Flush Twice, Kiddies!
Or maybe three or four times, if you've got one of the annoying low-flush toilets they're pushing people to install. With low-flow toilets, San Franciscan are saving water -- a precious commodity, but probably not one that costs them as much as the fixes for saving water. Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross write at SFGate:
Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.
Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite - better known as bleach - to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city's treated water before it's dumped into the bay. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.
That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year.
Where Was His Right To Choose?
Wild and horrible case of a woman giving a man oral sex, holding his sperm in her mouth, and using it to impregnate herself without his consent. The man sued the woman, his ex-girlfriend (who turned out to be still married to somebody else at the time of the sperm-robbing), for fraud and emotional distress...after she got a court order demanding that he pay child support for the 2-year-old daughter created from that sperm! Wildly, the child support claim was not contested. The story is at Legal As She Spoke blog. Sarah Berendt writes:
How could a father be forced to pay child support if the conception of the child was beyond (way, way beyond) a reasonable person's expectation? The court itself stated that the mother's actions were "extreme and outrageous", after all.The answer? Public policy. In a note for the Drake University Law Review, A Man's Right to Choose: Searching for Remedies in the Face of Unplanned Fatherhood, author Adrienne D. Gross explained the general policy in law of looking out for a child's best interest in both child support and paternity statutes. Undisputedly, a child's best interest is to have the financial support of both biological parents, regardless of their marital status, and according to Ms. Gross, "the child should not suffer from a parent's indiscretion concerning the events leading to conception."
Basically, if you father a child and the paternity is established, you are on the hook for child support payments. (A father can sue for IIED, if the mother's actions in the conception meet the requisite level of crazy, but there is no guarantee he will win.)
Crazy. It's like robbing a bank. Because somebody should pay doesn't mean they should throw you in prison because, well, somebody should pay and you were at the ATM when the robbers struck.
Paternity fraud goes on all the time, and men are made to pay -- for decades -- for children that aren't theirs, simply because they didn't contest a claim in time, or for some other spurious reason. Even when there's DNA proving they aren't the father.
Poster mj at the link added:
Male children are even liable for child support to their female molesters if they should become pregnant as a result of their assault and then go on welfare as a result of their crime.Welcome to American family court - a prison for men and boys.
via ifeminists
Cynthia McKinney Hearts Qaddafi
Richard Pollock at PJ Tatler digs up a speech the whack-job rep made in 2009:
"Colonel Khadafy should be highly commended for honoring our ancestors - the framers of true democracy - by reaching out from Africa to the entire world. We would like to thank him for this opportunity to discuss his thoughts as presented in the Green Book."We are here to listen and observe, then to support and carry forth the ideas of democracy and equality, universal principles embodied in the Green Book, the goal of our effort being to link and empower Black, indigenous and oppressed peoples world-wide for the betterment of our earth and all of its inhabitants."
Do You See A Doctor Or A Witch Doctor?
Some people see doctors. Some of those doctors (don't assume yours is one), practice evidence-based medicine, and actually have a clue as to how to assess what is and isn't solid enough evidence.
Some people skip the evidence thingie altogether and go to bullshitologists, otherwise known as "naturopaths." From December, 2003:
"Naturopathic medicine" is a recent manifestation of the field of naturopathy, a 19th-century health movement espousing "the healing power of nature." "Naturopathic physicians" now claim to be primary care physicians proficient in the practice of both "conventional" and "natural" medicine. Their training, however, amounts to a small fraction of that of medical doctors who practice primary care. An examination of their literature, moreover, reveals that it is replete with pseudoscientific, ineffective, unethical, and potentially dangerous practices. Despite this, naturopaths have achieved legal and political recognition, including licensure in 13 states and appointments to the US Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee. This dichotomy can be explained in part by erroneous representations of naturopathy offered by academic medical centers and popular medical Web sites.
Orac has more details here.
...In some sixteen states and five Canadian provinces license naturopaths in some form, and in some states naturopaths are fighting for--and in some cases winning--the power to prescribe certain real pharmaceutical medications and order real medical tests. For instance, in California, naturopaths can order laboratory tests and X-rays, which reminds me of a conversation I had with a mammographer from California at TAM last summer. He told me a tale of the dilemma he had when naturopaths and other "alt-med" practitioners ordered tests at his facilities. Specifically, the dilemma came about because he doubted that the naturopath knew what to do with the results. Meanwhile, in Oregon, naturopaths can prescribe certain types of pharmaceutical drugs (as opposed to the usual supplements, herbs, or homeopathic remedies they normally prescribe). Meanwhile, moves are under way to expand the prescribing privileges of naturopaths in Canada.Unfortunately, naturopathy is a hodge-podge of mostly unscientific treatment modalities based on vitalism and other prescientific notions of disease. As a result, typical naturopaths are more than happy in essence to "pick one from column A and one from column B" when it comes to pseudoscience, mixing and matching treatments including traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, herbalism, Ayurvedic medicine, applied kinesiology, anthroposophical medicine, reflexology, craniosacral therapy, Bowen Technique, and pretty much any other form of unscientific or prescientific medicine that you can imagine. Despite their affinity for non-science-based medical systems, naturopaths crave the imprimatur of science. As a result, they desperately try to represent what they do as being science-based, and they've even set up research institutes, much like the departments, divisions, and institutes devoted to "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) that have cropped up on the campuses of legitimate medical schools and academic medical centers like so many weeds poking through the cracks in the edifice of science-based medicine.
When anybody uses the term "naturopath" in my presence, I immediately reclassify them as the kind of dingdong who thinks they can predict what'll happen to me Wednesday based on what the moon is doing to Capricorn behind Aquarius' back.
Modern medicine sure has its failings -- the utterly wrong notion that a high-carb, low-fat diet is good for you, for starters -- but at least it starts out as an attempt to be scientific, even if it degenerates into bad or fraudulent science far too many times. The problem is, for the ordinary person, it's hard to parse whether your doctor is good or just another quack who doesn't know how to read studies, hasn't read one for years, and bases what they prescribe on the commercials they see on CNN and which pharmaceutical company gives the nicest pens (if not the nicest thinly disguided payola).
Server Switch Is Done!
It's now safe to go back in the commenting waters. Sorry about the craziness yesterday night through this morning. This should solve the problems we've been having on the site. About six to eight comments may have disappeared. If yours is one of them, I probably have it, but probably left it at home (I'm out now and forgot to copy comments I saved to my flash drive before I left). Hopefully, you saw the suggestion to save a copy of your comment and can repost it. And again, sorry! And thanks, Gregg!
Freeman Dyson On Why He's A Climate Change Skeptic
While a girl in my French class who earns her living arranging flowers for rich people told me she knows there's global warming, and knows it's caused by people, and knows it will be the ruin of the planet in short order unless we substantially change business and our lives and spend trillions stopping it...well, I know that I don't have a physics background, and that climatology is a complex science I don't understand, which is why I never blog on global warming/climate change.
I'm still not going to blog on it (I didn't go to bed last night a climatology idiot and wake up a climatology genius this morning), but I think this Q and A between Steve Connor and Freeman Dyson in the Telegraph is worth reading. An excerpt from Dyson's responses:
First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly. Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer. Third, there are many other causes of climate change besides human activities, as we know from studying the past. Fourth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and top-soil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs. Fifth, the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects. Sixth, summing up the other five reasons, the climate of the earth is an immensely complicated system and nobody is close to understanding it....I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain. On the other hand, the remedies proposed by the experts are enormously costly and damaging, especially to China and other developing countries. On a smaller scale, we have seen great harm done to poor people around the world by the conversion of maize from a food crop to an energy crop. This harm resulted directly from the political alliance between American farmers and global-warming politicians. Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science. If it happens that I am wrong and the climate experts are right, it is still true that the remedies are far worse than the disease that they claim to cure.
The Birthers' Bad Geography
Forget clinging to the idea that he might be Kenyan. HItchens wonders on Slate if the milquetoast-in-chief actually might be Swiss:
This has been especially evident in the case of Libya. For weeks, the administration dithered over Egypt and calibrated its actions to the lowest and slowest common denominators, on the grounds that it was difficult to deal with a rancid old friend and ally who had outlived his usefulness. But then it became the turn of Muammar Qaddafi--an all-round stinking nuisance and moreover a long-term enemy--and the dithering began all over again. Until Wednesday Feb. 23, when the president made a few anodyne remarks that condemned "violence" in general but failed to cite Qaddafi in particular--every important statesman and stateswoman in the world had been heard from, with the exception of Obama. And his silence was hardly worth breaking. Echoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had managed a few words of her own, he stressed only that the need was for a unanimous international opinion, as if in the absence of complete unity nothing could be done, or even attempted. This would hand an automatic veto to any of Qaddafi's remaining allies. It also underscored the impression that the opinion of the United States was no more worth hearing than that of, say, Switzerland. Secretary Clinton was then dispatched to no other destination than Geneva, where she will meet with the U.N. Human Rights Council--an absurd body that is already hopelessly tainted with Qaddafi's membership.
I was no fan of the last occupant of The White House, either, but at least the guy know how to talk tough.
Really, Really Simple Math
Notice income versus expenses. Do the math. We're fucked.
Server Trek: The Final Frontier
Today, at 1 p.m. Pacific Time, our server company is going to start fumigating our server (there's some more technical description, but "fumigate" is the best I can do).
Comments left between 1 p.m. PST today and Sunday night should be preserved, but just in case, please save a copy.
Sorry about that -- this should solve all the problems we've been having with the site, which will make me very happy, and Gregg, who actually has to fix the problems, especially happy.
P.S. Gregg adds, "Just say we have to point the website to a new server, period. It will propagate throughout the world, there may be some slight disruption, but we hope not."
Okay, honey.
Do You Sleep With A Pig?
No, I'm not talking about your spouse. A pig of the four-legged variety, I mean -- or any other kind of creature that isn't classified as human.
My friend Bob Morris has a fun piece piece in The New York Times about people who sleep with their pets -- sometimes a source of relationship conflict for the not-so-pet-friendly:
When Ms. Rudd, 47, met her current husband, she said she knew he was the one because when he put his arm around her in bed during the night, causing her dog to growl and nip at him, he didn't seem to mind."He just said he respected her for defending her space," Ms. Rudd said.
As a result, the dog respected him and a lasting marriage was born.
Perhaps one day it will be the same for Ms. Ruttenberg with her upstate menagerie. "Although I'm starting to think it's not likely," she said.
Most gentlemen callers don't even make it to the bedroom. One bolted when Ms. Ruttenberg, who has a total of 160 animals on her sprawling mountainside property, let a baby goat into the living room after Trixie, the pig, had already joined the visit.
"I thought he would find a little goat charming," she said. "But after the pig, it was too much for him. Especially as the goat, Iris, was leaving droppings on the floor."
Another date fled, after some wine and a soak in the hot tub under the stars, when Oola, one of the resident pigs (black, 150 pounds) charged and tried to bite him.
"And then, the last guy I had in the bed was freaked out by the rabbit," Ms. Ruttenberg said. "He's huge, and he got territorial seeing this guy in the room, so he started thumping and picking up his dish in his mouth and tossing it in our direction."
Bye-bye, boyfriend. Hello, love?
"The truth is, with all my animals around me, I feel loved here, and I always have someone to come home to and someone who misses me when I'm away," said Ms. Ruttenberg, who grew up on the Upper East Side and got her first pet, a dog, 20 years ago, after a terrible romantic breakup.
Ms. Ruttenberg's mother frets that her daughter has put herself in the permanent zone of marriage ineligibility. But Ms. Ruttenberg is too busy making art, having fun and cooking for her animals (baked potatoes, squash, scrambled eggs with truffle oil for the pigs) to worry about it.
Do you sleep with a beast? (Human or non?) What are your thoughts on pets in the bed?
I sleep with Lucy in my bed (she curls up right under my chin), but not when Gregg (or "Grogg," as I've recently taken to calling him) is here, lest he roll over and create a furry little Yorkie pancake. When he falls asleep on the couch, however, Lucy will mount him and stand on top for a minute like she owns him (which she totally does!) and then take a nap on the Gregg promontory.
The Sky Sneezed Twice
That's all it takes to take out the power here in Los Angeles. I'm from Michigan, where there's actual weather, not pretend weather like we have in Los Angeles (I like to say we don't have weather here, we just have earthquakes, mudslides, fires, riots and freeway chases).
Anyway, no blog items last night because my power (and that of my entire neighborhood) took a hike last night around 11. It was a little scary because Gregg was at his house because I had a lot of work to do (which I actually finished moments before 11). Just as I came back to the computer, poof! Darkness. It's 6 a.m. now -- up to work on the column, and thankfully, in bright electric light. More blog items soon!
Advice Goddess Free Swim
I'm running a little behind today, so feel free to discuss whatever's on your mind. One link per comment please, or you will be eaten by my anti-spam beast, and I'm working, so I may not see your e-mail about it until later in the afternoon.
Government Sanctioned Sexual Assaults By The TSA
I left this comment on travel writer Chris Elliott's blog item about his TSA search (it's "awaiting moderation"), and although I've blogged much of this before, in various places here, I think it's worth publishing in toto:
I was sexually assaulted by the TSA before the current "security theatre," as security expert Bruce Schneier calls it (for actual security, look to the Israelis, who look for terrorists, not tweezers). Meanwhile, a gun just made it past the TSA through the scanner (in a test) -- FIVE times.My own sexual assault at McCarren airport, which is what you call it when a woman gropes your breasts as a condition of boarding a plane, took place not this past January, but the one before, and I'm no prude and I remain feeling sexually violated to this day.
I blog about the warrantless, no-probable-cause, ridiculous "security" searches by the TSA with some frequency, and I applaud those who've stood up to them and been arrested, etc. We cannot be passive about being searched as a condition of boarding an airplane -- which has become normal travel, not some luxury. (My boyfriend's going to hitchhike or take a Greyhound every two weeks from LA to Detroit?)
If I am groped again, I will probably file sexual assault charges against the agent upon my return home. I asked a friend who's Constitutional lawyer to look into this for me; haven't heard back yet; but, it's my plan.
I urge everyone to speak out and stand up. The searches serve to make an already too docile public even more docile about giving up their rights.
Lisa Simeone comments similarly at Elliott's blog. An excerpt:
As some of us have been saying for over a year now, these gropefests weren't going to stop at the airport. They were always intended to be implemented at all transportation hubs, of all kinds, everywhere. They were just "tested" at airports, to see how much abuse people would put up with. And the answer is in: People will put up with anything.Thanks, sheeple of America. You have well and truly screwed us.
"No One Should Have To Sacrifice Their Dignity In Order To Travel"
Well said. And it was said by the Alaska legislature, in support of an Alaska representative who said no to the scanner and the groping by the TSA. In the LA Times, Kim Murphy writes:
When Alaska state Rep. Sharon Cissna passed through airport security a few months ago, the false breast she has worn since her mastectomy set off an alert on the new full-body scanner and triggered what she called a "humiliating" pat-down search.Last week, it happened again. The Anchorage Democrat was leaving Seattle to return to the legislative session in Juneau when her prosthetic breast sent her once again toward the rubber gloves.
"The horror began again," she recalled, except this time, she refused.
Cissna caught a small plane to British Columbia and boarded a ferry for a two-day journey back to Juneau.
..."Many people have felt genuinely traumatized," said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the ACLU's speech, privacy and technology program. "This policy puts TSA agents into intimate contact with Americans' bodies in a way that normally only doctors are in a position to do."
..."Many of the people who filed complaints reported that the searches were extremely intrusive, that their genital areas were being patted through their clothing, sometimes repeatedly, agents ran fingers several inches down their waistbands, or through their hair in the area around the collar, rubbing their bodies all over," Stanley said.
We cannot get used to this -- we must continue to protest it. If we don't, it'll just get easier and easier for government to trample on our freedoms.
Laws On Top Of Laws And Then Some
Lenore Skenazy, over at Free Range Kids, writes about a school board in Kelso, Washington, that not only doesn't find laws against porn, pedophilia and sexual harassment enough -- they have to try to make it illegal for teachers to talk about their lives at all. Here's the bit from the school board:
A proposal by the Kelso School Board aims to create a more professional relationship between teachers and their students.The proposal makes it a fireable offense to show students pornography, harass or touch students inappropriately, or to smoke or drink alcohol with students. Along with those common sense rules, teachers will not be able to talk about their family or personal lives in the classroom.
Lenore writes about how her son loved how one of her his teachers talked about her fave team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and how her other son loved hearing stories about his teacher's kids. I still remember the stories of how Mr. Finney, one of my high school teachers, would go off to be in those Civil War reenactments in the summer. As Lenore writes:
In Kelso those conversations would be verboten: They reveal personal details!Mustn't have teachers and kids connecting like human beings! It could be (somehow, in some strange dark fantasy world of fear) dangerous! -- L.
Why The Hell Are Ordinary People Being Treated Like Criminals?
Some neo-hippie-shirted suburban mom is being made by the TSA to "assume the position" like someone suspected of a serious crime. And her crime is...getting off a train in Savannah.
Yes, that's right -- our government is preparing us to be docile about having our rights removed from us by searching us, sans probable cause, at every turn. Everyone -- including small children.
Caption at the YouTube video link:
The only bad thing on our trip was TSA was at the Savannah train station. There were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and coralling everyone in a roped area AFTER you got OFF THE TRAIN! This made no sense!!! Poor family in front of us! 9 year old getting patted down and wanded. They groped our people too and were very unprofessional. I am all about security, but when have you ever been harassed and felt up getting OFF a plane? Shouldnt they be doing that getting ON??? And they wonder why so many people are mad at them.
And a comment below it that's right on about the people laughing about this process:
"Adults" laughing, joking, smiling, waving at the camera. Grow the fuck up, you mindless robots! Your children are more mature than you. I cannot believe ANYONE would go along with this. You are literally having your life & soul OWNED from out under you by the NWO, and you're SMILING? You deserve๏ปฟ the MUCH worse version that's coming SOON if this is how you react.Argue, disagree, kick up a fuss, get arrested if necessary, but for God's sake don't just swallow it and LAUGH.
If you've got money, and live in Chicago, you can bypass the ball-grab and all the wait of the horrid and stupid TSA process:
The Number In Wisconsin
Robert M. Costrell lays it out in the WSJ:
The showdown in Wisconsin over fringe benefits for public employees boils down to one number: 74.2. That's how many cents the public pays Milwaukee public-school teachers and other employees for retirement and health benefits for every dollar they receive in salary. The corresponding rate for employees of private firms is 24.3 cents.Gov. Scott Walker's proposal would bring public-employee benefits closer in line with those of workers in the private sector. And to prevent benefits from reaching sky-high levels in the future, he wants to restrict collective-bargaining rights.
The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools.
Hmm, suddenly, being a "public servant" is seeming a lot more like being somebody who gets served by the public.
The upshot, per Costrell:
What these numbers ultimately prove is the excessive power of collective bargaining. The teachers' main pension plan is set by the state legislature, but under the pressure of local bargaining, the employees' contribution is often pushed onto the taxpayers. In addition, collective bargaining led the Milwaukee public school district to add a supplemental pension plan--again with no employee contribution. Finally, the employees' contribution (or lack thereof) to the cost of health insurance is also collectively bargained.As the costs of pensions and insurance escalate, the governor's proposal to restrict collective bargaining to salaries--not benefits--seems entirely reasonable.
Hard Lesson
A family I'm friends with in New York, and stay with from time to time, had one son who was doing poorly in school. I overheard his (Ivy-educated, highly literate) father say to him, "You know, not everybody has to go to college." The kid ended up doing better in school and going to the same college both of his parents attended, and doing well there. I was impressed that his father took the pressure off -- but maybe that's not the best way.
A Florida mom whose son was failing all of his classes, including gym, made him stand on a busy street corner wearing a sandwich board announcing his 1.22 GPA and the message "Honk if I need an education."
Kyle Munzenrieder writes in Miami New Times about mother Ronda Holder's attempt to use public humiliation as a way to get her son's grades up:
The 33-year-old hair stylist was fed up that her 15-year-old son, James Mond III, was making his way through school with such low grades. Though, neither she nor the boy's father tried to help him with his homework, they grounded him, took away his cell phone, and gave him lecture after lecture to get him to raise his grades, but nothing worked. In fact, the last straw came when he got an F in gym class on his latest report card.Holder was afraid if he didn't take his education seriously he'd end up on the streets, so she decided to preempt this by, uh, putting him on the streets.
"I don't want any of my kids to stand by the side of the road asking for change," she told the St. Petersburg Times. Holder says that her other five children all get good grades in school.
...Of course, child experts aren't that high on Holder's plan.
"It's such an unfortunate strategy, and of course it's ineffective," a child development expert told the Times. "The key to motivating children is to balance responsibility with support, and balance is the important part."
More here.
So...for or against?
Right This Way, Mr. Bin Laden
TSA dipshits let a woman with a gun through the scanner -- five times.
Oh, and those long lines you go through where the
(Gotta love the Consumerist take on it: "Finally, a Delta gaffe that doesn't end up with a dead pet.")
via Consumerist
Judgment Call
An 11-year-old was arrested and hauled off in a police car for doodling stick figures with a gun and a message of violence to teachers. Julie Hayden writes at KDVR/Colorado:
Last October, he drew stick figures of himself with a gun, pointed at four other stick figures with the words "teachers must die."The boy drew the pictures to let out angry emotions. "Tim," his parents, and his therapist say it was not a threat and that Tim would never hurt anyone.
He felt calmer and was throwing the picture away when the teacher saw it and sent him to the principal's office.
The school was aware that the boy was in treatment, determined he was not a threat, notified his parents and sent him back to class. His mother, "Jane" was shocked when Arvada Police showed up at their home later that night.
She says she told her son to cooperate and tell the truth, but was horrified when they told her they were arresting him and then handcuffed him and hauled him away in a patrol car. His mother says she begged police to let her drive her son to the police department and to let her stay with him through the booking process but they refused.
They put him in a cell, took his mug shot and fingerprinted him. He says he thought he was going to jail and would never be able to go home again.
According to the police report, "Tim" explained he made the drawing to release anger and would never hurt teachers or anyone. At first school officials did not want to press charges, but changed their mind when police called them later that night. A juvenile assessment report shows he's never been in legal trouble before and is at low risk to reoffend.
He's charged with a third degree misdemeanor, interfering with staff and students at an educational facility. The system says it's doing what's in the best interest of the child. But Tim's therapist says handcuffing an 11-year-old and putting him in a cell over something like this is "quite an overreaction" and does much more harm than good.
Now, it's possible the kid is a burgeoning Columbine killer -- or just upset and blowing off some steam. Do you best assess this and deal with it by hauling him off in handcuffs and throwing him in jail?
The Woman Who Escaped Chandra Levy's Killer
Halle Shilling writes in the WaPo:
It's late afternoon in October, and I'm jogging in Rock Creek Park on a trail whose terrain is scorched in my memory. I am with my dad and my husband. It is a perfect day for a run, just like the last time I ran here, nine years ago.We run steadily, I lead. I need to make a few stops - where I first saw him sitting on the curb; where I felt him leap onto my back; where police found my Walkman on the path; where I was surprised by my reflection in the plexiglass of the Park Police station: ponytail pulled to the side, eyes wide in shock.
At these places, I whisper to the trees overhead. I say a small prayer to the clouds above. I bow in gratitude to a few ghosts.
I visualize the face of a dead woman I never met, a woman whose killer I testified against this morning.
The start of the run is difficult. I can't get my rhythm, and old images roll through my mind: "This was a crime of opportunity, and you created the opportunity," the first detective on the scene telling me; a purple dent in my finger, carved by a human tooth; a pair of knotted black running tights, discovered by police near a skeleton; a Fox News van lurking outside my cul de sac.
My father and husband run behind me, out of respect. Earlier, my dad asked if I'd be okay with this formation.
"Yeah, Dad," I laughed. "I'll be fine. Because I'll know that it's you."
Not some psychopath hunting me. Not like the last time.
We fought. I got away. He went to jail, and I pretended to forget. Except eight years later my attacker, Ingmar Guandique, was charged with the murder of Chandra Levy, whose body I had surely run within yards of that day in the spring of 2001.
The whole story at the link.
My friend Sergeant Heather would advise women not to think they're all that protected by a self-defense course. It's good to take one, but the problem is, according to Heather, that women get a false sense of security from them. Men have far more muscle mass than women, and can usually take on the average woman with ease.
Sergeant Heather advises carrying pepper spray, being smart about where you go and when, and keeping your wits about you at all times.
Have any of you ever been crime victims or narrowly escaped it?
Mickey Kaus On Unions
Mickey writes in the LA Times from May, 2010:
Unions have done a lot for this country; they were especially important when giant employers tried to take advantage of a harsh economy in the last century, not only to keep down wages but to speed up assembly lines and, worse, force workers to risk their lives and health. If you think about it, unions have been the opposite of selfish. By modern standards they've been stunningly altruistic, lobbying for job safety rules and portable pensions and Social Security and all sorts of government services that, if they were really selfish, they might have opposed, because if the government will guarantee that your workplace is safe and your retirement is secure, well, then you don't need a union so much, do you?At the same time unions were winning government protections, changes in the economy were making mainstream unionism itself an impediment to growth. We are no longer living in a world in which big, slow-moving bureaucratic organizations are the engines of prosperity. Only fast-moving, flexible ones prosper today. Technology changes too rapidly. Firms have to be able to make snap decisions: expand here, contract there, change the way they work every day. That was the lesson of Japan -- how 1,000 little improvements in productivity can add up to a big advantage.
But our union system is stuck in 1950, when it was considered a glorious achievement to generate thick books full of work rules that restricted what could be changed. At some automobile plants, every position on the assembly line was considered a distinct job classification. You wouldn't want an "Installer Level II" to have to do the job of an "Installer Level I," would you? Then came the competition from Japanese factories, where employees spent their time building cars instead of work rules, and there was only one job classification: "production." If something needed doing, you did it. Is it any wonder the Japanese cleaned Detroit's clock for two decades?
Keep in mind that Detroit's union, the United Auto Workers, is one of our best. It's democratic. It's not corrupt. Its leadership has often been visionary. Yet working within our archaic union system, it still helped bring our greatest industry to its knees. And the taxpayers were stuck with the bill for bailing it out, while UAW members didn't even take a cut of $1 an hour in their $28-an-hour basic pay. How many Californians would like $27-an-hour manufacturing jobs? Actually, there was a good auto factory in California, the NUMMI plant in Fremont. It got sucked under when GM went broke. Those 4,500 jobs are gone.
Yet the answer of most union leaders to the failure of 1950s unionism has been more 1950s unionism. This isn't how we're going to get prosperity back. But it's the official Democratic Party dogma. No dissent allowed.
Our Secretary Of State Is A Big, Fluffy Bunny
"Pathetic: The secretary of state steps up to the plate on Libya--and whiffs," is the headline on Bill Kristol's The Weekly Standard blog item. And here's Big Fluffy Bunny of State Clinton:
The world is watching the situation in Libya with alarm. We join the international community in strongly condemning the violence in Libya. Our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives have been lost, and with their loved ones. The government of Libya has a responsibility to respect the universal rights of the people, including the right to free expression and assembly. Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed. We are working urgently with friends and partners around the world to convey this message to the Libyan government.
Kristol writes:
No direct condemnation of the Qaddafi regime. No expression of support for the demonstrators. No hint of action on our part--no immediate economic embargo, no threats against any individuals involved in the atrocities, no call for a U.N. Security Council meeting, no sign of possible NATO enforcement of a no-fly zone, no demand that the border be opened for humanitarian aid. Instead, the State Department is trying to "convey a message" to the Libyan government.This is your State Department at work. Surely there are some in the White House--I think there are some--who are cringing at such an absence of moral clarity on the part of the U.S. government and at such a failure of American leadership. Let's hope they persuade the president to step forward very soon to overrule the State Department, and to put the United States, in both speech and deed, strongly and unequivocally on the side of decency and freedom.
Can't we even pretend to be a world leader in power and freedom? Talk a good game? I guess even that's become too much to ask. And perhaps that's because we're spending so much time engaging in national self-loathing for what a horrrible place America is.
Gad Saad blogs about this at Psychology Today, in regard to an appearance by Tavis Smiley on Bill Maher's "Real Time." When Maher suggested that the treatment of women in the Middle East (meaning, under Islam) had to improve for a meaningful and long-lasting revolution to take place, Smiley lectured Maher about the terrible treatment women face in the USA. (Right. They're stoning us on every street corner, and forcing us to wear...uh...whatever the hell we want.)
...([Smiley] referred to the patriarchy), and accordingly (to paraphrase him), "we should clean our house before we criticize other cultures."This triggered several angry responses from Maher, as he could not understand how Smiley could argue for the moral equivalence of the realities faced by women in the United States versus in the Muslim world. Maher was equally incredulous that Smiley could not recognize that sex-based oppression occurs in various degrees across disparate cultures. Smiley refused to recognize that "degrees matter." Maher readily conceded that sexism exists in the United States, but surely he argued the plight of American women was nowhere near that faced by women in many parts of the Middle East. Here is a thought experiment: If we were to elicit the opinions of 10,000 women from the Middle East and 10,000 American counterparts, which group would proclaim possessing greater freedoms, gender equality, and life opportunities?
On Smiley's own talk show last year, while interviewing Aayan Hirsi Ali, he interrupted her and proclaimed that it was simply untrue that terrorists were more likely to be Muslim. His exact words were: "But, but, but Christians do that [blow themselves up] every single day in this country. Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, I mean- people walk into post offices, they walk into schools- that's what Columbine is - I mean I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians - and I happen to be a Christian." Smiley is arguing that since American postal workers who go on a killing rampage are likely to be Christians, and since the Columbine killers were Christian (I am assuming that this is the case), these acts of violence can be attributed to Christianity in the exact same way that terrorist acts committed by Muslims can be attributed to Islam. This oft-used "progressive" argument does leave one speechless.
Abortion clinic murders:
In the U.S., violence directed towards abortion providers has killed at least eight people, including four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort.[6][7]
Eight? Of course, there have been many more acts of violence, and 17 more attempted murders, and I find all of vile, barbaric, and wrong, but the death toll by Christians is nowhere near that of The Religion of Peace. Just since 9/11, according to thereligionofpeace.com (yesterday), Islamic terrorists have carried out 16,846 deadly terror attacks.
Hmmm. I think that's a few more than eight, plus Jared Loughner, Columbine, and a few disturbed jerks who went postal -- many of whom weren't motivated by Christianity. (And, let me remind anybody who hasn't been bored senseless by the knowledge already -- I am no fan of religion in general, but least of all the one that hangs gay teenagers, stones raped women, etc., and no I'm not talking about the Quakers).
via @NickGillespie
Twit Therapy
Last night, after waking up at 5 a.m. and working an enormously long and rather tough day, then poring over some rather complicated studies well into the evening, I looked forward to my one great pleasure on Monday nights, the TV show "House."
Well, last night, as has happened with several shows recently, the show got to near the end...just as House was in Cuddy's office saying he was sorry and would leave her for a bit, and...IT CUT OUT! The show wasn't over, but that was the end of DISH's recording of it.
My DISH TV DVR apparently isn't timing the shows right. Also, my remote's been all weird -- not reponsive, and then if I restart the DISH DVR, it works for a while, then malfunctions again. Grrr. I dreaded calling DISH (because it's been such fun in the past) but I knew I had to call DISH.
Well, as before, thanks to the completely dunderheaded notion that companies save money by outsourcing customer service, it was A UNHOLY NIGHTMARE THAT ATE AN HOUR OF MY LIFE.
Both to have a record of the stupidity I saw that I'd once again go through, and as a form of therapy, I tweeted the whole deal...the whole repeated automated computer voice/unhelpful people in faraway places hanging up on me multiple times, despite my warnings deal.
Here goes:
amyalkon
Dish TV @TheDailyDishTV just cut off end of @HouseOnFOX -called Dish & "tech support" lady asks, "Is it a sporting event?" Uh...supervisor?!
about 1 hour ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV asked lady (not) helping me to hold while she xfers me to someone actually helpful. Long wait. Hangup! Genius!
about 1 hour ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Next guy doesn't actually pick up. I just hear boiler room sounds. Ted in India finally picks up. He's looking for supervisor.
43 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Ted transferring me. Hangup! UNBELIEVABLE. Not helped once, hung up on twice. Calling again. Perhaps Indian reps not $ savings?
42 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Now James in Manila on phone. He's asking me for my social security #, PIN # or city of birth before he'll xfer my call! Nuts.
37 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV James now has me on hold. He's xferring. Not stayed on line w/me per my request. Phone rings once. Click! Hung up on again!
34 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Now calling back again. After speaking 2 automated system, it rings once, then no answer. Hans in Manila on line. Getting supe.
29 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Hans in Manila supposedly getting supe. Hold music again. Asked him stay on so I won't hear "click" (Anybody wanna place bet?)
26 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Hans in Manila puts me on hold...music...& then...click! Yes! Dish hangs up on a customer again!
25 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Finally, an American! Great guy, William, in Thornton, Colorado. Figures out problem, sending new receiver. Pleasure, except...
3 minutes ago via webamyalkon
@DailyDishTV Dish, after hanging up on me for an hr, says replacing THEIR malfunctioning remote will cost me $20. Who's running this biz?!
less than 5 seconds ago via web
How do these companies stay in business? Is it because all the TV companies suck big green goat balls?
Has American business always been like this? What changed? When did it change? What needs to be done?
(I actually have some ideas about this, but that's the book after the book I'm writing now.)
Meanwhile, I lost an hour of my night, and as I pointed out to the very nice and very helpful and congenial good ole American William -- the only guy who had even a clue, and more than a clue, as to what to do to help me -- I pay DISH...I don't work for them. I'm not supposed to work for an hour, a really miserable, frustrating hour, to get the DVR I already pay for to function...only to have them tell me that their policy says I need to pay $20 to replace their malfunctioning remote. Which, frankly, probably malfunctions because it's too old to go with the receiver that replaced the last malfunctioning receiver I had.
And, finally, come on, DISH...you're supposed to be running a business, not putting on a cross between amateur night and International Night at the local elementary school. Go find William in your Thornton, Colorado call center. Give him a bonus and blow him a kiss from me. Then, go find a bunch of other guys like him. Then hire them and lose Manila, India, and Kuala Lumpur -- should you have anybody hanging up on your customers there.
P.S. Can somebody please tell me what happened after House left Cuddy's office, through to the end?
America's Economic Dream Is A Nightmare
A Canadian, Jeffrey Simpson, gets it, writing in the Globe and Mail about us Americans:
Our southern friends are living the American dream these days, a dream that's removing them from reality. Their federal legislators, including the President, are imagining a brilliant future that cannot be. None of them, it would appear, wants to awaken Americans from this dream.The dream? Economic recovery followed by the return of prosperity, built on borrowed money. And not just some borrowed money, but trillions and trillions of borrowed money.
In this scenario, the rest of the world will keep lending to the United States, borrowing costs won't rise, inflation will be banished, and the punishment that would befall almost any other country that ran such a lopsided budget will not strike the U.S.
Like all dreams, this one has lost touch with reality. In Washington, legislators seem to accept that amassing trillions of dollars of additional debt is a bad idea. Then they argue furiously about a mere 12 per cent of the budget that, even if half of it were to be eliminated, would still leave the government in a deficit position this year.
I don't agree with his solution, a five percent national sales tax. We need to stop spending money we don't have.
US Gov. Software Creates 'Fake People' on Social Networks to Push Propaganda
Way scummy. Sean Kerrigan writes on Examiner.com:
The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.
According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number of false signals to convince users that the poster is in fact a real person. A single user could manage unique background information and status updates for up to 10 fake people from a single computer.
The software enables the government to shield its identity through a number of different methods including the ability to assign unique IP addresses to each persona and the ability to make it appear as though the user is posting from other locations around the world.
PDF link (no download necessary) to the contract details is here.
Obscene!
"Should Employers Be Allowed to Ask for Your Facebook Login?" is the question on Alexis Madrigal's blog on The Atlantic:
The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up the cause of a Maryland man who was forced to cough up his Facebook password during a job interview with the Department of Corrections in that state.According to an ACLU letter sent to the Maryland Department of Corrections, the organization requires that new applicants and those applying for recertifications give the government "their social media account usernames and personal passwords for use in employee background checks."
The ACLU calls this policy "a frightening and illegal invasion of privacy" and I can't say that I disagree. Keep in mind that this isn't looking at what you've posted to a public Twitter account; the government agency here could look through private Facebook messages, which seems a lot like reading through your mail, paper or digital.
The video (the guy makes his case well):
There's been a real degradation of privacy in this society, and the TSA violations are a big part of it. The more people accept such attacks on privacy -- and other rights like free speech -- the more they and others will continue to attack and the further they will go.
Why Let Not Having Money Keep You From Spending It?
A couple went bankrupt but saw no reason for that to cramp their style. Kelly Barron writes in the LA Times:
Lisa and Stephen Furry have hit financial rock bottom, even though they're not acting like it.The couple filed for bankruptcy a little more than a year ago, wiping out $50,000 in credit card debt, yet their household spending outstrips their income. They shop at Whole Foods, spend freely on beauty products and splurged on a wedding anniversary getaway to Santa Barbara -- at a four-star hotel.
They haven't paid the mortgage on their North Hollywood home since September, and a default notice could come at any time.
Get the monthly that has L.A. talking. Subscribe to Los Angeles Times Magazine at a special introductory rate.
Things have gotten so bad that Lisa recently borrowed $200 from her 7-year-old daughter's savings account to cover household expenses.
"We're a paycheck away from the homeless shelter," said Lisa, 45, only half jokingly as she sat in her living room next to her 135-pound mastiff named Madison.
Brad Hartman, a financial planner in Glendale who reviewed the couple's finances, found no humor in the situation.
"It's a little surreal," he said. "They barely have enough cash to buy groceries.
"They need a reality check."
Um, yeah. There's even more reason for that at the link.
This is just me guessing, but it seems like this sort of behavior is a new thing, that people have run up credit cards and gone overboard in spending in decades prior, but never so many people and to such a great degree.
Virgina Postrel wrote a book called The Substance of Style
But...maybe there's become a feeling of entitlement in America, that everyone is entitled to the lush life. To me, if there's an emblem of this, it would be the suburban McMansion.
Yes, in America, it's possible to "have it all," or come pretty damn close, in terms of how easy our lives are compared to those of most people on the planet. But, you also need to be able to pay for it all -- or buy your vegetables at the 99 Cent store instead of Whole Foods until you can.
The Myth Of Militant Atheists
Dave Niose blogs on Psychology Today:
When the media and others refer to a "militant atheist," the object of that slander is usually an atheist who had the nerve to openly question religious authority or vocally express his or her views about the existence of God. Conventional wisdom quickly tells us that such conduct is shameful or, at the very least, distasteful, and therefore the brazen atheist is labeled "militant."But this reflects a double standard, because it seems to apply only to atheists. Religious individuals and groups frequently declare, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, that you are a sinner and that you will suffer in hell for eternity if you do not adopt their supernatural beliefs, but they will almost never be labeled "militant" by the media or the public. Instead, such individuals are called "devout" and such churches are called "evangelical."
The lesson here is clear. If you're an atheist, shut up about it. If you are open or vocal about your atheist worldview, you are a "militant atheist." Be silent, even though that same standard does not apply to those who passionately disagree with you.
Maybe The President Could Take A Vacation In Reality
Andrew Malcolm blogs at the LA Times' Top of the Ticket:
Here's the isolated president's perception of how painfully the feds need to address their fiscal canyon: "If you're a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, you might put off a vacation."
The Muslim Brotherhood: It's All There In The Motto
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the WSJ on the Muslim Brotherhood and the kind of Egypt they really want:
'Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." So goes the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood.What's extraordinary about this maxim is the succinct way that it captures the political dimension of Islam. Even more extraordinary is the capacity of these five pillars of faith to attract true believers. But the most remarkable thing of all is the way the Brotherhood's motto seduces Western liberals.
Readers of this paper are familiar with the genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood: its establishment in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna; its history of terrorism; its violent offshoots such as al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jamait Islamiya, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and others across the Muslim world. Readers may also recall the brutal crackdowns on the Brothers by autocratic regimes in the Middle East--particularly in Egypt under Nasser and in Syria during the Hama massacre of 1982.
As a result of these crackdowns, the Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s (after Nasser's regime executed the Islamist philosopher Sayyid Qutb in 1966) and started a gradual process to participate in conventional politics. This renunciation--and the Brotherhood's involvement in the Egyptian uprising, neither violent nor dominant--has prompted some commentators to encourage the American government to engage with the Brothers as legitimate partners in Middle Eastern affairs.
...Rather than running op-eds by the likes of Mr. Ramadan, the Western press would better serve Egyptians by exposing the Brotherhood's hidden agenda. Due to the limits on press freedom in Egypt, many educated Egyptians and other Arabs depend on the Western media for news and analysis. To deny them close scrutiny of the Brotherhood's past and future plans is unforgivable.
Instead of simply pushing for elections at the earliest opportunity, Western commentators should be pushing for more time--above all, to allow the drafting of a new Egyptian constitution. Such a constitution would introduce checks and balances, eliminate the one-party system, and guarantee the protection of human rights. In particular, it would safeguard Egypt against the imposition of Shariah law.
True, constitutions can be discarded by tyrants or religious fanatics if they assume power. But the introduction of a well-designed constitution would make it harder for them to do so. It would also make it easier for the U.S. and other foreign observers to ensure that any future elections are free and fair.
Anyone who believes that a truly democratic outcome in Egypt is the real goal of the Muslim Brotherhood has failed to understand--or purposefully ignored--the group's motto.
On a related note, Joe Scarborough tweeted:
@JoeNBC Keep Calm and Carry On. And try to be tolerant of those who don't share your beliefs.
What hogwash. People parrot that sort of thing without actually running it through their thoughts. I tweeted back:
@amyalkonWhy? Some beliefs are odious. I'm intolerant of Islamic hanging of gays RT @JoeNBC try to be tolerant of those who don't share your beliefs.
(I didn't have room within Twitter's 140 characters, but what I meant was that I'm intolerant of not only the practice, thanks to Islam, of hanging gays, but the religious thinking behind it.)
The Glorification Of Single Motherhood
Welcome to today's urban high school, from where teacher Gerry Garibaldi reports that there's no shame or social ostracism when a girl becomes pregnant:
Other girls in school want to pat their stomachs. Their friends throw baby showers at which meager little gifts are given. After delivery, the girls return to school with baby pictures on their cell phones or slipped into their binders, which they eagerly share with me. Often they sit together in my classes, sharing insights into parenting, discussing the taste of Pedialite or the exhaustion that goes with the job. On my way home at night, I often see my students in the projects that surround our school, pushing their strollers or hanging out on their stoops instead of doing their homework.Connecticut is among the most generous of the states to out-of-wedlock mothers. Teenage girls like Nicole qualify for a vast array of welfare benefits from the state and federal governments: medical coverage when they become pregnant (called "Healthy Start"); later, medical insurance for the family ("Husky"); child care ("Care 4 Kids"); Section 8 housing subsidies; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; cash assistance. If you need to get to an appointment, state-sponsored dial-a-ride is available. If that appointment is college-related, no sweat: education grants for single mothers are available, too. Nicole didn't have to worry about finishing the school year; the state sent a $35-an-hour tutor directly to her home halfway into her final trimester and for six weeks after the baby arrived.
In theory, this provision of services is humane and defensible, an essential safety net for the most vulnerable--children who have children. What it amounts to in practice is a monolithic public endorsement of single motherhood--one that has turned our urban high schools into puppy mills. The safety net has become a hammock.
The young father almost always greets the pregnancy with adolescent excitement, as if a baby were a new Xbox game. In Nicole's case, the father's name was David. David manfully walked Nicole to class each morning and gave her a kiss at the door. I had him in homeroom and asked if he planned to marry her. "No" was his frank answer. But he did have plans to help out. David himself lived with his mother. His dad had served a short sentence in prison for drug possession and ran a motorcycle-repair shop somewhere upstate. One afternoon, David proudly opened his father's website to show me the customized motorcycles he built. There he was, the spit and image of his son, smiling atop a gleaming vintage Harley, not a care in the world.
Boys without fathers, like David, cultivate an overweening bravado to overcome a deeper sense of vulnerability and male confusion. They strut, swear, and swagger. There's a he-man thing to getting a girl pregnant that marks you as an adult in the eyes of your equally unmoored peers. But a boy's interest in his child quickly vanishes. When I ask girls if the father is helping out with the baby, they shrug. "I don't care if he does or not," I've heard too often.
As for girls without fathers, they are often among my most disruptive students. You walk on eggshells with them. You broker remarks, you negotiate insults, all the while trying to pull them along on a slender thread. Their anger toward male authority can be lacerating. They view trips to the principal's office like victory laps.
There's this heartbreaking bit from the end of the piece:
My students often become curious about my personal life. The question most frequently asked is, "Do you have kids?""Two," I say.
The next question is always heartbreaking.
"Do they live with you?"
Government Is Bad For Your Health
Dr. Malcolm Kenrick and Dr. Duane Graveline clear up some of the crap we've been all fed by the government:
According to the U.S. Government's latest guidelines, one egg per day does not result in increased blood cholesterol levels. Nor does it increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in normal people.What it might have said is that 12 eggs per day will not increase your blood cholesterol or have a significant impact on cardiovascular risk. And the government could say this about many other cholesterol containing foodstuffs such as whole milk and butter.
Four decades ago when the U.S. Government abruptly placed eggs, butter and whole milk on the restricted list, doctors began to counsel patients likewise and warned about the evils of these farm products.
...Now after years of researching the true purpose of cholesterol and the terrible consequences of statin use to lower cholesterol we have discovered that cholesterol is not the cause of cardiovascular disease. It has never truly been Public Health Enemy #1.
Foods containing cholesterol don't raise blood cholesterol for several reasons. The main one is that our bodies, like the bodies of all living creatures, are capable of an amazing thing called homeostasis. Namely, keeping the level of things that are important e.g. temperature or potassium levels, at a constant level. No matter what you do on the outside, things remain calm and in control on the inside.
If your body couldn't do this, you would die in about two seconds flat. Looking at cholesterol, our livers synthesize around five times as much cholesterol as you are ever likely to eat in your diet. If you eat less cholesterol, your liver will synthesize more (of this vital substance). If you eat more cholesterol, you liver will synthesize less. This is homeostasis in action.
Quite how much cholesterol you would need to eat to overwhelm your homeostatic system is unknown. Nobody has managed to do it yet. People fed up to ten eggs a day kept their 'cholesterol levels' constant; something first proven by Ancel Keys - ironically the man who almost single handedly created the diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis in the 1950s.
...Cholesterol is perhaps the most important biochemical in our bodies. The true cause of heart attacks and strokes is a form of inflammation. For the past 40 years our dietary guidelines have been wrong. Is anyone coming out with an apology for all this - some words from our national leadership? Don't hold your breath while you are waiting.
Can he say this so definitively about inflammation? I don't know.
Dr. Eades explains inflammation here:
Overeating leads to the fat accumulation that stimulates the chronic inflammation, but simply eating does it as well. Eating is an inflammatory process. A number of scientific studies have shown that eating a meal, regardless of the macronutrient composition, causes acute inflammation, which makes sense when you think about it. Food coming into the body is a foreign substance that fires up the innate immune system - but it does so briefly until the food is digested and the various fats, proteins and carbohydrates are broken down into their basic units and absorbed into the blood stream. (Although it might seem strange that food that we absolutely need to live could cause inflammatory problems, it makes sense when you realize that the very oxygen we breathe and that we would be dead in about four minutes without is slowly killing us also.) When the average American noshes along throughout the day snacking on first this then that the inflammatory response becomes chronic.Over the past couple of decades just two of dietary changes - eating more and eating more often--have led to a state of chronic inflammation. The changes in diet composition have had an additive effect as well. Numerous studies have shown that while carbohydrates in general cause more of an inflammatory response than other macronutrients, fructose specifically causes the most rapid and intense inflammatory response of all. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils of the omega-6 variety (the majority) are inflammatory, trans fats (all of which start out as vegetable oils) are the worst, and most of the fat of animal, fish and dairy origin are actually anti-inflammatory. Sadly, we've been busy replacing the latter with the former. We find ourselves as a nation in the situation where most of our population is overfed the wrong kinds of food all too often with resulting high rates of obesity and chronic inflammation.
via @DrEades
Hey, Why So Few Women In The South By Southwest Comedy Lineup?!
From Jessica Grose's piece on Slate...Um...er...
First off, only three women applied in the SXSW open auditions this year. Secondly, they did try to reach out to several women comedians, but many had scheduling conflicts. Finally, SXSW runs at the same time as television pilot season. "This year, it cost us some great women," Sotelo said.
From the paragraph before in Grose's piece, women instantly suspected foul play:
As writer Lindsay Robertson pointed out, "What the f*** is up with the fact that SXSW comedy has booked TONS of male comedians and only ONE female, YET AT THE VERY SAME TIME and same part of the festival they have a panel about the tired old "Are women funny?" question, which involves exactly zero female comedians?"
I'm reminded of the recent brouhaha about Wikipedia and the finding from a Wikipedia study, per a New York Times piece by Noam Cohen, that Wikipedia's contributor base and is barely 13 percent women. They're looking to up the number of female contributors, which I find disturbing. Are they trying to up the number of male kindergarten teachers or male wedding planners? Wikipedia is created through voluntary contributions. So, the notion that there's some Wikipedia glass ceiling is just nuts, although, of course, people go there. From the Times piece:
Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women.
Oh, boohoo. So, then they shouldn't contribute.
There's similar whining about discrimination on the op-ed page. Now, maybe having a penis makes it easier to get on the op-ed page. I've submitted two op-eds in my life and I've had both published by the LA Times. My editor there is a woman, and I know that Charlotte Allen, who writes op-eds for them from time to time, has an editor who's a woman.
My most recent op-ed wasn't controversial and was LA-centric, so they didn't put it out on the wire like they did the last one (which ended up on the LA Times most-read list...as well of that of the numerous other papers that picked it up).
In short, in my experience, if you write a piece they think is good, they don't turn it down because you have a vagina.
Godless Conservatives
Mark Oppenheimer writes for The New York Times on the atheist conservatives blogging at Secular Right (I'm friendly with and greatly respect both Walter Olson and Heather Mac Donald). What I appreciate about both of them is that they are both independent thinkers who don't hug a particular party line. There's far too little of that in the punditocracy:
Of the group, Ms. Mac Donald is the one best known for atheism. She has written scathingly of the Christian instinct to give God credit for our good fortune while absolving him of our misfortunes."God's mercy was supposedly manifest when children were saved" from the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, Ms. Mac Donald wrote in The American Conservative in 2007. "But why did the prayers for 5-year-old Samantha Runnion go unheeded when she was taken from her Southern California home in 2002 and later sexually assaulted and asphyxiated?
"If you ask a believer, you will be told that the human mind cannot fathom God's ways. It would seem as if God benefits from double standards of a kind that would make even affirmative action look just."
Few liberals would use "affirmative action" as a byword for injustice -- but very few conservatives would refer to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin as members of "the knee-jerk venom squad," as Ms. Mac Donald did a week ago on her blog.
Mr. Derbyshire retains affection for his Anglican schooling -- "I sing hymns in my car," he said -- and Ms. Mac Donald respects many religious people she knows. But she suspects that they can embrace religion only because it has been so altered by secular values.
"We live with a religion that has been tamed, told to mind its manners and told to speak when asked to speak," she said in an interview this week. "I won't dwell on those outmoded religious activities that one is not supposed to remind religious advocates about, such as the burning of heretics and books, pitchforking the wrong type of Christian and opposition to liberal political reform."
For Ms. Mac Donald, politicians -- those beneficiaries of liberal political reform -- can be as bad as the radio talkers.
"I am puzzled," Ms. Mac Donald said, "by the logic of a John Ashcroft saying that while the wonderful people of the Justice Department contributed to keeping America safe, that really the ultimate gratitude is due to God.
"If that is true, why did God leave us vulnerable on 9/11?"
What's Really Happening In Wisconsin
Bookwormroom clears it up:
As I understand it, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, faced with a $3.6 billion biennial budget deficit (for the years 2011-2013), had the choice of raising taxes in his financially beleaguered state or firing up to 6,000 state employees. He chose a third route, proposing that Wisconsin's public sector employees start carrying a small portion of their pension and benefit load.
Bookwormroom links to The Foundry:
Walker's proposal would limit collective bargaining power and reform public employee benefit plans. For the first time, state employees would be responsible for making a 5.8 percent contribution into their pension plans and pick up the tab for 12 percent of their health care benefits. As it currently stands, Wisconsin taxpayers bear 100 percent of the costs.While Walker's proposal would allow unions to continue to represent workers, it would prevent the unions from seeking "pay increases above those pegged to the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a public referendum." It would also prevent unions from forcing employees to pay dues and would require the unions to hold yearly votes to remain viable.
For years, education unions have profited from teachers' salaries--receiving the bulk of their funding from teachers' paychecks--while they have successfully stood in the way of the interests of children by blocking much-needed education reforms. And in many cases, teachers have no choice in whether or not to join a union. In 22 forced-unionism states, teachers must either fork over union dues or leave the profession.
And Wisconsin is not alone. The ailing fiscal climates of most states throughout the country, compounded with a demand for improved education, have prompted many state leaders to attempt to loosen the grip of education unions.
Bookwormroom has more:
Even with this change to the status quo, the employees are still better off than the average Wisconsin employee. First, as noted, taxpayers are currently paying all of those costs. Second, even under the proposed change, the public sector employees would still be paying a significantly lower percentage of these costs than are paid by similarly situated private employees.Keep in mind, too, that the average teacher in Milwaukee - including benefits -- has a salary a total compensation in excess of $100,000:
This salary annual compensation package is one half the average sale price ($200,000) for a home in Madison, Wisconsin. The average salary in Wisconsin overall is less than $60,000. To summarize, Wisconsin teachers, who are state employees receiving their income from taxpayers, get higher pay and better benefits than many of their taxpayer employers.
Can we get some of this pension reform in California, please? Really fast?
via Robert W.
Some Call It SUE-shi
A diabetic man brings a lawsuit against a sushi restaurant, writes David Lazarus in the LA Times:
David Martin was in the mood for raw fish, and he liked the deal offered by a Studio City sushi restaurant: all you can eat for $28.He took a seat at the counter and started ordering. But it turned out that Martin didn't really want sushi, which includes rice; he wanted all-you-can-eat sashimi, which is just fish. He began picking the seafood off the top and leaving the rice.
Restaurant owner Jay Oh told Martin that if he wanted the all-you-can-eat price, he'd have to eat the rice too and not just fill up on fish. Martin replied that he has diabetes and that he can't eat rice.
Oh said he offered to prepare sashimi for Martin. Two orders of sashimi cost $25, or $3 less than the all-you-can-eat sushi deal. But Oh said Martin declined the offer.
Martin left the restaurant after being charged a la carte prices for the sushi he'd already ordered plus $1 for a cup of green tea.
Two weeks later, Martin filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It seeks at least $4,000 in damages for the "humiliation, embarrassment and mental anguish" Martin says he suffered after being discriminated against "on the basis of his disability."
Sure, they say "all you can eat," and they don't spell out the ins and outs in bug type and make you sign a contract before you chow down -- probably because they are operating on the hope that customers will behave decently, as in, not try to take advantage just because they can.
Restaurants are in business to make money, and they will go out of business if people insist on gaming the deal like this guy wants to. Take me, for example. I don't eat carbs. I don't go to an Italian all-you-can-eat joint and serve myself an entire trough of spaghetti and pick out all the meatballs and leave the noodles. That would be piggy and unfair.
via @VPostrel
Because You Have A Right To Free Speech Doesn't Mean It's A Good Idea
I'm not a legal scholar (the masthead above that reads "The Advice Goddess" would be your first clue), so I can't really be sure a teacher has a right to blog about her students. But, assuming she does, that doesn't mean it's a good idea...even if she does it anonymously.
First of all, what kind of naive person in this age thinks that a blogger who starts out anonymously can remain anonymous on the Internet? Maybe some can, but if I want to know who an anonymous blogger is, I can usually find out. Sometimes, it takes me an hour; often, it takes me five minutes.
Patrick Walters writes for the Associate Press about a teacher who's been suspended for blogging nasty (and, I'd guess, deservedly so) stuff about her students:
"My students are out of control," Munroe, who has taught 10th, 11th and 12th grades, wrote in one post. "They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."
And in another post, Munroe - who is more than eight months pregnant - writes: "Kids! They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs. Noisy, crazy, sloppy, lazy LOAFERS." She also comes up with a colorful list of comments that she felt should be available on student report cards.
Munroe did not use her full name or identify her students or school in the blog, which she started in August 2009 for friends and family. Last week, she said, students brought it to the attention of the school, which suspended her with pay.
"They get angry when you ask them to think or be creative," Munroe said of her students in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The students are not being held accountable."
Munroe pointed out that she also said positive things, but she acknowledges that she did write some things out of frustration - and of a feeling that many kids today are being given a free pass at school and at home.
"Parents are more trying to be their kids' friends and less trying to be their parent," Munroe said, also noting students' lack of patience. "They want everything right now. They want it yesterday."
One of Munroe's former students, who now attends McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., said he was torn by his former teacher's comments. Jeff Shoolbraid said he thought much of what Munroe said was true and that she had a right to voice her opinion, but felt her comments were out of line for a teacher.
"Whatever influenced her to say what she did is evidence as to why she simply should not teach," Shoolbraid wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "I just thought it was completely inappropriate. As far as motivated high school students, she's completely correct. High school kids don't want to do anything. .. It's a teacher's job, however, to give students the motivation to learn."
Wrong, Jeff-o. It's a teacher's job to teach. If you aren't motivated to learn, a teacher can't wish it into you, talk it into you, or cane it into you.
What do you think? Is it out of line for a teacher to do what Munroe did?
Ring, Ring: Hey, Fiscal Profligate, It's For You
I just made up that term, "Fiscal Profligate." It's the opposite of what I am -- a fiscal conservative, for small government and people in favor of wasteful pet programs paying out of their own pockets for all the programs they want (like the "high speed" train to SF that will cost billions -- when a Southwest flight from LA to SF is $59 if you buy it in advance).
Timothy Noah writes on Slate about a side effect of fiscal profligates voting in big spenders and big government -- and that's ridiculously high mobile phone taxes; a nationwide average of 16 percent:
A couple of years ago Bob McIntyre bought his daughter a mobile phone. She was living in Oakland, Calif., at the time, and McIntyre lived in northern Virginia. He told her to buy the phone in Oakland and to send him the bill. With rebates and discounts the phone ended up costing about $25. But when McIntyre got the bill, he hit the roof.McIntyre, I should point out, is director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal nonprofit. CTJ has a well-established reputation for scrupulously honest research--McIntyre's been tutoring me about tax distribution tables for three decades--and the man doesn't waste a lot of time griping that our wallets have been picked clean by the gol-durned guv'mint. (That's Grover Norquist's racket.) But McIntyre was flabbergasted to receive a bill of nearly $60 for his daughter's cell phone, of which the majority was taxes. The city fathers of Oakland had calculated their tax based on the phone's sticker price of about $300. Consequently, McIntyre ended up paying more for the tax than he did for the phone.
Taxes on mobile phone use are so high that you might wonder whether the government considers their use a vice, like the consumption of alcohol or tobacco. A pack of smokes costs about $5, on top of which state tax will add, on average, $1.45. That's an average tax rate of 22 percent. In the states of Nebraska, Washington, or New York--where taxes on cellular service are highest--the combined state and local tax is 18 or 19 percent, which isn't too far behind. Nationwide, the average state-local tax burden on cell phone service is 11 percent, compared with an average general sales or use tax of only 7 percent.
...The only logical reason to maintain the current tax scheme would be to discourage cell phone use. That's why we have sin taxes on unhealthy stuff like Marlboros and Coca-Cola. ... ! If we're going to chide cell phone providers--as we should--for adding sneaky fees to your bill, we mustn't ignore the government when it does the same.
Voters need a remedial math lesson -- that when they vote for lawmakers like Barbara Boxer who throws money at anything that crosses her desk and when they vote in boondoggles like the "high speed" train -- the money for them will not rain down from the sky like snowflakes.
On a related note: Here are a few of the "wacky taxes" you may be paying.
How The TSA And INS Are Killing Business
A post on Reddit:
Why I stopped travelling to the US and I largely stopped doing business in the US.With every trip I've taken to the US over the past 30 years, things have gotten a little worse every time. Things are now so bad that I have stopped visiting the US and i no longer have any clients in the US. Mostly because having clients in the US means having to go there. And I've grown to really dislike going to the US.
I'm a photographer. I mainly do street photography now, but i still do the odd bit of contract work. I travel with expensive gear though not that much of it. I like to travel light. The INS do not like that. If I turn up with just my camera backpack and a small bag of clean underwear for a one week stay I usually have to spend a lot of time being interrogated for my lack of a huge suitcase. (I guess they suspect I live in the US illegally. Which borders on comical since nobody knows more about my travel patterns than the US government. Besides, my passport is usually filled with stamps that should tell them that I travel a lot and that even if I lived in the US, I spend most of my time flitting around the world)
Paranoid as the INS are, the TSA are even worse. Mostly because they are a huge bureaucracy where nobody seems to be accountable and their on-the-ground personnel are mostly people who had to choose from a range of other low paying jobs. On several occasions I've had expensive gear disappear from my carry-on during security checks and last year a TSA agent dropped my Canon 1D Mk3, smashing both the lens and the camera body. No apology, but more importantly: I was never compensated. I'm not rich and that camera (and the lens) was important to my livelihood. An expensive piece of kit lost that meant that I basically didn't make any money that month.
Oh, and of course, now you have all this nonsense with pat-downs and backscatter X-rays which increases security with exactly zero percent and makes an already tense atmosphere even more tense. Well played.
Taking pictures in the US is another hassle. After 9/11 everyone is utterly paranoid and everyone from security guards to police, and even random passers-by, have hassled me. Claiming that I am breaking the law (I am not) or demanding I explain why I am taking pictures. Believe me, I have spent a lot of time figuring out what laws apply to photography in various states, but on the ground and with a camera in your hand, that means absolutely nothing. Explaining the laws in effect to a law enforcement officer only gets you into more trouble.
I've been to Russia before the cold war ended. I've been all over the middle east. I've been to China. I've travelled all over Europe. I've been to Cuba and I've been to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua.
What all of these places have in common is that going there was a far more pleasant experience than going to the US. Yes, you read correctly: going to the US is more unpleasant than going to Soviet era Russia or even Iran 10 years ago. Sure, you sometimes have to bribe people, but at least I've not had gear stolen off me during security checks or had people break my gear without at least compensating me.
And taking pictures. Well, let me put it like this: you are 20 times more likely to get hassled for whipping out your camera anywhere in the US than in, say, downtown Teheran.
I offer this as an observation from the outside. The US is isolating itself and it is becoming a very, very unpleasant place to visit. I often talk to fellow travellers and even a lot of business types in nice suits often relate how they'd rather not travel to the US if they could help it and that they'd rather work with people in Europe or Asia. I can relate to that.
via @ariarmstrong
Non-Western People Can Be Evil, Too?
Hitchens writes on Slate that human rights groups are finally noticing that the Taliban aren't exactly a wing of Amnesty International:
The turning point, in the mind of the human rights "activists," appears to have occurred in late January, when a Taliban suicide-murderer killed at least 14 civilians in the Finest Supermarket in Kabul. Among the slain was a well-known local campaigner named Hamida Barmaki, whose husband and four small children were also killed. One wonders in what sense this was the Taliban going too far--women are killed and mutilated by them every single day in Afghanistan. Yet let the terror reach one of the upscale markets or hotels that cater to the NGO constituency in Kabul, and suddenly there is an abrupt change from moral neutrality.Perhaps it is fortunate for the Taliban that they take few, if any, prisoners and maintain no places of detention--at least they don't have to face the righteous scrutiny of those who (like Amnesty International and Julian Assange) have seriously compared Guantanamo to the Gulag. Moreover, their refusal of any military discipline makes it hard if not impossible to distinguish their corpses from others who may have been killed in an airstrike. And can you imagine a Taliban fighter being disciplined by his "superiors" for murder, or demoted for lack of care toward the local population, as has happened several times with U.S. officers and soldiers? In a striking instance of the compliment that vice pays to virtue, sadistic Mullah Mohammed Omar, former dictator of Afghanistan and now Taliban commander, attempted to issue a "code of conduct" to his supporters in 2009. This was supposed to warn against the killing of innocents but seems only to have incited further brutality and the use of ever-more-random methods.
...I can only too well remember attending some press conferences in Pakistan in the winter of 2001 and seeing the unbearably smug expressions on the faces of various human rights and "relief" spokesmen who were concerned lest the military operation against the Taliban should disrupt their relatively modest efforts. They failed or refused to see that the removal of the Taliban was a necessary precondition of any serious relief and reconstruction. It's heartening to learn that, almost a decade later, they are at least open to the awareness that the Taliban is the worst offender. The next stage--may it come soon--will be the realization that the Taliban does not "violate" human rights, but entirely lacks the concept of their existence.
I'd Be More Likely To Vote For A Congressman Who Sleeps In His Office
I'm a workaholic. I love what I do, and it means everything to me to do it well. I'm a slow and meticulous writer, so it takes me a long time and a lot of writing and rewriting (in addition to the research I often need to do) to get a piece to the point where I feel okay sending it out. This means I work seven days a week, and frankly, wish I had an extra seven days each week so I could get more done. Everything else comes second to my work. That's really why I don't cook and don't go out to lunch (prime time in my writing day, and I need a nap afterward) and why I don't do a lot of things that other people consider normal parts of life.
Maybe that's why I really like and respect an elected representative who not only saves money but is right there on the job by living in his office. I blogged about this admiringly a few weeks ago after I learned that there are apparently a number of congressmen who do this.
But, here's Hollywood blowhard-turned political blowhard Lawrence O'Donnell trying to slap around a Congressman, calling him a "tax criminal" for sleeping in his office. To the credit of Congressman Chaffetz, he held his ground. Here, from Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard, a bit of their conversation:
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, HOST: You're living in your office. You've been living in your office for two years now in the House of Representatives?REPRESENTATIVE JASON CHAFFETZ (R-UTAH): No, I live in Alpine, Utah. That's where my home is.
O'DONNELL: Oh, that's your answer on your tax return, right? Because have you filed on your 2009 tax return, have you filed the equivalent income you have in effect received by illegally living for free in a federal building?
CHAFFETZ: I reject the whole premise of what you're saying there. I live in Alpine, Utah. That's my home. I work here in Washington.
O'DONNELL: Where are you sleeping tonight?
CHAFFETZ: I work here in Washington, D.C. They asked me to come to the floor at 2:00 in the morning. I am not sure I'm going to be sleeping anywhere tonight because we're going through a continuing resolution.
O'DONNELL: Congressman, you have given yourself...
CHAFFETZ: That is the reality. The reality is I will not necessarily go to sleep tonight.
O'DONNELL: Congressman, you have seized, you have illegally seized from the federal taxpayer a personal income benefit that saves you the rent money that you would pay in Washington like all of your fellow Congressmen who are responsible, who pay rent in Washington. How much money do you save by not paying rent in Washington? Would you say you save $20,000 a year off your $175,000 salary?
CHAFFETZ: Oh, it depends on month to month. I mean...
O'DONNELL: Do you declare that savings as income as you are legally obliged to do or are you sleeping in your office as a tax criminal?
CHAFFETZ: I reject the whole premise of your question and the way you phrased it. I am trying to save money for myself, my family.
O'DONNELL: For your personal income you are deriving. You are deriving additional personal income of your $174,000 of House income, you get to save more of it because you sleep in the office. Have you declared that additional income benefit on your tax return with a dollar figure?
CHAFFETZ: The way you phrase it, absolutely not. I am trying to be fiscally responsible for my family. I live in Alpine, Utah. That's where my mortgage is.
O'DONNELL: Have you sought an advisory opinion from the IRS that it is a legal tax behavior of yours...
CHAFFETZ: No, no.
O'DONNELL: ...to not declare that as income?
CHAFFETZ: I have not sought a tax opinion from the IRS, no.
O'DONNELL: Would you seek an advisory letter from the IRS as to whether or not you can derive that additional in kind income from the House of Representatives without declaring it on your tax return?
CHAFFETZ: I have not sought to do that.
O'DONNELL: Will you seek to do it tomorrow, write a letter to the IRS director and ask for an advisory opinion?
CHAFFETZ: No, I don't think so.
O'DONNELL: Alright, we will ask for that advisory opinion for you, Congressman.
Sheppard adds:
If O'Donnell and Company hadn't already done that, how did they know Chaffetz was doing anything wrong? Despite this, the badgering continued.
My late friend Cathy Seipp on her hilarious Dennis Miller appearance with O'Donnell (Larry O'Scary), who nearly popped a vein, and more.
We Called It "Learning Responsibility"
Taking care of kid brothers and kid sisters was just part of being a member of a family back when I was growing up. I babysat for other families starting when I was 12, and I was very responsible and very concerned about taking good care of the kids, who were maybe 4 and 5.
My friend Sergeant Heather has an autistic son, and one of the more amazing things I've seen is how they've created a family culture where all the other kids see it as normal, not some chore they're asked to do, to take care of their now-6-year-old brother. They just do it without being asked. It's part of being in their family.
Oh, how things have changed in with all the paranoia and overprotection of kids -- in the USA and in the UK. Lenore Skenazy, of Free Range Kids, writes about an incredible story -- a mom in England ticketed for "cruelty" for leaving her 14-year-old son to babysit his 3-year-old brother for half an hour while she went shopping. In Lenore's words at ParentDish:
Well, they don't call it a "ticket" in England, they call it a "caution" -- but forget semantics. The fact is, by allowing her teen to babysit for less than an hour, the mom lost her job as a health care assistant, because now her record shows her "committing an act of cruelty on a child or young person."Feel free to scream.
What, exactly, is so cruel about letting your teenage son act responsibly? What is so cruel about showing him that you believe in him, and that you like the young man he's becoming?
And what is so cruel about letting your younger son be cared for by his older brother? Is anyone in the English establishment aware that many of today's parents were themselves babysitters at age 11 or 12?
In fact, has it dawned on these government goons that since the beginning of human history, teens have even been popping out children of their OWN? That those teen parents must've been doing something right, because our species survived to this day? And, by the way, prehistoric pubescent parents didn't babysit for half an hour, they raised their children to adulthood. In caves. With food they killed themselves.
But no -- half an hour of babysitting at home is just too much for modern day kids.
More craziness: A 15-year-old in Florida isn't allowed to wait outside the library for his mom to pick him up. In Maryland, a grammar school has cancelled Valentine's Day.
Pundits Talking Out The Wrong Opening
Those who claim the Muslim Brotherhood are moderates know nothing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Claire Berlinski writes at Ricochet that Saudis spend $4 billion per annum in funding to American universities and think tanks for the purpose of promoting a particular view of Islam:
This exceeds the Soviet Union's budget for foreign subversion during the Cold War. A mind-boggling amount goes to funding America's top-tier universities, and of course this has an influence.
Here's the kind of speaker they bring in -- Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim:
Do you not feel it would have been minimally responsible, since the media covered this event and policy makers no doubt paid attention to it, for Georgetown to have mentioned that where the Muslim Brotherhood is concerned, Anwar is not neutral? That he himself co-founded the IIIT, a major Muslim Brotherhood think tank in the United States? Don't you think it might be relevant to note that the Justice Department named the IIIT as unindicted co-conspirators in a crucial terrorism-financing case involving the covert channeling of funds to Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation? Or perhaps they might have mentioned that the survivors of September 11 sued the IIIT for "rendering material support to radical Islamism?" None of this is a secret; it has been widely reported.Anwar's affection for and ties to the the most influential Muslim Brotherhood cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, are also extremely well-known to those paying any attention at all--that would be "Hitler didn't finish the job" Qaradawi; that would be "I encourage the mutilation of women's genitals" Qaradawi; that would be "Rape victims should be flogged" Qaradawi; that would be "Kill pregnant Israeli women because their unborn children are future soldiers" Qaradawi. And Anwar's anti-Semitism is so notorious and vulgar that the B'nai Brith has begged US officials to cut ties with him. Wouldn't you think Georgetown would be wary of inviting such a speaker to present the views of "moderate Muslims" about the Muslim Brotherhood?
And if they did invite him--out of the sense, perhaps, that universities should promote open debate, even with radicals--wouldn't you think they'd signal something to the media about their guest's intellectual pedigree by means of a word such as "controversial," or "Islamist," or anything, really, but "respected internationally as a leader in interreligious dialogue?"
Why Should The Rest Of Us Pay So Others' Children Don't Watch Commercials?
It's time to end the taxpayer handout to PBS and NPR. NPR and PBS fan Jill Lawrence agrees, and, at Politics Daily, has a plan for how that can work:
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels last weekend laid out a vision for "limited but active" government. He is a conservative Republican and I'm sure I'd disagree with him over what falls within those limits. Still, it's clear to me that public broadcasting is not in a league with national security, a healthy economy, safe food, drugs, air, water and products (be they cars or mortgages), and a social safety net for the sick, the poor and the elderly (the better to "promote the general welfare," as the Constitution puts it)....The most measured approach would be to put CPB on a five- to 10-year phase-out plan, gradually reducing its budget as other means of financing are developed. Here are some ways to bring more money into the pot.
- Advertising. Schutz says federal authorities have been easing up on what constitutes a sponsorship. Fifteen years ago there were "momentary mentions" of institutional sponsors such as the Ford Foundation, he said. Now there are 15- to 20-second segments and, particularly on TV with its visual elements, they look just like ads.
That's a slippery slope to some public broadcasting advocates. " 'Sesame Street' could survive on network TV," CPB spokesman Tim Isgitt told me. "But there will be a Sprite in the scene and the kids will be assaulted by Mattel ads every 10 minutes." NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said NPR would risk losing listeners. "Our audience appreciates not hearing five minutes of back-to-back commercials every break. That would not enhance our value to the audience. It's an important part of our commercial identity," she said.
Purity may not survive in this environment, but there are options that don't involve advertising.
These would be selling PBS programming to cable and satellite companies and more listener and viewer contributions and donations from benefactors like Joan Kroc, who left $200 million to NPR when she died in 2003, which became the major part of an endowment that produces $10 million a year for NPR's use.
If you don't want your kid to see commercials, you can buy DVDs. That's what my neighbors do, but mostly, the TV in their house isn't on, and the kids are playing and using their imagination.
Let's Call "Free" What It Really Is: "Taxpayer-Funded"
I saw this headline on Consumerist -- "New York State Guarantees Legal Assistance In Foreclosure Cases" -- and then this bit:
In the coming weeks, Queens County in NYC and Orange County will be the first locales to offer the gratis attorneys. The program will then roll out statewide.
It was a blog item off this David Streitfeld piece in The New York Times:
New York court officials outlined procedures Tuesday aimed at assuring that all homeowners facing foreclosure were represented by a lawyer, a shift that could give tens of thousands of families a better chance to save their homes....Criminal defendants are guaranteed a lawyer but New York will be the first state to try and extend that pledge to foreclosures, which are civil matters. There are about 80,000 active foreclosure cases in New York courts. In more than half the cases, only the banks have lawyers.
"It's such an uneven playing field," the state's chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, said. "Banks wind up with the property and the homeowner winds up over the cliff, on the street. It doesn't serve anyone's interest, including the banks'."
A lawyer for every defendant will also serve the courts' interests, the judge said, by making proceedings more efficient.
Legal aid groups will find the task of representing all foreclosure defendants easier if the state legislature agrees to Judge Lippman's request for a $100 million increase in legal services programs spread over the next four years. Current funding for legal services in New York is about $200 million a year drawn from a variety of public and private sources.
I didn't gamble and buy a house because I couldn't afford one (as somebody who's dealt with the financial difficulties that come with getting a writing career started, I waited until my mid 30s to get a dog so I could be sure I could pay any medical expenses that arose). Why should the rest of us who were careful with our money and prudent with our spending pay for the legal fees of all the gamblers?
Sure, some people have fallen on hard times, but if others want to donate to help them, I'm all for it. To paraphrase Bastiat, just because we don't want the government to fund something doesn't mean we're against it being funded. But, it in this case, hey, O.P.P: Other People's Pockets. Those who open them voluntarily, 'kay?
Language As A Window Into Human Nature
This is an abbreviated version of the very interesting talk I heard Steven Pinker give at the New Hampshire meeting of NEEPS (the NorthEast Evolutionary Psychology Society) a couple years ago:
My favorite part is at the end on direct versus indirect speech and individual knowledge versus mutual knowledge. I write about this here:
Of course, you mucked things up from the start by spitting up your feelings all over her shoes ("I told her of my attraction..."). When you don't know how somebody feels about you, you don't go all full-frontal with your feelings for them. Consider the difference between "Wanna have sex with me?" and "Would you like to come up and see my etchings?" which Harvard psych professor Steven Pinker addresses in "The Stuff Of Thought." With the latter, the girl is reasonably sure you aren't looking to guide her around a late-night art exhibition, but "indirect speech" allows both of you to maintain what Pinker calls "a comfortable fiction." The same goes for asking a co-worker out for after-work cocktails. Unlike lunch, the evening can morph into a date. If it doesn't, you can spin it as friendly drinks, or your new program, "No Co-worker Goes Home Thirsty" -- which you should find much easier on the ego than your old program, "An Audience With Genius: An Unwanted Declaration Of Attraction, Followed By A Long, Awkward Free Lunch."
There's also an apt bit, vis a vis events in Egypt, about assembling in a public square to challenge the authority of a dictator.
Weapons Of Mass Bullshit
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, aka "Curveball," made up the Weapons of Mass Destruction tale the U.S. used to invade Iraq, he tells The Guardian. Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd report:
Everything he had said about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programme was a flight of fantasy - one that, he now claims was aimed at ousting the Iraqi dictator. Janabi, a chemical engineering graduate who had worked in the Iraqi industry, says he looked on in shock as Powell's presentation revealed that the Bush administration's hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed the lot. Something else left him even more amazed; until that point he had not met a US official, let alone been interviewed by one."I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime," he told the Guardian in a series of interviews carried out in his native Arabic and German. "I and my sons are proud of that, and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."
His interviews with the Guardian, which took place over two days, appeared to be partly a purge of conscience, partly an attempt to justify what he did. It also seems to be a bid to resurrect his own reputation, which might help him start again in Iraq -- a country that eight years later is still reeling from more than 100,000 civilian deaths and the aftermath of a savage sectarian war.
...Even now, Curveball seems bemused that his lies got as far as they did. He says he thought the game was up by the end of 2000. By that point, the BND (Germany's Secret Service) had flown to Dubai to interview his former boss at Iraq's military industrial complex, Dr Basil Latif, who had told them that his former underling was a liar.
Several British intelligence officers were present at the meeting with Latif. Their German counterparts left Dubai seeing their prized source in a new light.
According to them, Curveball had claimed that Latif's son, who was then at school in Britain, was a procurer of WMD. That information was easily proven wrong by the British spooks.
The BND then returned to Germany and sent an officer to confront their source. "He says 'there (are) no trucks' and I say, ok, when (Dr Basil says) there are no trucks then (there are none)," Curveball recalled in broken English. "I did not speak to them again until (the) end of May 2002."
...But in January 2003, several weeks before Powell's speech, the interrogation returned to trucks and birdseed. "That was the first time they had talked to me about this since 2000." Curveball says it was clear to him that the drums of war were beating ever louder, but he maintains that he still thought his story about the mobile trucks had been discounted.
The Defense Of Discrimination Act
If we're going to discriminate against gays and lesbians and give them fewer rights, we should take that discrimination all the way, and allow them to pay less in taxes.
President Obama has called upon Congress to repeal the disgusting 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. So, why, asks The New York Times, do his government's lawyers continue to defend it in court?
The law, signed by President Bill Clinton, denies married same-sex couples the federal benefits granted to other married couples, including Social Security survivor payments and the right to file joint tax returns. When December's repeal of the noxious "don't ask, don't tell" law goes into effect, gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans will be able to serve openly in the military but may not be entitled to on-base housing or a spouse's burial in a national cemetery....Two new lawsuits, filed in Connecticut and New York, challenging the Defense of Marriage Act now offer the president a chance to put the government on the side of justice. We urge him to seize it when the administration files its response, which is due by March 11. The executive branch's duty to defend federal laws is not inviolate. This one's affront to equal protection is egregious.
As in the Massachusetts cases, there are two crucial questions here. The overarching one, of course, is whether it is constitutional for the federal government to deny benefits to some people who are legally married under their state's laws. Much also depends on the standard of review. How should courts evaluate claims that a law discriminates against gay people?
On the merits, this should be an easy call. A law focusing on a group that has been subjected to unfair discrimination, as gay people have been, is supposed to get a hard test. It is presumed invalid unless the government proves that the officials' purpose in adopting the law advances a real and compelling interest. That sort of heightened scrutiny would challenge the administration's weak argument for upholding the act. It would also make it more difficult to sustain other forms of anti-gay discrimination, including state laws that deny same-sex couples the right to marry.
An example of how the DOMA plays out. Say you're an American man who wants to marry his German girlfriend. Well, have at it! Say you're an American man who wants to marry his German boyfriend. Well, here it is from the comments below the NYT piece. Pam from Alaska writes:
My son and his German partner were married in Germany and California, but thanks to DOMA, his partner was still not eligible to immigrate to the US. So they took their talents, training, and education to Canada.
Raymond Chandler: The Simple Art Of Plagiarism
This LA Times' blog item about Raymond Chandler's wife's ashes being relocated to his grave in San Diego reminded me about a blog item I did a while back on Chandler.
It actually didn't start out to be on Chandler at all. I was just checking out a Chandler quote -- or what I thought was a Chandler quote from "The Simple Art of Murder" -- to make sure I got it right: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."
Unfortunately, it seems Chandler practiced the simple art of plagiarism. It seems he cribbed the line (and borrowed even more) from novelist Rebecca Harding Davis, who died in 1910. More here.
Why Doesn't This Guy Have Custody Of His Kid?
The mom's in jail (after making false accusations about her husband), the mom's mom's in jail, and the dad and husband seems to be an upstanding citizen who's had grave wrongs done to him, yet he still hasn't been granted custody of his own daughter. Robert Franklin writes at FathersandFamilies:
It didn't take the police long to figure out that (the wife, Kristin's) accusations were completely fabricated. Prosecutors dropped all charges against Jeff and instead indicted Kristin on 12 felony counts of lying to police and the district attorney's office.But Kristin's allegations kept Jeff under a legal cloud long enough for him to lose his job as a Coast Guard petty officer, almost lose his house, and have his parental rights to his daughter terminated.
As Assistant County Attorney Jerome Blanchard described it, that was her point. He told the jury: "She mocked him. She laughed at him. (She said) 'I took all your money, I took your daughter, and now I am going to take your career.' " Since then, Kristin has been convicted of all 12 felonies and sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison.
All of that has been well publicized. It's Jeff's effort to regain custody of his daughter that the public has seen little of. Despite his having done no wrong and despite being a responsible and loving father, Jeff still has not regained custody. He only lost her in the fir st place because of allegations by Kristin that have now been proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have been false.
...The U.S. Supreme Court has said that states may not deny rights to parents unless they have been proven to be unfit. Nothing of the sort has been proved against Jeffrey Ruggiero. The only "evidence" against him was the perjured testimony of his ex-wife.
It's time his little girl came home to live with the only decent figure in this whole sorry affair -- her father.
The amazing thing here, vis a vis a lot of cases I read about, is that there was some punishment for making false accusations.
Is The TSA Experience A Regular Part Of The Cruise Ship Experience?
A guy was arrested for dealing drugs out of his cruise ship cabin last week, writes Marnie Hunter on CNN. But, this was the bit that caught my notice:
The drugs and money were discovered during a random inspection of the ship's passengers Wednesday in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
A "random inspection of the ship's passengers"? What happens, they line you up and make you bend over? And who does this, and on what probable cause?
Before this, I would never take a cruise, but if this is what goes on, you can add a never to that and make it "never-never take a cruise."
Valentine's Day: Our National Day Of Insincerity
Every year, people who treat each other like crap year round take a day off to spend large sums of money buying roses, pricey prix-fixe dinners, and heart-imprinted merch for each other. Aww, how sweet.
If, on the other hand, you're wise enough to be sweet to your partner year round, I suggest you save your money (dinner will cost a third of the price on February 15) and stay home and have a night that's as warm and loving and fun as any other night. Warning note: Guys, don't try to do this unless you're absolutely positively sure you'll have wife or girlfriend approval. And even then, you might get a bunch of roses just to be safe. I already get enough hate mail.
As for me, I'm on deadline during the day, but I'm guessing Gregg will come over in the evening, cook me dinner, and then we'll watch "The Shield." Nothing like watching dirty cops finding dead hookers in a dumpster to bring out the romance in a relationship. And P.S. I'm serious. If you manage to find the right man, and if you aren't a bitch to him, you can have a romantic time whether you're out at a chichi restaurant or on your couch with your tiny dog climbing him like he's the human Swiss Alps.
For those of you who are single, the grass might seem greener on the relationship side of the fence, but if you read my mail, you'd know there's a relatively good chance it's spray-painted. Better to to hold out for somebody good than to go all musical chairs and grab for the last spot after the music goes off.
If you could still use a little more consolation than that, perhaps it would help to know that some really smart people made some of the dumbest lovers. Goethe, for example, developed a series of crushes on unattainable women throughout his life.
And then, take Descartes. Descartes lost his virginity to a serving maid, split from her, but then gained custody of their illegitimate child, who died at age 5. He swore himself to celibacy, and at age 47, started writing to Elizabeth, the 25-year-old daughter of the King of Bohemia, meeting her only a handful of times. It was "the most emtionally intimate relationship of his life," and Elizabeth "was his closest correspondent toward the end of his life," writes Andrew Shaffer in "Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love
Regarding Descartes' masterpiece, "Passions," deemed by the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" to be the "result of the probing of Princess Elizabeth," Shaffer noted, "There was, alas, no probing going on between the two."
Government Is An Ass
Pelosi's "green" dining solution in the House cafeteria cost the government (and "We the Sheeple" paying for it) more in energy and money. And the "compostable" cornstarch-based forks sucked as forks, to boot. Charlotte Allen has a fabulous op-ed in the LA Times:
The tableware, the color of mucus and as bendable as a pocket watch in a Salvador Dali painting (and thus unable to pierce any foodstuff firmer than the innards of Brie cheese), was the most visible manifestation of recently deposed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Green the Capitol initiative. That was her carbon-cutting effort to use the food-service and other House operations to fight global warming and a host of other perceived environmental, health and social ills. During the lunchtime rush, you could observe dozens of staffers struggling to stab lettuce leaves and poultry pieces with fork tines that appeared to be double-jointed as well as dull.But on Jan. 25, Dan Lungren, the GOP congressman from the Sacramento area who now heads the House Administration Committee, directed the House chief administrative officer to trash -- so to speak -- the composting program, which converts the dining service's cornstarch tableware, along with its biodegradable plates, trays, cups and drinking straws, into garden mulch.
It turns out that the composting program not only cost the House an estimated $475,000 a year (according to the House inspector general) but actually increased energy consumption in the form of "additional energy for the pulping process and the increased hauling distance to the composting facility," according to a news release from Lungren.
As far as carbon emissions were concerned, Lungren concluded that the reduction was the "nominal ... equivalent to removing one car from the road each year." He plans to switch the House to an alternate waste-management system recommended by the Architect of the Capitol, in which dining-service trash would be incinerated and the heat energy captured.
"Composting releases methane," said Lungren's spokesman, Brian Kaveney, and methane gas, as even the most warming-conscious among us have to admit, traps atmospheric heat far more efficiently than carbon dioxide, the usual bugaboo of the climate-change crowd.
Criminal Protection Of Property
Just when I was sure the UK couldn't possibly get any more PC, they up and surprise me. From the Daily Mail, residents are being told to remove wire mesh from their windows lest they give a poor burglar an ouchie!
Locals had reinforced their windows with wire mesh after a series of shed thefts but were told by community police officers that the wire was 'dangerous' and could lead to criminals claiming compensation if they 'hurt themselves'.Surrey Police have defended the move but outraged residents have attacked the force for seemingly trying to protect criminals.
Thomas Cooper, of Tatsfield, Surrey, said he put the mesh around three of his garden sheds after two break-ins over the past four years.
He said he decided to take action after reports of a rise in shed burglaries in the area near the Kent and Surrey border.
'I have three sheds and had two break-ins in the past four years,' Mr Cooper explained.
'I reinforced my shed windows with wire mesh, but was told by the police I had to be very careful because thieves can actually sue you if they get hurt.'"I mean, what are you meant to do? Let them take your stuff? It is ridiculous that the law protects them even though they are breaking it.'
Coming Up Shorter
There may be a market for shorter pieces of writing for electronic devices. I'm very interested in this because I have a piece I wrote that was to be part of a book, and I can't write that book for a while, and the piece seems to be pretty stand-alone. Hmmm.
Check out this Jenna Wortham story in The New York Times, "Shorter E-Books for Smaller Devices." She writes about the first e-book she read on her smartphone. "No typical tome," she writes:
It was "Lifted," an article -- at 12,000 words, a very long article -- about a $150 million Swedish bank heist. It cost me $3.The work was written by Evan Ratliff, a co-founder of the Atavist -- a new digital publishing house that commissions and sells nonfiction articles written exclusively for distribution on smartphones, e-readers and tablet computers.
The Atavist is among the growing number of organizations that are cultivating a certain niche of writing -- stories and articles that are longer than a typical magazine article but shorter than a novel -- in the hope that they will find a comfortable home on the glassy screens of evermore prevalent mobile devices. "Word counts are getting shorter in most magazines," said Mr. Ratliff, who is also a contributing editor to Wired magazine. "On a mobile device, we shouldn't be bound by those constraints."
The attention spans of readers -- many of us, anyway -- are actually not getting shorter, Mr. Ratliff says. The problem lies elsewhere, he adds: "It's the platform."
The physical dimensions of mobile devices are, in some ways, quite limited. So it's important to exploit the advantages that the devices do have, he contends. Success, he says, depends on thinking beyond a "one-to-one transition from book to e-book," and on doing more than replacing paper with pixels.
The Atavist integrates clever tools into the text, like interactive timelines and character biographies to help a reader quickly find her place without spoiling the plots. I found that this helped me spin through "Lifted" without the digressions that have usually turned me off of e-books.
Mr. Ratliff did not share specific sales figures for his venture, which began in late January, but he said interest was "much higher than anticipated." The Atavist isn't the only boutique publishing house planning to exploit what it believes are readers' nascent appetites for more medium-length material. Many digital boutiques, including Push Pop Press, Cursor and Byliner, are also promising to deliver new breeds of content primarily through mobile devices.
What would you pay for, essentially, a chapter of a book? Would you pay?
Shrink Claims Violent Video Games Cause Rape (Evidence? Not So Much)
Where there's media...there's a shrink popping up to bask in the limelight...whatever that takes.
Jason Schreier blogs on Wired about "self-described 'media psychiatrist' Carole Lieberman" and her evidence-free claim:
"The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in videogames," Lieberman told Fox News in an article, sensationally headlined "Is Bulletstorm the Worst Videogame in the World?" The story discusses the violence and sexual innuendo in developer Epic Games' upcoming first-person shooter.Though extremists like Jack Thompson have attacked violent videogames on multiple fronts in the past, this is the first time we've heard anyone link gaming to sexual aggression. By playing the rape card, Lieberman ratcheted up the rhetoric in the crusade against violent videogames -- and whipped up fury among gamers, who attacked her remarks in online forums (and even bombed her books with negative reviews on Amazon.com).
Despite the seriousness of Lieberman's allegations, when Wired.com asked her multiple times to clarify her comments, she failed to cite a single study, statistic or piece of evidence that proved her point.
Perhaps it's because such studies simply don't exist.
"I don't know where [Lieberman] would get any evidence for this opinion," said Iowa State University professor Douglas A. Gentile, who studies the relationship between media and violence. "There's really very little to substantiate her claims in research literature."
Gentile has been researching violence in media since 1999. He has written books and studies about the psychological effects of videogames. When asked by Wired.com in a phone interview, he said very few mainstream games contain any real sexual content. Explicit old games like Leisure Suit Larry and Custer's Revenge, Gentile pointed out, are hard to find on store shelves nowadays.
Lieberman "is extrapolating farther than science actually allows her to," Gentile said.
Heh. That's, um, polite.
A story by Steven E. Landsburg on Slate echoes what I found in reading a bunch of studies on porn a few months ago -- an association between the spread of porn and a decrease in rapes. He also notes an association between the showing of violent movies and the decrease in violence. Do note that it's an association -- not proof.
But, also note another association: A few years back I saw studies not connected to the spread of the Internet but the availability of porn, and researchers also found that rape decreased as porn became more available...if I remember correctly, in Demark and some other European country.
Landsburg writes:
The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth....Next, violence. What happens when a particularly violent movie is released? Answer: Violent crime rates fall. Instantly. Here again, we have a lot of natural experiments: The number of violent movie releases changes a lot from week to week. One weekend, 12 million people watch Hannibal, and another weekend, 12 million watch Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
University of California professors Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna compared what happens on those weekends. The bottom line: More violence on the screen means less violence in the streets. Probably that's because violent criminals prefer violent movies, and as long as they're at the movies, they're not out causing mischief. They'd rather see Hannibal than rob you, but they'd rather rob you than sit through Wallace & Gromit.
I say that's the most probable explanation, because the biggest drop in crime (about a 2 percent drop for every million people watching violent movies) occurs between 6 p.m. and midnight--the prime moviegoing hours. And what happens when the theaters close? Answer: Crime stays down, though not by quite as much. Dahl and DellaVigna speculate that this is because two hours at the movies means two hours of drinking Coke instead of beer, with sobering effects that persist right on through till morning. Speaking of morning, after 6 a.m., crime returns to its original level.
Little Girls Will All Want To Grow Up And Look Like Pepsi Cans
Some are claiming...don't laugh...that the new "skinny" Diet Pepsi can reinforces "dangerous stereotypes" about women and body image. Right. And...that would be the stereotype where women are more attractive if they appear to be five or six inches high, a little thinner than the usual Pepsi can, and made of aluminum?
Sarah Skidmore writes on MSNBC about the new can Pepsi has launched in time for New York's Fashion Week:
"Our slim, attractive new can is the perfect complement to today's most stylish looks, and we're excited to throw its coming-out party during the biggest celebration of innovative design in the world," Jill Beraud, chief marketing officer for PepsiCo said in a statement.Critics say it is nothing to celebrate.
Brand experts praised the new design but say the company may be a bit off on its sales pitch that skinny is better. The National Eating Disorders Association said it takes offense to the can and said the company's comments are both "thoughtless and irresponsible."
Libby Copeland summed up many of the criticisms in an article for Slate.
"Same old story - aspirational, looks-oriented advertising with a thin layer of faux-empowerment on top," Copeland wrote. "If you're confident on the inside, you'll be skinny on the outside, or something. Huh?"
Most men like women who are not fat. Telling women that being any size is just fine, and telling men that they "should" lust after you for what's within and not care about the outside just isn't going to cut it. We're also not going to change the effects of 1.8 million or so years of evolution by changing or not changing a Pepsi can.
To explain further, a quote from my piece on the truth about beauty from Psychology Today:
While Western women do struggle to be slim, the truth is, women in all cultures eat (or don't) to appeal to "the male gaze." The body size that's idealized in a particular culture appears to correspond to the availability of food. In cultures like ours, where you can't go five miles without passing a 7-Eleven and food is sold by the pallet-load at warehouse grocery stores, thin women are in. In cultures where food is scarce (like in Sahara-adjacent hoods), blubber is beautiful, and women appeal to men by stuffing themselves until they're slim like Jabba the Hut.
By the way, I don't use any artificial sweeteners, nor do I eat sugar, which seems to be poison for the human body. Regarding the aspartame in Diet Pepsi, Dr. Michael Eades writes in the comments on his site:
I think it's probably best to avoid any kind of artificial sweeteners, but if you're going to use one, I think Splenda is the best choice.
Here's Dr. Eades' very cool wife, Dr. Mary Dan Eades, who Gregg and I just met, on artificial sweeteners, quoting an American Association of Cereal Chemists book, Sweeteners: Alternative Handbook
Aspartame: Sold under the brand name NutraSweet, the compound was also an accidental discovery in 1965 by a chemist at Searle & Company. (Another finger sucker, apparently.) It is a synthetic, white, crystalline powder, made of two amino acids (L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine) with about 160-220 times the sweetness of sucrose. Positives include a clean taste without metallic bitterness. Drawbacks include its notorious instability in non-acidic aqueous solutions or when heated, at which point it loses its sweetness and potentially becomes toxic. When the molecule disassociates (breaks apart) one potential decomposition compound is methanol or 'wood alcohol'-the stuff sometimes in moonshine that makes you go blind if you drink it. Just image what could be happening to those aspartame molecules inside all those cans of diet soda in the back of a delivery truck on a sweltering August day in Atlanta. We have personally witnessed a startling array of clinical ills anecdotally attributable to its use, ranging from severe and reproducible stomach cramping to sleeplessness to hives to emotional disturbance to memory loss. There's some evidence (again, anecdotal) that these potential ills might even be of greater risk to people on a low carb dietary structure. These concerns, in part, are what prompted our reversal of opinion about the sweetener's safety after writing Protein Power and why we no longer allow any little blue packets in our house. We do not recommend its use!
It's also possible that artificial sweeteners lead to weight gain. From a Sydney Morning Herald story:
Scientists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, studied rats that were fed food with the artificial sweetener saccharin and rats fed food with glucose, a natural sugar. In comparison to rats given yoghurt sweetened with glucose, those that ate yoghurt sweetened with saccharin went on to consume more calories and put on more weight and body fat.The researchers said sweet foods may prompt the body to get ready to take in a lot of calories, but when sweetness in the form of artificial sweeteners is not followed by a large amount of calories, the body gets confused, which may lead to eating more or expending less energy than normal.
"The data clearly indicate that consuming a food sweetened with no-calorie saccharin can lead to greater body-weight gain and adiposity than would consuming the same food sweetened with high-calorie sugar," Purdue researchers Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson wrote in the journal Behavioural Neuroscience, published by the American Psychological Association.
Of Course They're Safe!
The TSA claims their scanners are perfectly safe, and the documentation to back that up is...backed up, and has been for two months since lawmakers asked for it...two months with millions of people going through those scanners on the assurances of the nimrods looking for tweezers instead of terrorists. Alison Young writes for USA Today:
...The TSA has yet to release radiation inspection reports for its X-ray equipment -- two months after lawmakers called for them to be made public following USA TODAY's requests to review the reports.TSA spokesman Kristin Lee says that the agency is still trying to ensure that the reports don't contain any "sensitive security or privacy-protected information" and that she expects they will be released "within the next few weeks."
...Fueling concerns about the potential for scanner malfunctions and the TSA's ability to identify problems: a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found the TSA and its contractors had failed in the past to detect when some baggage X-ray machines were emitting excessive levels of radiation or had safety features that were missing or disabled. The TSA says that it has made improvements since then and that all of its X-ray scanners -- for people and luggage -- have passed recent inspections by contractors. The agency in January asked the CDC to repeat its luggage X-ray study "to confirm the progress TSA has made," Lee says.
The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general is investigating the adequacy of the TSA's X-ray inspection program at the request of Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Markey spokeswoman Giselle Barry says. TSA Administrator John Pistole told Markey in a January letter that there have been no full-body scanner malfunctions that resulted in "an actual or potential additional radiation exposure."
Yeah. That we know of.
And here's some recent pat-down fun. "Stay classy, TSA!"
Cute Old People Find Love And Get Married
Great piece by Nina Reyes in The New York Times' Vows column.
Incredible Creatures: Meet The PVC-asaurus
Theo Jansen's amazing Strandbeests, from Wallace & Gromit's "World of Invention":
via Dr. Eades
America: Land Of Lawsuit Madness
But, the manufacturer included no warning that it was unsafe to microwave the cat. American litigiousness, told in Japanese Anime!
via Walter Olson
I'm Being Followed On Twitter By A Spammer I Wrote About
Weird. See the comments below the piece.
The Product Isn't To Blame
Parents installed baby monitors with the cord within reach of their baby, and tragically, the babies strangled on the cord. I can understand that parents in a terrible situation like this would want to look elsewhere to place blame, but that's really not fair.
In conjunction with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Summer Infant company that made the monitors is issuing a "voluntary recall."
From MSNBC:
According to the commission, a 10-month-old girl from Washington, D.C., died in March when she strangled on the cord of a Summer Infant monitor camera that had been placed on the top of the crib rail. In November, a 6-month-old boy from Conway, S.C., strangled in the electrical cord of a baby monitor placed on the changing table attached to his crib.CPSC and Summer Infant are also aware of a 20-month-old boy from Pittsburgh who nearly strangled on a camera cord that was mounted to the wall in reach of the child.
Commission Chairman Inez Tenenbaum says cords and kids can be a deadly combination.
"I urge all parents and caregivers to put at least 3 feet between any video or audio baby monitor cords and a child in a crib," she said. "This simple step can save your child's life."
A bit from the Summer Infant press release linked above:
In conjunction with the CPSC, Summer Infant is issuing a voluntary recall to provide new product label and instructions for baby monitors with electric cords. This consumer safety alert and awareness campaign is aimed at educating consumers of potential strangulation issues with electric cords in the nursery when placed too close to a crib, bassinet, play yard, or other safe sleep environment. As a part of this campaign, Summer Infant is providing a Safe Installation Guide and a cord Warning Label to consumers free of charge. Summer Infant would like to point out that a baby monitor with cord should NEVER be placed within three feet of a crib or baby's reach. Baby monitor cameras can be safely placed away from the crib and still operate as intended - to monitor a child while sleeping.Since 2004, there have been seven deaths reported from monitor cord strangulation as a result of a baby monitor being placed in or near the crib. In response to the deaths, the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) has put together an informative Infants Can Strangle in Baby Monitor Cords Safety Alert brochure.
Of the seven deaths, two involved Summer Infant Video Monitors. In an effort to prevent any further fatalities, we are including additional information and warnings within our baby monitor products. We are also providing a Safe Installation Guide and Warning Label free of charge to anyone who does not currently have one.
I know that my parents and other parents I know are and were constantly vigilant about their children's immediate environment. Are these, perhaps, cases where common sense should have prevailed?
via @FreeRangeKids
Pat Condell On What Cameron Left Out About Multiculturalism
via Richard Nikoley
A Little Perspective From Claire Berlinski
The Turkey-dwelling Berlinski writes:
If you're told over and over that the Obama is a radical left-winger and the Tea Partiers are radical right-wingers, when you hear the words, "radical" applied to the Muslim Brotherhood, you'll intuitively reach for what you know, which just isn't that radical. America has no real extremes. Everyone here is a moderate. The radicals are either in Supermax prisons or mental hospitals.
When Taxes Are No Longer Enough
Steve Lopez blogs at the LA Times about exorbitant traffic ticket prices in Los Angeles (in a piece that sounds a bit like a press release for business that he mentions twice in his piece). An excerpt:
Traffic camera tickets, issued when you're caught on video running a red light, used to cost a few hundred dollars. But in the last couple of years, some are as high as $500-$600, says Steve Miller of Ticketbust.com, which tries to knock down the fees or get tickets dismissed altogether."Business is booming," said Miller, who told me that Californians are also ticked off about speeding ticket fines that run as high as several hundred dollars. "In the last two years, we've seen over a 100% increase in business each year."
Look, if someone's blowing red lights or barreling down a highway 90 miles an hour with a phone to the ear, I don't have much sympathy. But for questionable or relatively minor infractions, working folks are being hammered by fee increases imposed to fill budget gaps. Is it fair to charge someone half a month's rent, or the cost of a month's supply of food, for a slow-rolling turn as a light goes from yellow to red?
Of course, the best information is not in Lopez' blog item but in the comments.
Red light camera tickets are atrociously expensive, but many people do not think they have the time to fight them. Without taking a day off work, you can fight an unjust traffic citation. California allows Trial by Declaration - a process in which a written statement is submitted by the defendant. If the defendant disagrees with the ruling, the case can still be taken to trial. The best website on fighting red light camera tickets can be found at highwayrobbery.net. With advice from this site, I was able to prove the yellow phase at a traffic light was too short and had my case dismissed.Posted by: anonymous | February 10, 2011 at 03:39 PM
There are stories, too:
My husband crossed a small, completely empty side street in Pasadena and was cited for jaywalking. Even though it was his first offense, the fine was $180. He's currently not working so instead did 18 hours of community service, but he still had to pay various fees amounting to $65.In Sierra Madre, where the local police department has declared an all-out war on the city's residents and visitors, it's common to see a police car parked at any of the major four-way intersections and totally ready to pounce on anyone who fails to stop before the limit line. They nail you even if you're so much as an inch inside the crosswalk, even if there are no pedestrians around. It's predatory and infuriating.
Posted by: MH | February 10, 2011 at 03:53 PM
And a comparison:
Hello Steve,I just wanted to point out for your article the difference in prices for the very same ticket from state to state. I was recently home in Boulder Colorado, and learned that running a red light incurs a ticket of 40 dollars, while the same driving infraction here in Los Angeles costs almost 500 dollars. I was told while I was in Boulder that the system pays for itself and produces the results they want at those prices. So my question is why are the tickets in L.A. ten times the amount of a ticket there?
Thanks
Eric
West L.A.Posted by: eric | February 10, 2011 at 05:39 PM
Beyond traffic violations, just forgetting to move your car on street cleaning day has gone up from $25 or $30 to $65. Being frugal and very, very careful, I almost never get them, but wake up sick one morning, and you're out $65.
Where does all the money go? Oh, for "emergencies" like these.
Multiculturalism Has Failed
Like Cameron, Angela Merkel, and other leaders, Sarkozy has come out in favor of the obvious. From Yahoo/AFP, Sarko said in a television interview:
"If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France," the right-wing president said."The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women... freedom for little girls to go to school," he said.
"We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him," Sarkozy said in the TFI channel show.
The Winnipeg schools should give a listen.
Guilty Verdict In Mo Hassan Case
From HillBuzz:
Yesterday, Muzzammil Hassan, the Buffalo Muslim TV station owner, was found guilty of second degree murder. In 2009, this low life scumbag stabbed his wife Aasiya 40 times before beheading her. She had just filed for divorce (with a restraining order) the week before the murder. Watch the video (below) and you will see just how smug and evil this creature is and I love the fact that it only took the jury 1 hour to convict him. I just hope that he gets the maximum sentence allowed but it still won't be harsh enough.
Domestic violence to men happens, and goes underreported and is often even laughed off. Women have less muscle mass than men and are usually physically weaker, but they can do plenty of damage with a blunt object or a gun.
Unfortunately, you sometimes hear guilty people defend themselves by appropriating the language of others' legitimate defenses, like parental alienation, which I hear a good deal about from some men who write me (and these men typically aren't pleading any case to me or looking for me to do anything for them; they're typically just looking for some words of sympathy back).
This guy, however, writes Phyllis Chesler, is actually "a man with a long and terrible history of physically and psychologically battering three wives and physically and psychologically abusing his children as well--he once punched his 13-year-old son in the nose."
Chesler's whole piece on this case (at the above link) is very interesting. She notes that Hassan is from Pakistan (and, I'll note that the culture is not just Pakistani, but Muslim):
In 2009, I received an extraordinary report which documented honor killings in Pakistan. My Pakistani informant, of the SW Community Development Department, in Sind, Pakistan, sent me an unpublished paper in which he describes and explains a murderous Pakistani culture very carefully. He writes:Male control does not only extend to a woman's body and her sexual behavior but all of her behavior, including her movements, her language and her actions. In any of these areas, defiance by women translates into undermining male honor and ultimately family and community honor. Severe punishments are reported for bringing food late, for talking back or for undertaking forbidden trips, etc. A man's honor defiled by a woman's alleged or real sexual misdemeanor or other defiance is only partly restored by killing her. He also has to kill the man allegedly involved. Since [the woman] is murdered first, the [man] often hears about it and flees, aided by the fact that unlike the woman, he is both familiar with the world outside the house and can move freely in it. But [men] who escape will not be able to return to normal life. Nobody will give such a man shelter; he remains on the run until he and his family are ready to negotiate with the victim, the man whose honour the [man] defiled. The balance is restored by negotiating compensation for damages.Moreover, there are few safe places for a woman to escape to. Seeking help outside the family is fraught with danger for a woman. Not only does society blame a woman for being targeted for murder-the popular perception being that she must somehow deserve it-but by seeking outside help she risks being sent back to her husband or father in whose custody she is perceived to belong. Most important by seeking help outside, she adds shame to her husband and his family by making the issue public. No Kari ["black" woman marked for honor-killing] who escapes is ever forgiven, even if her innocence is recognized; some men are known to have traveled hundreds of miles to find and kill Karis, even years after the alleged misdeed.
More from Chesler:
Hassan could not stop being a Pakistani Muslim man. What does this mean? It means that he still felt entitled to control, monitor, harass, and physically batter his wife. When he physically punished her, it was viewed as "correcting" her mistakes. When she went to the hospital and filed a police report--when she had black eyes, bruises, cuts--he viewed her exposing him as "humiliating attacks," indeed, as "terrorist attacks." When she said that she was going to file for divorce, he viewed that as "killing him;" in addition, he began to fear that these police and hospital reports plus a divorce with such facts stated might jeopardize his dream of a pro-Muslim television network. Her attempts to defend herself from his physical violence, e.g. sitting on her, trying to run her car off the road (2007), beating her so viciously that his son from a previous marriage who lived with them had to use a whole roll of toilet paper to stanch the flow of blood, dragging her across their driveway, blackening her eyes, breaking windows (2009), etc., were seen by him as "abuse."In other words, her attempt to defend herself against his violence was something he experienced as "abusive" to him.
Many Pakistani men in America have killed their wives and their daughters. In my studies published at Middle East Quarterly, I found that honor killing victims comprised two very different groups: One victim group had an average age of 17; the second victim group had an average age of 36. Aasiya was 37 when Muzzammil murdered her. I also found that one feature of an honor killing is "overkill." The victims are tortuously murdered, burned, raped, mutilated, stoned, even beheaded, as was the case with Aasiya. At trial (which is still ongoing) it became clear that Muzzammil attacked his unarmed wife with two hunting knives and stabbed her at least 40 times before he beheaded her--a signature Islamist-era gesture.
More on honor killings here.
The Economic Ignorance Of Hillary
Our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the woman who tells us she's qualified to be president, tells a Mexican TV interviewer that we can't legalize drugs because...because there's too much money to be made from selling them! (Of course, the wild sums of money are to be made precisely because drugs are illegal.)
Jacob Sullum blogs at reason:
Prohibition not only enables traffickers to earn a "risk premium" that makes drug prices much higher than they would otherwise be; it delivers this highly lucrative business into the hands of criminals who, having no legal recourse, resolve disputes by spilling blood. The 35,000 or so prohibition-related deaths that Mexico has seen since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on drugs in 2006 are one consequence of the volatile situation created by the government's arbitrary dictates regarding psychoactive substances. Pace Clinton, the way to "stop" the violent thugs who profit from prohibition is not to mindlessly maintain the policy that enriches them.
UPDATE -- More in the video:
"Alcohol prohibition causes violence and so does drug prohibition."--Ted Balaker, reason.tv
Another Word Priss In Blogland
When people can't properly debate you on the points, they try to indict you for tiny little flaws -- an "i" you've forgotten to dot, perhaps.
We've got a regular commenter 'round here who's really smart, and who happens to be dyslexic. Newbie commenters who can't match him on logic will typically attack his spelling, which I happen to find adorable.
Marlon Brando, too, was dyslexic. We were friends, and I loved his spelling, too. I put one of his e-mails to me in my book with "avoid" spelled "ovoid." It happened to be in the e-mail he sent me about how he was going to ring up my car thief at 3 a.m. as The Godfather and chew him out, which he did. You can probably guess that I wrote something sweet and appreciative back -- rather than snidely informing him that "ovoid" actually means "egg-shaped."
Well, here's a man who calls himself "Billie" commenting on my recent post about how dumb the Nutella lawsuit is; specifically, on my remark, "P.S. French toast isn't healthy, either, but...hey...who do you sue?"
Billie wrote:
"French toast isn't healthy"? You mean it's sick? Or do you mean it's not "healthful"? Perhaps before criticizing people as idiots, the bloggatrix should learn English more good.
Yeah, you got me! Except that you didn't. I commented back:
Pissed-off French toast eater? I guess you couldn't find any errors in my information, so you thought you'd find fault in my word use.Perhaps before criticizing the "bloggatrix" for not "learn(ing) English more good," you should buy yourself a copy of The Columbia Guide to Standard American English
.
QUOTE (page 223 of the hardcover): "most Standard English now accepts 'healthy' as readily substitutable for 'healthful,' as in 'Milk is a healthy thing to drink.'"
Like Elmore Leonard, I write like people talk. Otherwise, it sounds stuffy.
By the way, because I'm a big old nerd and a big old word nerd, I have these conversations with my editor all the time about exactly what word is correct, and I often decide to go with what sounds good. (I had the healthy/healthful conversation about 10 years ago.)
P.S. You really should cut the carbs, dear.
If you read I SEE RUDE PEOPLE and my column, you'll also note that I often use "they" or "their" when "he and she" and "him and her" would be correct. I want to give a good read, with what I think is good rhythm. Since I'm not 21, I don't care that some people will decide I have bad grammar. (The prissy "gotcha!" notes are a little annoying.)
"Would Old White Men Get Away With This?"
Ezra Levant asks the right question in the Toronto Sun, pointing out that discrimination only seems to be okay when it comes from the "right" color and nationality of people:
One hundred-and- fifty-four Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan, not just for the big things such as fighting international terrorists, but for the small things, too.Like the right of Afghan girls to go to school. Simple things, like the right to listen to music. These things were actually banned under the Taliban, which enforced sharia law.
So what would our soldiers think of Winnipeg's Louis Riel School Division, where a dozen Muslim immigrant families have demanded changes to the curriculum to accommodate their fundamentalist view of Islam? The families don't want boys and girls in the same classes, such as physical education.
And they don't want their children to hear to any instruments or singing in music class, either.
Instead of sending their kids to a private or religious school, they want the public schools to change.
Superintendent Terry Borys says the families are "adamant' about this, despite both phys-ed and music being compulsory. So the suggestion now is the children be allowed do their musical requirements through a 'writing project."
Brilliant. A music class with no music.
No word yet on how they'll accommodate the request for gender apartheid in gym. How long before parents can "adamantly" demand no mere woman teaches their son -- or if she does, that she has to wear a veil?
Don't laugh. Last fall the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Muslim women can ask for a court order to clear men out of a courtroom -- court sta ff, lawyers, even the judge -- before taking off their veils to testify.
He brings up Brit Prime Minister David Cameron's speech from last week, pointing out that Cameron vowed to cut off funding to any group that opposes the equality of women, or integration of immigrants. In Cameron's words:
"We've even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values. So, when a white person holds objectionable views ... we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices come from someone who isn't white, we've been too cautious frankly -- frankly, even fearful -- to stand up to them."
Levant then asks:
Who is the better liberal: Cameron or the Winnipeg school board?
via Robert W.
A New Way To Turn Ordinary People Into Criminals
A man is facing a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge -- because his dog killed a raccoon that did some damage to his garage. Danielle Salisbury writes for the Jackson Citizen Patriot:
Seth Foster, 23, said he found his family garage in disarray last summer and sent his dog in the building to investigate.Grizz, a blue heeler, returned with the culprit, a young raccoon.
As two teenage boys watched, one of them filming its actions with a cell phone, Grizz killed the coon, Foster said.
Now, Foster is facing a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty resulting in death, which is punishable by a maximum of 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. A jury trial is scheduled for Feb. 25 in Jackson County District Court.
As per "If a tree falls...?" is what animals do naturally cruel if humans are watching as it happens and don't try to stop it? And no, I don't support cockfighting or dog fighting.
via kishke
Eek! Naked People!
Blogging at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf offers a counterpoint to the Attorney General of Texas, who says sexting teens "don't understand the consequences of what they're doing - they are exposing themselves around the world." He links to Apollo, at Federalist Paupers, who has a different view:
...The teenagers are perfectly aware of the consquences of what they are doing. We're not dealing with illiterate babes in the woods being exploited here, we're dealing with tech savvy kids loaded with hormones who are exchanging pictures with people exactly like themselves. I doubt there's one out of twenty sexters who would be surprised to learn that their pictures could get beyond the original audience. As I've long said,* there's a changing culture regarding nude and explicit pictures. In 20 years, I suspect these sexting teenagers will look back not with horror, like today's serious adults expect, but with bemusement.
The real problem is the idiot lawmakers who criminalize sexting, turning teens into sex offenders for sending out naked pictures of themselves or their friends or partners. For example, from this Mike Celizic MSNBC story:
A 15-year-old Pennsylvania girl is facing child pornography charges for sending nude photos of herself to other kids. A 19-year-old Florida man got thrown out of college and has to register as a sex offender for 25 years because he sent nude pictures of his girlfriend to other teens.The growing phenomenon of kids using their cell phones and computers to share racy photos and videos is known as "sexting." It is a problem that society is having trouble dealing with, and the punishments do not fit the perceived crimes, attorney Larry Walters told TODAY's Matt Lauer Tuesday in New York.
"Kids will be kids, but that doesn't make them criminals. This problem needs to be solved as a social problem, not a criminal problem," Walters said.
Here I Am In Later Life
They call it "the most remarkable deployment of a handbag since Margaret Thatcher." An old lady stops a bunch of jewel thieves. Details in the Telegraph/UK. And here's the video (wait for the old lady in the red coat to come on the scene):
Say Superbye-bye To Your Tax Dollars!
Check out the National Debt Clock:
One look at that, and what's there to do but spend $450K flying military planes over the Superbowl? From the WaPo's Sally Jenkins:
For absurdity, how about those four Navy F-18s flying over the stadium - with its retractable roof closed? Everybody inside could only see the planes on the stadium's video screens. It was strictly a two-second beauty shot. Know what it cost taxpayers? I'll tell you: $450,000. (The Navy justifies the expense by saying it's good for recruiting.)
Enough With The Hysteria About Porn
This is the first of two columns I've written on it, Triumph Of The Willie:
It's hard to have a rational conversation about porn because people's first reaction is so often knee-jerk hysteria. I got a lot of that in response to this particular column; for example, as one guy wrote, "Porn focuses on body parts, not on sex. This is how bestiality develops." Yes, we see that all the time: One week, a guy's surfing the net for busty blondes; the next, he's got the hots for the neighbor's Labradoodle...
Comments are live at the link.
Rude Awakening
The LA Times published my op-ed on the Travel + Leisure poll deeming Los Angeles the rudest city in America. An excerpt:
Snapshot from Los Angeles, the place Travel + Leisure readers deemed the rudest city in America: It's late morning in an L.A. coffeehouse. Everybody's staring down into something -- a laptop, spreadsheets, a college entrance exam workbook -- until the door opens and an elderly woman carrying a canvas book bag walks in. Writers stop writing, students stop studying and wave, smile and call hello to the woman, who smiles brightly and waves back. A few get up, one by one, and go give her a hug.The woman is Kay, and her husband, who comes in 20 minutes later, steadied by a walker, is Earl. Another round of hugging ensues. I can't trace back exactly how this hugging tradition started, but somebody hugged Kay, and somebody else saw it happen, and now it's just how things are. When Kay and Earl come in, people get up and go hug them.
The people who decided L.A. was America's rudest city probably aren't going to get to this coffeehouse and see how some of us make Los Angeles an incredibly warm and neighborly place. Sure, L.A. is big and spread out, and it's easy to feel alienated here -- if you let yourself be alienated. To a great extent, you inhabit the world you create wherever you are.
To understand why L.A. can be a tough city to feel at home in, it helps to understand why people are rude. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar figured out that the human neocortex seems to have a capacity to manage social interaction in societies of about 150 people. Beyond that number, social order seems to break down.
In other words, people are rude -- in L.A. and many other places -- because we live in societies too big for our brains. In a small society in which everyone knows each other, you can't act out the way you can around strangers. If, however, you're around people you'll never see again, you can get away with all sorts of nasty behavior.
We can't shrink Los Angeles to a more polite population size, but we can bring back some of the constraints and benefits of the small tribal societies our brains are adapted for. This actually doesn't take much.
We need to refuse to be victimized by the rude. This means speaking out when people are behaving hoggishly, like all those cellphone shouters privatizing public space as their own. We also need to make an effort to treat strangers like neighbors -- to smile at the guy passing us on the sidewalk, to say hello to the cashier, to do the small kindnesses that you would for someone you know...
Continued at the link.
If you haven't read my book, I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle To Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society, I hope you'll consider buying a copy. It's only $11.53, brand new, with Amazon's discount at the link above. (New copies go against my advance, and help me keep writing...and eating!)
It's Nice To Be Nice
To celebrate my op-ed on how to make the world a more considerate and less rude place, published today in the LA Times, I'm printing a little excerpt from Chapter 10 of my book I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society:
It turns out that the bumper sticker that pretty much comes standard on every aging Volvo, "Perform random acts of kindness..." isn't just hippie-dippy hoohah. It's actually in the self-interest of each of us to go out of our way for other people; even total strangers.Many people recognize this intuitively. The title of this chapter, "It's Nice To Be Nice," was the motto of Henry's Restaurant in Algonac, Michigan, and it echoes numerous bits of popular wisdom, including Malcolm Forbes' prescription, "The more sympathy you give, the less you need" and the Dalai Lama's advice, "If you want to be happy, practice compassion." But, these really are more than warm fuzzies to needlepoint onto couch pillows or fodder for the inoffensive office dรฉcor industry. There's now data showing that you're likely to be happier if you help others.
"Positive psychology" professor Sonja Lyubomirsky takes an evidence-based approach to happiness. She and her team at UC Riverside have conducted a number of studies that strongly suggest helping others really does bring happiness, and that performing acts of kindness on a regular basis makes people happy for an extended period.
In one of Lyubomirsky's experiments, participants were asked to perform five kind acts a week for six weeks. The acts could be large or small -- even just thanking someone for their hard work. The researchers not only found that being kind and generous made people happy, but that those who did their entire week's generosity assignment on a single day experienced a significant elevation in their happiness -- suggesting that it's really, really nice to be really, really nice.
The researchers also found that those who were required to perform the same three acts of kindness every week for 10 weeks had their level of happiness drop in the middle of the study. (It eventually rebounded to their original level). Lyubomirsky speculates in her book, "The How of Happiness," that the repetition turned their exercise into just another chore. She feels acts of kindness must remain fresh and meaningful to enhance well-being, which, to me, says they have to come from the heart, from genuine concern for others and their needs. You can't just make a list, "1. Help three little old ladies across street," then start forcing them across at gunpoint so you can get on with your day.
To explain why being good to others makes you happier, Lyubomirsky cites evidence from past psychological research. Doing kind deeds can, for example, distract you from your problems, encourage you to be grateful for how good you have it (gratitude being another major happiness producer), and can lead to a more positive self-image and a greater sense of meaning in your own life. She adds that "kindness can jump-start a cascade of positive social consequences," leading people to like you, appreciate you, to offer you gratitude and even friendship, and maybe to reciprocate in your times of need.
Lyubomirsky illustrates the benefits of reaching out to others with the story of five women with multiple sclerosis who became peer supporters for 67 other MS patients. The five women were trained in "active and compassionate listening" and told to call each patient for 15 minutes once a month. In interviews, these peer supporters told the researchers that they'd experienced dramatic changes in their lives as a result of their volunteer work. They were less focused on their own problems, and felt increased satisfaction and feelings of mastery. They gained a stronger sense of self-esteem and self-acceptance, and developed confidence in their ability to cope with difficulties and manage their disease. As one woman said, "There's no cure for MS, but I really feel that I'm able to handle whatever comes my way."
Amazingly, the positive changes in the lives of the five peer supporters far outpaced the benefits for those they were supporting. Most notably, the volunteers experienced a boost in their general life satisfaction seven times greater than that shown by the patients they helped. Also, the benefits the volunteers experienced from their kind acts grew as time went on -- "an incredible finding," Lyubomirsky writes, given that the benefits seen in most happiness experiments "tend to diminish over time."
Who's The Smart One, You Or Your Phone?
So many people take such a dumb approach to smart phones.
My friends never call me on my cell phone, because it's rarely answered. In fact, it's rarely even heard, unless I'm at my desk, where I leave it plugged in to charge, because it's always on vibrate.
If I like you enough to talk to you on the phone, and you don't live somewhere that there's horrible traffic to get to (Kate Coe!), or live 2,500 miles away, we'll go out and have a drink, face to face, and our phones will remain in our pockets or purses while we pay attention to each other. That's the way I've always done it, and I'm not about to make myself my phone's bitch now.
Granted, I'm not selling homes, and I'm not a doctor, so I don't have to be reachable at weird hours. But frankly, a good many people's bosses are pretty rude about how accessible they expect them to be. If you aren't making some huge salary as a mucky-muck manager, and/or it isn't your job description to be reachable at 8 p.m. or whenever, guess what: You get to have a life. Your boss doesn't get to expect an e-mail or text back from you in the evening. If they do, and if they aren't paying you overtime, they're stealing from you -- and probably taking advantage of your fear of losing your job and not finding another in a bad economy.
Sure, some employees will want to be going that extra mile, but as a boss, it's also your job to see that your employees don't burn out, and the best way to do that is to see that they have a life in the evenings and weekends, sans phone calls and e-mails from you that they're expected to deal with instantly...save for the extremely occasional emergency.
Mickey Meece writes in The New York Times about the extraordinary little communications devices so many of us have, and all the people who are slaves to them:
There's a palpable sense "that home has invaded work and work has invaded home and the boundary is likely never to be restored," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. "The new gadgetry," he adds, "has really put this issue into much clearer focus."...Ms. Riley-Grant, who is 35 and director of global consumer marketing for the Dockers brand, has felt the stress of trying to stay constantly connected -- not because of pressure from her bosses, she says, but her own fear.
"I love my job," she says. "The decision to plug in or unplug is a personal one. My job is fast-paced and demanding. If I'm not paying attention during the off-hours, things could go south."
But even before the birth of her second child last year, she recognized that she needed to power down to achieve the right work-life balance. So with the help of Ms. Klaus, she made a plan to take small steps: she let her co-workers know that she would be turning off her iPhone for a few hours on weeknights and weekend days, and completely on certain Friday nights.
She tries to communicate a need for balance to employees who report to her, too. "I worry about the speed at which they are going," she says, adding that she wants them to "shut down" when needed, for the sake of their families and their health.
Has your phone given your boss the idea that you work a 168-hour week? Anybody had to set boundaries with a boss, friends, co-workers? Anybody too afraid to do that?
Fired Austrian Male Cartoonist Gets Work As A Jewish Woman
Cartoonist Daryl Cagle blogs the story:
There are very few women editorial cartoonists, and I'm not sure why. At this time, there is only one woman who has a full time job drawing editorial cartoons for a print newspaper, out of about 75 newspaper cartooning positions in America. The disparity extends to the unsolicited submissions I get from aspiring cartoonists, who are 99.9 percent male; the same is true among the almost-all-male cartoonists around the world. Naturally, a rare woman editorial cartoonist gets special attention, just because she is a woman....One of the top editorial cartoonists in Austria is Rachel Gold, who draws for the national Wiener Zeitung and Tiroler Tageszeitung newspapers. Rachel is remarkable, not only because she is a rare, female editorial cartoonist, but also because she's not female, and she doesn't really exist. Rachel Gold is a fictional character, created by Austrian cartoonist Markus Szyszkowitz.
Rachel was created in response to Markus' frustrations, working under editorial constraints at his former newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung. Rachel got a job, and a paycheck, as a cartoonist at the Wiener Zeitung, replacing Markus, who was forced to leave his editorial cartooning job under pressure from his editor, because his cartoons had offended a politician who would later become Austria's chancellor.
Drawing in a different style, with a different political point of view, Rachel could draw cartoons that Markus could never get past his editors. Markus is convinced that his editors, and the Austrian readers, were willing to accept more hard-hitting, liberal cartoons from the young, pretty, Jewish immigrant girl from Israel. Given Austria's harsh history, Markus believes that Rachel gets more editorial leeway because she is Jewish, rather than because she is a woman.
"What Does This City Know About Luxury?"
That's the question Eminem asks in the Chrysler/Detroit commercial that ran during the Superbowl.
The answer to his question: Certain people know lots about luxury -- the auto executives and union bigwigs who ran Detroit into the ground, and boats and cars and fancy houses in Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe out of the deal...and then got their companies taxpayer welfare from the rest of us.
As a few people I follow on Twitter observed, the government pay-daddy is noted right there in the spot: "Congress." It's a street sign a man in the spot is walking past, but maybe something the ad dudes should have given some thought. What it reiterated to me and a lot of people: "This car company paid for by Congress"...when it should have been allowed to go bankrupt.
Was their CEO at least grateful for the bailout? Well, not quite:
Sergio Marchionne said in a statement posted Saturday that he regrets a term he used and considers it "inappropriate." Friday, he called the interest a "thorn" in his side, saying refinancing would mean no longer having to explain the "shyster rates."
He's talking about the interest rates the U.S. and Canadian governments are charging Chrysler on the bailouts Chrysler got in 2008 and 2009. (It's paying 11 to 12 percent interest.)
Egypt's Economic Hopelessness
A lack of property rights (with 92 percent of Egyptians holding their property without legal title), no enforcement of contracts, and a wildly vast bureaucracy, just for starters, make it a place terrible to build a business or even have security about keeping one's home. Hernando de Soto writes at the WSJ, quoting an Al Jazeera headline from January 14, a week before the Egyptian uprising:
"[T]he real terror eating away at the Arab world is socio-economic marginalization."
It turns out that much of Egypt's economy operates on the black market because it's so impossible to do anything legally. From a 2004 investigation by de Soto and his colleagues, championed by Egypt's then-minister of finance:
Egypt's underground economy was the nation's biggest employer. The legal private sector employed 6.8 million people and the public sector employed 5.9 million, while 9.6 million people worked in the extralegal sector....The entrepreneurs who operate outside the legal system are held back. They do not have access to the business organizational forms (partnerships, joint stock companies, corporations, etc.) that would enable them to grow the way legal enterprises do. Because such enterprises are not tied to standard contractual and enforcement rules, outsiders cannot trust that their owners can be held to their promises or contracts. This makes it difficult or impossible to employ the best technicians and professional managers--and the owners of these businesses cannot issue bonds or IOUs to obtain credit.
...Without clear legal title to their assets and real estate, in short, these entrepreneurs own what I have called "dead capital"--property that cannot be leveraged as collateral for loans, to obtain investment capital, or as security for long-term contractual deals. And so the majority of these Egyptian enterprises remain small and relatively poor. The only thing that can emancipate them is legal reform. And only the political leadership of Egypt can pull this off. Too many technocrats have been trained not to expand the rule of law, but to defend it as they find it. Emancipating people from bad law and devising strategies to overcome the inertia of the status quo is a political job.
...Due to burdensome, discriminatory and just plain bad laws, it is impossible for most people to legalize their property and businesses, no matter how well intentioned they might be.
The examples are legion. To open a small bakery, our investigators found, would take more than 500 days. To get legal title to a vacant piece of land would take more than 10 years of dealing with red tape. To do business in Egypt, an aspiring poor entrepreneur would have to deal with 56 government agencies and repetitive government inspections.
Pedro Jimenez writes in the comments:
I'll share an anecdote of "Rent Control" laws in Egypt and one that shaped my views on economic freedom: I know one family who used to live in a subsidized rent controlled apartment in EGYPT for ONE DOLLAR PER MONTH RENT!After a decade of living in the apartment, they moved to the United States, and they maintained the lease on the apartment for over a decade. The subsidized rent was still ONE DOLLAR A MONTH. The apartment remained VACANT all this time!
A decade later, the lessee traveled to Egypt to check the apartment-> It was unused, empty, and the landlord poured concrete into the toilet bowl, rendering it useless, but the apartment was still in overall good shape.
I'll ask one of the family members if they still hold the lease to this apartment. This same family member recently complained about a "serious housing problem" in Egypt that the government was never able to solve.
How ironic.
Also, it's likely that the Egyptians lack of credit is related to Islam, since charging interest is prohibited by the Quran. If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over, it's unlikely anyone will ever be able to get credit, once Sharia-compliant banking laws are in effect.
Homeopathy Is A Scam
James Randi has, many times, downed an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills and lived to tell -- and stayed wide awake, to boot. He challenges you to "overdose" on homeopathic medicine, too, to get the truth out about homeopathy: "There's nothing in it":
Homeopathy's main effect? Curing your wallet of the strains of excess dollars -- assuming you don't take homeopathic "medicine" in place of real medicine you need.
Here's a blog item I did on an adult idiot who's going to let his little girl -- his 2-year-old daughter -- suffer by giving her this bullshit "medicine" for a cough she's been up with all night:
She's too young, apparently, for baby cough medicine, so he's giving her...homeopathic remedies! Which is the same as giving her nothing, but spending $20 on it. Which means she's suffering needlessly, up all night coughing, when they could probably give her baby Benadryl or something to at least knock her out, if not stop her cough. (Or some other drug an actual pediatrician recommends.)...Really, he might as well burn his money.
What Was Your First Clue That It Isn't A Form Of Broccoli?
The litigious are going after the chocolate hazelnut spread Nutella
The suit, filed in San Diego federal court, alleges that Ferrero USA Inc. violates California consumer protection laws by representing that the spread is a healthy, nutritious and balanced breakfast for children.The name plaintiff, Athena Hohenberg, is the mother of a four-year-old child.
Ferrero USA declined to comment specifically about the lawsuit. Elise Titan, a spokeswoman for the company, said, "We stand behind the quality and ingredients of Nutella hazelnut spread and the advertising of our product."
"Nutella . . . contains 70% saturated fat and processed sugar by weight," the complaint reads. "Both of these ingredients significantly contribute to America's alarming increases in childhood obesity, which can lead to life-long health problems."
The complaint alleges that the plaintiff was "shocked" when she learned that Nutella was not healthy and "was the next best thing to a candy bar."
If you are that dim, that a jar of sweet, chocolately stuff is not "health food," it seems best that you avoid passing on your genes.
P.S. French toast isn't healthy, either, but...hey...who do you sue?
The Unhealthiest Thing About Obamacare
WaPo op-ed columnist Charles Lane points it out:
The point Ezra [Klein] misses -- by a country mile -- is that the threat to liberty, if any, comes not so much from the individual mandate itself, but from the other things Congress might do if it gets away with claiming authority for this measure under the commerce clause.Fairly stated, this is the conservative constitutional argument: Health care for all is a good cause. But if, in the name of that noble goal, you construe Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce so broadly as to encompass individual choices that have never previously been thought of as commercial, much less interstate, there would be nothing left of the commerce clause's restraints on Congress's power. And then, the argument goes, Congress would be free to impose far more intrusive mandates. Judge Vinson suggested that Congress "could require that people buy and consume broccoli at regular intervals," and that is hardly the most absurd or mischievous imaginable consequence.
There may be a convincing rebuttal, but I haven't heard it yet. (Orin Kerr attempts one, and Jonathan Adler counters it.) Rather, it looks like the law's drafters never took such concerns very seriously and are paying a price now for their legal overconfidence. It's not terribly persuasive to suggest, as the Obama administration has done, that the health-care market is "unique" -- that's asking the courts for a ticket good on one train only.
Ezra says this is all about "semantics." Congress has the power to levy taxes; and the "penalty" attached the mandate really is a tax, but Congress couldn't use the word "tax," because it's politically "toxic." "I don't believe our forefathers risked their lives to make sure the word 'penalty' was eschewed in favor of the word 'tax,'" he writes. Wrong again: Actually, one purpose of the Constitution is to prevent government from engaging in politically expedient deception. The modern term, I believe, is "transparency."
Modern Technology And Free Speech A Problem For You?
Ditch your cell phone and your Internet connection, go live in a tent, and herd goats.
If you aren't ready for the modern life and democratic principles of the West, feel free to ignore us and live without all the innovations and advances made possible by Enlightenment values.
Don't be sending legal demands to Google that they comply with your evidence-free religious beliefs. Of course, writes Anand Holla in the Mumbai Mirror, that's exactly what some wealthy Muslims are doing:
Nearly a month ago, Bandra-based lawyer family Majeed Memon, son Zulfiquar and cousin Parvez were shocked to find indecent images while searching for 'Prophet Mohammed' on Google. The Memons say that of 4.95 lakh results on searching 'Prophet Mohammed' in 'Google Images', the first few pages show offensive images, purportedly to be of the Prophet."If a child wants to learn about the Prophet, he will come across these vulgar depictions on the first pages itself," said senior lawyer Majeed Memon.
Not to worry: Some 60 to 80 percent of the Muslim world is illiterate, thanks largely to the teachings of Islam, which keep Muslims in a state of backwardness to keep the religion going.
The story continues:
In their notice to Google, the Memons have 'humbly requested' Google to take off the images in keeping with "emotions and sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims of 56 Muslim countries."While Google's indemnity clause states the images that appear in its search results are controlled by webmasters of respective sites and that Google cannot remove content from the web, the Memons believe there must be a solution.
"Google provides options for those who wish to remove objectionable material from Google, if and only if it violates the copyright of that person or entity. For this, you request Google to have it removed from search results," said Parvez. "This means Google can remove images if it wants to."
The Memons, in their notice, say that if Google fails to address the problem, it will result in mass global agitation and multiple criminal prosecution and litigations.
Stop Huffing And Puffing About The Giant New Starbucks Size
Yes, the Starbucks Trenta holds the contents of a bottle of wine. If you don't want that much coffee, don't buy it.
Great Kid Raised By Two Women Speaks Out For Gay Marriage
He's speaking to the Iowa House of Representatives January 31 in a video that's gone viral:
"Our family really isn't so different from any other Iowa family," he said, speaking out against a ban on gay marriage that nevertheless ended up passing in the Iowa House, 62-37, in vote Feb. 1.
Shame on you, Iowa. Gay parents -- and gay people -- deserve the same rights as straight parents and straight people. How about this: As long as we give them only partial rights, they should only have to pay partial taxes.
More from his speech:
"If I was your son, Mr. Chairman, I believe I would make you very proud," Wahls, who says he is an engineering student, Eagle Scout and small business owner, said at the hearing. "I'm not really so different from any of your children. My family really isn't so different from yours. ... The sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other to work through the hard times so we can enjoy good ones. It comes from the love that binds us. That's what makes a family."
The measure next goes to the Iowa Senate where the Majority Leader, Democrat Michael Gronstal, has promised to block it from a vote.
via Lenore Skenazy
Everything Must Be Subsidized!
If a particular course of action or product is worthwhile to me, I pay for it. You?
Well, this NYT food writer, Mark Bittman, is in love with the word "subsidize." He does want to end one kind (and I'm all for ending it).
End government subsidies to processed food. We grow more corn for livestock and cars than for humans, and it's subsidized by more than $3 billion annually; most of it is processed beyond recognition. The story is similar for other crops, including soy: 98 percent of soybean meal becomes livestock feed, while most soybean oil is used in processed foods. Meanwhile, the marketers of the junk food made from these crops receive tax write-offs for the costs of promoting their wares. Total agricultural subsidies in 2009 were around $16 billion, which would pay for a great many of the ideas that follow.
But, here come his suggestions for new subsidies:
Begin subsidies to those who produce and sell actual food for direct consumption. Small farmers and their employees need to make living wages. Markets -- from super- to farmers' -- should be supported when they open in so-called food deserts and when they focus on real food rather than junk food. And, of course, we should immediately increase subsidies for school lunches so we can feed our youth more real food.Encourage and subsidize home cooking. (Someday soon, I'll write about my idea for a new Civilian Cooking Corps.) When people cook their own food, they make better choices. When families eat together, they're more stable. We should provide food education for children (a new form of home ec, anyone?), cooking classes for anyone who wants them and even cooking assistance for those unable to cook for themselves.
This is nuts. Nuts. Nuts. Nuts. Any one of us can go on the Internet, call Grandma, call the neighbor, call Gregg (don't do that unless you're me or you might get growled at) and ask for tips on how to cook things. For no charge at all.
Taxpayers should not be paying for your cooking education. And they should not be paying you to grow vegetables or anything else.
Oh, and if the government would stop promoting a diet based in "science" instead of science, there'd be far fewer obese people in this country. More on that in the blog item below.
via @walterolson
Possibly The Most Boring Blog Ever
It's Slate's Clean Plate: Outlandish experiments in sensible eating.
Hilariously, it's not sensible eating at all. It's what people tend to think is sensible eating, filled with the carbs (like Grape Nuts) that study after study show are so unhealthy for us to eat. The girl is hungry and lethargic all the time -- which she wouldn't be if she were eating delicious foods like bacon that have fat in them.
Poor, silly girl. Somebody go on Slate, will you, and direct her to Gary Taubes and Dr. Eades, who will educate her a way of eating actually based in evidence.
In short, as you'll read in Taubes' book above, there's a mountain of evidence that shows that it's carbs that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
No need to starve, Dearie...just stop eating Grape Nuts and eat bacon, eggs, and steak instead. You're likely to find yourself effortlessly thin.
Thursday night, Gregg made me a dinner of lamb chops, buttered green beans (with lots of butter) and salad with lots of dressing. Yum! I had a little snack about a half hour ago -- a wedge of Brie and some dry Italian sausage. It's now 12:11 am as I'm writing that...which means it's only about five and a half hours until I eat three strips of bacon...one of the great joys of my existence. (I have to wake up seriously early tomorrow and write...but since I stopped eating carbs, I need less sleep than ever...although I do have to admit that I took a 20 minute nap this afternoon.)
Until bacon...
via Kate Coe
How To Get A Bribe From The U.S. Government
David Harsanyi writes in the Denver Post:
I came across only a single criterion foreign nations must meet to receive aid from the United States: They just have to ask. They don't even have to ask nicely.Actually, we began bribing the Egyptian dictatorship -- which is pronounced "presidency" in Arabic -- with approximately $2 billion yearly beginning in the late 1970s. The funding has helped Egyptians break the habit of launching wars they couldn't win and saved the Israeli army the hassle of sending tanks to exurbs of Cairo every few years.
What the dollars did not seem to do is help foster any more liberalism. It did not dissuade the Egyptian state-run media from fomenting anti-Western conspiracies and hatred, nor did it quell radicalism and, most consequentially, it did not stem the growing poverty in the nation.
...So what do we do? "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" is a famous American axiom. And shouldn't our money come with the promise to be better?
Loved the line in the piece about our ancestors trying to escape the Egyptians ever since they had a "thriving construction sector."
We have a huge fiscal crisis in this country. I'll ask the big question: Should we be subsidizing anybody?
How Feminism Messes Up Women's Lives
I'm all for truly equal rights: Women having the vote and equal pay for truly equal work. But, feminism is far too often about getting special rights under the guise of equal rights and man-hating, man-bashing and being nasty to men under the guise of being strong and independent.
I have my own business with two part-time employees, I tracked down a car thief and a hit-and-run driver when the police could or would do neither, I've published a book (actually, two, but one I co-authored), and I get these amazing e-mails from people who say I've made a difference in their lives.
I still have plenty I want to accomplish, but perhaps because I'm so satisfied by my work and my life, I am able to respond to men who do chivalrous things for me with a simple "Thank you!" (The boyfriend gets lots more gratitude than that for being lots more wonderful.)
Check out this article at The Frisky. The girl says she has "newfound respect for chivalry," but observe how wrong we've been driven by feminism for her to behave like this. Jessica Wakeman writes:
My freshman year of college, I went on a date with a guy to a fancy restaurant in Manhattan. It was the kind of place with a white tablecloth, where a busboy scraped the crumbs off the table with a comb once your plates were removed and the maitre'd pulled out women's chairs for them. That's where I made my big statement: the maitre'd pulled out a chair for me and I walked around to the other chair, pulled it out for myself and sat down. I wasn't just being rude; I thought I was making a point about how I -- and by extension all women -- didn't need to be treated with chivalry.
Later, she says she came to enjoy chivalry, but ick -- she calls her boyfriend from that time "Mr. Jessica." She winds up her piece with this:
For the first time in my life, I genuinely liked how chivalry made me feel: valued as someone worthy of his extra-special attention, taken care of, to an extent, and even a little bit "ladylike," whatever that means. Maybe it's because my relationship with Mr. Jessica was the first long-term, very serious one that I had been in, but his chivalry never made me feel like he thought I was weak or that it was a "front" to get in my pants. It felt like he treated me chivalrously because he cared about me. Perhaps for me, trust is a big element for appreciating chivalry.Of course, being treated chivalrously isn't a guarantee that you will always be treated well, as our breakup attests. But I cherished the day-to-day feeling that he cared about me and that he was putting an effort into treating me nicely, beyond just having the basic manners of not chewing with his mouth open or interrupting someone when they were speaking. Just like I have a hard time reconciling my feminist beliefs with my desire to be with a more dominant, alpha male, I also have a hard time reconciling my feminist beliefs with my enjoyment of chivalry. I am now figuring out that the two are not mutually exclusive.
via Instapundit
Government To Regulate Spilled Milk -- Seriously!
This is not a joke. It should be, but it's not. Thomas Sowell writes about the latest utter ridiculousness in government regulations:
We all understand why the EPA was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But not everyone understands that any power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond that purpose.In a classic example of this process, the EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file "emergency management" plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train "first responders" and build "containment facilities" if there is a flood of spilled milk.
Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming-- and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products.
It is going to cost the taxpayers money as well, since the EPA is going to have to hire people to inspect farms, inspect farmers' reports and prosecute farmers who don't jump through all the right hoops in the right order. All of this will be "creating jobs," even if the tax money removed from the private sector correspondingly reduces the jobs that can be created there.
Does anyone seriously believe that any farmer is going to spill enough milk to compare with the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the BP oil spill?
Do you envision people fleeing their homes, as a flood of milk comes pouring down the mountainside, threatening to wipe out the village below?
Funniest line I think Sowell has ever written.
Sowell points out that once a law is in place, the bureaucracy has every incentive to stretch it to expand its empire:
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has expanded its definition of "discrimination" to include things that no one thought was discrimination when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to expand its jurisdiction to cover things that were never included in its jurisdiction, and that have no relationship to the reason why the FCC was created in the first place.
Welcome To Islam: Check Your Women's Rights At The Door
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury writes at Hudson New York:
A girl named Hena, age 14, was murdered by local Sharia Committee at Shariatpur in the southern part of Bangladesh. The daughter of poor farmer named Darbesh Kha, Hena was forcefully abducted and raped on January 30, 2011 during late at night by Mahbub, age 40. During this abuse, villagers arrived in response to the cries of Hena. At the same time, the imam of the local mosque, a man named Mofiz Uddin, and a few teachers of Madrassa [Koranic School] led by Saiful Islam, also arrived; instead of taking any action against the rapist, the Muslim clergymen took Hena inside the Madrassa and locked her in a room. The following day, the same imam and some of members of the Sharia Committee in the village sat for a trial of Hena on charges of "immoral sexuality" before marriage. Later the committee decided to punish Hena with 200 lashes, and took financial penalty of only TK. 10,000 [US$ 150] from the rapist.During the lashing, Hena became unconscious; when she was rushed to the nearby village hospital, the attending doctors declared her dead.
After lodging a murder case with the local police station, a few influential members of the local mosque committee, as well as Sharia Law Committee, are telling members of media that Hena was involved in "immoral activities," and the villagers caught her red-handed while she was having physical relations with a villager; and that later the Sharia Law Committee punished Hena for such anti-Islamic and immoral activities. They denied admitting that Hena died during being lashed. Further, a few political leaders in the area are frantically trying to save the rapist and the members of the Sharia Law Committee.
Robert Spencer explains how rape is punished -- that is, how it works so the victim is punished, not the rapist, under Islam:
Accusations of adultery against Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, and Muhammad's desire to exonerate her brought about the requirement that four male Muslim witnesses must be produced in order to establish a crime of adultery or other sexual indiscretions: "Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah" (Qur'an 24:13; see also 24:4 and Bukhari, vol. 3, book 52, no. 2661).Aisha's own word counted for nothing to establish the falsity of the accusations against her -- so to this day Islamic law restricts the validity of a woman's testimony, particularly in cases involving sexual immorality. Says the Qur'an: "Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses; so that if either of them commit an error, the other will remember" (2:282). And Islamic legal theorists have restricted women's testimony even farther, limiting it to, in the words of one Muslim legal manual, "cases involving property, or transactions dealing with property, such as sales" ('Umdat al-Salik, o24.8). Otherwise only men can testify.
Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow these Sharia provisions. As long as men deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim's account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman cannot produce four male witnesses, she may end up incriminating herself simply by making the charge: she has by charging a man with rape made an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that, according to the Muslim feminist group Sisters in Islam, as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.
How Netflix Is Run
A fascinating slideshow of a successful business.
Wearing Red On Friday Can Be Helpful...
...If you are, say, wandering into traffic while staring into your electronic binkie, it may help drivers stop soon enough as to only maim you instead of killing you.
But, I spotted this silly tweet from @MensHealthMag:
@MensHealthMag This Friday is National Wear Red Day. Sport the color to show support for the American Heart Association & eliminate heart disease for good!
My initial response:
@amyalkon Better advice: Wear whatever color suits your fancy & eat according to sci evidence (carbs cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat).
My subsequent response:
@amyalkon Go naked on Friday to support anti-asshat-think. Wearing pink doesn't stop breast cancer, wearing red doesn't eliminate heart disease.
If you want to stop heart disease, read this post by cardiologist William Davis, take his advice, and e-mail it to everybody in your address book who listens to the recommendations of the government and most doctors on what to eat.
The Genitals They Aren't Groping
While Americans are having their hoo hoos and balls groped by TSA thugs, British airline employees are plotting to blow up planes to America. Yes, of course, he's a Quaker. Those Quakers, always trying to mass-murder in the name of Allah. Story here.
Love this: Why did he come to the UK from Bangladesh? To get free (British taxpayer-paid) cancer treatment for his kid, who turned out to not have cancer.
How Many?...How Many?
Like the ridiculous (and untrue) one in four number, which is widely quoted as the number of girls that are sexually assaulted before the age of 18, there's another ridiculous number being floated right now about molested children.
About the alleged rape number above, Kate Roiphe asked "If I was really standing in the middle of an 'epidemic'...if 25 percent of my female friends were really being raped, wouldn't I know it?"
I wrote about this here:
Researchers who used sound scientific methods came up with much lower figures than Koss; for example, the finding by the University of Washington's Margaret Gordon showing 1 in 50 women is a rape victim. Truth-in-feminism advocate Hoff Sommers notes the paucity of headlines generated by researchers like Gordon, who based their statistics on solid data. Gordon described pressure from "really avid feminists...trying to get me to say that things were worse than they really are," but refused to budge from what good data told her was the truth.Hoff Sommers also references New York magazine reporter Peter Hellman's 1990 investigation into rumors of a rape outbreak at Columbia University. Upon investigation, he found only two rapes were reported to the Columbia campus police that year, and fewer than one thousand on college campuses across the entire country -- which works out to fewer than one-half of one rape per campus. Nevertheless, Columbia was pressured by feminists to install an expensive rape crisis center at the university. Hoff Sommers quotes Hellman describing a typical Saturday night for the three peer counselors sitting around at the center: "Nobody called; nobody came."
So, while Dines professes to be acting in women's best interest, Katie Roiphe, in doubting the "one in four" statistic, was actually the one best serving women -- calling into question the pervasive campus rape hysteria. Sounding the alarm when there's little need for an alarm, or such a loud and persistent alarm, comes with a price. It means deflecting attention and funding from where it's really needed; for example, in preventing the very real risk that homeless inner-city women will be victims of violent sexual assault -- a topic which doesn't gather quite the crowd as does fomenting unnecessary fear of men on a campus of coddled women. As for the real issue in pornography -- women and children in the developing world being sold into sex slavery -- the victim feminists can't worry so much about that; they've got a "Take Back The Night" march across campus.
Who do we really have to fear? Legal scholar and ACLU president Nadine Strossen points to "the feminist procensorship movement." In her book, Defending Pornography - Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, Strossen explains, "Women's rights are far more endangered by censoring sexual images than they are by the sexual images themselves. Women do not need the government's protection from words and pictures. We do need, rather, to protect ourselves from any government infringement upon our freedom and autonomy, even - indeed, especially - when it is allegedly 'for our own good.'"
In other words, Dines, Jensen, and the "Big Sister"-hood are the real victimizers here: pseudo-intellectual thugs who demonize men, infantilize women, and use the media to beat up anyone who dares question the unsupported contentions they pass off as truth. In reality, you don't protect women by convincing them they're victims, but by telling them they're powerful enough to protect themselves, teaching them how, and insisting they do it. You teach women they have choices, and must be personally responsible for those they make. And, you celebrate critical thinking and truth-seeking over blind acceptance of "the facts." Only by throwing off the yoke of victimhood can women alert themselves to real dangers instead of busying themselves with phony ones -- those that pay the salaries of Dines and Jensen, and give them a level of status they probably couldn't attain any other way.
The latest wild stat comes out of an organization called "Shared Hope International." Here's an MSNBC quote from their total unsensationally headlined story, "Super Bowl a magnet for under-age sex trade":
Up to 300,000 girls between 11 and 17 are lured into the U.S. sex industry annually, according to a 2007 report sponsored by the Department of Justice and written by the nonprofit group Shared Hope International.
Really? Really? "Up to 300,000" young girls? To borrow from Roiphe, if there was this vast number of underage exploited children...wouldn't we know? Where do they all come from?
And then there's this, the opener to the story:
ATLANTA -- Pimps will traffic thousands of under-age prostitutes to Texas for Sunday's Super Bowl, hoping to do business with men arriving for the big game with money to burn, child rights advocates said...."The Super Bowl is one of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told a trafficking prevention meeting in January.
I have no proof that it isn't. But, first of all, are there really that many kiddie diddlers out there? Seems implausible. And trafficking THOUSANDS of under-age prostitutes in? How? Where will they keep them? How will they hide them?
I'm very much behind preventing abuse, especially sexual abuse of children, but doesn't this number...hundreds and hundreds of thousands, sound fishy? Here's a link. An excerpt:
Experts estimate at least 100,000 American juveniles are victimized through prostitution in America each year. Domestic minor sex trafficking is child sex slavery, child sex trafficking, prostitution of children, commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), and rape of a child.
Here's another excerpt:
In the Midwest, a child protection services officer in Kansas City related that approximately 84 child victims of prostitution had been identified since 2000 in Jackson County, Missouri. Of those 84 victims, 10 were local to Jackson County. Ages ranged from 12 to 16 years old.
Yes, 84, since 2000. Awful, horrible, and tragic for those victims, but the number sure doesn't point to the scare number they give out in the media and on their site. I looked up the study on Google Scholar, with the reference they gave (Wade, Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Assessment Report -- Independence, Missouri, pg. 37.) and wasn't finding it.
The rest of the numbers in the report just don't bear out the number in the MSNBC report.
Here it is again from their paper:
There is no national reporting measure currently in place to provide accurate reporting of the numbers of commercially sexually exploited youth in America. The proliferation of labels and variations in data reporting in each state creates an inability to assess the true scope of domestic minor sex trafficking. Nonetheless, experts have estimated numbers from 100,000 to 300,000 children each year are victimized in prostitution in America.
"Experts"? Such as? And they got their data from?
Crying wolf and overestimating harm means money goes to "preventing" harm that might be better spent preventing real harm elsewhere. In this case, it also means, once again, demonizing men in general as the exploiters of children. Sure, some are. A very, very, very small number.
UPDATE: I found this at the DOJ:
Although comprehensive research to document the number of children engaged in prostitution in the United States is lacking, it is estimated that about 293,000 American youth are currently at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Richard J. Estes and Neil Alan Weiner, Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S, Canada and Mexico, University of Pennsylvania, Executive Summary at 11-12 (2001).
"At risk"? Not quite the same as it actually happening.
And then there's this at the DOJ, which sounds like another exaggeration to me.
Q. I recently read a Newsweek article that said that middle class children are becoming involved in prostitution for pure financial gain. Is that true?A.A recent study by Richard Estes of the University of Pennsylvania indicated a trend that children from stable middle class homes are becoming involved in prostitution to earn money for luxury goods. The Newsweek article profiled a 17 year-old girl from Minnesota who was from a typical middle class home and had engaged in prostitution. At this time we cannot judge whether this behavior is a trend, but we can state that the majority of children who are victims of prostitution are not from stable homes.
And then, there's this on Estes (whose studies I have not read and unfortunately don't have time to read today). It's from Research on Human Trafficking in North America: A Review of Literature, by Elzbieta M. Gozdziak and Elizabeth A. Collett, and was published in the journal "International Migration":
Richard Estes, for example, estimates that as many as 17,000 children are traf- ficked into the United States every year (Estes and Weiner, 2001), which does not correspond with the most recent numbers provided by the CIA. As indicated above, the CIA's current estimates put the number of trafficking victims (adults and children combined) at 14,500 to 17,500 per annum. Estes' data, however, is problematic in many other ways. When presenting his research at a conference on identifying and serving child victims of trafficking in Houston, Texas, Estes was not able to differentiate between children who have crossed international borders and those who were trafficked within a particular North American country. He also did not collect data on nativity, and therefore was not able to provide information whether the children he studied were foreign-born or native-born. Data on nativity is important for many reasons, including referral and determination of eligibility for particular services. In the United States, foreign-born child victims of trafficking are eligible for a full complement of assistance, including immigration relief, under the provisions of TVPA, while US-born child victims obviously do not need immigration assistance and would be referred to child protective services for appropriate protection and services.At the moment the only reliable US data relate to the number of trafficking victims officially certified by ORR. As of 18 March 2005, ORR certified 717 survivors of trafficking, including 651 adults and 66 children. The group included 213 males and 504 females.
Wait, here's the 300,000 number (again and again) in a report by Estes and Weiner:
Indeed, the first World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (Muntarbhorn, 1996) confirmed that large numbers of prostituted children are to be found in rich countries, including in the U.S. for which the "End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Exploitation" (ECPAT) estimated their numbers to be between 100,000 and 300,000 (ECPAT, 1996b:70). Other estimates suggest the numbers of sexually exploited children to be even higher (Goldman & Wheeler, 1986; Greenfeld, 1997; Spangenberg, 2001)....As reported in Exhibit 3.2 below, the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) receives more than 300,000 reports of child sexual abuse each year (NCCAN, 1996).
...The persons identified in these 17 categories, however, do not include the more than 300,000 American children and youth who annually become victims of child sexual assaults in their own homes (National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect, 1996; OJJDP, 2000),
...Previous estimates of the number of such cases ranged from a low of 300,000 (ECPAT, 1996b) to a high of as many as 1,000,000 cases (Goldman & Wheeler, 1986). Neither estimate, though, was based on empirically-derived evidence, and both asser- tions have been widely criticized as lacking scientific merit.
Check out the chart in their shorter "executive summary."
Big Government Makes You Big And Fat
US Dietary Guidelines -- why base them on science?!
A note: Studies roll gets boring. Skip ahead to 5:12 after the studies start rolling (there's a wee message at the end), or, better yet, just cut out once they get going.
via @DrEades
Site Problems
Sorry, they're continuing. Comments are not showing up right now. Gregg is working on it, as is my server company. Your comments are there, they are not lost, they will show up when they fix this, which I hope will be very soon. Sorry!
UPDATE: Comments are back. And we can't change to Wordpress, but thanks, as I have blog posts linked all over the damn place going back to 2003, and it will change the permalinks.
I'm on deadline, Gregg and my server co are on this, and despite the problems, I have to say, they are great, and I recommend them.
Nobody's LOLCat
A friend has a friend and her cat staying with her and the thing just looks evil. I suggested renaming the thing Dyspepsia.
Actual sickeningly cute LOLCats here.
(Squirt) Gun Control?!
Why not just outlaw childhood, right after you ban fun? The Hawaiian state House of Representatives is considering a bill to outlaw the sale of toy guns to minors. The proposed bill:
SECTION 1. Chapter 709, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by adding a new section to be appropriately designated and to read as follows: "ยง709- Sale of toy guns to minors prohibited. (1) It shall be unlawful to sell, attempt to sell, or offer for sale a toy gun to a minor under eighteen years of age......(2) Any person who violates this section shall be subject to a fine of not more than $2,000, imprisonment of not more than ninety days, or both."
Status is here. Yep, it's current.
via Free Range Kids
UPDATE: Eugene Volokh e-mailed me and commented on Instapundit (thanks for the link, Glenn!):
I wonder whether the suggestion that squirt guns are being "outlawed" -- even if somewhat hyperbolic -- is quite apt. As I read the proposed statute, it simply means that children can't buy the toy guns themselves, but need to have parents (or other adults) to buy them for them. (Do minors even buy a lot of toy guns themselves? I would think most toy gun users don't do much of their own toy-buying.) I'm not sure the law is a good idea, but it seems pretty different from "outlawing." And I think many readers' first impression would be that there really is a ban on squirt guns, and not just a requirement that they be channeled through parents.
I wrote back to Eugene:
No, a 5-year-old probably isn't going to be going to the store by himself, but if a 15-year-old wants to buy herself a squirt gun, I don't think we should be stopping her. (I bought myself a squirt gun when I was a teen -- still have it in my kitchen drawer right here!)
James Taranto emailed Glenn:
"If squirt guns are outlawed, only outlaw squirts will have guns!"
Count me in!
Nobamacare!
A Florida judge has ruled Obamacare unconstitutional. From MSNBC's FirstRead blogs about Judge Roger Vinson's decision:
Judge Roger Vinson found the entire law unconstitutional, after declaring that its key element -- the health insurance mandate -- was a law Congress did not have the power to enact. Opponents of the law claimed that while the government can regulate the activities of people engaged in commerce, like the insurance industry, it cannot regulate someone's inactivity -- that is, someone's refusal to buy insurance. It's an argument the judge found persuasive."It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause," he said. If that were true, he said, "it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted." If Congress could reach so broadly, "we would have a Constitution in name only," he said.
Judge Vinson rejected the Obama administration's argument that no one truly opts out of the health care system, because everyone eventually needs medical attention. In that sense, the judge said, health care is no different than many human activities.
"There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner, or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that --- when aggregated with similar economic decisions --- affect the price of that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To be sure, it is not difficult to identify an economic decision that has a cumulatively substantial effect on interstate commerce; rather, the difficult task is to find a decision that does not," he said.
Vinson is a federal judge, a Reagan appointee serving in Florida.
Ilya Shapiro blogs at Cato:
1. In performing his severability analysis -- determining which parts of the overall legislation survive -- the judge threw out all of Obamacare:In sum, notwithstanding the fact that many of the provisions in the Act can stand independently without the individual mandate (as a technical and practical matter), it is reasonably "evident," as I have discussed above, that the individual mandate was an essential and indispensable part of the health reform efforts, and that Congress did not believe other parts of the Act could (or it would want them to) survive independently. I must conclude that the individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit. The individual mandate cannot be severed. This conclusion is reached with full appreciation for the "normal rule" that reviewing courts should ordinarily refrain from invalidating more than the unconstitutional part of a statute, but non-severability is required based on the unique facts of this case and the particular aspects of the Act. This is not a situation that is likely to be repeated.
Here's are some choice excerpts from the opinion that reason Foundation's Manny Klausner e-mailed me:
The Necessary and Proper Clause cannot be utilized to "pass laws for the accomplishment of objects" that are not within Congress' enumerated powers. As the previous analysis of the defendants' Commerce Clause argument reveals, the individual mandate is neither within the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution. To uphold that provision via application of the Necessary and Proper Clause would authorize Congress to reach and regulate far beyond the currently established "outer limits" of the Commerce Clause and effectively remove all limits on federal power.[U]nder [the Government's] logic, Congress could . . . raise too-low wheat prices merely by increasing demand through mandating that every adult purchase and consume wheat bread daily, rationalized on the grounds that because everyone must participate in the market for food, non-consumers of wheat bread adversely affect prices in the wheat market.
Or, as was discussed during oral argument, Congress could require that people buy and consume broccoli at regular intervals, not only because the required purchases will positively impact interstate commerce, but also because people who eat healthier tend to be healthier, and are thus more productive and put less of a strain on the health care system.
Similarly, because virtually no one can be divorced from the transportation market, Congress could require that everyone above a certain income threshold buy a General Motors automobile --- now partially government-owned --- because those who do not buy GM cars (or those who buy foreign cars) are adversely impacting commerce and a taxpayer-subsidized business."
Peter Suderman over at reason explains further why the whole shebang had to go:
When Judge Henry Hudson struck down the individual mandate last year in response to Virginia's constitutional challenge to the health care overhaul, he left the rest of the law intact. In ruling on a separate multi-state challenge to the law today, Roger Vinson, a federal judge in Pensacola, Florida, went significantly further by striking down the entire law. Why the difference?Because the law contained no severability clause, which would have protected the bulk of the law should one part be ruled unconstitutional, Vinson had to decide whether in striking the mandate he should also strike some or all of the rest of the law. Supreme Court guidance on laws lacking severability clauses suggests that judges should generally seek to excise as little of the law as possible, but also to ensure that if there is a remainder, it still serves the law's overall intended objective.
Therein lies the problem for the law's legal backers. As Vinson notes in his ruling, both the administration, which is implementing the law and defending it in court, and Congress, which wrote and passed the law, have made clear that the individual mandate is an absolutely critical provision.
And it was, critical, too, to those of us who wanted this monstrosity overturned.
Who's Who In The Power Struggle In Egypt
Amir Taheri lays it out in the New York Post:
Founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood remains the most organized party at the moment. Yet its strength shouldn't be exaggerated. It is almost absent in Upper Egypt and has little support among peasants, more than half of the population.The brotherhood, moreover, is divided into factions that hate each other more than they hate their common enemies. One faction (the source of the ideology that produced al Qaeda) has been the public face of the Gamma al-Islamiyah (Islamic Society) and other terrorist groups. By contrast, another faction acknowledges that trying to impose sharia on Egypt could prove as disastrous as in neighboring Sudan.
A third faction is influenced by the Turkish experience that has allowed an Islamist party to form the government within a secular constitution. It's also concerned about the rise of Salafist Islam, which regards even the Muslim Brotherhood as "Kaffir" (Infidel). Thus a good chunk of the brotherhood might split to claim a place in a multiparty system, if such an occasion arises.
The next structured group, although smaller, is Egypt's oldest political party, Wafd (Delegation) -- which until the last election was the parliamentary opposition. The center-right party governed Egypt until the military coup of 1952; it appeals to urban middle classes and has an old base among the peasantry...
More at the link.
