in the developing world, especially in Muslim societies, in their struggle for basic rights. False depictions of the United States as an oppressive "patriarchy" are a ludicrous distraction. If American women are as oppressed as Ugandan women, then American feminists would be right to focus on their domestic travails and let the Ugandan women fend for themselves.All books have mistakes, so why pick on the feminists? My complaint with feminist research is not so much that the authors make mistakes; it is that the mistakes are impervious to reasoned criticism. They do not get corrected. The authors are passionately committed to the proposition that American women are oppressed and under siege. The scholars seize and hold on for dear life to any piece of data that appears to corroborate their dire worldview. At the same time, any critic who attempts to correct the false assumptions is dismissed as a backlasher and an anti-feminist crank.
Saturday Night At The Train Station
Tucson, Arizona. 
Must Not Appeal To The Patriarchal Oppressors!
I was looking for some stuff on feminist perceptions about women who try to look attractive for men, and came upon this silliness in the comments on Feministing:
[6+] Steven replied to Carmen:
What about privilege or classist arguments against fashion and style? Hair, make up, clothes are all displays of wealth and not everyone can afford their own unique style, or have the time for it.[5+] alixana replied to Steven:
I think there is very little that gets talked about on this website that isn't full of classist implications. Even in activist circles and websites that get an A+ in intersectionality, just the ability to have the time and access to them is a class privilege.
Oh, please. You can get a thing of sparkly eyeshadow that lasts you a year or more at the 99 Cent Store. But, if you still can't afford to look good...everyone else should look all haggy to make up for it? Or...maybe you should get a job or a better job or create your own job and work until you, too, can afford a 99-cent pot of eyeshadow.
Frankly, undercapitalized men have it rougher. Ever try taking a girl for a date in Los Angeles on the bus? Unfortunately, they don't sell cars at the 99 Cent store -- except for the kind that come in packages of four or six.
Of course, there were the expected nitwits in Feministing's comments section complaining that men aren't expected to wear makeup like the poor, downtrodden wymyn are. Of course, if these poor oppressed women and their pet eunuchs didn't spend their time in college in the women's studies ghetto, they might've learned that men and women are biologically and psychologically different; that women are nowhere near as looks-driven as men, although across cultures, they prefer tallness and symmetry in men. Accordingly, while straight men aren't likely to be seen in makeup, my cool shoemaker, who's been in the business for 45 years, just told me a number of the male Hollywood stars he's made elevator shoes for. (No, I can't reveal them, since I don't think he thought I'd blog that information.)
Finally -- sure, more and more, there are some, uh, lipstick feminists out there, but the prevailing thinking -- the one that's trickled into our culture like toxic sewage -- is the notion that women degrade themselves by doing anything at all to their appearance to appeal to men.
What Islam Costs Us
A visit to the Statue of Liberty sure has changed since I was there in the summer of 1981. Shawn Macomber writes in reason about the post 9/11 security:
During my visit, a group of elderly World War II vets festooned with embroidered patches reading "POW" and "Combat Wounded Veteran" were struggling to get through a secondary screening in a tent outside the statue. "No exceptions to the secondary security screening," a burly officer growled as the EntryScan 3 puffed in the background. If these men want to visit the emblem of what they bled for on some godforsaken battlefield, the hats, belts, jackets, canes, and insignia pins all need to be removed and examined...again.Two weary veterans demurred and were given a single stool to share between them while their comrades made the tour. Honoring veterans, U.S. Park Police style. It seemed ludicrously disrespectful, but perhaps Homeland Security had received a tip about a recently activated Al Qaeda sleeper cell recruited at Guadalcanal in '42.
How To Play It As The Scorned Wife In The Media Lights
In Newsweek, Kathleen Deveny calls Sanford's wife a "media genius" for the way she worked the media to her best advantage:
She said she still loves her man and that she remains willing to forgive him and welcome him back. She quoted Psalm 127, that "sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him."When I first heard it, I felt a stab of disappointment--yet another political wife scorned, somehow willing to put on a pastel suit and sob quietly in the background as her husband explains all the very good reasons why he had boinked a dear (tan) old friend, had an affair with a man, or spent good money on a tacky hooker. All of those wives have my sympathy: Suzanne Craig, wife of former senator Larry (wide stance) Craig. Dina McGreevey, former wife of former New Jersey governor Jim ("I am a gay American") McGreevey. Silda Wall Spitzer, wife of former New York governor Eliot (Client 9) Spitzer.
But there are a few wronged political wives who get my respect, as well. And I'm beginning to think Jenny Sanford is one of them. On second read, her statement is kind of perfect. It's loving. It's forgiving. It is pious. And she really kicks some butt, if you're willing to read between the lines. She reclaimed the high ground: she "put forth every possible effort to be the best wife during almost 20 years of marriage" (i.e., she did nothing to deserve this). She believes in the sanctity of marriage (he's a cheating bastard). She is ready to forgive completely (because she's a better person than he'll ever be) "as long as he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance" (there will be hell to pay). She says she will continue to focus on raising her sons to be honorable young men (unlike their dirtbag father). She had kept the separation quiet, she said, to protect those four beautiful boys, and because of the separation, she really hadn't a clue about where her husband was.
It is completely possible that she didn't mean any of those things. But what wife (or former wife, in my case) can't imagine what she'd like to say if she found herself in Jenny Sanford's pumps? And I'm guessing she had an inkling that the luv guv wasn't hiking the Appalachian Trail. By letting him hang himself--and look really dopey while doing it--she somehow managed to come out of a god-awful mess with a little bit of dignity. She may even have become the latest member of an elite club no woman wants to join: Scorned political wives who turn victimhood to their own advantage.
The Zero Profit Motive
Shira Schoenberg writes for the Concord Monitor of a store that won't stock trash bags for some new state trash scheme:
Rebekah Allen of Concord came to Market Basket yesterday to do her shopping, and planned to look for the new trash bags required by the city's pay-as-you-throw system. The bags were not there.Market Basket, alone among Concord's major supermarkets, has decided not to stock the trash bags. Their logic is simple: Why sell an item for which the store gets no profit?
Allen, when told of the decision, said she would still shop at Market Basket, and she did not mind going to another store for trash bags.
"I think it's a bad program anyway," Allen said of pay-as-you-throw. "I agree with (Market Basket)."
By refusing to sell the purple pay-as-you-throw bags, Market Basket has inserted itself into the controversy over a new trash system that will require Concord residents to pay for each bag of trash they throw out, beginning July 6.
Market Basket's decision was made on the corporate level, not at local stores. David McLean, operations manager for Market Basket, said the company is reviewing its policy in Concord and in multiple other communities where pay-as-you-throw has been instituted. Market Basket has 59 stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
"All of a sudden, all these towns are taking on these programs and wanting businesses to subsidize the towns and do it for nothing, and have their customers foot the expense of carrying those products," McLean said.
The way the program works is the city has a contract with a South Carolina company called Waste Zero. Waste Zero manufactures the bags and recruits stores to sell them. Waste Zero stores the bags in warehouses, and the individual stores contact Waste Zero to have bags shipped to them.
Consumers then pay $1 for a 15-gallon trash bag and $2 for a 30-gallon bag. The stores get none of that money. Instead, the stores must send all the money they collect from the bags to Waste Zero, which takes a cut and gives the rest of the money to the city. Mark Dancy, president of Waste Zero, said his company typically keeps 20 to 25 cents for each large bag.
via Insty
Working The Room
Here I am at the annual alt weeklies conference doing the hard sell.
Actually, I write about this in my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, on the collapse of manners and how to change things (Oct. 30, 2009, McGraw-Hill): The way some people are talented at soccer or ballroom dancing I am talented at sleeping. I can just put my head down and nap.
It's not a natural talent -- I learned to do it after taking one yoga class. Hate-hate-hated yoga, especially Santa Monica-style, and never went back, but now I can slow down my breathing and conk myself out.
photo by Clif Garboden
Night Light
The sky over Tucson, Arizona, where I'm attending the alt weeklies' annual conference.
Jesus Wasn't Such A Great Guy, Says Robert Wright
From a Salon interview of Wright by Steve Paulson:
So later Christians, Paul among others, really institutionalized Christianity. What about the historical Jesus? What do we know about him?It's popular to say he said the good stuff and not the less good stuff. I think it's the opposite.
He's typically seen as the great prophet of peace and love.
Yeah. But the fact is, the Sermon on the Mount, which is a beautiful thing, does not appear in Mark, which was the first written gospel. And these views are not attributed to Jesus in the letters of Paul, which are the earliest post-crucifixion documents we have. You see Paul develop a doctrine of universal love, but he's not, by and large, attributing this stuff to Jesus. So, too, with "love your enemies." Paul says something like love your enemies, but he doesn't say Jesus said it. It's only in later gospels that this stuff gets attributed to Jesus. This will seem dispiriting to some people to hear that Jesus wasn't the great guy we thought he was. But to me, it's actually more inspiring to think that the doctrines of transnational, transethnic love were products of a multinational, imperial platform. Throughout human history, as social organization grows beyond ethnic bounds, it comes to encompass diverse ethnicities and nations. And if it develops doctrines that bring us closer to moral truth, like universal love, that is encouraging. I think you see it in all three religions.
If Jesus was not the prophet of love and tolerance that he's commonly thought to be, what kind of person was he?
I think he was your typical Jewish apocalyptic preacher. I'm not the first to say that. Bart Ehrman makes these kinds of arguments, and it goes back to Albert Schweitzer. Jesus was preaching that the kingdom of God was about to come. He didn't mean in heaven. He meant God's going to come down and straighten things out on Earth. And he had the biases that you'd expect a Jewish apocalyptic preacher to have. He doesn't seem to have been all that enthusiastic about non-Jews. There's one episode where a woman who's not from Israel wants him to use his healing powers on her daughter. He's pretty mean and basically says, no, we don't serve dogs here. He compares her to a dog. In the later gospels, that conversation unfolds so you can interpret it as a lesson in the value of faith. But in the earliest treatment, in Mark, it's an ugly story. It's only because she accepts her inferior status that Jesus says, OK, I will heal your daughter.
QuantcastBut wasn't Jesus revolutionary because he made no distinctions between social classes? The poor were just as worthy as the rich.
It's certainly plausible that his following included poor people. But I don't think it extended beyond ethnic bounds. And I don't think it was that original. In the Hebrew Bible, you see a number of prophets who were crying out for justice on behalf of the poor. So it wasn't new that someone would have a constituency that includes the dispossessed. I'm sure in many ways Jesus was a laudable person. But I think more good things are attributed to him than really bear weight.
So you are distinguishing between Jesus and Christ -- Jesus the flesh and blood historical figure as opposed to how he was later represented as Christ, the son of God.
That's right. There's no evidence that Jesus thought he should be equated with God. He may have thought he was a messiah, but "messiah" in those days didn't mean what it's come to mean to Christians. It meant a powerful figure who leads his people to victory, perhaps a successful revolt against the Romans. But Christ as we think of Christ -- the son of God -- that's something that emerges in the later gospels and reaches its climax in John, which is the last of the four Gospels to be written. So the story of what Jesus represents in theology did not take shape during his lifetime.
Wright's new book is The Evolution of God
AZ Voters May Ban Racism And Sexism In Hiring
Howard Fischer writes for the AZ Star of an amendment to prohibit special treatment for women and minorities, "politely" referred to as "affirmative action." Yes, that's actually racism and sexism -- same as special treatment for white guys. Californian Ward Connerly is behind the measure:
Connerly, who pushed through a similar measure in his home state in 1996, said it "sets the tone that government should not be discriminating against its citizens or granting anyone preferential treatment."He also said this measure simply mirrors the intent of other civil-rights laws that already ban discrimination.
"We sometimes forget that these laws are not just there for women and minorities," he said.
"They're there to apply to everybody. Black people aren't the only ones to have civil rights," said Connerly, who is black.
Federal courts have outlawed numerical quotas that spell out that a certain percentage of school admissions, jobs or contracts must go to minorities or women.
But judges have upheld affirmative-action programs designed to help groups that have been underrepresented. And the courts also have allowed certain bid preferences if the government can show minorities or women are not getting a share of contracts.
Here's a blogger all angry that no vaginas were on this panel:
Media analysis: no women need apply?
When MediaBistro announced its upcoming panel discussion titled "Finding a Business Model for News and Online Media", it listed only white men as panelists, thus joining a list of other apparently well-meaning organizations whose leaders tend to see only men as media innovators. In MediaBistro's case, this is particularly ironic, since the pioneering Web-based all-things-media outlet and consulting company was founded by Laurel Touby, a woman.The Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) community took issue with MediaBistro's treatment, issuing this letter:
Dear MediaBistro and Demand Studios,We applaud your efforts to create an "an open discussion about the business models, innovation, and power of community that are changing journalism." But your selection of presenters on this subject has forced us to wonder to whom, exactly, this discussion is open.
We won't stand for another panel exclusively composed of white males when the future of our media is at stake. As members of Women, Action & the Media, we know all too well that white-male-dominated conversations produce white-male-dominated media models. We ask you to stand with us instead, to create a sustainable new journalism that includes and supports all of us, including women and people of color.
It's not hard to find qualified women to serve on your "Finding a Business Model for News and Online Media" panel. Here are just a few we've come up with today:
Tina Brown, The Daily Beast
Ada Calhoun, Babble
Gabrielle Darbyshire, Gawker Media
Nicki Gilmour, The Glass Hammer, founder and CEO of Evolved People Media LLC
Erica Gruen, Quantum Media
Kathleen Hall Jameson, director, Annenberg Public Policy Center
Carol Jenkins, president, Women's Media Center
Rita Henley Jensen, Women's eNews
Esther Kaplan, The Nation Institute
Dori Maynard, president, The Maynard Institute
Gina McCauley, Blogging While Brown
Laurel Touby, your founder at mediabistro.com
Sheryl Hilliard Tucker, executive editor, Time, Inc.
Joan Walsh, Salon
Tracy Van Slyke, The Media Consortium
Deanna Zandt, media technologistPlease let us know if you need help getting in touch with any of these exceptional women - we'd be very happy to help make those connections.
Signed,
Apparently, MediaBistro has been successfully bullied, Tweeting this:
We hear you & you're right. We'll add a panelist in the coming weeks. Stay tuned... http://bit.ly/272SxO.
The panelists MediaBistro currently has?
•Moderator: Jon Fine, media columnist, BusinessWeek.
•Jay Rosen, press critic, writer, and NYU journalism prof.
•Matt Romanoski of NJNewsroom, a "breaking news site" created by 40 journalists formerly of the Star-Ledger newspaper.
By the way, I'm on a journalism panel, too, in late August, with three other women. Gasp! Men, and specifically, white men, are unrepresented? Um, yeah. The person leading the panel tried to get a number of different men to be on the panel, and they were all going to be busy or out of town on the appointed day.
AZ link via ifeminists
A 90-Year-Old Guy Rang Up My Friend Lenore Skenazy
She's been called stuff like "the worst mom in the world" because she let her then-9-year-old son Izzy take a subway ride by himself. Well, he's not the only one. 90-year-old Irving somebody or other called her up the other day to tell her that he did the same at 10. Lenore writes on HuffPo:
Now here's a guy who has been married for 66 years. He has children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and even two great great grandchildren, which I wasn't sure was humanly possible. He fought in World War II. But one of the defining moments of his LIFE was that first time he did something "grown up" by himself.In 1929.
So these past few weeks, when I've found myself on talk shows that attract callers who would like to personally tie me to the subway tracks (or tie my son, to teach me a lesson), Irving became my new touchstone.
My whole point - lost on these lovely callers -- is not to deny that there is danger in the world. It's just to put that danger back in perspective so we can give our children exactly what Irving has treasured for eight solid decades: The chance to say: "I did it myself!"
A chance we've started denying our kids.
She blames a number of things for getting parents to this point:
*A litigious society that has trained us to consider every situation in light of, "What if?" and dream up worst-case scenarios.*A kiddie safety industry that keeps warning us about remote childhood dangers so we'll run and buy their products, from baby knee pads to toddler helmets. (Yes, for real: helmets your child is supposed to wear to protect his brain while learning to walk. As if evolution hadn't already come up with that whole "skull" thing.)
*A legion of parenting magazines and advice books eager to point out the hideous and lasting effects of giving our kids the wrong food, book, toy, feedback, praise, discipline, hug, class, or rattle, so we'll buy their words of wisdom (that worry us even more).
*I even blame Sesame Street. Because if you go get the collector's DVD, "Sesame Street: Old School," featuring highlights from 1969-1974, all you'll see are delightful scenes of kids playing follow-the-leader and tag and such without any grown-ups around. And even though this show was created to model the IDEAL safe, happy childhood as envisioned by a battery of psychologists and educators, this nostalgia-fest comes with the warning: "These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups." Like a porno movie! The wimps at PBS refuse to sanction any notion that kids can play on their own anymore. So now it's modeling the NEW norm: Constant parental supervision.
...But in reality, most criminals do not hide in the bushes outside school. They know their victims. Often, they live with them. And rather than being fiendishly clever, a lot of them are just drunk (so said the Mayo Clinic, too). So the idea that kids are being snatched right and left by lurking pedophiles is wrong.
As is our perception of the crime rate. Since its peak in the early '90s, the crime level has plummeted by about 50%. Nationally, crimes against kids and adults are back to the levels of 1970. Here in New York, they're back to the levels of about 1963. So if you were growing up and playing outside in the '70s or '80s, your children are actually safer than you were.
Hitchens: No Reason To Believe There's A God
Why is it, he asks, that the religious are so determined to be slaves?
Two Funny Sanford Tweets From Walter Olson
Overlawyered's Walter Olson is one of those Tweeters I really like -- he never tells you he's boarding a plane or that he might've eaten some bad clams. Just stuff like this:
@walterolson Gov. Sanford: "marriage should only be between a man, a woman, and another woman from Argentina." (h/t Tunku V.)
@walterolson You know, "hiking the Appalachian Trail" may be the best euphemism ever (h/t: Stephanie V.)
Post your own (and others') Sanford quips below. Follow me on Twitter here.
UPDATE: Sanford e-mails here.
Diana West On How Islam Ruins Everything
In the wake of 9/11, every time (like today) that I have a package to mail that weighs more than 13 ounces, I am forced by Islam to go to the post office rather than dropping it in a mailbox. This sucks half an hour out of my day, uses gas, and pisses me the hell off. And then, of course, there are the hours I lose every time I go to the airport, and the rage I feel at it, and at being comprehensively searched when I have done nothing wrong. And then I lose with-Gregg hours, as he travels frequently and has to get to the airport to go through the search process far in advance of the time he would've otherwise. And finally, there's our military and those at the WTC, and people like Daniel Pearl who've lost their lives to give some gullible fucker those 72 virgins he was told he'd get, when there's no evidence that, when humans die, we become anything more than dinner for worms. Islam costs American business and Americans in so many ways.
Syndicated columnist Diana West reminds writes about how Islam has changed all of our lives:
Because Islam is a growing presence in the West, Western countries must now and presumably forever expend vast sums of money and manpower to manage - not defeat, just manage - the jihad that can break out in acts large and small at any time. Increasingly, this also means deferring to Sharia. Finally, my pre-conference frisk is over. Hallelujah, I am no threat to society and allowed to pass. I go on to meet for the first time the great author Wafa Sultan, and meet again the great Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, the two most illustrious speakers on the conference roster.Both Sultan and Wilders, of course, live under unrelenting, permanent and Islamic threat of death for their critiques of Islam, in a very real way suffering every day for defying Sharia's prohibition against criticizing Islam. But does the outrageousness of their plight resonate with their fellow citizens? I don't think so. I think we've all grown much too used to it, and dully complacent.
But imagine if I had written, circa 1970, that for his critique of communism, Ronald Reagan lived under unrelenting, permanent and communist threat of death in his beloved California, that he couldn't travel the streets of Los Angeles without a massive security retinue, that he could no longer even sleep in his own home. Wouldn't Americans have become rightly agitated over the communist enemy within?
I think the answer would have been yes, but the point is, no such mortal homeland danger existed at that time for those who spoke against the leading threat to Western-style liberty. Today, a mortal homeland danger does exist. I won't tell you what it was like to slip in and out of the Wilders security bubble during the course of his stay in Copenhagen, but suffice it to say, it is both a veritable shame and an outrage that his life depends on that bubble, and that for speaking his mind in defense of Western-style liberty he has lost his own freedom.
The same goes for Wafa Sultan, who, for attacking the repressiveness of Islamic law (under which she existed for 30 years in Syria), also lives privately a similarly wary, hunted life that necessitates protective security measures.
Remember, this is happening in the ``Free World.'' Whether in Denmark, Holland or the United States, the heavy hand of Islamic law is pressing in on its leading critics, squeezing the freedom out of their existence. It is time to say enough - literally enough, for example, and stop Sharia by stopping Islamic immigration - and throw off the rising chokehold of jihad-advanced Sharia.
Welcome To The Police State
America...suddenly the land of the frisked, strip-searched, and interrogated -- without probable cause.
Steve Bierfield, director of the Campaign for Liberty, an outgrowth of the Ron Paul presidential campaign, was pulled aside by the TSA for harassment (uh, questioning) simply because he carried a box of cash through airport security. It happened to be around $4,700 in cash -- the proceeds from the sale of political merch like T-shirts and books.
Whoopsy, he was carrying a pocket copy of the Constitution (the cute Cato Institute one I have, I'll bet) and an iPhone capable of recording audio -- and record audio he did, write CNN's Jeanne Meserve and Mike Ahlers:
There are no restrictions on carrying large sums of cash on flights within the United States, but the TSA allegedly took Bierfeldt to a windowless room and, along with other law enforcement agencies, questioned him for almost half an hour about the money.An excerpt:
Officer: Why do you have this money? That's the question, that's the major question.
Bierfeldt: Yes, sir, and I'm asking whether I'm legally required to answer that question.
Officer: Answer that question first, why do you have this money.
Bierfeldt: Am I legally required to answer that question?
Officer: So you refuse to answer that question?
Bierfeldt: No, sir, I am not refusing.
Officer: Well, you're not answering.
Bierfeldt: I'm simply asking my rights under the law.
The officers can be heard saying they will involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and appear to threaten arrest, saying they are going to transport Bierfeldt to the local police station, in handcuffs if necessary.
Bierfeldt told CNN he believes their behavior was inappropriate.
"You're in a locked room with no windows. You've got TSA agent. You've got police officers with loaded guns. They're in your face. A few of them were swearing at me."
But the officers did not follow through on their threats. Near the end of the recording an additional officer enters the situation and realizes the origins of the money.
Officer: So these are campaign contributions for Ron Paul?
Bierfeldt: Yes, sir.
Officer: You're free to go.
... Bierfeldt contends he never refused to answer a question, he only sought to clarify his constitutional rights.
advertisement"I asked them, 'Am I required by law to tell you what you're asking me? Am I required to tell you where I am working? Am I required to tell you how I got the cash? Nothing I've done is suspicious. I'm not breaking any laws. I just want to go to my flight. Please advise me as to my rights.' And they didn't."
In what way are any of us endangered by a man carrying a cashbox filled with money?
Maybe Innocent? Too Bad!
It seems it's too much trouble to give a man who may not be guilty a more modern DNA test to see where the truth lies. William G. Osborne is in an Alaska prison, convicted in 1994 of rape, based in part on a DNA test of semen from a condom found at the scene. From a New York Times editorial:
The state used an old method, known as DQ-alpha testing, that could not identify, with great specificity, the person to whom the DNA belonged. The high court sided with Alaska in its refusal to grant Mr. Osborne access to the physical evidence, the semen. His intent was to obtain a more advanced DNA test that was not available at the time of his trial and that prosecutors agreed could almost definitively prove his guilt or innocence.Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted the "unparalleled ability" to prove guilt or innocence using DNA evidence. But he treated that breakthrough more as an irritant than an opportunity.
The availability of conclusive DNA testing, he wrote, "cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every criminal conviction involving biological evidence, is suddenly in doubt."
The chief justice further worried that establishing a "freestanding and far-reaching constitutional right of access" to DNA evidence would short-circuit efforts underway by federal and state governments to develop rules to control access to such evidence. Yet Alaska is one of four states that does not have laws giving prisoners access to DNA evidence that could establish their innocence -- a dismal reality underscoring the need for Supreme Court intervention.
Of course, there is a value to finality of verdicts and not allowing prisoners to endlessly challenge their convictions. But the chief justice and his concurring colleagues have their priorities all wrong.
Much as the four dissenters -- Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter -- saw, Alaska was wrong to block testing when DNA technology is available that may prove someone is unjustly being kept behind bars. Overturning Alaska's denial of due process should have been an easy call.
There Is A Gad
I Tweeted this last night -- "The Never-Ending Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology," or why Newsweek's Sharon Begley is an ass. http://ow.ly/15FUR6 -- but I was too tired to post it then. My HBES pal Gad Saad does a masterful job in a blog item over at Psych Today (a magazine rejuvenated by my friend Kaja Perina) taking apart the crappy article Begley wrote in Newsweek. An excerpt from Gad's piece:
(1) Ms. Begley's article title, Can We Blame Our Bad Behavior on Stone-Age Genes, seems to levy yet again the specter that evolutionary psychology is tantamount to genetic determinism. Evolutionary psychologists posit that the human mind does indeed consist of evolved computational systems that can be instantiated in one of several ways as a function of specific triggering inputs. Put simply, evolutionary psychologists are perfectly aware that humans are an inextricable mélange of their genes and idiosyncratic life experiences. This is known as the interactionist perspective. Epigenetic rules by definition recognize the importance of the environment in shaping the manner by which biological blueprints will be instantiated. Hence, EP does not imply that we are endowed with a perfectly rigid and inflexible human nature. Rather, we do possess an evolutionary-based human nature that subsequently interacts with environmental cues. That said this does not imply that human nature is infinitely malleable. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture in the annals of recorded history where parents were overwhelmingly more concerned about their son's chastity as compared to their daughter's. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where on average men have had a sustained preference for mating with post-menopausal women. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where individuals who possess asymmetric facial features are judged to be more attractive and desirable than their symmetric counterparts. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where on average women have had a sustained preference for lazy, submissive, apathetic men as prospective mates. As a side note, contrary to Ms. Begley's claim, as a woman's socioeconomic status increases, her preference for a high status man becomes even more pronounced.
And yes, from the beginning of Begley's shoddy piece, Thornhill and Palmer (who I know as well, and have great respect for), believe that rape was an evolutionary adaptation. This doesn't mean they think it's good or that it should happen. But, it does, and they do a hell of a job explaining why in their excellent book, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion
I recommend Gad Saad's book as well: The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (Marketing and Consumer Psychology Series)
If you're looking for a good intro to evolutionary psychology that's also a really interesting read, I recommend David Buss' book, which is also a bit more budget-priced: The Evolution Of Desire - Revised Edition 4
"Most American Grads Are Unemployable"
Those are the words of a top Indian CEO in the high-tech industry, Vineet Nayar, of HCL Technologies, from a story by Rob Preston in Information Week:
Many American grads looking to enter the tech field are preoccupied with getting rich, Vineet said. They're far less inclined than students from developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Ireland to spend their time learning the "boring" details of tech process, methodology, and tools--ITIL, Six Sigma, and the like.As a result, Vineet said, most Americans are just too expensive to train--despite the Indian IT industry's reputation for having the most exhaustive boot camps in the world. To some extent, he said, students from other highly developed countries fall into the same rut.
In an interview following his presentation, Vineet said HCL and other employers need to have a greater influence on the tech curricula of U.S. colleges and universities, to make them more real-world and rigorous. For the most part, he said, those institutions haven't been receptive to such industry partnerships.
thanks, Deirdre!
If Obamacare Is Like Medicare We're In Trouble
Why become a doctor if years and years of medical school, huge student loans, high malpractice insurance costs and years of grueling training don't make you much money? Dr. Abraham Verghese writes in the WSJ about Obama's speech to the AMA:
President Obama pointed to the problem of "a system of incentives where the more tests and services are provided, the more money we pay." As if to rub it in, he added, "And a lot of people in this room know what I'm talking about."...Yes, Mr. President, a lot of people inside and outside that room know exactly what you are talking about. A skewed reimbursement scheme set up by Medicare, a system that pays generously when you do something to a patient, but is stingy when you do something for a patient, is largely to blame. Cut, poke, sew, burn, insert, inject, dilate, stent, remove and you get very well paid; if you learn how to do this efficiently, maybe set up your own outpatient center so you can do it to more people in a shorter time (which is what happened when this payment system was put in place in 1989) and you are paid even more. If, however, you are a primary care physician, and if, just like the young doctor who saw my parents yesterday, you spend time getting to know your patients, and are willing to play quarterback when your patient enters the hospital, so that you can herd the consultants and guide the family through a bewildering experience that gets surreal if you are in the intensive care unit, then you may have great personal satisfaction but you will make five to tenfold less than your colleagues in the doing-to disciplines.
He goes on to debunk Obama's fairytale that preventive care will save piles of money:
Prevention is a good thing to do, but why equate it with saving money when it won't? Think about this: discovering high cholesterol in a person who is feeling well, is really just discovering a risk factor and not a disease; it predicts that you have a greater chance of having a heart attack than someone with a normal cholesterol. Now you can reduce the probability of a heart attack by swallowing a statin, and it will make good sense for you personally, especially if you have other risk factors (male sex, smoking etc).. But if you are treating a population, keep in mind that you may have to treat several hundred people to prevent one heart attack. Using a statin costs about $150,000 for every year of life it saves in men, and even more in women (since their heart-attack risk is lower)--I don't see the savings there.
(At first, I thought he was talking about the annual cost of statins, but I don't think he is, as I looked it up, and found that the non-generic of Zocor cost $2.75 a pill -- just over $1,000 a year.)
Or take the coronary calcium scans or heart scan, which most authorities suggest is not a test to be done on people who have no symptoms, and which I think of as the equivalent of the miracle glow-in-the-dark minnow lure advertised on late night infommercials. It's a money maker, without any doubt, and some institutions actually advertise on billboards or in newspapers, luring you in for this 'cheap' and 'painless' way to get a look at your coronary arteries. If you take the test and find you have no calcium on your coronaries, you have learned that . . . you have no calcium on your coronaries. If they do find calcium on your coronaries, then my friend, you have just bought yourself some major worry. You will want to know, What does this mean? Are my coronary arteries narrowed to a trickle? Am I about to die? Is it nothing? Asking such questions almost inevitably leads to more tests: a stress test, an echocardiogram, a stress echo, a cardiac catheterization, stents and even cardiac bypass operations--all because you opted for a 'cheap' and 'painless' test--if only you'd never seen that billboard.
WSJ commenter Robert Mitchell has a wise take on the issue:
The fallacy today is that we don't have universal health care. We do have it. Anyone can get health care practically anywhere they want. The rub is that they have to pay for it.Health care isn't free. Someone has to pay for technology and labor costs. I feel much more comfortable with people making their own cost decisions than politicians making those calls. The notion that government can be a more effective negotiator if it were a single payor is another fallacy. The problem is that the government is not negotiating for an individual's benefit. The government negotiates for its own benefit, which in our government equates to enhancing re-election probabilities for incumbents, and therefore the catering to of special interests. Those incentives are way out-of-whack to deliver effective medical treatment.
I have far greater faith in people's individual abilities to save and make their own medical choices. I would favor reforms in insurance to make catastrophic policies more readily available directly to individuals. However, inserting employers and governments in between physicians and patients only serves to skew incentives and increase costs of middle men. As the preventative medicine practitioners like to pronounce, people have to take responsibility for their own health. Those who don't will have higher bills to pay. Why is this a problem?
God Is Seriously Insecure
What's with this need to be worshipped all the time? The Atheist Missionary deconstructs Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life," wondering something I always have:
In the unlikely event that God exists (Rick assumes his readers are all under this delusion), why is He so insecure? Why does He feel the need to have humanity glorify and worship Him? I wonder if anybody has ever undertaken a psychoanalysis of God? Why does he have this infinite need for everyone to bow down at His altar? If He was better adjusted, you would think that he would be content to score celestial touchdown after touchdown without insisting that the crowd cheer Him on.
Chase Those Nasty Earners Away
In Oregon, lawmakers like to bleed 'em until they pack up and scurry out of state. From a WSJ op-ed:
The Labor Department reported yesterday that Oregon's unemployment rate soared to 12.4% in May, the nation's second highest after Michigan's 14.1%. What to do? If you're the geniuses in the state legislature in Salem, you naturally raise taxes....In Oregon, as in so many states this year, lawmakers had to choose between reducing the growth of spending and raising taxes. No contest. So government spending will climb by about $2 billion, or almost 4%, which is on top of a 21% increase in the 2007-08 biennium budget. The sliver of good news is that taxpayer groups like Americans for Prosperity of Oregon are promising to put these taxes before the voters in a referendum this year or next. Since Salem's politicians seem intent on following California's, maybe Oregon's voters will do the same and just say no.
Will voters put two minus two together? After observing voters in my own state, voting for a high-speed train from LA to SF as the state is about to declare bankruptcy, I think that may be a bit optimistic.
Of all the classes they should be teaching in high schools across America, it seems economics is one of the most necessary. Personal and public.
First They Came For The Pilots
Rand Simberg reprints an e-mail that's been making its way around. When I was growing up, I read books about Russia and Germany and other European countries during the Nazi era where policemen were always demanding that citizens present their "papers" to be identified -- without probable cause. I felt so grateful that I didn't live in a country like that. Well, now I do. An excerpt from Simberg's post:
Utilizing their seemingly unfettered authority to do anything that strikes their fancy without oversight by anyone, Homeland Security has instituted a requirement that private aircraft operators seek government permission each time we propose to take off if we are planning to depart for Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean. We must provide advance detailed information about where, when, and who, including the names, social security numbers, addresses, etc., of all persons who will be in the aircraft. The justification for this, they say, is that we, our spouses, family or friends might be on their mysterious and top secret "No Fly List." The most significant aspect of this is that Homeland Security has indicated that this is a preliminary step toward their ultimate objective of requiring this data submission prior to EVERY aircraft takeoff in America, regardless of destination. Keep this in mind as we continue.It is important to understand that this requirement breaks entirely new ground. While ENTERING any country requires formalities, never, ever, has it been necessary to seek and receive government permission to LEAVE America, the "land of the free," much less to travel within its borders. And never, ever, has it been proposed that such permission is somehow necessary to preserve "national security." This is a requirement only previously seen in Iron Curtain dictatorships.
Another entirely new and very unsettling aspect of this program has just surfaced in the form of several incidents in which citizens who filed the required information and received official permission to depart the USA have been detained as they were preparing to take off and had their personal aircraft, luggage, wallets, purses, etc., searched by government agents. In one particularly frightening case (Long Beach, California) the airplane was blocked in by multiple vehicles with red lights and sirens and the occupants forced from their plane, hands on their heads, by "screaming" agents from several agencies pointing drawn weapons. In this and all the other incidents, after extensive searches the agents told the citizens it had been just a "routine ramp check" and departed, leaving the shaken travelers to repack their belongings. This activity, totally unrelated to traditional arrival customs checks, also breaks new ground. On the face of it, it seems to clearly violate the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution, as it is not a match for any of the situations Courts have ruled would make this type of warrantless "random stop and search" activity permissible.
...What does this mean to the average citizen? Yes, you don't own an airplane and, OK, you really don't give a [bleep] about how airplane owners are treated. But consider this: Do you own an RV? A car or van? All the "justifications" being used to restrict, control and harass aviation people would apply equally to anyone who travels in RVs, cars, vans, busses, trains, bicycles or what-have-you. And if you think that if unchecked it will stop with airplane owners, well, I fear you are sadly mistaken.
via Insty
"Because We're Asian?"
It's 1:50 in the morning. A bunch of guys who've come out of a poorly run bar in my neighborhood are parked on my street, four feet from the property line of all the houses on my block, and they are making lots of noise. Lucy starts barking and my neighbor's baby starts crying.
I go outside and point out that they are just feet away from houses, and they need to be more considerate next time. When I told one of the guys my dog barked he started disputing it. "I didn't hear the dog barking...I didn't hear the dog barking."
Uh, don't care. Not the point. I was only outside in my pajamas because they were making noise in front of my house, I said. Still no apology. In fact, the guy (the one in the black) just continued, "I didn't hear the dog barking."
I told him they were clearly badly raised.
"Are you saying that because we're Asian?" the guy asked. Unbelievable.
"No," I told him, "Because you're loud, inconsiderate assholes."
It's Always About Naomi
So much of Naomi Wolf's pontificating about the way things are for everybody is really about the way things are -- or should be -- for Naomi. Virginia Postrel notes that Wolf's Vanity Fair piece on Angelina Jolie is brilliant -- but not in the way the author intended. Virginia writes on Deep Glamour:
Most revealing is the way Wolf, a divorced mother of two, projects her own desires onto Jolie's (short-lived) status as single mom. She completely ignores the standard tabloid narrative, an anti-feminist storyline casting Jolie as the womanly mother figure against Jennifer Aniston, the careerist punished for her insufficiently feminine ambition. Instead, Wolf reads Jolie's story as the triumph of the Single Mom as Ideal.Then there is the plane. Women are so used to being dependent on others (certainly on men) for where they go, metaphorically, and how they get there. Flying a private plane is the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction; usually, that is a guy thing to do, yet there was Jolie, with her aviator glasses on, taking flying lessons so she could blow the mind of her four-year-old son. That is the ultimate in single-mom chic: Even before she had reconstructed a nuclear (or postnuclear) family with a dad at the head of it, she was reframing single motherhood from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice. Paradoxically, having done so, she makes the choice of a man to help her raise her kids seem like one option among many for a self-directed woman rather than either a completion of a woman or a capitulation.This much-mocked paragraph takes aviator glamour -- which is, in fact, a long-standing element of Jolie's appeal (see the magnificent photos Annie Leibovitz did for Vogue) -- and turns it into a story about what Naomi Wolf wants. A plane becomes a symbol not of general human freedom, mastery, and escape but of "single-mom chic." Jolie rescues the aviatrix archetype from the inconveniently married-and-childless Amelia Earhart.
I'm reminded of my late friend Cathy Seipp's great take in reason on Wolf's book on becoming a mommy:
Even deadlier was the reaction last fall to Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions, a mesmerizingly nutty polemic about what she calls "the hidden truths behind giving birth in America today." (That's compared to the sheer delight of giving birth in the rest of the world, of course.) The bland trade journal Publishers Weekly, which hardly has an anti-feminist ax to grind, irritatedly dismissed the book as "a weirdly out-of-touch bid for personal attention."Now that the standard polite flip-through of the neighbors' hospital baby pictures means viewing a bloody color close-up of baby's emerging head and mom's genitalia, you may wonder just what truths about giving birth are still hidden. But perhaps you had no idea that pregnant women "in our culture" (to use Wolf's favorite phrase) often have Cesareans, even when they'd hoped not to; that they are typically exhausted and sometimes feel like they're losing their minds; that new moms still get up more than new dads to deal with howling infants in the middle of the night; or that maternity clothes tend to be unstylish, with a cruel lack of selection in Western wear.
Yes, she's serious about that one. "You could not be a cowgirl and a mother," Wolf observes glumly, describing another day "mourning the loss of the young woman I had been" while rifling the racks at the mall. "You could not be a heartbreaker and a mother....You could not, in our culture, easily pair motherhood with many other alluring archetypes."
As opposed to what other culture? Are there really maternity shops selling Annie Get Your Gun outfits in Iraq or India? But Wolf remains starry-eyed about the obstetrical wonders of the non-American world. In Europe and Belize, she instructs one annoyed obstetrician, episiotomies are less necessary because midwives massage the perineal area with warm oil. There's hardly anywhere on the planet, in fact (except the bad old U.S.A.), that Wolf doesn't imagine as a garden of perineum-massaging delights.
Stealing From Really, Really Rich People Is Still Stealing
The amount of the judgment -- $1.92 million -- against this lady accused of illegal downloading is just ridiculous. Clearly, she's never going to pay or pay any substantial amount of it. It's obviously a message to others stealing songs.
Steve Karnowski writes for the AP about the only file-sharing case to go to trial:
A federal jury ruled Thursday that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song.Thomas-Rasset's second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a $222,000 judgment.
The new trial was ordered after the judge in the case decided he had erred in giving jury instructions.
Thomas-Rasset sat glumly with her chin in hand as she heard the jury's finding of willful infringement, which increased the potential penalty. She raised her eyebrows in surprise when the jury's penalty of $80,000 per song was read.
Outside the courtroom, she called the $1.92 million figure "kind of ridiculous" but expressed resignation over the decision.
"There's no way they're ever going to get that," said Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four from the central Minnesota city of Brainerd. "I'm a mom, limited means, so I'm not going to worry about it now."
Her attorney, Kiwi Camara, said he was surprised by the size of the judgment. He said it suggested that jurors didn't believe Thomas-Rasset's denials of illegal file-sharing, and that they were angry with her.
And yes, downloading stuff you haven't paid for, that isn't specifically designated as free, is stealing. And no, the fact that the record companies are multi-bazillion-dollar businesses doesn't change that. Nor does the fact that Madonna or whomever is really, really rich.
via Kate Coe
They're Trying To Legislate Manners In New York
From WCBS TV:
A new campaign reminds subway and bus riders to give up reserved seats to the elderly or disabled.Those who refuse could be fined $25 to $50 -- or even face up to 10 days in jail.
Signs are going up this week in thousands of subway cars and buses. The law has long been on the books; transit officials are now trying to get people to obey it.
One of the things I hate most about riding the subway is people, almost always men, who open their legs really wide and encroach on you and your seat with their knees -- or make it impossible for anybody on a crowded train to sit on either side of them.
The L.A. version of this is the asshats who get megabass -- usually in their vast, shiny Stupid Utility Vehicles -- then play it while driving through a residential area or sitting outside your house, shaking it on its foundation.
Word to the megabassers: As the saying goes, "An empty vessel makes the most noise." An "I Feel Like A Big Zero" bumper sticker sends the same message about you as that thumpa-thumpa bass, but won't wake my neighbor's baby.
A Hard Lesson In Obamanomics
James Pethokoukis blogs at Reuters about hope for change -- the hope we all have that we won't be on corners begging for it -- and how it's fading:
Obama took a tremendous economic and political gamble last January. The new president had the option of putting forward a stimulus plan that would attempt to reverse or significantly dampen America's terrible economic downturn ASAP. The quickest and most effective approach would have been a big cut in payroll taxes. For $800 billion, combined Social Security and Medicare taxes could have been slashed by 6 percentage points, or 40 percent. That would have put $1,500 in worker paychecks and, according to one credible study, increased employment by 4 million jobs in 2009.Instead, Obama chose to listen to Rahm "Never let a crisis go to waste" Emanuel and put forward an $800 billion plan that advanced his healthcare, energy and education policy goals -- but pretty much neglected the economy in 2009. Team Obama had to fully understand this. Indeed, a study from the Congressional Budget Office study -- when led by current Obama budget chief Peter Orszag -- concluded that an Obama-like economic stimulus package would be "totally impractical" because it would take so long to implement. (True enough, only seven percent of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been doled out so far.)
Presidential gamble. In short, Obama wagered that the deluge of money coming from the Federal Reserve would do the heavy lifting as far as stabilizing the financial sector and keeping the already apparent recession from turning into a real disaster. Voters would, thus, continue to support his policies to assert more government control over healthcare, heavily regulate energy through a costly cap-and-trade program and further intervene into the financial industry.
The gamble appears to have failed miserably, both economically and politically. The terrible tale of the tape: a) the current downturn is arguably the worse since the Great Depression; b) household wealth has fallen by $14 trillion during the past two years, including the first quarter of 2009; c) while the economy may not shrink as much this quarter as it did in the previous three months (-5.7 percent) or the final quarter of 2008 (-6.3 percent), unemployment is soaring; d) Obama himself said the jobless rate will hit 10 percent this year; d) even worse, the Federal Reserve sees it approaching 11 percent next year. (Recall, that the original White House economic analysis of the Obama economic plan never saw unemployment exceeding 8 percent if Obamanomics was passed by Congress.)
Falling public support. So now many Americans are rightfully wondering just what they are getting for that $800 billion, as well as massive budget deficits as far as the eye can see.
Getting slowly fucked, and not the fun way, is how I'd put it.
Health Care's Already Been "Reformed"
It's called Medicaid and Medicare. They're working exactly as Obamacare is predicted to work -- which is that they're crushing states with costs. Daniel Henninger writes in the WSJ that the "public option" we're being promised for health care is "Son of Medicaid":
Spending on health and welfare, largely under Medicaid, makes up one-third of California's budget of some $100 billion. In New York Gov. David Paterson's budget message, he notes that "New York spends more per capital ($2,283) on Medicaid than any other state in the country."After 45 years, the health-care reform called Medicaid has crushed state budgets. A study by the National Governors Association said a decade ago that because of "new requirements" imposed by federal law -- meaning Congress -- "Medicaid has evolved into a program whose size, cost and significance are far beyond the original vision of its creators."
In his speeches, Mr. Obama makes the original vision of his "public option" insurance plan sound about as simple as driving through toll booths with an electronic pass on your windshield. It's going to be all about "best practices" with patients "reimbursed in a thoughtful way," as if the federal government is about to become just another big Google.
Medicaid is a morass. Since the program's inception, Congress has loaded it up every few years with more notions of what to cover, shifting about 43% of the ever-upward cost onto someone else's tab, mainly the states. A 1988 congressional mandate requires local schools to pay for schooling and related services for disabled children, but because Congress underfunds its mandates, the states pay the rest through Medicaid.
...Mr. Obama's plan is intended to "guarantee" health insurance for all. Whatever the truth of that, its outlays -- larded atop Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security -- guarantee that Congress will become more like the states' clown shows. But they are expensive clowns.
In his speech, Mr. Obama said the cost of the Public Option won't add to the deficit: "I've set down a rule for my staff, for my team -- and I've said this to Congress -- health-care reform must be, and will be, deficit-neutral in the next decade." If we're honest, that means tax increases are inevitable. Sounds scary to me.
In case you didn't see the link before, Virginia Postrel suggests we fix Medicare first -- before embarking on any new adventures in going into vast levels of debt.
People For The Ethical Treatment Of Disease-Carrying Vermin
I kept thinking it had to be from The Onion, but no. It's PETA up to their usual silliness.
Sandra Tsing Loh's Atlantic Piece
Sandra is getting divorced, and writes about it. Read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt with her final thoughts on marriage:
So, herewith, some modest proposals. Clearly, research shows that what's best for children is domestic stability and not having to bond with, and to be left by, ever new stepparent figures. Less important is whether or not their overworked parents are logging "date night" (or feeling the magic). So why don't we accept marriage as a splitting-the-mortgage arrangement? As Fisher suggests, rekindling the romance is, for many of us, biologically unnatural, particularly after the kids come. (Says another friend of mine, about his wife of 23 years: "My heart doesn't lift when she walks in the room. It sinks, slightly.") If high-revving women are sexually frustrated, let them have some sort of French arrangement where they have two men, the postfeminist model dad building shelves, cooking bouillabaise, and ignoring them in the home, and the occasional fun-loving boyfriend the kids never see. Alternately, if both spouses find life already rather exhausting, never mind chasing around for sex. Long-married husbands and wives should pleasantly agree to be friends, to set the bedroom aglow at night by the mute opening of separate laptops and just be done with it. More than anything, aside from providing insulation from the world at large, that kind of arrangement could be the perfect way to be left alone.As far as the children are concerned, how about the tribal approach (a natural, according to both primate and human evolution)? Let children between the ages of 1 and 5 be raised in a household of mothers and their female kin. Let the men/husbands/boyfriends come in once or twice a week to build shelves, prepare that bouillabaisse, or provide sex.
Or best of all, after the breast-feeding and toddler years are through, let those nurturing superdads be the custodial parents! Let the Type A moms obsessively work, write checks, and forget to feed the dog. Let the dads then, if they wish, kick out those sloppy working mothers and run effective households, hiring the appropriate staff, if need be. To a certain extent, men today may have more clarity about what it takes to raise children in the modern age. They don't, for instance, have today's working mother's ambivalence and emotional stickiness.
In any case, here's my final piece of advice: avoid marriage--or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.
I'd Prefer "Former Senator Boxer"
Barbara Boxer scolds a general for calling her "ma'am." Patricia Murphy posts Boxer's little huffy to the general at Politics Daily:
"Could you say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am?' It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title. I'd appreciate it."
Don't you think it's likely the guy would call a male senator "sir"? And how likely do you think he'd be to get scolded for that?
Barbara Ehrenreich Is Full Of It
She isn't the only journo to take a job at Wal-Mart, but Wired's Charles Platt tells a different story on BoingBoing than she did in her book Nickel and Dimed
The job was as dull as I expected, but I was stunned to discover how benign the workplace turned out to be. My supervisor was friendly, decent, and treated me as an equal. Wal-Mart allowed a liberal dress code. The company explained precisely what it expected from its employees, and adhered to this policy in every detail. I was unfailingly reminded to take paid rest breaks, and was also encouraged to take fully paid time, whenever I felt like it, to study topics such as job safety and customer relations via a series of well-produced interactive courses on computers in a room at the back of the store. Each successfully completed course added an increment to my hourly wage, a policy which Barbara Ehrenreich somehow forgot to mention in her book.My standard equipment included a handheld bar-code scanner which revealed the in-store stock and nearest warehouse stock of every item on the shelves, and its profit margin. At the branch where I worked, all the lowest-level employees were allowed this information and were encouraged to make individual decisions about inventory. One of the secrets to Wal-Mart's success is that it delegates many judgment calls to the sales-floor level, where employees know first-hand what sells, what doesn't, and (most important) what customers are asking for.
Several of my co-workers had relocated from other areas, where they had worked at other Wal-Marts. They wanted more of the same. Everyone agreed that Wal-Mart was preferable to the local Target, where the hourly pay was lower and workers were said to be treated with less respect (an opinion which I was unable to verify). Most of all, my coworkers wanted to avoid those "mom-and-pop" stores beloved by social commentators where, I was told, employees had to deal with quixotic management policies, while lacking the opportunities for promotion that exist in a large corporation.
Of course, I was not well paid, but Wal-Mart is hardly unique in paying a low hourly rate to entry-level retail staff. The answer to this problem seems elusive to Barbara Ehrenreich, yet is obvious to any teenager who enrolls in a vocational institute. In a labor market, employees are valued partly according to their abilities. To earn a higher hourly rate, you need to acquire some relevant skills.
As for all those Wal-Mart horror stories--when I went home and checked the web sites that attack the company, I found that many of them are subsidized with union money. walmartwatch.com, for instance, is partnered with the Service Employees International Union; wakeupwalmart.com is copyright by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Why are unions so obsessed with Wal-Mart? I'm guessing that if the more-than-a-million Wal-Mart employees could be unionized, they would be compelled to contribute at least half a billion dollars per year in union dues.
Subsequently I considered writing about my brief experience, but a book defending a company that has been demonized does not have a large potential audience, and the writer tends to be dismissed as either hopelessly naive or bribed by corporate America.
He goes on to tell the tale of a guy who entered a homeless shelter with $25, worked as a day laborer and then for a moving company, and in 10 months, had $2,500 saved up, plus a pickup truck and an apartment. That story is Adam Sheperd's, and his book about it is Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream
Platt continued in the comments:
"Is there an incentive for this level of decision making by "sales-floor level" employees?"I spoke to a guy who took the initiative to order, I think, 100 tentlike carports during his first month on the job, just because he noticed that a sample of four of the things had sold out within a day, and several people then came in asking for them as a result of word-of-mouth.
His gamble was successful. As a result he was invited to some kind of annual Wal-Mart gathering at company HQ, he met the CEO, and of course was promoted. That's a very unusual story but, yes, I'd say there's an incentive!
The biggest sin at Wal-Mart is not to take initiative. It is to offend a customer. We were warned quite severely that each average Wal-Mart customer is expected to spend, as I recall, about $200,000 during the rest of their lives. If you terminally alienate one customer, you may have just lost the store almost a quarter-million dollars. The second-biggest sin might be to hurt yourself, since your reimbursed medical expenses will reduce the annual bonus for your coworkers.
Oddly enough, Wal-Mart reminded me of startups that I visited in Silicon Valley during the 1990s. Same informality, same devolution of responsibility to low levels, same gung-ho optimism, young-aged work force, willingness to innovate, emphasis on growth, and a sense of very smart management behind the scenes. But of course the work is MUCH more boring!
Also from the comments is another person's perspective that's in tune with mine:
"how can you raise a family on that money in a company town?"You probably can't. Starting a family is a decision that from a financial perspective should be delayed until one has a sizeable nest egg. Gratification can be delayed despite to protestation of young hormones otherwise. Most don't wait and that's their right but it doesn't give them any justification to complain that entry level employment doesn't cover the cost of maintaining a single family private dwelling with their one true love an a brood of entitled young ones. No legislation or labor union will ever prevent people from procreating themselves into poverty. Study hard, avoid unhealthy vices, keep your willy in your trousers or seated with a dime between your knees as the case may be and save up your money to start a family. Poor planning does not obligate Walmart to provide mitigation for bad decisions.
It's like the idea that health care is a right -- one other people should pick up the tab for, even if you're mentally healthy and capable of working to pay your own way. An old boyfriend of mine does liver transplants. He spent years and bazillions on his education, worked insane hours during his training, and continues to work insane hours now, at one of the country's finest hospitals. He makes a lot of money and the people whose lives he saves can tell you he deserves every cent.
via Kate Coe
Why Are We All Getting Fat?
This is the evidence-based science -- the stuff you aren't getting from the medical establishment. Gary Taubes gives a fascinating talk at Dartmouth, complete with slides, linked here.
His terrific book, which lays out how much of what we think is dietary science is actually "science," is Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health
via Dr. Eades
Do You Live In A Conservative Town?
There's a small point I need to consider about my book, and I need to talk to a few bookstore owners in conservative towns. And I don't mean the ones who own the one hippie bookstore, but the mainstream bookstore or small bookstore that serves a good deal of the town.
If you do live in a conservative town, or you know of one, and you could post the name of your town, the name of your local bookstore, and maybe even the phone number, I'd be most appreciative. I'm going to call the manager or owner and ask them a question. I started out in advertising, right out of college, at David Ogilvy's ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, and ever since, I've always "tested" stuff I do when I'm not sure about what will fly or sell.
P.S. If you'd rather not attach a location to your name, please just post as "anonymous" or something. What's most important is that I get names of bookstores, not who they come from.
Many thanks!
Nobody Gets Knocked Up By The Bus Driver
Women, like one of many who e-mailed me, complain that porn "provides unrealistic images of women." Well, as my ev psych prof friend Catherine Salmon points out in Evolutionary Psychology, Public Policy and Personal Decisions
I was looking up Harlequin books for a column, and I was amazed by some of the top titles and descriptions, like Billionaire Prince, Pregnant Mistress
The Color Of Crime In London
I trace this to children needing daddies, and so, it seems, does Rod Liddle, who writes in the Times of London:
The overwhelming bulk of violent street crime in London is committed by young black men, and in numerous cases against white people, although one would not impute a racial motive; the statistics suggest that young black male criminals are quite happy to stab or shoot anybody who hoves into view with either a bulging wallet, a mobile phone or an assumed reflection of disrespec' in their eyes.Apologies if this offends - but that's how it is. At most, the African Caribbean population of London is about 12% of the whole. But black males are responsible for nearly 60% of arrests for robbery - and the overwhelming majority of gun crime, most of it black-on-black violence.
We skirt this issue, mostly for decent, if deluding reasons - that a proportion of young black males is more likely to commit violent crime than other sectors of the population. It is a form of racism, though, to assume that the problem is simply a given, and unalterable - but we have been hamstrung in our attempts to deal with it for reasons of political correctness.
The propensity of some young black males to underachieve at school and later commit crimes of violence has been seen for too long as a roguish expression of cultural diversity, exacerbated by our own inherent racism and economic oppression; in other words, it's not their fault. Indeed the culture of violence, misogyny and epic drug abuse, exemplified in rap music, has been lapped up by a bovine liberal white culture that finds the vibrancy and "edginess" of gangsta rap something in which we should all exult and indeed emulate.
At the same time, we are reluctant to draw attention to the fatherless families in our black communities, the absence of male role models and teachers, even though we know that this is not a good thing, as we increasingly realise it is not a good thing for white boys either. We have been shy of condemning this demeaned culture for fear of being branded racist; too quick to make excuses when the education statistics arrive and show black males right down at the bottom, even below poor whites. But not black females, note; they do well at school and are high achievers later on too (Amy says: see this link). This is only a racist thing if you make it a racist thing.
It isn't racist to expect things to be different...to be better...to tell black women (and all women) that they have no right to be "single mothers by choice." What is racist is not saying anything to or about the vast numbers of single black women who have sex without birth control and who bring children into this world who will not grow up with fathers.
A Libertarian On The Anti-Abortion Arguments
While I would like to see abortion remain rare, I am pro-choice. Libertarian Wendy McElroy, always an incisive and interesting thinker, takes nine anti-abortion arguments to their logical conclusion on her ifeminists site. An excerpt:
Abortion is still hotly debated within libertarianism. This has always seemed odd to me since I believe libertarianism is based on self-ownership and that a pregnant woman has an unquestionable right to her own body, including the right to expel the fetus or have any other body part amputated. This right has been subjected to critical scrutiny by anti-abortionists in the movement who claim the fetus is a human being with full individual rights that are violated in an abortion. Basically, anti-abortionists pit the woman's rights against the alleged rights of the fetus, and give the latter priority.The argument is a weak one and open to attack from several directions. But my purpose here is a bit different. I want to explore some of the implications of the anti-abortion position because they are usually ignored even though they are vicious in nature.
Implication #1: If the fetus is accorded individual rights, then the aborting woman and anyone who assists her are murders and must be subject to whatever penalty society metes out for that crime, up to and including capital punishment. The punishment should be applied to past abortions as there is no statute of limitation on murder. If anti-abortionists shy away from this conclusion, then they do not really consider abortion to be murder. Note: it does not matter that the woman didn't view the fetus as a child; if her state of mind exonerates her, then it follows that a racist should be exonerated for killing blacks.
Implication #2: if a woman cannot 'kill' her fetus because it is a separate human being, then she also cannot injure it. If she does, she should be prosecuted in the same manner as if she assaulted an innocent bystander. If she ingests harmful substances, then the law should view the act as though she had strapped down a child and force-fed a toxin to it. Thus, the pregnant woman is vulnerable to criminal prosecution based on her diet, her lifestyle choices, etc. If anti-abortionists do not follow their own logic this far, it is not because the logic doesn't lead here. It is because the conclusion makes them uncomfortable.
...Implication #5: anti-abortionists are destroying the concept of natural righs itself which claims that every human being properly has jurisdiction over his or her own body. It is only because each human being is a self-owner that is is improper to initiate force against another. But if the fetus possesses the right to live off the pregnant woman's body functions -- to share the food she eats, the blood her heart pumps -- then this is tantamount to saying that one human being can properly own the body functions of another. It is tantamount to saying one human being can properly enslave another.
...Implication #7: anti-abotionists are claiming, "The fetus is an individual with rights" and, so, the onus of proof logically rests on the one who asserts a claim rather than upon those who see no evidence for the assertion.
Implication #8: if a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, anti-abortionists must legally require the woman to remain pregnant even if it means her death. Otherwise they do not take their own argument seriously. If the fetus is a separate individual with full rights, then the ill woman has no more right to kill it to save her life than a woman who needs a liver has the right to kill another person to secure a 'donor' organ. You cannot kill an innocent bystander just because your health requires it.
Implication #9: pregnancies that result from rape must also be brought to term. Anti-abortionists who make exceptions for e.g. a 12-year-old who becomes after being raped are saying that it is alright to kill an innocent baby under the 'proper' circumstances... which denies their entire argument, of course.
Wafa Sultan On Obama's Speech
This wise and courageous woman (courageous because Muslims murder apostates and people who exercise freedom of speech) gives her take on Obama's pandering to the Arab world:
Mr. Obama is a politician, and a very astute one. However, his speech revealed that his view is unduly influenced by naïve desire. His perception of Islam and the reality of Islam need to be synchronized. I am a physician and a realist who has lived and experienced the effect of my Arab culture and Islamic religion since childhood.The president pandered to Muslims: praised their accomplishments, commiserated with their grievances, and apologized for injustices done to them by centuries of colonialism -- without once mentioning the history of rampant and violent Arab colonialism. He avoided any mention of Jihadi tenets, or of the Islamic political ideology of supremacy over non Muslims -- principles embedded in Sharia law. These are taught and sanctioned openly by Al-Azhar, the university that hosted him, the foremost center of Sharia studies. Obama underscored the supposed American mistreatment of terrorists and apologized for torture in Guantanamo, forgetting that Islamic regimes are brutal to their own people. The president also repudiated significant U.S. contributions in both the lives of its soldiers and humanitarian aid to Muslims across the globe made throughout history -- despite Muslim attacks against America and Americans. In short, parts of his speech sounded like a new Pan-Arab messiah come to usher the Arab world back into its rightful world dominion.
Most disturbing was the president's call to defend Muslims against negative stereotypes. A dangerous precedent is set when freedom of speech is silenced and ideological criticism forbidden. This, again, is the stuff of nightmarish totalitarian regimes. The beauty of the US Constitution is its balance, and the wisdom it embraces by distinguishing between that which should be protected and defended and that which should be prosecuted and decried. Encouraging laws to make criticism of Islam an offense punishable by law is troubling.
Since arriving in the US, I have enjoyed the freedom to educate my Arab brothers and sisters in the Middle East, who yearn for real freedom - and I have seen successes. Mr. Obama calls these very successes into question rather than championing freedom.
As the president embarks on his new task to defend Muslims "against negative stereotypes," does this mean he will somehow interfere and undermine that message? Or, perhaps it means he may join with the Organization of Islamic Conference, the 57 Muslim countries that work relentlessly to promote a United Nations resolution to suppress voices of dissent against Islam? I am confident we would all come to regret this.
Obama sidesteps the acute state of affairs in the Islamic world with flattery, failing to encourage accountability for rhetoric, practices and the behavior that feed stereotypes. I did not hear an exhortation to the Islamic world to open itself to diversity, to accept women as equal citizens with the same rights and protection under law as men. I did not hear a challenge to the Muslim world to accept other religions and their ability to practice openly within the Islamic world -- where the practice of Christianity, Judaism and other religions could cost an individual his or her life. I did not hear a call to erase for all time, Dhimmi racism -- the Sharia law-based dictate that Christians and Jews are inferior and should be suppressed. Are these "...the principles of justice, tolerance and dignity for human beings"?
In contrast, I see my people's heart bleeding and know the pressing need for self-correction and honest examination for the sake of urgent repair. Obama dangles the carrot but shies away from the imperative issues boiling beneath the surface.
Obama's reality makes my work and that of others who speak up against intolerant Islamic doctrines more challenging. He undermines this mission by placating abusive, xenophobic policies and enabling those within the Islamic world to subjugate others, to coerce others to its beliefs, and to continue these pursuits with his blessing.
The president failed to join freedom-loving individuals, liberated Arabs like myself. He failed to lead the Muslim world into modernization and vital reform.
Rather than calling out, "The house is on fire." Obama smiles and tells us how beautiful the house is as it burns out of control and threatens to destroy us.
The Difference Between The Palestinians And The Israelis
The Israelis are determined to build things; the Palestinians build only their hatred for the Jews. Consider the greenhouses the Jews left in Gaza, writes Holocaust survivor Si Frumkin in the Jewish Observer (scroll down at the link):
I am sure that at least some of the flowers, fruit and vegetables that cater to European sophisticates came from the more than 3000 Gaza greenhouses. They were all built on barren empty land by the Jews who, until a few years ago, employed over 12,000 Palestinians there. Since the start of the last Intifada and several terror attacks by the more demented employees, the number of Arabs working the greenhouses was drastically reduced, and they were replaced by Thais, Africans and Filipinos.During the months of preparation for the Israeli withdrawal, there were many questions on what should be done with the greenhouses. They were state-of-art agricultural marvels with their own sophisticated temperature and humidity control systems. They turned out millions of dollars worth of produce yearly and they were a source of employment for thousands of people in an area, where close to 40% were unemployed.
Should these marvelous structures be destroyed or moved or just abandoned? Then a wonderful and heartwarming solution was found. A small group of wealthy American Jews decided to buy the greenhouses from Israel and donate them to the Palestinian Authority. One of the donors was former World Bank president James Wolfensohn who put up $500,000 of his own money. All in all, $14 million was collected, the deal was done and an appreciative Palestinian spokesmen announced that the greenhouses would become the cornerstone of the future Palestinian economy.
So where is the Schadenfreude, you say? Happy ending for all, right? Palestinians get the greenhouses, Israelis get $14 million and the small group of admirable Jews in America get the warm feeling of having made the world a more tolerant and loving place where Arabs appreciate Jewish kindness and are less eager to murder Jews, right?
Well, no, not really!
...Just an hour or so after the Jews left Gaza, thousands of Palestinians swarmed into the empty settlements.
The Palestinian police stood and watched the mob demolish the abandoned synagogues and set them on fire. They also watched with interest as part of the crowd turned on the greenhouses, breaking windows, taking plates of glass, wiring, computer and electronic parts, irrigation pipes and timers.
It didn't take long and after a few hours or so the greenhouses that it had taken years to build were just so much junk.
And so I have Schadenfreude. The Palestinians will not export flowers to Holland or fruit to France. The greenhouses will not be rebuilt.
The Palestinian economy, such as it is, will continue to be mired in corruption, hatred and violence.
They will suffer--Schadenfreude --but still, they'll never admit that it was their own fault.
I have been to Israel. I wrote an essay my senior year of high school and won a trip there. And I've seen that the Israelis live in peace with many Arabs -- any Arabs who don't have it as their mission to run all the Jews into the sea.
The Muslim Arabs really don't care about other Muslims. Arabs are tribal people who, but for the Jews, kill each other (the Sunni and the Shiite, for example). And when black Muslims are slaughtered in Darfur, you only hear Arab Muslims whining about the conditions in Gaza. Who's taken in the black Muslims from Darfur? The Israelis, of course.
God And Evil In Ireland
An Irish friend told me a few years back that people in Ireland knew priests molested children. Well, it turns out horrible things were being done to thousands of children in the church's care, in institutions run by the religious orders in Ireland. It's just now coming out in the Ryan Report. A man speaks about his experience -- very moving, very tragic:
Here's more about what went on from an article in The Guardian by Henry McDonald:
The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but instead endured frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless."In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximise pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."
The report concluded that when confronted with evidence of sex abuse, religious authorities responded by transferring offenders to another location, where in many instances they were free to abuse again.
"There was evidence that such men took up teaching positions sometimes within days of receiving dispensations because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse," the report said. "The safety of children in general was not a consideration."
The Church is, first and foremost, a business -- a profit center. They've made that completely clear with the way they've covered up molestation of children by priests in the USA and elsewhere, and how they simply relocated the sick fuck priests who preyed on children...leaving them free to molest a whole new crop again and again and again.
More by McDonald on the business that is The Church here:
In their distinctive Thunderbirds-style light-blue uniforms with red trim the Artane Boys Band are icons of Irish music. For decades, the band marched around the pitch at Croke Park, Dublin, and played across Ireland, Britain and the US.But behind this image of boyhood whole someness lay a darker truth.
Until the 1970s thousands of the young men in the band were being abused, beaten and exploited at the industrial school that gave the ensemble its name.
One of those who was physically beaten on a regular basis by members of the Christian Brothers order that ran Artane was Patrick Walsh, now a businessman who lives in north London.
"The band was an extraordinary facade back then at that time," Walsh, who played the clarinet in the band during the 1960s, told the Guardian. "It was used by the church and state to convey a bogus image of wholesomeness that did not exist in these institutions. In Artane, the brothers were men of violence. On a daily basis, I witnessed some savage behaviour meted out to me and other boys."
Walsh added: "The boys in the band didn't receive a farthing, the Christian Brothers pocketed the money. We did the work, they took the money. There is a word for it: unpaid labour, or slavery.
"They also had a 500-acre farm at Artane, growing potatoes and vegetables, and we, the kids, worked in the fields without pay."
...The five-volume report, published by the Irish government today, seeks to address decades of clerical child abuse and state neglect. It confirms allegations from former pupils that they were used as unpaid virtual slaves, who made money for religious orders in mini factories, farms, shops and laundry services.
...Yet, when the final bill for compensating the thousands of victims of that abuse is counted, the cost will be shouldered, in the main, by the Irish taxpayer rather than the Catholic church.
In June 2002, under a special deal worked out between the Catholic hierarchy and the government, then led by Bertie Ahern, the church will pay only €128m (£112m) in compensation.
The overall cost, according to official figures, will be €1.3bn.
How To Speak Hollyweasel
A screenwriter told a friend of mine, "I'm traveling today, so I'd like to call you tomorrow."
"Like to" being the operative words.
He'd like to, but he won't, and didn't.
My favorite, though, is the woman -- a TV specialist at a Hollywood management firm -- who asked this same friend of mine, a really decent guy in his 50s who earns a good living, whether he owns a car. (No, lady, he gets around Los Angeles on a Razor scooter
It's the tiniest people who behave this way.
Meanwhile, I was out with another friend the other night. He's a member of The Foundation Room at The House Of Blues. It's a private club with the profits benefiting inner-city kids that has to be seriously pricey to join. He took me there for dinner -- really cool place, very old New Orleans meets "The Adams Family" decor.
Afterward, there was some metal'y band playing live, so we went over to the Mondrian Hotel lobby to have drinks and keep talking. Finally, we were about to leave, and he went to the john. Two guys approached me -- 40-something Wall Streeters from Boston -- and asked whether I had a boyfriend. I told them yes, but he was home reading about Stalin (my stock reason for why Gregg isn't with me at parties that would make him miserable), and I was waiting for a friend.
The guys told me they were looking for a bar that wasn't packed with 20-something gay guys. My friend came out, I intro'd him to the two guys, and we speculated for a moment about a bar for them. Then he had a thought -- and told them he'd get them into The Foundation Room as his guests. And he did -- walked them over and told the door dude they were his guests, and got them in. And he even walked them to the elevator so they'd know how to get up to the main room.
Now there's a class act. And he only told the guys his name when one of them asked before we left them to go get our cars.
Sailing The Amazon For Bargains
Kitchen & Home one-day sale
Is Your Poor Health Your Fault?
If so, why are the rest of us paying for it? The answer is, that's just how insurance works these days -- which is really dumb.
Safeway CEO Steven A. Burd writes in the WSJ about a different philosophy -- rewarding healthy behavior -- that helps them save on health care costs:
Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.As much as we would like to take credit for being a health-care innovator, Safeway has done nothing more than borrow from the well-tested automobile insurance model. For decades, driving behavior has been correlated with accident risk and has therefore translated into premium differences among drivers. Stated somewhat differently, the auto-insurance industry has long recognized the role of personal responsibility. As a result, bad behaviors (like speeding, tickets for failure to follow the rules of the road, and frequency of accidents) are considered when establishing insurance premiums. Bad driver premiums are not subsidized by the good driver premiums.
As with most employers, Safeway's employees pay a portion of their own health care through premiums, co-pays and deductibles. The big difference between Safeway and most employers is that we have pronounced differences in premiums that reflect each covered member's behaviors. Our plan utilizes a provision in the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that permits employers to differentiate premiums based on behaviors. Currently we are focused on tobacco usage, healthy weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
...At Safeway, we are building a culture of health and fitness. The numbers speak for themselves. Our obesity and smoking rates are roughly 70% of the national average and our health-care costs for four years have been held constant. When surveyed, 78% of our employees rated our plan good, very good or excellent. In addition, 76% asked for more financial incentives to reward healthy behaviors. We have heard from dozens of employees who lost weight, lowered their blood-pressure and cholesterol levels, and are enjoying better health because of this program. Many discovered for the first time that they have high blood pressure, and others have been told by their doctor that they have added years to their life.
Today, we are constrained by current laws from increasing these incentives. We reward plan members $312 per year for not using tobacco, yet the annual cost of insuring a tobacco user is $1,400. Reform legislation needs to raise the federal legal limits so that incentives can better match the true incremental benefit of not engaging in these unhealthy behaviors. If these limits are appropriately increased, I am confident Safeway's per capita health-care costs will decline for at least another five years as our work force becomes healthier.
Women who have no intention of becoming pregnant should also be able to opt out of maternity care. Currently, on my Kaiser plan, there's no way to say no way to maternity costs, which are sizable.
"Them Jews Ain't Going To Let Him Talk To Me"
Reverend Wright turns on his usual charm. David Squires writes for the Daily Press:
"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me," Wright said. "I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ..."Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing (by) the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel," Wright said.
What is this, the adult version of the kid's game, "I know you are but what am I?"
The Israelis don't want to kill all the Arabs. It's the other way around. And the Israelis live in peace with many people who are not Jews -- any people who aren't looking to murder them for Allah, or whatever.
Meanwhile, on the subject of actual ethnic cleansing, in Darfur, the Revvie is strangely silent. I guess that's because Muslims are killing Muslims. (So inconvenient not to be able to blame the Jews!)
Who Is Mitchell Koss And Why Isn't He Talking?
Epicanthus asks and kinda answers the question.
Alternative Therapy, Alright
Alternative to therapies that work. The AP reports that the government set out 10 years ago to test herbal remedies and the like -- spending $2.5 billion -- and found that few of them actually do what they're said to:
Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.
To me, the dimmest people are those who buy into "Chinese medicine." Time and time again, you hear reports of lead in the eye of newt or whatever is in those jars. Here's an idea: instead of paying Dr. Aging Hippie Chick or Dr. Insert Chinese Name Here so you can ingest lead and who knows what else, why not go find an old, lead-painted wall and lick the damn thing?
Oh, and the second dumbest people are those who load up on a bunch of "alternative therapies" based on the advice of some gray-skinned girl in the health food store. Of course, those people are sure to insist that they're much better off than with "big pharma." (Like the vitamin industry isn't a multi-billion dollar one, and like there's not a soul in it determined to get you to believe all sorts of stuff there's no evidence for in order to separate you and your money.)
More on contamination here.
An epidemiologist friend of mine suggests avoiding all vitamins manufactured in China -- and many, many are, he says. And a guy named Peter Kovacs wrote in the WaPo:
Earlier this spring, Europe narrowly averted disaster when a batch of vitamin A from China was found to be contaminated with Enterobacter sakazakii, which has been proved to cause infant deaths. Thankfully, the defective vitamin A had not yet been incorporated into infant formula. Next time we may not be so fortunate.Currently, most of the world's vitamins are manufactured in China. Unable to compete, the last U.S. plant making vitamin C closed a year ago. One of Europe's largest citric acid plants shut last winter, and only one vitamin C manufacturer operates in the West.
Given China's cheap labor, artificially low prices and the unfair competitive climate it has foisted on the industry, few Western producers of food ingredients can survive much longer.
Western companies have had to invest heavily in Chinese facilities. These Western-owned plants follow strict standards and are generally better managed than their locally owned counterparts.
Nevertheless, 80 percent of the world's vitamin C is now manufactured in China - much of it unregulated and some of it of questionable quality.
Kovacs is "a management consultant to many large food companies," but what he writes is in tune with a great deal of stuff I've read and and what I've heard from my epi-friend.
What's Wrong With Handing Out Bibles?
And I say that as somebody who doesn't believe in god, who thinks the bible is a bunch of contradictory hooey, and whose business card reads "Amy Alkon, godless harlot."
What I am, however, is somebody who's staunchly for free speech and the free dissemination of ideas, no matter how silly or misguided. In the piece below, I was struck by the administrator's remark that these students' attempt to get their point across was "equivalent to handing out Bibles," as if that would be a bad thing.
From FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends everybody's right to speak, no matter what their point of view, this posting:
Conservative Student Group Silenced at BucknellStudent rights are under assault at Bucknell University, where a conservative student group's protests against affirmative action policies and President Obama's stimulus plan have repeatedly been shut down or forbidden by administrators using flimsy or patently false excuses. After the Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC) had three events censored in two months, the students turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
Bucknell's recent forays into censorship began on March 17, 2009, when BUCC members stood at Bucknell's student center and passed out fake dollar bills with President Obama's face on the front and the sentence "Obama's stimulus plan makes your money as worthless as monopoly money" on the back. One hour into this symbolic protest, Bucknell administrator Judith L. Mickanis approached the students and told them that they were "busted," that they were "soliciting" without prior approval, and that their activity was equivalent to handing out Bibles.
Bucknell's misguided crusade against free expression continued on April 7, when administrators shut down BUCC's "affirmative action bake sale" protest. About an hour into BUCC's protest, Associate Dean of Students Gerald W. Commerford arrived and informed the students that he had the "opportunity" to shut down the sale because the prices they were charging were different (lower) than what they had listed on their event application. The students offered to change the prices on the spot, but Commerford refused and insisted that they close the event immediately and file another application for a later date.
Accordingly, BUCC members filed an application to hold the same event two weeks later, but were then told that they would have to obtain the permission of the Dean of Students to hold a "controversial" event. No such permission is required by Bucknell policy. When the students nevertheless attempted to get this special permission, Commerford rejected the request. In a recorded conversation, Commerford said that such a bake sale would violate Bucknell's nondiscrimination policy, even with satirical recommended (not actual) pricing, and that the only event he would approve on the topic would be a debate in a different forum altogether. This novel restriction also does not exist among Bucknell's official policies.
There's a letter you can send from the link above -- just type your name in and hit "send."
Again, aren't universities supposed to be places of free inquiry and debate? I guess they've just become extremely expensive trade schools where you don't actually learn a trade.
UPDATE from FIRE here.
The Extra "E" Is For Extra Peeee!
(If that headline doesn't make sense to you, read this Talk of the Town. An classic late-night TV ad from my days in New York.)
And then, let's move on up -- to Quebec, where the story in Le Journal de Montréal caught Mark Steyn's eye. Steyn posts on NRO that the paper is en français...
...but you don't have to know the lingo of the Continent to figure out the meaning of le mot "incontinent":Des patients souffrant d'un problème d'incontinence grave doivent attendre jusqu'à trois ans pour une opération qui dure à peine 30 minutes.- which means: In the Province of Quebec, patients suffering from serious incontinence - ie, they have to aller aux toilettes jusqu'à 12 fois par nuit (that's 12 times a night) - have to wait three years for a half-hour operation. That's 3 years times 365 nights times 12 trips to the bathroom.
There are only two urologists in the province who perform the operation, in part because hospital budgets are so tight they decline to buy the necessary "neurostimulator".
The central point about socialized medicine is that restricting access is the only means of controlling costs. And, when comparisons of health "costs" between nations are made, the time you spend in the bathroom each night and the subsequent impact on your work performance the following day are not factored in.
Terrorism Or Coincidence?
Two of the passengers on Air France flight 447 that they're now trying to find in the sea had the same names as "radical Muslims considered a threat to the French Republic." Peter Allen writes for SkyNews:
Agents are now trying to establish dates of birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections.There is a possibility the name similarities are simply a "macabre coincidence", the source added, but the revelation is still being "taken very seriously".
France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan.
Dick Cheney Kinda Sorta Comes Out For Gay Marriage
"I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish."
"Empathy" Can Kill
Stuart Taylor, Jr. writes in the National Journal about the damage done by the vote by Sotomayor and two other judges on Ricci to uphold the city's denial of promotions to white firefighters who did best on the test:
In response to Judge Rosemary Pooler's assertion that "no one was hurt" in the New Haven case, Torre (the white firefighters' lawyer) said: "No one was hurt? For heaven's sakes, judge, if they didn't refuse to fill the vacancies, these men would be lieutenants and captains. How can you say they weren't hurt? They're out $1,000 apiece [for test preparation].... They spent three months of their lives holed up in a room, like I was and you were when we took the bar exam."Torre went on to emphasize why the test was a valid basis for making promotions -- and what can happen when promotions go to people who have not done their homework:
"These men [are not] garbage collectors. This is a command position of a first-responder agency. The books you see piled on my desk are fire-science books. These men face life-threatening circumstances every time they go out.... They are tested for their knowledge of fire, behavior, combustion principles, building collapse, truss roofs, building construction, confined-space rescue, dirty-bomb response, anthrax, metallurgy.... The court [should] not treat these men in this profession as if it were unskilled labor. We don't do this to lawyers or doctors or nurses or captains or even real estate brokers. But somehow, they treat firefighters as if it doesn't require any knowledge to do the job....
"Firefighters die every week in this country .... A young father and firefighter, Eddie Ramos, died after a truss roof collapsed in a warehouse fire because the person who commanded the scene decided to send men into an unoccupied house... with a truss roof known to collapse early in [a] fire because of the nature of the pins that hold the trusses together.... And the fire chief had to go tell a 6-year-old that her father wasn't coming home."
Judge Sotomayor responded by observing that there must be "a fair test that could be devised that measures knowledge in a more substantive way."
Translation: New Haven needs a test that won't give such an advantage to the firefighters who have learned the most about fighting fires.
Why Erin Pizzey Is An Outcast
Wendy McElroy writes:
In 1971, Pizzey opened the first battered wives shelter in England, which she ran until 1982. Arguably, the Chiswick Family Rescue was the second domestic violence shelter in the world. Pizzey's book "Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" (1974, out of print) was one of the first to explore and expose wife battering.Today, the shelter Pizzey founded denies her entry; her name does not appear in its official history.
Pizzey's 'mistake' was to diverge from the theory of domestic violence that feminists at the time insisted dominate all discussion. She believed that men could also be the victims of domestic violence, and that women could be as violent toward their partners as men.
Pizzey's views put her on a collision course with PC feminists who, according to Pizzey's own published account of events, initiated a campaign of harassment and violence against her.
...Prone To Violence
spelled out some of Pizzey's disagreements with that view.
Disagreement #1: Of the first 100 women who entered Chiswick, Pizzey found that over 60 percent were as violent or more violent than the men they were fleeing. In short, a significant percentage of the women were also batterers or otherwise active participants in the violence.
Disagreement #2: Pizzey developed the theory that many battered women were psychologically drawn to abusive relationships and they sought them out. To PC feminists, such analysis was tantamount to 'blaming the victim.'
Disagreement #3: She explained why the existing model of domestic violence shelters was ineffective. PC feminists were attempting then (and now) to secure ever greater financing for these operations. Sandra Horley, director of Chiswick in 1992, reportedly complained, "if we put across this idea that the abuse of men is as great as the abuse of women, then it could seriously affect our funding."
Handbag Farm
Hermes is breeding crocodiles for their handbags. David Jones writes for Reuters:
Hermes already faces a major challenge producing 3,000 crocodile bags a year, Thomas said, adding: "The world is not full of crocodiles, except the stock exchange!"
Life In Wackytown
Alternate side of the street parking day is harder for some than others.
What You Won't Be Seeing On My Blog
The state of things in academia is such that there really isn't much freedom of speech on college campuses for anybody who isn't P.C. This probably isn't news to most people here, or anybody acquainted with the terrific work of Greg Lukianoff and FIRE, but I still can't help but be shocked by the desire by some to quash opposing viewpoints.
Professor Glenn Geher, for example, spoke at the Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference of a disgusting campaign by feminists to prevent Rutgers professor Lionel Tiger from speaking at SUNY Binghamton.
And at HBES itself, I asked a researcher who gave a fascinating talk on a controversial subject for a copy of his PowerPoint because I planned to blog his talk. (And I do plan to blog a number of these talks from HBES, just a little swamped.) He gave me a printout of it, and then came back to find me a couple hours later. He begged me not to blog it, because he was worried of losing his (non-tenured) position at a university. A university! A place that's supposed to be for the free exchange and debate of ideas. Right. How naive.
And yes, I reassured him I won't blog his work. And then we comiserated: Pretty disgusting, the state of things.
And, finally, why don't the feminists, or anybody who disagrees with somebody presenting a point of view (short of one advocating or encouraging violence), just come to their talk and make reasoned arguments afterward? Is their position so weak that their only option is to silence those they consider the opposition? (Never mind, I've read their stuff. I already know the answer.)
Unpopular Science May Be Even Cheaper
Special at Amazon, Popular Science
"Why Does The US Hate My Mexican Heritage?"
I don't hate you, Gaby, and certainly not because you're of "Mexican heritage"; I just think you're a whiny, victimist ass. Gaby Wood asks the above question in the Guardian/UK, as a way to present her boohoo/poor me thinking about why there's opposition to Sotomayor. An excerpt:
A former Republican congressman described the Hispanic advocacy group National Council of La Raza as a "Latino KKK", and a writer at the conservative publication the National Review argued that Sotomayor was not fully assimilated because she pronounced her surname with the stress on the last syllable. As I read these things, I wept.I moved to New York six years ago. I am half-Mexican, half-British, and while growing up in Mexico and England I had no direct experience of racism. Yet suddenly, in America, I was one of a racially abused minority.
Most days, the people I speak to in Spanish are part of an underclass and that's never been true in my life before. If I speak English, people here think I'm posh, like the Queen, and if I speak Spanish, they can't believe how Mexican my accent is. There are millions of bilingual people here, but that particular mix is unusual. And only in America could it be viewed as such a clash of classes.
I've had people tell me not to go to certain places because they are full of Mexicans. On the more politically correct end of the scale, I've been chastised for referring to Latinos who were Mexican as "Mexicans".
Somehow, my nationality has become a dirty word. If you say "Mexican" in America, you are not referring to the citizens of a specific country, you are using a blanket derogatory term for "people who came out of nowhere and took our jobs".
The attacks on Sonia Sotomayor are unconscionable, yet even more worryingly, Obama has been cited as proof that we are now colour blind and therefore anyone who has shown direct support for the racial underdog is too biased to be considered as a Supreme Court justice. In other words, now we've elected Obama, we have a licence to get on with being as racist as we were before. Also, blacks are one thing (they've always been here) but these invaders are a real problem. We needn't worry that Sonia Sotomayor will be judged on the wrong terms: there is a Democratic majority in the Senate and she has many Republican admirers. But what about the rest of the country? In the heady first days of this year, many warned that the word "post-racial" was dangerous; we may already be just where they feared we'd find ourselves.
My response in the comments:
Oh. Please.This Southern Californian doesn't "hate" anybody (in fact, I moved here because I like living in a place filled with diverse sorts of people, from all sorts of places), although your whiny, victimist stance above makes me want to hurl.
What I do hate is, while our state is going bankrupt, paying taxes for school and health care for millions of illegals, most of whom happen to be of Hispanic origin (not that that matters). The drug violence exported by Mexico, I'm not too fond of, either. And I would feel the same lack of "fondness" if it were exported by Canada instead.
I'm against Sotomayor because she does not believe in judging on strict Constitutional grounds. I also find her racist. I'm for a post-racial society, in which nobody claims that "a Latino woman" would be a wiser judge than a white man, but looks at people as individuals and considers them for jobs based on merit and ability alone.
Her judgement in Ricci is highly questionable, throwing out a test because white firefighters did the best on it. Not the way to a post-racial society.
Oh, and I do hate, hate, hate when newscasters pronounce their names with a Spanish accent. And Hispanic/Latino newscasters are the only ones I hear doing it. You don't hear people of other origins running around pronouncing their names the old country way, like "Goldschtein" for "Goldstein." Come on, people -- America's the melting pot country. It only works if people melt.
Press one to read this message in Spanish. Press two to ask people who read this message in Spanish to learn English like my poor-as-fuck European peasant ancestors did, and pronto, so they could join our economy and become American.
What Was Euna Lee Doing On This Assigment?
Make no mistake: I think it's horrible that these two girls have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor for allegedly crossing into North Korea.
That said, North Korea is not some silly little country that's known for its relaxed attitudes toward, well, anyone. What was Al Gore's Current TV doing sending Ling and Lee anywhere near the Korean border? And what will it cost this country in dollars and diplomatic giveaways to yank them out?
And for anybody who happens to know, is the border marked off? Are there signs? Or is it easy to just stumble across into mad North Korean dictatorland? Of course, pondering all possibilities, it is possible troops stormed across and kidnapped them. What do you think?
Check out Lee's "Flim (sic) & Video Editor | Compositor" resume, and her work, here. What was this girl, not exactly a seasoned foreign correspondent (or seasoned anything), doing on this job?
I'm not the only one wondering this. A comment from Gawker by "Lulupasternak":
Euna Lee had been a tape editor. This was her first overseas assignment, and she only got it because she speaks Korean. Current hires beginners, pays shit, and throws them to the wolves. Laura's never been a journalist anywhere but Vanguard. Her EP used to be her sister's EP when she was at Channel 1. This is an outrage, but Current is to blame.
More from the LA Times. And guess what: Lee has a 4-year-old daughter!
As I said about Daniel Pearl, the WSJ reporter who left behind a widow and a child when he was murdered by Islamists, when you have kids, maybe you don't get to keep putting yourself in harm's way. (That's for the "barren!" among us.) Once you have kids, stay home in New York and report on who got windy at the U.N. Too boring? Don't reproduce.
A Jewish Mother On Circumcision
A most eloquent critic of the ritual mutilation of boys:
Part two:
"We need to state it that way...It's not simply 'a bris,' it's not 'circumcision.' We are genital cutting people,'" she says (meaning Jewish people). "We do not have the right to hold down another human being and subtract healthy tissue for non-medical reasons," says Pollack in part two.
Her thoughts are here in print as well.
Nightmare On Obamastreet
A draft of the Kennedy-Dodd health care plan got leaked over the weekend.
via Instapundit
It's My Life. I'll Kill Myself If And When I Want To.
I would also like to be put out of my misery (or turnip-like state) if I am lying brain-dead in a bed, thanks.
A 66-year-old woman in Washington named Linda Fleming, diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, was the first to die under the state's new "Death With Dignity" law. Kudos to Washington for passing this law, and to the heroic Jack Kevorkian, who helped put a number of people out of their misery when they asked him to, at great personal cost.
Sandi Doughton writes for The Seattle Times:
Rather than die in agony or spend her final days in a drug-induced haze, Fleming swallowed a fatal dose of barbiturates in her apartment Thursday night -- becoming the first person in Washington to end her life under the state's new "Death with Dignity" law.Family members, her beloved Chihuahua, Seri, and a physician were with her when she died, according to Compassion & Choices Washington, the organization that sponsored the measure adopted by Washington voters in November.
...She said she was grateful that Washington's law provided her "the choice of a death that fits my own personal beliefs."
One opponent of the law called Fleming's death a "sad day" and criticized her choice as "egotistical."
"It's saying: 'I want to go out of life on my own terms, even though the vast majority of us accept the natural conclusion of our lives,' " said Chris Carlson, of the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide, one of the groups that raised $1.6 million to fight the measure.
You "accept the natural conclusion" of your life, asshole, and I'll take a handful of pills, thanks. "Egotistical"? Yes, that's right. It's my life, and I'll decide when to end it. You don't get to decide that I have to continue suffering -- especially if I no longer have the physical capacity to end my life myself.
My worry is what to do if I get Dementia or Alzheimer's. If they don't have a cure by the time I'm old, I'd like to be sure I off myself before I totally lose my mind, but not too soon. The problem is, possibly missing the window before you totally fall out mentally.
And finally, one problem with this law (as you'll see if you read the whole piece, which you should, at the link), is that it's not an assisted suicide law. You have to be able to administer the pills (or whatever) yourself. There are people who are unable to do so, who would like to end their lives, and this doesn't cover them. Some of the other limitations -- that you must have only six months to live, according to your doctor -- are troubling as well. I think people should have autonomy over their lives and deaths, and the ability to ask to be helped to die if they can't kill themselves.
Bob Lutz Couldn't Figure Out Why Saturn Flopped
Kaus helps him out:
"I could have saved him the 10 years, as could about 85% of the readers of Car and Driver, because it's obvious why Saturn flopped: The company had built a popular brand as a sort of feel-good anti-car-vaguely tractor-like, noisy, but made of semi-indestructible plastic by dedicated Tennessee workers and-unique in nearly all of GM-actually reliable. GM threw all this away and filled Saturn showrooms with cars designed to appeal to totally different buyers: rebadged mainstream Opels. They were OK, but creepily overstyled and not so reliable. End of explanation. . . . Detroit cars will sell when they're bulletproof, not when they're green (or, in Lutz's new spin, when they're made by a company that also sells something 'green'). But only one of the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers has made dramatic progress catching up to Japan on the bulletproof front-and it's not Chrysler or GM. It's the one that hasn't gone broke."
Lutz seems to believe (or want to believe) that the Prius is Toyota's magic bullet, the reason for their success. It's not. I grew up with parents who drove GM cars...back and forth to the shop. Kaus explains:
Even today, when GM suffers "under the perception that they [are] saddled with cars of inferior quality," you only have to look at the Consumer Reports reliability ratings to see that the reason GM is saddled with this perception is that the perception is accurate. (The Cadillac CTS that Lutz boasts about, for example, may be a great performer. But it's still so unreliable that Consumer Reports can't recommend it. The beautiful Pontiac Solstice, which Lutz championed, has a true crap record. The Prius, meanwhile, is spectacularly reliable.)For those three decades of Japanese market surge, much of the talk of Detroit executives has been an attempt to dance around the central issue of reliability and 'build quality,' and the inability of Detroit to provide it.
...Detroit cars will sell when they're bulletproof, not when they're green (or, in Lutz's new spin, when they're made by a company that also sells something "green"). But only one of the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers has made dramatic progress catching up to Japan on the bulletproof front--and it's not Chrysler or GM. It's the one that hasn't gone broke.
Literal Video
Totally hilarious reworking of "Total Eclipse of the Heart":
All Parents Are Perverts Until Proven Otherwise
Free Range Kids author Lenore Skenazy chronicles the absolute idiocy of one particular school on her blog. They require all parents to go through a background check before attending their child's class party. From one of her suburban Texas readers, the notice from the local grammar school:
"Our Winter Holiday parties will be Friday, December 19, with K-2 celebrating from 1:00-1:45 and grades 3-5 will celebrate from 2:00-2:45 ... Please remember that each adult attending the party must have a volunteer background check completed and reported. If you have not completed this process please do this immediately."
Lenore writes:
That's right - you need a background check to ATTEND YOUR CHILD'S CLASS PARTY. One woman apologized on the neighborhood's message board for not being able to help out at her daughter's kindergarten shindig. And why was that?
The woman continues:
"By the time I decided to go, there was not enough time for the school to do a background check on me. And their policy is if you want to be a volunteer, you have to go through the background check, it usually takes two weeks. The teacher told me I could still go to the party, but I cannot help or interact with any children except my own. I was supposed to just stand back and watch."
A commenter called, most amusingly, SheWhoPicksUpToys, writes on Lenore's site:
This is the same kind of nonsense as zero tolerance. The understandable desire of schools to protect themselves from liability leads to the inability to make the simplest distinctions imaginable -- such as the distinction between an adult spending large amounts of time with children, without other supervision, and adult showing up in a room along with a bunch of other adults doing the same thing for a half hour and eating cupcakes with the kids.I recently heard a similar story from a friend who was helping out at her church's summer camp -- she had to go through a background check to help serve lunch. Doesn't a group lunch usually take place in a large room full of a mixture of children and adults? If they simply insisted that only the certified people could take the kids to the bathroom or whatever, that would make sense (from a liability POV at least.) But making every person go through a check who spends any time whatsoever at any event involving children is madness.
I guess they're just overflowing with volunteers at these schools -- gotta do what they can to keep the crowds of the helpful from stampeding the lunchroom.
The President Is Muslim(ish) Again
ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller note that Obama's campaign worked overtime to keep him Christian in the public's eyes, with this from their Fight The Smears website:
"Barack Obama is a committed Christian. He was sworn into the Senate on his family Bible. He has regularly attended church with his wife and daughters for years. But shameful, shadowy attackers have been lying about Barack's religion, claiming he is a Muslim instead of a committed Christian. When people fabricate stories about someone's faith to denigrate them politically, that's an attack on people of all faiths. Make sure everyone you know is aware of this deception."
Suddenly, whaddya know, he's rediscovering his Muslim roots. (That was fast!) Tapper and Miller write:
The other day we heard a comment from a White House aide that never would have been uttered during the primaries or general election campaign.During a conference call in preparation for President Obama's trip to Cairo, Egypt, where he will address the Muslim world, deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said "the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago."
When people talk about Obama's Muslim roots, that's opportunism. When he later does it...opportunity!
Lucky thing is (since Muslims put people to death for apostasy), he never explained when he left Islam and became a Christian (the campaign maintained that he was never a Muslim). Robert Spencer wrote at Jihadwatch during the campaign:
According to Islamic law an apostate male is not to be put to death if he has not reached puberty (cf. 'Umdat al-Salik o8.2; Hidayah vol. II p. 246). Some, however, hold that he should be imprisoned until he is of age and then "invited" to accept Islam, but officially the death penalty for youthful apostates is ruled out.There are several ways this could go with Obama. Fjordman writes, "This is a golden opportunity for American anti-Jihadis to expose the intolerance inherent to Islamic teachings. And it is even better that it is a man from the black community and the political Left, where Muslims find many of their sympathizers."
That is true -- it is an opportunity to call attention to this aspect of Islam that so many are so eager to cover up. However, I think that Obama's candidacy and religious history are more likely to work to the advantage of the Left and the jihadists, even if he flames out a la Howard Dean in 2004. For if the Islamic death penalty for apostasy is even allowed to come up in the mainstream media, smiling Islamic spokesmen will deny that Islam teaches this. They can even be honest and simply affirm that it doesn't apply to Obama at all, since he left Islam while still very young.
...Meanwhile, many, many people have been writing me, asking if he is a Muslim. I don't know anything more than anyone else: he says he isn't. Do I think he is secretly a Muslim still? No, I don't. I don't see any reason not to take him at his word. The thing that concerns me most about him is his politics, which will take us farther down the road of appeasement whatever his individual creed is.
Kay And Earl Recommend...
The world's most adorable senior citizen lovebirds are voracious readers. They come to read almost every day at the cafe where I write. Kay is reading a novel she says is wonderful, the story of a guy, in his 90s as the book opens, who had to join the circus after his parents died. The book is Water for Elephants: A Novel
When Kay isn't reading, she's teaching kids to read. Earl is a retired pediatrician who volunteers at the Venice Free Clinic -- as he has for 30 years. Many of the cafe regulars love them and get up and hug them when they come in. Who says Los Angeles is a cold town? You just have to go the right places and be a little friendly and open.
Your Health Is Going To Be Too Expensive
A Canadian professor friend can't believe how naive Americans are to think government-run health care is a good idea. She only has good care now because she's working at a university in the USA. She had a small melanoma on her face and had it dealt with right away (she's fine now), but in Canada, would've undergone huge waits and probably substandard care (compared with the work the American plastic surgeon did to cover it so it's barely noticeable).
Virginia Postrel makes the wise observation that if 30 percent of costs of Medicare can be saved, let's start there as a proving ground for Obamacare. (Which, surely, would be deadly for Obamacare, which is why they'll never do it.) Virginia writes:
Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs....why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent of its spending thinks it's making a case for making the rest of the health care system more like Medicare.
And in a follow-up to her post, a doctor e-mailed her this:
I put a plate on a distal radius today. Fifteen years ago, I may have used a cheaper technology, an external fixator or reducing and pinning it. Open reduction and internal fixation of distal radius (wrist) fractures gives the best result and it is because of significant improvement in plate and screw design and manufacture (and better surgical technique, if any credit in America can go do physicians). This is on small problem that can lead to significant disability and pain. Multiply by every medical and surgical condition. Under a government controlled healthcare system, how much improvement will follow? Where will be the evidence for "evidence based medicine" when a green eyeshade guy is determining whether new technology can be used? If everyone is happy with healthcare in 2009, performed at the lowest per capita cost that can be managed, then go for Obamacare. If you think there might be significant improvements in the future, realize Obamacare will be an abortion. Doctors will do their best with whatever system we get, but we are not driving this. If it is a poor system that we get from the government, expect a worse future for medical care. Thanks for letting me vent.
Here's Virginia's Atlantic piece on how she'd be dead (from cancer) if she lived in New Zealand, under their national health care program.
Robert Spencer Translates Obama
Obama showed massive naivete in much he said in his speech to Muslims. There was surely some diplomacy in there (aka lying while wearing a very nice suit), but I suspect it's overly optimistic to attribute some of the pretty egregious stuff he said to that.
Jihadwatch's Robert Spencer cuts through the crap and explains what Obama was really saying, and why. A few excerpts (with text as prepared for delivery by the White House):
OBAMA: I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning,SPENCER: ...whose Grand Sheikh, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, has given his approval -- on Islamic grounds -- to suicide bombing.
... OBAMA: I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
SPENCER: No word, of course, of the Sharia laws that impugn the dignity of human beings who are women or non-Muslim by denying them various basic rights.
... OBAMA: As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam - at places like Al-Azhar University - that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.
SPENCER: The idea that Islamic culture was once a beacon of learning and enlightenment is a commonly held myth. In fact, much of this has been exaggerated, often for quite transparent apologetic motives. The astrolabe was developed, if not perfected, long before Muhammad was born. The zero, which is often attributed to Muslims, and what we know today as "Arabic numerals" did not originate in Arabia, but in pre-Islamic India. Aristotle's work was preserved in Arabic not initially by Muslims at all, but by Christians such as the fifth century priest Probus of Antioch, who introduced Aristotle to the Arabic-speaking world. Another Christian, Huneyn ibn-Ishaq (809-873), translated many works by Aristotle, Galen, Plato and Hippocrates into Syriac. His son then translated them into Arabic. The Syrian Christian Yahya ibn 'Adi (893-974) also translated works of philosophy into Arabic, and wrote one of his own, The Reformation of Morals. His student, another Christian named Abu 'Ali 'Isa ibn Zur'a (943-1008), also translated Aristotle and others from Syriac into Arabic. The first Arabic-language medical treatise was written by a Christian priest and translated into Arabic by a Jewish doctor in 683. The first hospital was founded in Baghdad during the Abbasid caliphate -- not by a Muslim, but a Nestorian Christian. A pioneering medical school was founded at Gundeshapur in Persia -- by Assyrian Christians.
In sum, there was a time when it was indeed true that Islamic culture was more advanced than that of Europeans, but that superiority corresponds exactly to the period when Muslims were able to draw on and advance the achievements of Byzantine and other civilizations. But when the Muslim overlords had taken what they could from their subject peoples, and the Jewish and Christian communities had been stripped of their material and intellectual wealth and thoroughly subdued, Islam went into a period of intellectual decline from which it has not yet recovered.
OBAMA: I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims."
SPENCER: Of course it doesn't. But does that statement hold true the other way around?
... OBAMA: Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity - men and women - to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.
SPENCER: How does he propose to overcome the culture that teachings like this create? The Qur'an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will" (2:223).
The Qur'an also declares that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (2:282).
It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (4:3).
It rules that a son's inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: "Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females" (4:11).
Worst of all, the Qur'an tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them" (4:34).
It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures "shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated" (65:4).
Incredible naivete from an American president, recited to barbarians from a religion that is not a religion at all, but a totalitarian system cloaking itself as a religion, with scripture written to justify Mohammed's violent and sick acts, like marrying a girl who was 6, and having sex with her when she was nine.
That's just a bit of Spencer's translation excerpted above. Read the whole thing at the link.
Obama Rewrites The Quran
I am an atheist but I was raised Jewish and sent to temple, where I learned that the highest form of righteousness (tzedakah) in Judaism is saving a life. I was surprised to hear from Obama that Islam has a similar value, since so many of its adherents go around murdering the rest of us for Allah. The Spectator's Melanie Phillips set me (and Obama) straight:
...One of Obama's references in particular made me catch my breath. It was this:
The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.This is boilerplate misrepresentation by Islamists and their apologists. The fact is that it is Judaism which teaches this as a cardinal precept. The Talmud states:
Whoever destroys a single soul, he is guilty as though he had destroyed a complete world; and whoever preserves a single soul, it is as though he had preserved a whole world.
The Koran appropriated this precept - but altered it to mean something very different. Thus (verses 5:32-5:35):
That was why we laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind. Our apostles brought them veritable proofs: yet many among them, even after that, did prodigious evil in the land. Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land. (Phillips' emphasis)In other words, this turns a Talmudic precept affirming the value of preserving human life into a prescription for violence and murder against Jews and 'unbelievers'. Yet Obama passed it off as evidence of the pacific nature of Islam.
So in conclusion, yes, there was some positive stuff in this speech - but it was outweighed by the United States President's shocking historical misrepresentations, gross ignorance, disgusting moral equivalence between aggressors and their victims, and disturbing sanitising of Islamist supremacism.
In short, deeply troubling.
The Death Of Common Sense
That's what happens when adults catch teens sexting each other. I blogged about this a few days ago, but I can never resist reading my friend Nancy Rommelmann's writing, so I'm linking to her reason article on sexting:
This practice might be considered relatively harmless, the 21st-century version of "you show me yours, I'll show you mine," if it weren't for federal and state laws that deal harshly with those who traffic in child pornography. The federal statute criminalizes the production, distribution, and possession of images depicting underage subjects engaged in sexually explicit conduct; depending on the charges, it mandates sentences of five to 30 years in prison. Because the technology that allows sexting is new, age-appropriate punishments have yet to be hammered out. Instead, laws designed to thwart middle-aged people who prey on children are being applied to the children themselves.Sexting cases are piling up in courtrooms across the United States. Three Pennsylvania girls, ages 14 and 15, who took semi-nude pictures of themselves with their phones and sent them to their boyfriends are awaiting trial on charges of distributing child porn. (The boyfriends are charged with possession.) Last October a 15-year-old Ohio girl was taken in handcuffs to a juvenile detention facility after sending nude photos of herself to classmates. "I wasn't really thinking when I did it," she told the court, which threatened felony charges that would require her to register as a sex offender, charges that were dropped when she agreed to have her cell phone and Internet use monitored. Two teenagers in Florida were not as fortunate: In 2007 a state appeals court upheld their convictions for producing child porn. Although the pair didn't pass around the snapshots, which showed them engaged in an "unspecified sex act," the judges found a "reasonable expectation that the material will ultimately be disseminated." Were that to happen, they observed, "future damage may be done to these minors' careers or personal lives." They did not say anything about the potential impact on their lives from a child pornography conviction.
Alex's case isn't even the first to arise in his part of the country. Genesee County, with a population of about 60,000, has seen "a dozen, 15 maybe" in the last two years, according to Assistant District Attorney Will Zickl. "I'm glad they didn't have this technology when I was in high school," he says. "Once you put your image out there, it's out there. God knows where it can go. As computer-savvy and Net-savvy as kids are, they don't think about that."
Or maybe they do, and they just don't care. While it's hard to argue that it's an awesome idea for teenagers to launch pictures of their genitals into cyberspace, the sheer number who do so suggests that they don't share the concern for privacy that held sway over previous generations. When they close their bedroom doors, it is not necessarily to be alone. It might be to hook up with the whole world.
Privatize Marriage
iFeminist's Wendy McElroy has a great idea -- to stop making marriage "a three-way contract between two people and the government, which is regulated by the state from wedding vows to divorce decrees." McElroy writes:
Let people make their own marriage contracts according to their conscience, religion and common sense. Those contracts could be registered with the state, recognized as legal and arbitrated by the courts, but the terms would be determined by the adults involved.
At the link, McElroy lays out the reasons that marriage is increasingly unattractive to men. She also notes the increasing meddling by government in marital contracts:
For example, "no-fault" divorce was imposed by virtually every state legislature and by the courts between 1969 to 1985. No-fault was even retrofitted onto marriages entered into under a different set of laws.Unfortunately, government intrudes more and more. The state's intrusion is always for a "noble" cause: to protect women and children. But the state could instead embrace a more immediate and practical solution. Existing law could be used to punish acts of violence, such as wife beating, in the criminal court system. The civil courts could register, recognize and legally enforce the terms of private marriage contracts.
Get politics out of marriage: privatize it. Make marriage an enforceable contract between two people who agree on the terms of union and of divorce, including the terms of child custody and support. The contract could be as broadly or narrowly phrased as people wish. In the nature of marriage, most contracts would probably be broadly defined, leaving many or most details to private and personal negotiation: for example, who does the dishes. In all likelihood, those areas that now cause such social turmoil are the ones that would be narrowly defined: for example, who gets the custody of children upon divorce and what are the support arrangements.
In all likelihood, several standard contracts would evolve that could be adapted to handle the most common marriage preferences. This would solve the problems caused by imposing a "one-size-fits-all" contract upon marriage. Author David Boaz speculates: "If they -- a marrying couple -- wanted to contract for a traditional breadwinner/homemaker setup, with specified rules for property and alimony in the event of divorce, they could do so. Less traditional couples could keep their assets separate and agree to share specified expenses. Those with assets to protect could sign prenuptial agreements that courts would respect. Marriage contracts could be as individually tailored as other contracts ..."
...Consider the hot potato of same-sex marriage. Various states and legislatures are waging political warfare over the question, "What constitutes a marriage?" A few years ago, the European Court of Human Rights recognized a British transsexual as being a "woman" with the right to legally marry, despite the fact that British law denies both claims. At the same time, Ontario, Canada, accorded legal status to same-sex marriage but delayed enforcement for two years in order to let Parliament figure out, "What is marriage?" Currently, polygamous 'sects' are having their 'marriages' legally challenged on grounds that range from child abuse to exploitation of women. "What is marriage?"
My definition: A legal marriage is whatever contract for a committed relationship is agreed to by the adults involved.
Galoshes For Girls
They're called Shuellas, and they go over your high-heeled shoes, boots, or sandals (or flats) to protect them from the rain. 
Love the bright color, and they come with a little pouch you can fold them into so you can tuck them in your purse. Clever. Also, they're pretty sleek looking for a boot you put over your shoes.
Thanks so much to everyone who's been helping keep me afloat by buying stuff through my Amy's Mall links to Amazon. I get a kickback from every purchase, and appreciate even the smallest ones, which count toward increasing my percentage (from 6.5 percent to 7). This past month, I think my total was $162 for everybody's Amazon purchases, which made me feel just great. It's especially helpful because the Tucson Citizen, which always paid me very well, went out of business May 15, 2009. Just hoping those who work there will be able to find new jobs.
Betty Bowers Explains Traditional Marriage to Everyone Else
"America's Best Christian" explores the curious details of god's concept of marriage.
via Little Shiva
Odd Mistake
Just heard Obama addressing the Muslims on the radio, and he pronounced hijab as "hajeeb." Meaningless slip of the tongue? Reflective of how little he actually knows about Islam? Or, something else?
She Loves Me Not, She Loves Me Not
Check out some of my recent hate mail for a column in which I respond to a guy who wants to know who has it harder, stay-at-home moms or breadwinner dads.
Disturbingly, the e-mail is from a mother -- apparently yet another who believes squeezing children out of one's coochie qualifies a person to be a parent. Here it is:
Dear Amy, I have been reading your columns for several months now. I would like to offer you a bit of advice...since you yourself have admitted you are a "barren" woman I think you should lay off the moms...at least until you find someone stupid enough to procreate with such a venomous, self loathing, college drop-out, sorry excuse for an advice columnist. I read you little piece about SAHM and you know you obviously have no background as a mother so I have to assume you have no background in psychology. Throw in the towel call it a day and get your adam's apple reduced.
No name on it, although I used three brain cells to realize that I could unpeel the e-mail header, which I did, noting her full name and sending her a response with it in the subject line. Tellingly, her e-mail address was her child's name, as in Ashtonzmom at soandso dot com -- which I suspect has something do with why she was so enraged by this column, Harried, With Children.
I get mail and e-mail for a living, and no matter how devoted the the husband or dad, I never, ever get e-mail from guys in names like Marshazhusband or Ashtonzdad.
Some excerpts from my response:
Um, maybe when you write an e-mail like you did above you should consider dropping the "Dear"?What, in particular, in my column, do you feel was incorrect?
People often like to take out their rage on strangers over the Internet -- just wrote about that, in fact, and interviewed a TV star at a book festival who has the cruelest possible things written about her -- as if she's not a person and doesn't have feelings. Would you come up to me and say all this above to my face? If not, why do you think it's appropriate to say via e-mail? Do you allow your children to behave this way?
...If I did drop out of college, or didn't go, what would that matter? Wendy McElroy is one of a number of thinkers I respect who didn't attend college. Judith Rich Harris, who I referenced in the column, is an excellent and meticulous researcher and didn't have a traditional path.
...The way you lashed out above suggests you aren't able to counter me with reason, as some mothers who disagreed on some points did. Their polite arguments were welcomed.
As for "BARREN!" -- it's a joke. Of sorts. I don't want children because I understand what an enormous thing it is to raise them (although I have nine children in my life that I'm very close with and care deeply about). Tragically, too many parents get pregnant by accident or carelessness or don't fully consider what it takes.
...I do copious research and did a vast amount for this column, and spend a good bit of my time with a stay-at-home mom and her two children, who she raises to be kind, good people -- as she is. She's an exemplary human being, and when somebody does something rude to her in traffic, she contains herself and "gives back" by being extra nice to somebody else. Quite a different approach from yours, and I have to tell you, children pick up on subtle signals, and I'm convinced that her children are the kind, loving little people they are because she is their mother and sets the tone for them.
As I've said before, it's disturbing that you need a license to cut hair, but only working ovaries to have children.
How To Make Perfect Microwave Bacon
No paper toweling, which protects your microwave from splatter but makes the bacon taste like salty particle board, and sucks the fat away.
I need the fat so I'm not hungry, and this method does the trick: CorningWare
One piece takes less time (maybe eight minutes), and more pieces take more, and the whole deal varies by microwave. The thing is, cooking it on high is too hot. You need to cook it slowly, on a low temperature.
For those who wonder why I need the fat and work hard to eat lots of it instead of disdaining it like so many across America (who eat a diet based in "science" instead of science, thanks to the medical establishment), read Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health
Because I barely eat carbs, I have tremendous energy (like I'm 17 again), weigh less than I did in high school, and would still if I never exercised a stitch.
"Kind Of Like Being The Best Lobster In Maine"
That's what my friend Hillary Johnson said, upon hearing the news that Portland's Ristretto Roasters, the baby of my friend Nancy Rommelmann's (coffee psycho) husband Din, was named The Northwest's Best Cup Of Coffee by important foodies and foodie authors Jane and Michael Stern, in their new book, 500 Things To Eat Before It's Too Late: and the Very Best Places To Eat Them
My own review of Din's coffee? "It's like drinking velvet."
Oh, and I mean the "coffee psycho" thing in the nicest of ways. Of course.
The Geniuses In The Government Like To Keep These Things A Secret
I have to fly somewhere in June, on a ticket I bought in March, and I just discovered a brand new flight regulation even the phone reps at the airlines haven't heard of. From an Ed Perkins story a few days ago in the Chicago Trib, if you don't have your middle name on your ticket, flying could be trouble:
If your passport or driver's license includes a full middle name that you don't normally use, you will have to include that name on your ticket the next time you fly within the United States and by December if you fly overseas. That new requirement seems to be sneaking up on a lot of travelers and apparently on airlines as well.The requirement from the Transportation Security Administration is supposed to make it easier for travelers, airlines and the TSA to avoid ID hassles at airports. Because the master lists of questionable travelers apparently are in full-name format, the TSA wants to make sure that travel documents conform to its lists. The requirement was supposed to take effect May 15 for domestic travel, but when I spoke to people in the industry before that, some expected it to be pushed back a month or so.
As I understand it, the principle of the new rule is that you must travel under your name as it appears on the ID you use to get on a flight, which generally means either a passport or a driver's license domestically; a passport or a passport-derived "enhanced" driver's license internationally.
Under the new rule, when you make a flight reservation, each airline is supposed to get your full name and pass it along to the TSA. An agency spokesman said your ticket and/or boarding pass also should have your full name.
Hey, TSA, thanks for that massive P.R. push to let us know.
I'm a little worried that I won't be able to board my plane or get back. I mean, I should be able to, by virtue of buying my ticket in March, for a underadvertised requirement taking place at some unspecified time in the future, but I've found it prudent to never assume anybody in government will operate guided by reason and common sense.
I called the airline. The dude on the phone hadn't heard word one about this. He had to go ask a supervisor. He came back and said, "You won't have anything to worry about with the TSA."
Yeah, right. I asked him to add my middle name to my reservation (just for kicks, since I know this is impossible). He told me "United's computers need to be updated. We're not capable of accepting this information. Our goal is to start with the middle name (in the computers) on August 15."
In case you're wondering, the TSA website has up-to-date information on ID requirements -- for anyone willing to travel back in time to June 21, 2008. Here's all it said when I checked Monday, June 1, 2009:
Effective June 21, 2008, adult passengers (18 and over) are required to show a U.S. federal or state-issued photo ID that contains the following: name, date of birth, gender, expiration date and a tamper-resistant feature in order to be allowed to go through the checkpoint and onto their flight.Passengers who do not or cannot present an acceptable ID will have to provide information to the Transportation Security Officer performing Travel Document Checking duties in order to verify their identity. Passengers who are cleared through this process may be subject to additional screening. Passengers whose identity cannot be verified by TSA may not be allowed to go through the checkpoint or onto an airplane.
Not a word about this middle name or else requirement.
No, wait -- there's a cryptic picture about "Secure Flight" -- a photo on the site with the note that all the people in it were named Alex Johnson. Out of abject frustration and some sense of what numbnuts they are at the TSA, I clicked on it and got this:
Q. Does the name on all of my IDs have to match? What if my driver's license has only my middle initial, but my passport has my full name? Should I change my driver's license to match my passport?A. Secure Flight does not require that the names on all of your IDs be identical. Passengers should provide their name as it appears on their government-issued ID they plan to use when traveling. This provides TSA the best information possible to use when performing watch list matching. This will result in a better process for travelers and greatly reduces the number of misidentifications. By adding date of birth and gender, the number of misidentifications is reduced further and can more readily identify passengers who do not pose a threat.
So...is this the slightest bit current, and do we or do we not have to have our middle name on our tix to match our ID?
And you seriously think government-run health care is a wise idea?
Then there's this, from the Trib article:
Even more troubling is the possibility that you will have to change one or more of your charge cards. These days, you often have to show the card you used to purchase your e-ticket to an agent when you check in for a flight, and you could encounter a problem if the names don't agree.
Um, so the credit card companies are supposed to pay to reissue all those new cards with those terrorist trapping middle names? Or we are?
Way to bolster the economy, TSA!
P.S. Again, I ask, are we safer...or just way more annoyed?
UPDATE: Just spoke to TSA spokesman Greg Soule, who led me to a changing flash screen on their site to get me to click on the second photo that comes up (and goes away) to get to this link -- http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2009/0521.shtm -- which does a super-poor job of educating people about whether they need their middle name, as it doesn't mention it in the slightest. Just this sort of thing:
Over the coming months when booking airline travel, travelers may be asked to provide their name as it appears on the government ID they plan to use when traveling. Later this summer, airlines will also begin asking passengers to provide their date of birth and gender. TSA's goal is for Secure Flight to be fully implemented in early 2010 for all domestic flights and the end of 2010 for all international flights.
Soule told me they'd "partnered with The Ad Council" to get the word out. I ranted about how poorly they'd done it, and suggested they hire a talented editor I know, formerly at a major paper, who'd do a much better job on their website than they do. He wouldn't even take the guy's name. They have "contractors" they work with. Yes, I'm sure they do -- contractors who surely make buttloads of money to do a real shit job.
What he told me on the phone is that they think this middle name business will "greatly reduce misidentification," and said that "We did ask as of May that people provide their name is it appears on their government I.D. (they) plan to use while traveling." This info, he said, was put out in a press release. One nobody seems to have seen, including people who write about travel for major newspapers and other venues.
Airlines are supposed to be able to collect this info, along with gender and birthdate, by August 15. "At this point," he added, "We're offering flexibilities and working with airlines to make sure they have the capability to collect the information."
In response to my rant that they'd done a really crappy job, he asked "What would you suggest?" as in, what would I suggest they do. Again, as I told him on the phone, hire somebody competent in dispensing information to put something front and center on their site to allay the confusion. Most people can't call up the press rep for the TSA to clarify.
Oh, and if you change your mind about wanting a talented editor to make your website actually work for the public, e-mail me at adviceamy at aol dot com. How disappointing that you keep going with incompetents, and how much money are they making to leave us all confused?
Spin The Bottle, Wireless
Let's get modern already, and stop preemptively ruining kids' lives. York University researcher Peter Cumming puts teenage sexting in perspective on AFP:
Youths exchanging nude photos of themselves over cellphones, known as "sexting," should not face child pornography charges, as some have in the United States, a humanities conference heard Tuesday.Peter Cumming, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, presented a paper on children's sexuality at the 78th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences defending the practice as a modern variation on "playing doctor or spin-the-bottle."
"Technology does change things, and there can be very serious consequences" Cumming said.
"But that obscures the fact that children and young people are sexual beings who have explored their sexuality in all times, and all cultures and all places.
"A distinction has to be made between nudity and child porn," he added.
...a "bored" Florida boy was charged for sending a photo of his genitalia to a female classmate, while another was listed as a sex offender for emailing nude photos of his 16-year-old girlfriend to her family after an argument.
According to a survey by a US family planning organization, published in December, 20 percent of American teenagers said they had participated in sexting.
Cumming said that to consider labeling a teen a sex offender because of a sexting incident -- a label that will stick for life -- defies common sense.
"It would be very unlikely to see dozens of news stories announcing that some children were caught playing spin-the-bottle, or doctor, or strip poker," he said in his presentation.
"Yet many of the cases brought forward have been on the same level of innocence and experience as those activities. In other words, kids are playing spin-the-bottle online."
Not surprisingly, it seems more likely (merely in my opinion, from articles I've read on the subject, not based on actual stats) that boys will be charged as sex offenders while girls get off. So to speak.
The Peacock's Tail And The Professor's Shoe
This shoe was on the foot of an evolutionary psych prof friend of mine at this past week's Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference, and like the peacock's tail, it's a "costly signal."
Male peacocks show their quality as mates by the size of their tail. The bigger the tail, the harder for the peacock to get around and the more vulnerable to predators, so only the most alpha peacocks can manage to survive with a huge tail.
Alpha gazelles are similar. When the gazelles spot a hyena, the natural predator of the gazelles, across the plain, the weak gazelles book. The strong ones not only stay in place, they bounce up and down really, really high in the air ("stotting," it's called).
It's like they're saying, "Ya know, Hyena Boy, you are so not going to catch my ass that I'm going to hang around and have a cigarette and an espresso, and after I'm done, I might consider taking off." Interestingly, the hyenas tend to ignore the stotters and chase after the gazelles that booked right away.
This theory, in which waste or hardship advertises the quality of an organism, is called "the handicap principle," and it was originated by Israeli ornithologist Amotz Zahavi who, with his wife Avishag, co-authored the book by the same name that I have and recommend.
And now, because I'm totally wiped after this conference, on deadline, and need to go to bed, I'll copy a more comprehensive definition of the handicap principle out of Wikipedia:
The handicap principle is a hypothesis originally proposed in 1975 by biologist Amotz Zahavi[1][2][3] to explain how evolution may lead to "honest" or reliable signaling between animals who have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. The handicap principle suggests that reliable signals must be costly to the signaler, costing the signaler something that an individual with less of that trait could not afford. For example, in the case of sexual selection, the theory suggests that animals of greater biological fitness signal this status through handicapping behaviour or morphology that effectively lowers this quality. The central idea is that sexually selected traits function like conspicuous consumption, signalling the ability to afford to squander a resource simply by squandering it. Receivers know that the signal indicates quality because inferior quality signallers cannot afford to produce such wastefully extravagant signals.
Back to our ev. psych prof with the very funky shoes, only because she's secure in her position and her reputation as a researcher can she dress so wildly. In fact, dressing wildly -- not bowing to the usual professorial wardrobe trends (bleak, bleak, and bleaker) -- suggests that she's a researcher of exceptionally high quality.
On the other hand, there was a student at the conference -- probably an undergrad, but maybe a grad student -- in a short fluffy skirt and fishnets. I commented to shoe prof that the grad student would be wise to wait to, well, become somebody before dressing as did. At her level, wearing what she wore was not a costly signal, merely costly. Shoe prof, who's a very, very nice person, and ever-practical, merely noted how bad your legs look when you take off fishnets.
Nobody's Gonna "Coax" Me To Blow People Or Places Up
There's been talk of entrapment here and there in the case of the Muslims who were too dim to actually blow up the temple and Jewish center in Westchester, but had hoped to be successful.
Thankfully, in a world where you almost never hear from "moderate Muslims," when violence is committed against us infidels, the National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) has come out to say how deplorable it is that Muslims would follow the words in the Quran and try to murder Jews.
Just kidding!
Actually, the Muslim ladies were all over the FBI, and very supportive of the would-be Muslim terrorists. From Israel National News, Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu reports:
NAMAW appealed to the Justice Department to investigate the case, accusing the FBI of plotting to entrap the cell as part of a campaign against Muslims. It said that the FBI is "creating the illusion that all Muslims are either terrorists or potential terrorists, thereby substantiating the use of racial and religious profiling on Muslims and Arabs."The FBI, posing as Al Qaeda-backed militants to brainwash and coax 'vulnerable' men into the walking trap of their own foiled terrorist plot, causes grave concern to the representatives of Muslims in American society," the organization said in a statement.
You know, I can be coaxed into eating something chocolate, or even attending a talk on "Paleolithic politics in Victorian novels" (there really was one like that last week at HBES), but there's no way you're going to "coax" me into murdering people or destroying property.
What I really want to know: Why isn't it "of grave concern" to these ladies that far too many Muslims are either terrorists or potential terrorists?
Part B of that would question would be "And what do they plan to do to stop them?" but I'm just very tired, not high out of my mind.
