Rainn Dance
I'm interviewing Rainn Wilson, Saturday, 11 am, LA Times Festival of Books, LA Times Stage. Come on out!
"A Yearlong Sting Operation"
Yes, that's what the Feds had. Meth, you're thinking, right? Nope. Milk.
Stephan Dinan writes at the Washington Times:
A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.The product in question: unpasteurized milk.
It's a battle that's been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it's also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.
"It is the FDA's position that raw milk should never be consumed," said Tamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA...
Well, then the FDA doesn't have to consume it.
Hat Crimes
Don't care about the royal wedding, but here are some hats worn to it, from a New York Times slide show. Some are rather attractive. Here's one more: a wild one that Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, the wife of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, manages to pull off.
This was a line about British women and their wacky hats that I saved in my "funny lines to use in a moment of desperation" file:
Why Do Wealthy English Women So Often Wear Giant Flying Cockroaches On Their Head?
The craziest hat? In The New York Times slideshow, Princess Beatrice, one of Fergie's daughters, manages to go beyond the beyond in a hat that is both reminiscent of a giant billboard in the sky and Snakes on a Plane
Alkon Interviews Oakley: When Helping Hurts
Caring too much can actually hurt instead of helping. For Prometheus Books, I interview my friend, engineering professor and author Dr. Barbara Oakley about the contents of her terrific, just-published book, "Cold-Blooded Kindness." A bit from the preamble to my interview with her:
Do you sometimes feel drawn into other people's problems-so much so that their pain becomes yours? Do you, or does someone you know, sometimes feel overwhelmed with the burdens of others? In Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts, Dr. Barbara Oakley tells a magnificent true story that shows how empathy-one of mankind's deepest, most valuable emotions-can be a double-edged sword.
An excerpt from our interview:
Alkon: What can we learn from stories like this?
Oakley: We can learn that setting emotional limits is okay-in fact, it's healthy. Right now society has this sense-again, especially for women-that there can never be enough empathy or altruism. That altruism is the answer to everything. But it's not. Altruism isn't this shining orb that brightens everything it touches. It is a double-edged sword. There are always tradeoffs. Carole Alden was a champion of soliciting the empathy of others. She often used her children as her shield-for example, she once managed to finagle some very expensive emu chicks she coveted by telling reporters that her daughter was dying of terminal breast cancer, and the chicks were her daughter's dying wish. Of course, her daughter didn't have terminal breast cancer, but Carole got those chicks.
That's a seemingly innocuous example-except to the breeder who donated the very expensive chick, the airlines who donated frequent-flier miles that should have gone to a more worthy recipient, and arguably the many newspaper readers who were cheated of an honest story. But we can all be tricked into making sacrifices that should never be made.
Ultimately, Cold-Blooded Kindness is a book meant to convey the best of what we know about the limits of our emotions. It does this using a compelling real-life story that shows how people can avoid being manipulated through their best trait: their compassion.
Government Creates Poverty
Stossel at reason.com on how the government has "helped" Native Americans right out of the need to help themselves. Instead of seeking to become entrepreneurs and make it on their own, ambitious Native Americans seek to become bureaucrats to manage who gets the government handouts:
The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state. Government manages their land, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special "native American" programs. The result? Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers.Nevertheless, Indian activists want more government "help."
It is intuitive to assume that, when people struggle, government "help" is the answer. The opposite is true. American groups who are helped the most, do the worst.
Consider the Lumbees of Robeson County, N.C.--a tribe not recognized as sovereign by the government and therefore ineligible for most of the "help" given other tribes. The Lumbees do much better than those recognized tribes.
Lumbees own their homes and succeed in business. They include real estate developer Jim Thomas, who used to own the Sacramento Kings, and Jack Lowery, who helped start the Cracker Barrel Restaurants. Lumbees started the first Indian-owned bank, which now has 12 branches.
The Lumbees' wealth is not from casino money.
"We don't have any casinos. We have 12 banks," says Ben Chavis, another successful Lumbee businessman. He also points out that Robeson County looks different from most Indian reservations.
"There's mansions. They look like English manors. I can take you to one neighborhood where my people are from and show you nicer homes than the whole Sioux reservation."
Despite this success, professional "victims" activists want Congress to make the Lumbees dependent--like other tribes. U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), has introduced the Lumbee Recognition Act, which would give the Lumbees the same "help" other tribes get--about $80 million a year. Some members of the tribe support the bill.
Of course they do. People like to freeload.
Stossel acknowledges:
Yes, many years ago white people stole the Indians' land and caused great misery. And yes, the government signed treaties with the tribes that make Indians "special." But that "specialness" has brought the Indians socialism. It's what keeps them dependent and poor.
What's the solution? I don't think you can get Native Americans off the government dole. Does this mean they're just a people who are forever doomed to helplessness with a hand held out?
20 Obama Problems, 20 Libertarian Solutions
Wes Benedict, from the Libertarian party, writes in a press release about the birther story, pretty much echoing what my thoughts have been, that it's a convenient distraction from all the really pressing problems in this country:
"I wonder if Obama and the Republicans might just be conspiring to keep this birther stuff alive, to distract everyone from all the real problems they're causing. The president might have been worried that the birther talk was about to die down."When you consider that we're involved in three foreign wars, our entitlement state is crumbling, we have record-level spending and deficits, unemployment is high, and inflation is growing, the president's birth certificate seems less significant somehow.
The Obama problems and the Libertarian solutions below:
1. Cash for Clunkers The government should not try to dictate what vehicles people drive, or what mileage they get. This program paid people to destroy their cars and buy new higher-mileage cars. It wasted both money and natural resources. Libertarians would never have done this.2. War escalation in Afghanistan
We would withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. President Obama has escalated the war.3. Giant government health care expansion bill
Libertarians would return health care to the private sector and the free market, instead of repeatedly increasing the amount of government interference.4. Post office loses money hand over fist
Libertarians would end the post office's monopoly, and allow competition and the free market to provide the mail services people demand.5. Stimulus package
The key to a robust economy is shrinking government, not growing it. Libertarians don't believe in stimulus packages.6. Expansion of "state secrets" doctrine
The president is not a dictator. Libertarians would not allow presidential actions to avoid judicial scrutiny.7. Big increase in unemployment
High unemployment is mostly caused by government interference. Libertarians would let the free market work.8. "Bailout" Geithner as Treasury Secretary
Libertarians would appoint someone who understands economics and the importance of free markets.9. Skyrocketing federal spending
Libertarians would would make huge cuts, not increases, in government spending.10. Huge federal deficits
Libertarians would cut government spending so much that deficits would disappear.And here are ten new ones:
11. War in Libya
Libertarians want to end America's foreign wars, not start new ones.12. Assassination doctrine
Libertarians would never claim that the president can assassinate American citizens just because he personally believes them to be terrorists.13. Big-spending deals with Republicans
Last December, and again this month, President Obama and Republicans came together to keep federal spending huge this year. Massive defense spending, unemployment extensions, ethanol subsidies, etc. Libertarians would demand cuts in the current year, and we'd be happy to let the government shut down if our opponents refused.14. Keeping Guantanamo open
Before he was elected, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. He hasn't done it. Libertarians would shut it down.15. Fed massively inflates fiat currency
With the support of President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner, the Federal Reserve has continued its massive inflation of the money supply. Libertarians wouldn't allow it -- in fact, we would end the Fed.16. War on Poker
Less than two weeks ago, Obama's Justice Department decided to trample on the rights of millions of Americans by shutting down several online poker websites and indicting their executives. Libertarians believe that Americans have the right to gamble.17. Patriot Act extensions
Obama has signed bills to extend the life of the Patriot Act, which violates the civil rights of Americans. Libertarians would refuse to renew it.18. Sustaining warrantless wiretaps
As a candidate, Obama said he would end these violations started during the Bush administration. But apparently he lied. Warrantless wiretaps are still being used today. Libertarians would end them immediately.19. Sustaining War in Iraq
As a candidate, Obama promised the Iraq War would be over by now. But there are still upwards of 50,000 American troops in Iraq. Libertarians would end that war and withdraw all of the troops.20. Medical Marijuana raids
In October 2009, we sent a press release commending the Obama administration's new policy to end raids on medical marijuana providers. Unfortunately, they were lying. The feds have continued to raid medical marijuana providers. Libertarians would completely end the tragic and destructive War on Drugs.
You buying any or all of these? Why or why not?
Who's Afraid Of Cheaper Groceries?
Labor unions and politicians, that's who -- the same people who are afraid of school choice. Nick Gillespie for reason.tv:
My favorite comment was that of the woman who said that Walmart will cause crime -- merely by opening, because kids will steal and be caught and jailed. Love her logic. No, they won't be stealing because they're ill-raised, but because Walmart's mere existence, with all that shopliftable stuff on the shelves, will just be too tempting.
On a need for cheaper groceries in New York note, a friend let me stay in his downtown loft last year when I was in New York for an event with a reading of I See Rude People. I went to the Gristedes near my friend's place, and found iceberg lettuce priced like it was iceberg caviar: Hovering around the five-dollar mark.
New York could do with cheaper groceries!
TSA Freeze Drills: They Aren't Actual Officers And You Don't Have To Freeze
Know your rights. Joe Sharkey writes in The New York Times:
IN general, I don't take orders from anyone except (as a matter of prudence) my wife. So the last time I was in an airport and security agents started bellowing, "Freeze!" I simply carried on with my business of buying a box of chocolates at a pushcart a few dozen feet away from the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint area.I was immediately upbraided, not by a security officer, but by a fellow passenger. Like dozens of other travelers near the checkpoint, he had abruptly halted in place, on command, as if playing a children's game.
"You're supposed to freeze!" the guy growled at me as he stood motionless in the frozen tableau of the reflexively compliant.
But wait a minute: Am I really supposed to freeze? At many airports, T.S.A. officers conduct occasional drills in which the agents suddenly start screaming things like "Code Bravo! Freeze!" The drills, which the T.S.A. tells me happen only once or twice a year at any given airport, are intended to give the officers experience in what happens if there is a security breach. The goal is to train them in how to quickly shut down a checkpoint and, once the potential threat is resolved, get it up and running again in a timely manner.
"These drills are generally conducted during off-peak hours to minimize disruption, and generally last a minute," said Kristin Lee, a spokeswoman for the agency. The agency conducts a range of security exercises, not all of them in public, to train checkpoint officers, she said.
Understood, I said. But still, am I, a citizen, required to stop motionless when the T.S.A. officers yell "freeze"?
Actually, no. The agency has "wide-ranging legal authority to carry out security-related responsibilities," Ms Lee said. But in these specific drills, she added, "passengers are not required to 'freeze' in place like statues." But if they are within the checkpoint security area, they may be required to remain there until the drill has ended, she said.
...On the two occasions that I have experienced the freeze drill -- once at the Los Angeles airport and, more recently, at Atlanta -- it was clear to me that travelers believed they were required to stop and stand motionless -- even those who had cleared security and were merely within shouting distance of the checkpoint. Officers seemed to reinforce that impression, too.
TSA "officers" aren't actual police officers with any ability to arrest you. On a side note, they aren't required to have first aid training and would really rather you have your heart attack elsewhere, thanks. (They're really too busy making you put your liquids and gels back in the baggie after you've come through security -- just to show you how powerful they are, even with those pretend police badges they wear.)
More from "Ask The Pilot" Patrick Smith on the freeze drills and TSA powers:
TSA guards do not have law enforcement power -- much as the agency has done a good job at fooling people into believing otherwise. Screeners are now called "officers" and they wear blue shirts with badges. Not by accident, the badges look exactly like the kind worn by police.Thus the cynics out there see the freeze drills as a means of control and intimidation. They probably feel the same way about the recent revelation that "arrogant complaining about airport security" is an indicator used by screeners when looking for criminals and terrorists.
In both cases that's probably unfair, though TSA is, at times, prone to bullying and guilty of a certain mission-creep. At the airport, TSA's job is to keep dangerous items and dangerous people away from planes, end of story. We can argue over the definition of dangerous, but TSA holds the authority -- legitimately enough in my opinion -- to inspect your belongings and prevent you from passing through a checkpoint. However, it does not have the authority to interrogate you, make you stand in one place, recite the national anthem or otherwise compromise your rights.
Thanks for the reminder, Lisa Simeone.
Political Correctness With Four Legs And A Tail
I sometimes get called a bitch, but I am definitively not my dog's "mom," nor do I want to be referred to by any of the ridiculous P.C. terms in this article by John Bingham in the Telegraph/UK. (I had to check to make sure it wasn't The Onion.)
Bingham reports on a call for change in terminology from the editors of the Journal of Animal Ethics:
Animal lovers should stop calling their furry or feathered friends "pets" because the term is insulting to them, leading academics claim.Domestic dogs, cats, hamsters or budgerigars should be rebranded as "companion animals" while owners should be known as "human carers", they insist.
Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned - who should henceforth be known as "free-living", the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.
...In its first editorial, the journal - jointly published by Prof Linzey's centre and the University of Illinois in the US - condemns the use of terms such as "critters" and "beasts".
It argues that "derogatory" language about animals can affect the way that they are treated.
"Despite its prevalence, 'pets' is surely a derogatory term both of the animals concerned and their human carers," the editorial claims.
"Again the word 'owners', whilst technically correct in law, harks back to a previous age when animals were regarded as just that: property, machines or things to use without moral constraint."
They also, not surprisingly, and no less hilariously, take issue with terms like "sly as a fox, "eat like a pig" or "drunk as a skunk" -- all unfair to animals, they claim...in all seriousness.
Probable Sauce
Via reason, Missouri police trying to make drug busts targeted a man who was growing tomato plants. They've been going after people growing pot -- going after them most disgustingly by monitoring who buys hydroponic growing equipment. And guess who: People who grow perfectly legal vegetables like tomatoes.
From KMBC.com:
Independence police found a growing operation Wednesday afternoon: a tomato growing operation."What I saw today was not protection," the man told KMBC's Cliff Judy. "That was harassment, all because of where I made a purchase."
Independence police said the Missouri Highway Patrol monitors stores that sell hydroponic growing equipment, and they use those sales to track down illegal marijuana growing operations. That information is what led them to the man's door.
"The last time I checked, it wasn't illegal to grow a tomato plant, but it makes you wonder," the man said.
...The man told Judy that he supports fighting drugs and has no problem with the officers who came to his home. But he also said he thinks labeling him as a possible drug dealer because of buying hydroponic equipment is profiling.
"I understand that a lot of people use hydroponic equipment for illegal ways, but that's just like saying everybody who buys a gun is going to be a criminal and murder somebody," the man said.
Anybody noticing a scary pattern in this country in the past few years? Police monitoring who's buying gardening equipment? Because somebody, somewhere, might be growing pot?
What's next, keeping a close watch in grocery stores for people who buy a lot of Doritos and brownies?
Everything Is Racism - Turbo Version
A pub singer in England was arrested...on suspicion of racism!...for performing the song "Kung Fu Fighting." From the Daily Mail:
'We were performing Kung Fu Fighting, as we do during all our sets,' he said.'People of all races were loving it. Chinese people have never been offended by it before.
'But this lad walking past with his mum started swearing at us and making obscene hand gestures before taking a picture on his mobile phone.
'We hadn't even seen them when we started the song. He must have phoned the police.'
Officers later called Mr Ledger while he was eating in a Chinese restaurant to arrange a meeting.
The singer assumed it was a prank - but he was later arrested and is still under investigation.
'They seemed pretty amazed but said the law is the law and it was their duty,' he is reported to have said.
'It's political correctness gone potty. There are plenty of Welsh people at our shows - does it mean I can't play any Tom Jones?'
Bar owner Sean Ware told the Sun newspaper: 'The song is in no way racist and nor is Simon. There is no way he would abuse anyone.
'He didn't start the song just because Chinese people were walking past. He had already started playing it.'
Mr Ledger, who was later bailed, wrote on Facebook: 'If the lad who phoned the police is reading this, what is wrong with you?'
Here's the original:
The lyrics below:
Everybody was kung fu fighting,Those cats were fast as lightning,
In fact it was a little bit frightening,
But they fought with expert timing
They were funky China men from funky Chinatown,
They were chopping them up and they were chopping them down,
It's an ancient Chinese art and everybody knew their part,
From a feint into a slip, and kicking from the hip
Everybody was kung fu fighting ...
There was funky Billy Chin and little Sammy Chung,
He said here comes the big boss, let's get it on,
We took a bow and made a stand, started swinging with the hand,
The sudden motion made me skip now we're into a brand knew trip
Everybody was kung fu fighting ...
We have a lot of problems in our country, and there's recently been a flurry of attempts to degrade our rights and get us used to it, but there's still a level of free speech in this country that's unequalled anywhere else. Let's keep it that way.
Minger Does It Again
Denise Minger, who took apart the crap that is The China Study, blogged this: Brand-Spankin' New Study: Are Low-Carb Meat Eaters in Trouble?...neatly showing up sloppy-woppy, loosey-goosey on the science Dean Ornish, who blogged about about the study over at the HuffPo. Here's an excerpt from Minger summarizing some of the flaws in the study:
Bottom line: In this study, when you look closer at the data, differences in mortality appear to be unrelated to animal product consumption. Changes in cancer and cardiovascular risk ratios occur out of sync with changes in animal food intake.So what is responsible for the Vegetable Group's lower mortality hazard ratios (and the Animal Group's higher ones)?
Here's a clue. Every time the researchers made multivariate adjustments to the data to account for the risk factors they did document (including physical activity, BMI, alcohol consumption, hypertension, and smoking, among other things), the hazard ratio went down for the Animal Group (meaning it got better) and it went up for the Vegetable Group adherents (meaning it got worse). That indicates pretty clearly that the Animal Group adherents had more proclivity to disease right from the get go, regardless of meat consumption, and the Vegetable Group adherents may have been more health-aware than most folks. (To see what I'm talking about, look at the mortality tables under the "10″ column, and compare the "Age- and energy-adjusted HR" with the "Multivariate-adjusted HR" for each group.)
In other words, it looks like what this study really measured was a Standard American Diet group (aka highest Animal Group decile) and a slightly-less Standard American Diet group (aka highest Vegetable Group decile). Both ate sucky diets, but the latter had slightly less suckage. You can bet the farm that neither was anything close to "low carb." And if you have two farms, you can bet the other one that neither diet group was anything near plant-based, so I'm not sure the vegan crowd has much to gloat about here.
The End.
Meet Susie Castillo's Vagina: Susie Castillo's TSA Experience
The former Miss USA's experience, having her vagina touched four times, echoes mine. In her words, "They're making me choose to either get molested ... or go through this machine, that's completely unhealthy and dangerous."
Here's her tearful video about her violation below, and her blog post.
As I suggest on my post linked above -- don't give the TSA an easy time of violating your rights. Make noise -- sob your guts out the entire time. All of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience that Americans, sobbing or howling loudly as they're being searched will give them, and from all of us.
If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Racism
In New York, I had a boss with the last name "Rickey." A few of us who worked with him used to joke that he had two first names. In fact, you could use them interchangeably, and if somebody put last names first, with a comma, you could easily confuse which was which.
In the constant push to find racism at every turn, while I was out hearing a beautiful, talented writer friend of mine (who happens to have skin the color of fine dark chocolate) speak at an event, some person calling him or herself "brownmenace" left this remark about my TSA grope post:
"neither name sounds like a typical American first name or last name" "typical American name" Here we have the epitome of prejudice. Her name was not American enough for you? Her name was not white enough for you? Not WASP enough? Not typical for the names of the people where you live? Bigot much? The names that you in your prejudice think are 'typically American' will be replaced by 'typically American' names like García, Fernández, Hernandez and Gonzalez in the next few years. Look up the current top 20 American surnames right now. How many of them fit your idea of "typical American names"?
This comment was in response to my update on the post:
UPDATE: I forgot to post the TSA woman's name when I wrote this last night. I think it might have been Thedala Magee. Or Magee Thedala. I was really upset, and neither name sounds like a typical American first name or last name, so I can't remember if I wrote it down in the right order.
Luckily, kenmce and jazzhands were around to bat cleanup. Here's kenmce:
>brownmenace at April 26, 2011 7:08 PM>Here we have the epitome of prejudice. Her name >was not American enough for you? Her name was >not white enough for you? Not WASP enough? Not >typical for the names of the people where you >live? Bigot much?
*Hmm, goes upthread to see the original paragraph
*ah, here it is:
>>UPDATE: I forgot to post the TSA woman's name >>when I wrote this last night. I think it might >>have been Thedala Magee. Or Magee Thedala. I >>was really upset, and neither name sounds like >>a typical American first name or last name, so >>I can't remember if I wrote it down in the >>right order.
*Actual quote says nothing negative about the woman, her color, her name, her ethnic background, hair, shoes, perfume or anything else. Actual quote just says that she had oddball name and that it is hard to remember which is the first part and which the last.
*Racecard FAILS miserably, but thanks for playing.
Here's jazzhands:
@brownmenace, Kenmce pretty well beat me to it, but since you are SUCH an expert on names which the rest of us are not, please enlighten us as to which of the choices is a "common" last name, and also where it is common? I certainly don't want to be accused of being racist should I come across the name in the future.BTW, Amy lives in LA. If any of the names you listed (García, Fernández, Hernandez and Gonzalez) were the name of the person doing the assaulting, I'm sure she'd remember which was first or which was last. Hell, I grew up in a mostly Czech farming town in MN, without one single Hispanic or Latino in my high school, and I know those are surnames. Thedala and Magee are both names I've never heard of, though. Sorry I'm not as enlightened as you seem to be. Please help rectify that.
Meanwhile, my people are WASPS -- if you can be considered WASPS by way of Russian peasanthood and German-Polish border poverty, arriving in this country in steerage class. My mom's family was Smollofsky, and my great grandpa fed his family by picking up trash and selling metal for scrap. (Still, I'm sure it's somehow possible to trace my lineage back to the Queen of England...don't you think?)
Like jazzhands points out, if my groper's name had been Rosa Gonzalez, I wouldn't have wondered which came first. Roman Genn, on the other hand, another Russki...Genn Roman? If he gropes me, I could get very confused!
Rats On Atkins
Via segamartinez, via @DrEades, here's Dr. Robert Lustig ("Sugar: The Bitter Truth") talking to KQED:
How do you get diet induced obesity in a rat? People say put them on a high fat diet. Garbage.You can't get a rat to eat a high fat diet...unless you add 20% sucrose to the diet.
Basically you're giving them cookie dough.But if you give them lard they won't eat it. They actually lose weight on that because that's the Atkins diet for them. It's not palatable. They don't like it and they actually lose weight and their metabolic parameters improve.
The only way to get an animal eat monkey or any other animal for that matter to eat a high fat diet is to lace the fat with sucrose.
So the question is: which is doing the damage, the fat or the sucrose in that case? And the answer is both.
As segamartinez writes:
We shouldn't let researchers, or journalists, or professors, or anyone for that matter, off the hook when they implicate a "high-fat" diet in causing, or even curing, an ailment, without them making the distinction that a "high-fat" diet is a "high-fat-high-sugar" diet in this context.It could be likely that the increase in sugar is the driver of disease, while the "high-fat" content is along for the ride. The results of the 90% fat ketogenic diets certainly seem to make a case for it.
72 Questions About The 72 Virgins
From Vinienco's blog, a fistful of questions:
1) What if the bomber wants girls with more experience?
2) What if one virgin is no good in bed? Does she get replaced or is he stuck with 71?
3) If he's gay, does he get male virgins?
4) What if he's celibate? What does he get?
5) What if he hasn't reached puberty yet? Does he get 72 Xboxes till he comes of age?
And a few virgin questions more:
15) If he has a tryst with a 73rd virgin, do the others consider it cheating?
16) Do the virgins have a union? If so, can they strike if they're not satisfied?
17) Is there a temp agency that replaces virgins if they call in sick?
18) What if the bomber's into animals? Does he get accommodated?
19) Why 72? Is 71 too few? Is 73 too many?
The rest are at the above link.
Bizarrocar
Olympic Boulevard and 11th, Santa Monica. Salvation Army store parking lot.
And yes, those are little toy people and plastic animals glued to the dashboard.
Don't Give The TSA An Easy Time Of Violating Your Rights
It shouldn't be emotionally easy, earning a living by violating people's rights.
On March 31st, when I came through the metal detector and realized that everyone in the TSA line to my United flight was getting searched, I got teary. I was teary at the prospect of being touched by a government worker -- entirely without probable cause. I was very upset, both because of the physical violation and because I love our now too-often-crumpled-up Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I can hold back the tears...hang tough...but as I was made to "assume the position" on a rubber mat like a common criminal, I thought fast. I decided that these TSA lackeys who serve the government in violating our rights just don't deserve my quiet compliance. And no, I won't go through the scanner (do you trust the government that they're safe?) and allow a government employee to see me naked in the course of normal and totally ordinary business travel: flying from Los Angeles to Binghamton, New York, to attend an evolutionary psychology conference for my work.
Basically, I felt it important to make a spectacle of what they are doing to us, to make it uncomfortable for them to violate us and our rights, so I let the tears come. In fact, I sobbed my guts out. Loudly. Very loudly. The entire time the woman was searching me.
Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked -- utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.
Upon leaving, still sobbing, I yelled to the woman, "YOU RAPED ME." And I took her name to see if I could file sexual assault charges on my return. This woman, and all of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience, and from all of us.
I've been waiting on posting this, both because I've been utterly swamped with work, and because I was waiting for a reply from a lawyer about the possibility of filing sexual assault charges. It turns out that filing charges is probably a no-go. Harvey Silverglate, lawyer and co-founder of the wonderful campus free speech defenders, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), emailed me this:
I think it is extremely unlikely that these pat-downs would be deemed a sexual assault, or any assault for that matter. In the first place, the person doing the pat-down would be acting according to regulations and instructions, hence on good faith ... because of the purported justification ("National security", airline safety).The only issue, it seems to me, is whether there is a decent security reason to justify such pat-downs, or whether it is an unconstitutional search and seizure, or invasion of privacy/intrusion, because not justified for safety reasons. As with most constitutional rights, including this Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure, or Fifth Amendment due process, a court would weigh the state's justification (i.e., security gains) versus the citizen's losses (privacy, dignity).
...To win a battle for liberty like this, people must not get accustomed to these indignities, but must complain about them every single time ... and in every forum possible.
I'll echo Harvey in asking that you all do as I did (and that you spread the word to do as I did): Don't make it easy for the government, through these TSA lackeys, to be violating us -- sexually, and in respect to our right to not be searched without probable cause.
And no -- the fact that some people are terrorists is NOT probable cause. The fact that you are wearing underwire is NOT probable cause. And no -- the fact that you, in 2011, are unwilling to hitchhike thousands of miles instead of taking a plane is NOT probable cause.
The rights of vast number of Americans are being violated daily and it is absolutely essential that we all stand up and defend our rights -- and as loudly and vociferously as possible.
Are you in? Spread the word.
UPDATE: I forgot to post the TSA woman's name when I wrote this last night. I think it might have been Thedala Magee. Or Magee Thedala. I was really upset, and neither name sounds like a typical American first name or last name, so I can't remember if I wrote it down in the right order.
Please, everybody, ask for the name of the person who violated you, and when you post about it, use their name. It's got to become very uncomfortable to be one of those who earns a living, as said at Nuremberg, by "just following orders."
Oh, and just in case you're one of those who has gotten used to giving up your rights with ease, ANY touching by a government official without probable cause counts as being violated.
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"Flower Me"
I've been working very hard this year, doing very little but writing and research and related endeavors, and washing my car is very low on the priority list. Very, very low, as in, I haven't washed it yet this year (luckily, we've had some hard rains).
Well, I came out to my car the other day, and instead of "Wash me!" across my windshield, I found this flower. Made me feel good about my neighbors, and acted as a little reminder to do this sort of thing for others, as I advise in chapter 10 of I See Rude People and in my recent LA Times op-ed. 
It's Those Damn Orphans Bleeding The State Dry For T-Shirt Money
Michigan will solve their deficit problem by mandating that the money given to foster children for clothing can only be spent at thrift stores. Jack Stuef writes at Wonkette:
Orphans, who have set themselves up for disaster in our capitalist meritocracy by choosing to not have parents, should have to wear rags like they did in the days of our founders. (They should also have to work if they can't afford school, but, you know, one thing at a time.) But you know how children without parents are, they always expect BIG GOVERNMENT to provide them with things to keep them from dying in gutters.
From a Detroit News story by Karen Bouffardand and Paul Egan:
A small part of the DHS savings, about $200,000, would come from adjustments to the clothing allowance for foster children, or children of the working poor, of $79 for school clothes. Caswell said children will still get close to that $79, but would be issued gift cards that can only be used at the Salvation Army, Goodwill or other thrift stores."The reason is you can get a whole lot more in a resale store," Caswell said.
"Give me a break," said Gilda Jacobs, president and CEO of the Michigan League for Human Services.
"Government should not be big brother in telling somebody how to spend their (79) dollars," she said.
"How Much Should Parents Help Adult Children?"
Good question on Consumerist, posted by Phil Villareal, inspired by blog posts by the author of the blog A Gai Shan Life. She describes herself thusly:
I'm a 20-something girl living on the West Coast.Since 2000, I've put myself through college and paid off $75,000 of debt on my family's behalf.
Now I support my parents from afar: 1 income, 3 adults, 1.25 households.
She's not only helping her immigrant parents dig out, she's been helping her ne'er-do-well brother who's living with them, and has a sense of what a mistake that's been. She writes about her parents:
Somewhere along the way, they stopped making what I understood to be the truly loving choice, the hard or harsh-seeming choice despite the guilt and pain. This wasn't something they shied away from when we were children, so I have to wonder, what changed?...Giving him a helping hand is not helping him. It's just enabling now.
For example, mostly from my dad, "We wouldn't ever ask a child:
-- to pay rent,
-- to move out,
-- to find another way to get to work/school/where they needed to go if they were in need."In essence, if they haven't learned how to function independently or coping skills, they'll never have to as long as we live.
She explains about her brother:
From early on it was clear the sibling was a born spender, scammer and manipulator. At the age of 4, he would memorize the stories he heard in class to recite back to my mom as she was falling asleep listening when it was his time to practice reading so he didn't have to actually read. He was essentially illiterate through third grade because he was such a good faker and she was exhausted going school and raising two kids. Until she figured it out and gave him what-for, and intensive lessons, he wasn't going to learn how to read!Growing up, his "entrepreneurship" was all about making a quick buck and he quickly became notorious for his involvement in MLM schemes because of the number of people he convinced to waste their money. Now he's many times lazier. He expects praise for basic functions like managing to wake up on time in the morning without someone else waking him up. He's 30-something!
In the entire time that my idiot sibling has lived under our roof - he has never been required to ante up for his fair share of rent, utilities, or any living expenses, he has never been told to move out and be an independent adult who can earn his own living and support himself as a result of not contributing. Basically, he has never been told he needed to grow the eff up according to any societal norms by my parents.
Certainly, neither have I. But is fairness really the measure by which we ought to be parenting?
Times are tough now. The jobs just aren't out there, save for the low-end jobs like working at a coffeehouse. So, maybe parents should help kids somewhat -- or should they? Where do you -- or should you -- draw the line with your adult-aged children?
(More on Gai Shan Girl and her parents' story here.)
How Obamacare Kills The Incentive To Work
In France, people go on the dole because they make just as much money not working as they do working. In America, with Obamacare, thanks to the ways family subsidies work, at a certain point, it becomes cost-effective for one working parent to stay home. Daniel P. Kessler writes in the WSJ:
Starting in 2014, subsidies will be available to families with incomes between 134% and 400% of the federal poverty line. (Families earning less than 134% of poverty are eligible for Medicaid.) For example, a family of four headed by a 55-year-old earning $31,389 in 2014 dollars (134% of the federal poverty line) in a high-cost area will get a subsidy of $22,740. This will cover 96% of an insurance policy that the Kaiser Family Foundation predicts will cost $23,700. A similar family earning $93,699 (400% of poverty) gets a subsidy of $14,799. But a family earning $1 more--$93,700--gets no subsidy.Consider a wife in a family with $90,000 in income. If she were to earn an additional $3,700, her family would lose the insurance subsidy and be more than $10,000 poorer. In addition, she would also pay more in income and Social Security taxes. Taken together, these policies impose a substantial punishment on work effort.
Notches also lead to unfairness. The principle that families of the same size with similar incomes should be treated similarly by tax law and transfer programs has deep philosophical roots and appeals to basic notions of equity. The notch turns this principle on its head. Next-door neighbors with virtually identical circumstances could receive very different levels of government assistance, depending on which side of the notch they happen to fall. This feature will justifiably increase public cynicism about the law and government in general.
Fixing the notch is not so easy. To phase out the subsidy smoothly for families with incomes of 134% to 400% of poverty, the law would have to take away $22,700 in subsidies as a family's income rose to $93,700 from $31,389. In other words, for every dollar earned in this income range, a family's subsidy would have to decline by 36 cents. On top of 25% federal income taxes, 5% state income taxes, and 15% Social Security taxes, this implies a reward to work of less than 20 cents on the dollar--in economists' language, an implicit marginal tax rate of over 80%. Although economists may differ on the effect of taxes on work effort, it is hard to fathom how anyone could argue that this will not reduce economic activity.
Dr. Helen's PJTV Show: Barb Oakley And Amy Alkon On Political Correctness
Pathological Altruism: Does Evil Wear a Politically Correct Mask?:
Could it be that some people do good just to hide their own evil? Dr. Helen sits with the Advice Goddess Amy Alkon and Barbara Oakley to talk about pathological altruism. Oakley is the author of Cold-Blooded Kindness and Alkon is the author of I See Rude People. Hear what happened to the Advice Goddess after she criticized Jesse Jackson.
Hope And More Of The (#$&*@!) Same
Via Instapundit, the Obama admin asks the Supremes to uphold the FCC's anti-pottymouth and anti-naked people on TV policy. Gautham Nagesh writes at The Hill:
The administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision that struck down the FCC's indecency policy last July.The court ruled that the FCC's policy against fleeting expletives on live television, instituted in 2004 after U2 frontman Bono used an expletive during the 2003 Golden Globes, was unconstitutionally vague and resulted in self-censorship by broadcasters wary of facing record fines.
The FCC subsequently acknowledged the court's ruling would likely prevent the commission from enforcing its indecency policy even in cases of scripted rather than fleeting profanity or nudity.
That prediction came to fruition in January when the same court tossed the commission's record $1.4 million fine leveled against 52 ABC affiliates for airing a 2003 episode of "NYPD Blue" that contained a scene featuring actress Charlotte Ross nude.
There's plenty of TV out there. There are even plenty of DVDs out there, and there's plenty of stuff on Hulu. If you don't want to see naked people or hear pottymouths, how about you watch shows and stations that exist and will develop for people like you. And let's keep the government out of television for the rest of us, shall we?
Porn Use Causes Crime...To Drop?
Steve Chapman writes at reason what I've long known from reading research over the years on how when porn use goes up sex crimes go down:
The past two decades have been to electronic erotica what Thanksgiving is to gluttony. Never in history have more people had easier access to sexually explicit material in such vast abundance and such low cost. More than one out of every three Americans with Internet access regularly visits porn sites.By the logic of the puritans, we should be coping with an avalanche of collateral damage. But we're not.
Sexual violence? Rape has dropped by 86 percent in the United States since 1991. Harm to families? Divorce rates are down 25 percent during the same period.
As for sex trafficking, no one really knows how much goes on, or whether it's rising or falling. But when the Bush administration mounted a crackdown on the problem, The Washington Post reported in 2007, it found only "1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000, nowhere near the 50,000 a year the government had estimated."
Numerous studies have failed to prove that viewing prurient pictures has any deleterious consequences to individuals. Just because the occasional rapist or child molester blames his crimes on skin flicks doesn't make it true.
Critics claim that pornography can take over some people's lives, but so can fantasy baseball. Porn addiction is not a recognized psychiatric disorder. And what if it were? Alcoholism is a form of addiction, but we don't ban wine.
Of course, we can't be sure the porn consumption causes crimes to decrease, but when access to porn increases, time and time again, crimes decrease.
Terrornoia
Ridiculous scare on an Alaska Airlines flight. NBC News reports that an Alaska Airlines flight was evacuated and the plane made to return to the airport after a suspicious white powder was found in an airplane lavatory:
It turned out to be toilet paper remnants, NBC News reported.A flight attendant aboard Flight 508, which originated in Seattle, discovered a tissue containing a "white dust," Alaska Airlines Spokeswoman Bobbie Egan told NBC News.
As standard practice, the flight crew radioed ahead to John Wayne Airport and the plane was met by a hazardous materials team, Egan said.
The 151 passengers and six crew members evacuated safely.
Remember The First Amendment?
It's been thrown out in Michigan, where Florida pastor Terry Jones (of Quran-burning reknown) and a colleague were thrown in jail and barred from exercising their free speech rights with potential violence being the excuse, writes Niraj Warikoo for the Freep:
A judge late Friday sent two Florida pastors to jail for refusing to post a $1 bond and barred them from visiting a Dearborn mosque or its adjacent property for three years unless the mosque's leadership says otherwise. After a short time in jail they left on $1 bond each.The stunning developments came after a Dearborn jury sided with prosecutors, ruling that Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp would breach the peace if they rallied at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Critics slammed the decision to jail them, the court proceedings, and Wayne County prosecutors, saying they violated the men's Constitutional rights.
Prosecutors asked Judge Mark Somers for $45,000 bond. Somers then set bond at $1 each for the two pastors. They refused to pay. And Somers ordered them remanded to jail.
"Breach of the peace," huh? So, those are the magic words we will now us to make the First Amendment go away? Let's be clear: Jones and Sapp didn't threaten violence. Because others may act violently when Americans exercise their right to free speech, the onus should not be on those speaking, but on any who get violent.
Oh, in case you were wondering, I was for the Nazis marching in Skokie and I'm for anyone exercising their right to free speech. We need the First Amendment to protect the assholes of the world, swastikas and all.
Security For Gmail Users -- And Everybody
For Gmail users. For anybody with a password. Specifically, why "this is fun" is an incredibly strong password.
The Line Is "Jesus Died For Your Sins..."
Not "Jesus was a really big idiot for your sins." People in the Philippines are celebrating Easter by having themselves nailed to crosses. (Couldn't they just go around giving their possessions to the poor? Hmmm...less fanfare, I guess.)
Pedophilia Or Bust!
Prophets are busy guys. Jesus ran around telling people to turn the other cheek. Mohammed was busy raping, plundering, and murdering, and sexually violating a 9-year-old child he married when she was 6.
From Jihad Watch, that's why, under Islam, you see old men marrying and having sex with little girls -- and getting a big thumbs up from Muslim clerics for doing it:
Indeed, the heart of the problem is this: Muhammad married a child. The example of Muhammad, "a beautiful pattern of conduct" according to Qur'an 33:21, cannot be set aside, or standards he set "updated," lest one imply Muhammad made a mistake. That would not only insult Muhammad (things seem to become flammable when that happens) but go against the Qur'an's endorsement of him, and therefore Allah's.That is why child marriage persists in the Islamic world, from Nigeria to Yemen to Indonesia:
"The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)." -- Bukhari 7.62.88
So, it's no surprise that in Bangladesh, an Islamic cleric, Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini, is threatening jihad if the barbarism that is child marriage is banned by the government. From Weekly Blitz:
He said, two hundred thousand Jihadists of his group are ready to 'sacrifice' lives if any such law, which goes against "Koran and Sunnah" will be passed by the current government in the country.Mufti Amini said, "Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, who also married minor Ayesha, when she was just eight years old".
He said, "The new law initiated by the current government will put the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge."
Fazlul Haque Amini further said, "Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women."
It may be mentioned here that, current government in Bangladesh has taken several measures in ensuring better rights to the women thus treating child marriage as severe offense. It also recommends equal distribution of properties amongst male and female inherits. In contrary, Islamic Sharia law gives lesser rights to women as far as inheritance is concerned. It also allows men to marry any infant girl child. It may be mentioned here that, such law is prevalent in most of the Islamic republics, while in Iran, even forceful sexual relations with the married infant is allowed. A large segment of Muslim scholars and secularist individuals term this as mere perversion.
I like that the idiot gets the age from the Hadith wrong (the al-Bukhari bit above). I'm an infidel bitch and even I know that Mohammed married Aisha at six and violated her when she was 9.
Republicans Hate Votes
Peter Tucci blogs at the Daily Caller about Republicans against gay marriage, and the problem that's likely to cause for them, vis a vis more people supporting legalizing it.
Tucci is one of a few people who's noticed that Republicans might be missing a few votes of people (like me) who are fiscal conservatives and small governmenters, but who are opposed to the insertion of people's religious beliefs into the political sphere. Tucci writes:
Ten years ago, it looked like the GOP's anti-gay marriage stance was a tenable one. The party's opposition to gay marriage even helped George Bush get reelected in 2004. But public support for gay marriage is increasing fast. According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, 53 percent of Americans now support legalizing gay marriage. (As recently as 2004, support for gay marriage stood at just 32 percent.) Support for gay marriage is especially strong among the young -- about two-thirds of Americans under 40 now support it. The GOP's opposition to gay marriage is already alienating large swathes of the electorate, and is ultimately untenable.But the party can't abandon its opposition to gay marriage without upsetting one of its core constituencies: evangelical white Protestants, who remain overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage.
That puts the GOP in a tough but not impossible position. What it needs to do is walk back its opposition to gay marriage without endorsing it, encourage individual candidates to take the stance that best suits their constituents, and emphasize that gay marriage is an issue that should be left to the states -- not to Congress or the Supreme Court.
In other words, tell the voters that they were against gay marriage before they were against gay marriage, but what they're really for while being against is...is...what was the question?
If anybody, Democrat or Republican, thinks politics and getting elected is about much more than pandering to the widest swath of voters, well, we'd appreciate if you didn't vote.
The Futility Of Exercise For Weight Loss
People like to believe that fat people are just lazy -- if only they would just get to the gym, they'd slim down. They're wrong.
Rob Lyons, echoing what Gary Taubes wrote about the evidence about exercise in 2007 in New York Magazine, mythbusts at Spiked Online. No, exercise doesn't make you skinnier:
There's no doubt that if you run long distances, you burn a lot of calories - about 100 calories per mile. So if you run 50 miles per week, that's the calorific equivalent of perhaps two days normal food consumption. If you can manage to avoid eating extra food to compensate for that mileage, you should be able to lose weight. But most people simply get hungry - probably ravenously so in the case of those who can run large distances - and eat more.Of course, there is individual variation. There's always someone who can claim to have gone from chubby to skinny thanks to pounding out the miles. Whether such people really have just changed their exercise habits without also changing their eating habits is open to debate. But for most people, the effect of trying to run your butt off is that your butt remains as large as ever.
Why Don't They Teach Witchdoctoring?
You know, something along the lines of, "Throw three severed chicken feet over your head and send me smoke signals in the morning!"
The universities give it such a dignified name -- "Integrative Medicine" -- but what they're dignifying and "integrating" is a whole host of bullshit-think. Steven Salzberg writes on Forbes.com that med schools are teaching homeopathy and other ridiculousness:
So what's going on at Maryland's medical school? UMM is home to one of the nation's premier "integrative medicine" programs, which promotes a wide range of questionable practices. Its clinical services include:* Acupuncture
* Homeopathy
* Reflexology
* Reiki
* Qi GongAlthough each of these has a different history, all of them are, well, nonsense. Let's take a closer look homeopathy, which is perhaps the most ridiculous pseudoscience on the list. Homeopathy is based on two ideas: that "like cures like", and that vanishingly small quantities of medicine are stronger than larger quantities. Both ideas were invented by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1700s, back when most medicine was pretty bad for you. Unfortunately for Hahnemann, his ideas were no better.
The idea that "like cures like" is used to justify treating (for example) itchiness with extract of poison ivy. I'm not making this up: this is a standard homeopathic preparation, promoted on many homeopathic sites, even (sorry, cycling fans) on Lance Armstrong's Livestrong website.
The second idea is that you dilute these substances so much that instead of causing the symptom, they cure it. Alas, Hahnemann was unaware that when you dilute a substance to the degree that he recommended, you end up with nothing left. Typical dilutions used today go by the abbreviations 10C, 20C, or 30C. One "C" is a dilution of 1 in 100, and 20C means that you dilute the active ingredient 100-fold, and then repeat the process 20 times over. This is a dilution of 100 to the 20th power, a ridiculously large number. If you had a single molecule immersed on a sphere of water the size of the entire planet, it would still not be dilute enough.
That's right: homeopathic treatments are just water. Or rather, water dropped onto a sugar pill, and sold at stores such as Whole Foods, which has a section devoted to homeopathic remedies. And offered up as medicine by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Medicine through their clinical services. (Why isn't this malpractice? I haven't figured that out yet.)
Indonesians Are "Moderate Muslims"
Well, except for the ones who planted a 330-lb. bomb under a gas line near a church that holds 3,000 people. From a story by Ali Koarumalos from the AP:
Ninety percent of Indonesians are Muslim, though most practice a moderate form of the faith and abhor violence.
In Robert Spencer's words at Jihad Watch link above:
It would be refreshing if AP, or anyone, would explain how this "moderate form of the faith" deals with the Qur'an's many exhortations to violence. That no one ever does so is telling.
Great Free Stuff To Fill Your Head
Dr. Barbara Oakley, engineering professor and author of the terrific new book, Cold-Blooded Kindness
"Is That A Mic In Your Pocket...?"
Los Angeles/Keystone cops after robbers instead bust a Bloomberg news crew doing story on paparazzi. Oopsy! Story at WeHo Daily and LA Observed.
Loved this quote posted on WeHo Daily from Brittany Joe, who they say, "was observing the extraction nearby, unaware that police were looking for robbery suspects":
"This is what happens in West Hollywood, six cop cars with guns drawn on a CAMERA CREW. The sound guy still has his head phones and fanny pack on. Maybe they thought his boom was a gun?"
Putting The "End" In Friend
Great old line left in the comments on a column by a little sense:
Saying "We can still be friends" after breaking up is like having your dog die and your mom saying you can still keep it.
Feminist Bookstore: Bathrooms For Customers Only
Hilarious bit from Portlandia.
via GSpotted
You Can't Eat A Muffin Without The Government Announcing That It Could Kill You
Starbucks apparently has to clutter up their coffee fixings bar now with notifications about acrylamide (and friends) thanks to Prop 65:
From the State of California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment:
1. What is acrylamide?Acrylamide is on the Proposition 65 list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity (such as birth defects and other reproductive harm).
For many years, acrylamide has been used in grouts and cements, pulp and paper production, ore processing, permanent-press fabrics, and dye manufacture. It is also used to produce polyacrylamide, which is used in water and wastewater treatment, soil conditioning and oil drilling. Acrylamide also is present in tobacco smoke.
In 2002, Swedish researchers discovered that acrylamide forms during the baking, frying, or roasting of certain kinds of foods, particularly starchy foods. Acrylamide is not added to foods. It is a contaminant that forms during the baking, frying or roasting of certain plant-based foods. Boiling and steaming foods does not create acrylamide.
French fries, potato chips, other fried and baked snack foods, roasted asparagus, canned sweet potatoes and pumpkin, canned black olives, roasted nuts, coffee, roasted grain-based coffee substitutes, prune juice, breakfast cereals, crackers, cookies, bread crusts, and toast all contain varying levels of acrylamide.
Do you think one person, even one, is going to look at that sign and go return their muffin or spill out their coffee? If not, the purpose of that sign would be...?
More Paternity Fraud: Underage Boys Bullied, Sans Legal Counsel
The thing about these paternity fraud cases is that they all seem so unbelievable vis a vis what America is supposed to be like: a land of rights and fairness, a land of laws.
Over at Fathers and Families, I read about yet another abuse -- the family court system allowing child support enforcement agencies to bully teenaged boys, often manipulating them into signing paternity declarations (as minors) without their parents' consent or access to legal counsel. F and F has helped introduce two paternity fraud bills to try to stop this. Here's a letter in support of one of these bills from Thomas Rodriguez, who was manipulated at 17 into signing a paternity declaration -- without parental consent or legal counsel:
I am writing to you in support of SB 377, because when I was 17-years-old I was victimized by the problem which the bill addresses.The hospital manipulated me into signing a paternity declaration when my former girlfriend gave birth to a son she said was mine. There was no parental consent nor did I have access to legal counsel or advice. I was never informed of the legal implications of what I was being asked to sign and I did not fully understand them. I thought that because I was a minor, there couldn't be serious legal implications. I have since learned differently.
The mother of the child has not allowed me to have a relationship with the boy, and several of her relatives have told me that another young man who I knew in our community is in fact the biological father.
I tried to rectify the situation, but the judge ruled me to be the biological father and denied my request to establish paternity, even after the child's mother initially agreed in court to have DNA testing done.
I am now on the hook for 18 years of child support to support a boy I'm not able to see and who perhaps is not even mine. Moreover, someday I would like to marry and have a family, and I am instead faced with the potential prospect of losing a quarter of my after-tax earnings because I was defrauded.
SB 377 would resolve these kinds of injustices by "invalidat[ing] a voluntary declaration of paternity that is signed by a minor parent if it is not also signed by the parent or guardian of the minor parent." SB 377 would also require that the parent or guardian of the minor parent receive oral and written information relating to the voluntary declaration of paternity.
I wish this legislation had been in place when I was 17--it would have saved me a lot of pain and problems.
Sincerely,
Thomas Rodriguez
Riverside, CA
News From Iran: Islam Is Dogs' Worst Friend
Michael Theodoulou writes in the Daily Mail:
Now, for the first time, Iranian MPs have tabled a motion that criminalises owning dogs in private apartments or exercising them in public places.The bill warns that in addition to posing health hazards, the growing popularity of dog ownership 'poses a cultural problem, a blind imitation of the vulgar Western culture'.
Yes, the "vulgar Western culture" that makes it possible for the Iranians to be more than a bunch of warring goatherds.
The Deluge
This is my busiest month, with an ev psych conference, taxes, my book, my regular deadlines, some radio stuff I'm working on, Literary Orange, LA Times Festival of Books, and spending a good bit of yesterday evening being slowly pecked to death by ducks (aka attending a zoning board meeting about a neighborhood issue).
A whole lot of people have herpes (perhaps one in four, if you believe the stats, and I rarely believe the stats). One of the questions I've got in my "still-unanswered" pile is from a guy who has it. He politely reminded me of this today, and I'm always in favor of the polite reminder. He wants to know how and when to tell he's got it. Since so many of you who comment here have opinions I generally respect, I thought I'd put the question to you. So...please, have at it. So the guy won't have to wait to date until literary search and rescue digs me out (and if only there were such a thing!).
We Need A More Controlled Administration, Thanks
It's a big enough pain in the ass to get the drugs you legitimately need now -- without the administration worrying that somebody might be having a little addictive fun on painkillers, and taking steps to meddle in yet another area. More on that below.
As probably a lot of you know, I take Ritalin, and thank goodness I now have a prescribing doctor who gets me: who gets that I am not selling it on playgrounds but taking it so I can write -- and gives me an ample supply so I don't have to kill a writing day every month to come get more.
The point is to make me productive, yet the last shrink I had wanted to make me come in once a month to see him. Not that he had word one to say to me (in a psychologically helpful sense).
At the prescribing psychiatry appointments, they don't really talk to you about anything -- they just ask you these really stupid standard questions (for prescription of controlled substances), like, "Do you want to fly a plane into the White House?" (The guy I saw before the last shrink used to ask me that, which I thought was hilarious in its specificity, and a dipshit question, because you have to be a pretty dim crazy person to answer in the affirmative.) He knew it was a crazy question, too, because he always rushed through it and almost didn't wait for my answer, but rules are rules are rules.
About the latest in government meddling, Barry Meier and Abby Goodnough write in The New York Times that the administration will seek legislation requiring doctors to undergo training before being permitted to prescribe painkillers like OxyContin:
Proponents of the training argue that it would help doctors better identify patients who would benefit from treatment with long-acting narcotics, and help them unmask patients feigning pain to get drugs they then abuse. Opponents say a training requirement will reduce the number of doctors prescribing pain drugs and hamper patient care.
That's probably what it's about -- reducing the number of drugs prescribing these. Already patients in extreme and prolonged pain have a hard time getting them, which is really sick. Sullum at reason has written about a number of these cases:
Last May a Kentucky physician reported that a former patient, a paraplegic with severe chronic pain, had killed himself. The man's new doctor, alarmed by official warnings about the prescription painkiller OxyContin, had drastically reduced his dose, leaving him in agony.Stinginess with pain medication is not a new phenomenon. For decades pain experts have complained that many doctors are so worried about getting into trouble with state regulators or the Drug Enforcement Administration that they err on the side of letting patients suffer.
This government meddling is precisely the bullshit that prevents me from feeling secure about using my doctor as a doctor, lest I get identified as some sort of druggie, and not just a girl who wants to get her brain to sit down at the computer and pay attention. This guy I have now is pretty great, but he's the third doctor I've had in not a lot of years, and if he goes, I'm worried about having it on my chart that I'm taking something in an off-label way.
I'm thinking that because I was taking Mucinex this past week for a cold and found that pseudoephedrine (in this 12-hour release form) was fantastic for my ADHD. While Ritalin (Methylin or Methylphenidate generic) help me focus, the 120 mg. of pseudoephedrine in the Mucinex-D (combined with guaifenesin, 1200 mg.) gave me really even all-day concentration.
I need to find out if there are longterm side-effects for using pseudoephedrine (for a healthy person like me with a healthy heart), and whether I can find a 12-hour release form of it that doesn't have this other stuff in it (I'm worried I might damage my sinuses or something with longterm use of guaifenesin). I haven't done the research on it yet in any substantive way.
P.S. If anybody here is a researcher who knows anything about ephedrine and/or pseudoephedrine or knows of a solid meta-analysis on them, please let me know. I love that I'm trying to get medical advice from my blog commenters (I mean, you're a smart lot, and I love that about you, but this is a little ridiculous). Thanks, govern-nanny!
Airport Security With A Brain
Via the FT, British Airways chairman Sir Martin Broughton has a hard time abiding the ridiculousness of UK to US-bound flight "security":
Calling for "a risk-based approach to security rather than a one-size-fits-all based approach", in a speech to the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in London, Sir Martin asked: "Is it sensible to run exactly the same security checks on pilots - each and every time they fly - as, for example, a Yemeni student?"...Some would describe this as profiling, "which some people regard as a pejorative term" with "discriminatory overtones", but such concerns were misplaced. "Making everybody suffer inconvenience in the name of uniformity doesn't make any sense at all and reduces the quality of security by dissipating resources."
I'd actually like two different paths for security -- one for people like me who are willing to take the highly unlikely risk of being blown up, and the other for people who'd much rather take a risk with their rights and freedoms.
In A Weenie State Of Mind
That will be the replacement line for "In A New York State Of Mind," after the New York Dept. of Health deems games like Wiffleball activities that pose a "significant risk of injury."
Getting out of bed poses "a significant risk of injury" (compared to staying in bed) but do you spend your days hiding under the covers? And how has that worked out for you so far?
Everything Will Soon Be Illegal
Illegal use of sheets? Yes, a bill in the California legislature demands hotels use fitted sheets to make it easier on maids. Is there anybody out there who still isn't of the mind that we have far too much government?
via @VPostrel
Breaking Bad News
Thoughtful article in The Economist by Sally Williams. An excerpt:
Every year, 1.17m people die in road accidents around the world. As of January 2011, 7,066 soldiers from coalition forces had been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with an estimated 110,000 civilians; in 2007, the last year for which there are full figures, 521,303 people died of cancer in western Europe. Behind all these statistics are families who need to be informed and someone whose job it is to inform them. There is now a widespread belief that the way the news is delivered has a profound effect on the way the dead person is remembered and the way the survivors heal.There are some textbook examples of what not to do. Putting a note through the letterbox; getting the victim's name wrong; using euphemisms such as "lost" or "passed on" (confusing at a time when someone is trying hard not to believe it); and turning up in shorts and flip-flops, like the British diplomats who greeted one woman as she arrived in Bahrain in 2006 after her husband's death in a boat disaster. A vision that has stuck in her mind, rather than anything that was said.
"Sorry, But Your Genes Haven't Been Reading Ms. Or Feminist Blogs"
That was my tweet in response to this tweet from XX Factor from Slate:
@DoubleXMag Young men still expected to be providers http://slate.me/dHKn9L
A follow-up tweet from me:
Likewise, men's genes have remained deaf to feminism's demand that they lust after woman because she looks type to buy a homeless man a sandwich.
Yes, reality bites, all around. Having the attitude that it "shouldn't" won't change that. So, if you're a man, probably a good idea to earn a living, and if you're a woman who wants a man, probably a good idea to go easy on the Doritos and to gussy yourself up before you leave the house.
More People Should Eat Such A "Deadly" Diet
Gary Taubes was told by Dr. Oz that his diet was deadly. Taubes writes:
I do indeed eat three eggs with cheese, bacon and sausage for breakfast every morning, typically a couple of cheeseburgers (no bun) or a roast chicken for lunch, and more often than not, a ribeye or New York steak (grass fed) for dinner, usually in the neighborhood of a pound of meat. I cook with butter and, occasionally, olive oil (the sausages). My snacks run to cheese and almonds. So lots of fat and saturated fat and very little carbohydrates.
Now check out his labs. To "kill" yourself just like Taubes is, and I am (I eat pretty much as he does, save for the almonds), read his book, Why We Get Fat.
Meet President George W. Obama
President Obama was against signing statements (statements bypassing the particular law the president is signing) -- until the pen was in his hand. Outside The Beltway reports that he's signed 17 such statements since he became president in January 2009.
Here's what he told the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage in 2007 about signing statements:
Signing statements have been used by presidents of both parties, dating back to Andrew Jackson. While it is legitimate for a president to issue a signing statement to clarify his understanding of ambiguous provisions of statutes and to explain his view of how he intends to faithfully execute the law, it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability.I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law. The problem with this administration is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation. The fact that President Bush has issued signing statements to challenge over 1100 laws - more than any president in history - is a clear abuse of this prerogative.
New guy pretty much the same as the old guy. A little younger, a little more latte-colored. But, big on the pen.
via Walter Olson
NYPD Arrests A New Yorker For Being A New Yorker
The Constitution is flopping around like a dying goldfish. Yet another incident in the disturbing trend to ignore our rights. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air blogs an incredible incident about a guy being arrested for being a smartass. Video below. Ed writes:
Moral of the story: The NYPD has no sense of humor. After stopping a bicyclist for riding on the sidewalk, a particular sore spot in New York, a passerby starts teasing the cyclist, saying, "You know that's against the law!" The police then come out of their van and demand the identification of the smart-alec, turning a routine stop into a major confrontation that eventually required at least a half-dozen officers to handle. While six of New York City's finest arrest a man for having a big mouth, another man who is obviously either drunk or stoned stumbles out into traffic -- and none of the police officers bother to notice:
Potheads And Hookers
Detroit mayoral candidate and former Kevorkian lawyer Geoffrey Feiger has a proposal for Detroit's comeback -- as the Amsterdam of the Midwest. Carol Cain writes in the Freep:
Could Detroit be the new Amsterdam -- a city where prostitution and marijuana are both legalized to help attract young people and turn the troubled city's prospects around?Why not, barrister and occasional mayoral candidate Geoffrey Fieger said during a taping of "Michigan Matters" on what he would do if he walked in Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's shoes and tried to address the city's woes.
"I could turn it around in five minutes," Fieger said.
"I'd shovel the snow and I'd clean the streets and parks. Then, I'd tell the police department to leave marijuana alone and don't spend one dime trying to enforce marijuana laws. I also would not enforce prostitution laws and I'd make us the new Amsterdam."
"We would attract young people," Fieger said. "You make Detroit a fun city. A place they want to live and they would flock here."
For or against, and why?
via Jay J. Hector
The City That Civilization Passed By
Charlie LeDuff, a former LA pal now living in Michigan goes on a ride-along with a Flint, Michigan cop and reports in The New York Times:
A sign taped to the entrance of police headquarters says it all: "Closed weekends and holidays." Every weekday, the doors are locked at dusk.It's not that the cops here are scared; it's just that they're outmanned, outgunned and flat broke.
..."We ain't cops anymore," Howe says. "We're librarians. We take reports. We don't fight crime."
He guides me through the yellowing jail cells upstairs that had to be closed down recently because of lack of manpower. "If you break into someone's house, we can't hold you," he says with a straight face. "If you've got a weapon or you've murdered somebody, then county will take you. I don't see any light at the end of this tunnel. Only darkness."
We leave headquarters and head out into the night. Howe turns up the heat in his Chevy cruiser and switches on the computer.
...I see that there are more than 12 runs stacked up, including a kidnapping call that is more than six hours old. A home-invader call is two hours old. A "man with a gun" call is 90-minutes old.
"Sometimes, we don't get to a call for two days," he says. Last fall, an elderly couple called after being held up at gunpoint in their driveway. The police arrived on the scene five hours later.
Traffic tickets?
"Don't make me laugh," he says.
via Kate Coe
The Sunny Side Of Racism
That's when racism is painted as a progressive policy. A. Barton Hinckle reports at reason of Somerville Place, a blacks-only dorm floor at USC. Shocking. And I can't understand why racism seems okay to blacks and university administrators as long as they're excluding whites and others. Hinckle writes:
Says USC, "The goals of Somerville Place aim to foster an understanding of and respect for Black culture."...Somerville is not unique. Voluntary racial balkanization has greatly advanced in recent years, and rare is the major institution without a diversity office premised on the idea that people of different races bring with them different traits. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor famously put it, "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Some might say this is far different from the racialism of the Jim Crow South--that Sotomayor spoke of experiences people live as a result of their ethnicity, not traits they are born with. And there is something to this. But it also would imply that, at some point in a happier future, the need for racial head-counting would disappear as people cease to experience disparate treatment. To the contrary: Diversity programs will always be needed, one gathers, even when discrimination no longer exists.
They say Somerville is for students "of African descent." Well, Steven Pinker writes in The Blank Slate
Hmmm...seems, if you go by the book, even whitey can get onto that floor. And what of South African actress Charlize Theron? She is more "of African descent" than a friend of mine who is black like dark chocolate but comes from a family that's long been in the Caribbean. How does one judge who's "African" enough?
Are You Texting To Me?
David Carr writes in The New York Times:
YOU are at a party and the person in front of you is not really listening to you. Yes, she is murmuring occasional assent to your remarks, or nodding at appropriate junctures, but for the most part she is looking beyond you, scanning in search of something or someone more compelling.Here's the funny part: If she is looking over your shoulder at a room full of potentially more interesting people, she is ill-mannered. If, however, she is not looking over your shoulder, but into a smartphone in her hand, she is not only well within modern social norms, but is also a wired, well-put-together person.
Add one more achievement to the digital revolution: It has made it fashionable to be rude.
No, it's made it common to be rude. Because people do this sort of thing doesn't mean you have to accept it. But, if you do accept it, and the more other people accept it, the more the rude will think it's acceptable.
This guy knows how to deal:
In an e-mail later, Mr. De Rosa wrote: "I'm fine with people stepping aside to check something, but when I'm standing in front of someone and in the middle of my conversation they whip out their phone, I'll just stop talking to them and walk away. If they're going to be rude, I'll be rude right back."
It's not rude right back -- same as ducking when somebody tries to punch you isn't rude.
Because your phone rings doesn't mean you have to answer it. In fact, being powerful means not being reachable at all times.
I train people to know that I will not talk on my cell phone unless I'm stuck in traffic and need to let them know I'm late, or something like that, save for the occasional exception. And even then, I never talk in a public place. No stranger should have to have my conversation streamed into their brain.
I think I may have changed my cell phone message from what it was (because I needed to not scare some TV person who needed to reach me), but until that time, it said something like "This phone is rarely answered. Messages are sometimes returned weeks later...."
People who I like enough to spend some quality time with know to email me and and we arrange a time and place to meet and pay real attention to each other. With phones in purses or pockets and off.
The problem is, all these people got all this technology and no set of manners to go with. I'm working on that, too -- a comprehensive manners book for people who couldn't care less about which teaspoon you use while dining with the queen.
P.S. Oh, and as I had to ask one jerkoff today at the No Cell Phones cafe: Turn off the damn click-click-click sound on your phone! I asked politely, but I shouldn't have had to ask at all. (Except that he's from the ME! ME! ME! Generation -- which is actually ageless, in case you were thinking he's a teenager. I think he's about 45. And badly raised.)
If you don't have a copy of my book I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, you can buy one, brand new, discounted to only $11.53 at the above link. (New copies go against my advance, and help me keep writing...and eating.)
Thanks, Tom!
Stop Quoting Bullshit Rape Stats Meant To Demonize Men
On the Match.com entry, where I said that a woman's contention that checking members' names against a sex offender registry will protect women will actually not and will give them a false sense of security, a woman I know through a friend came on and said I knew she'd been raped by a man she met on Match.com.
I didn't know that -- she merely wrote me a vague message on Facebook (the worst way and laziest way to reach me) and when, to be kind, I wrote back to tell her to email me at my personal email address and I'd make some time on the evening of my deadline night to speak to her, I never heard from her -- until two days ago, when I posted the Match.com entry. But, I don't formulate my opinions based on emotion, but reason, and while I think it's horrible that she was raped, I'm not going to advocate for a Match.com to behave in a way that will only make it very expensive for people to join while giving women a false sense of security.
Moreover, both of these women knew that Match.com does exactly one check -- to make sure your credit card goes through -- and chose to date people from the service anyway.
As I wrote in the comments on the entry, I'm no less hard on myself in terms of the need to take personal responsibility and chiding myself for my failure to take it a few years back in New York:
I was attacked by a guy on the street in New York, and while you think my response above is "cold" per your particular situation, I approached what happened to me with a similar attitude.I was attacked walking in my old neighborhood after coming back from California. I used to only walk down Greenwich at night if the UPS loading docks were still open. They weren't but I broke my old rule. Should I have been attacked? No, nobody has a right to do that to you. But, I needed to be prudent, and I wasn't.
I continued:
As for background checks, I could establish a credible fake identity in probably an hour. It might cost me $150 at Macarthur Park for a new driver's license and maybe a few more bucks for the fake social security number. Anybody who thinks they are protected from a determined predator by this has another thing coming.
And I reiterated my thoughts:
I took a number of risks when I was still dating, like letting near strangers into my home, but I was well-aware that they were risks, and I had nobody to blame but myself if they didn't pan out well. I feel strongly that this personal responsibility approach, not the idea that somebody else will protect you with a background check on somebody (that somebody can easily get around by borrowing somebody else's ID or buying a stolen ID), is the way to be the safest...if that's what you desire. Some people find risk-taking exciting and knowingly choose to take risks. That's their prerogative. Those who are not willing to suffer the potential consequences should not date off the Internet, meet strangers in bars, or allow somebody into their home until they have had a great deal of experience with them in public, and otherwise take precautions.
But, the point of this blog item is my disgust at yet another person quoting the bullshit rape stats in the comments:
And remember, 1 in 3 women has been a victim of sexual assault.
My response:
Please, please, stop quoting bullshit rape stats that come from radical feminists and not unbiased researchers seeking the truth.This woman is arguing that I am terrible for telling the truth -- that background checks will protect you from rapists. I got fired from a paper for telling the truth in the past -- about these crap stats. The editor who fired me just left, so I'm hoping I can get back in. Here's an excerpt from the column I got fired for:
Here you are, parroting this outrageous man-bashing propaganda -- "one in four women reports having been raped or molested during childhood" -- maybe because you heard it repeated so often you assumed it was fact. This figure is a common misquote of a survey by radical feminist sociology professor Diana Russell. Although Russell presents herself as a truth-seeking social scientist, her work reflects a substantial bias against men, as evidenced by her claim, based on one of her studies, that "a considerable amount of marital sex is probably closer to the rape end of the continuum."The actual figure from Russell's survey was an unbelievable one in 2.6 women sexually abused before the age of 18 -- a figure she arrived at with substandard sampling techniques and what UC Berkeley professor Neil Gilbert, in his book Welfare Justice, calls "research that lumps together relatively harmless behavior such as attempted petting with the traumatic experience of child rape." For example, one of Russell's questions asked, "Did anyone ever try or succeed in touching your breasts or genitals against your wishes before you turned 14?" Well, if you put it that way, even I was a victim of child sexual abuse: It was sixth grade, we were playing spin the bottle in somebody's basement, and the boy who kissed me tried to feel me up.
Should we really count a quick boob grab I got from some sixth-grader the same as the experience of some other 12-year-old girl who was repeatedly forced to have sex with her uncle? We should if we're looking to criminalize being male -- and never mind if that poisons relations between women and men, dilutes funding and attention to real victims, and leads to prejudicial policies like British Airways' that no unaccompanied minor can sit next to a man. (Which -- horrors! -- means some unaccompanied brat is more likely to be seated next to me!)
Women best protect themselves by appraising men as individuals, based on evidence, not by leaping to the assumption that "stepdad" equals sex predator. In other words, my advice to "Uneasy" stands. My advice to you? Pick up Christina Hoff Sommers' Who Stole Feminism? to get a better idea of the damage done by radical feminist activism tarted up as serious science. Contrary to what the likes of Diana Russell would have you believe, you should come to the conclusion that the answer to "Hey, Dad, how'd you meet Mom?" probably isn't "While raping her at knifepoint."
French School Lunches: Vive La Difference
There's just a world of difference between the French school lunch -- and the French way of eating -- and ours. The French make some serious economic mistakes, but they sure have food (and meals) right in a way we don't even come close to. Here's the video.
Thanks, Eric.
When They Leave The Tofu Out Of The Tofurkey
Hilariously, via Jay J. Hector, a vegan magazine is illustrated with shots of meat -- with the bones Photoshopped out so they can pretend it's that edible turd with meat names stuff vegans eat.
"When A Man Owns A Woman..."
It's the Islamic twist on the Western song, "When A Man Loves A Woman..." Girls are sold into sex slavery in exchange for sheep:
Just wondering...where are all the protesters?
And for those of you who doubt that a woman is considered worth half a man in Islam, here's a link. Mohammed's hatred of women here.
Life Is Not Without Risk, And Neither Is Life.com
A woman is suing Match.com, writes Alexandra Zavis in the LA Times, because she was sexually assaulted by a guy she met on the site.
She's asking that the site start screening members to see if they're sexual predators -- which would likely raise the price of joining considerably...as well as giving members a false sense of security.
What are they going to do, run extensive psychological profiles (which sociopaths can likely game), or criminal background checks? What if the person has yet to be arrested for any sort of crime?
An excerpt from the piece:
Attorney Mark L. Webb, who represents the woman identified in the lawsuit only as Jane Doe, said he will ask a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge for a temporary injunction barring the site from signing up more members until his client's demands are met....Webb described his client as an Ivy League graduate who works in film and television. He said she met her alleged assailant last year at Urth Cafe in West Hollywood. He seemed charming and she agreed to see him again. After the second date, however, he allegedly followed her home and forced himself on her, Webb said.
"This horrific ordeal completely blindsided me because I had considered myself savvy about online dating safety," the woman said in a statement released through her attorney last week. "Things quickly turned into a nightmare, beyond my control."
After the man left, the woman went online and learned that he had been convicted of several counts of sexual battery. Charges are pending in the Match.com case, Webb said.
The attorney said his client wants Match.com to check members' names against public sex offender registries. "It's not a guarantee," he said. "But don't you think something is better than nothing?"
As I said above, I think it's a guarantee of a false sense of security (for many people).
There are people out there without a lot of street smarts. Those people should avoid online dating. (Some people think they have street smarts. Who wants to think of him or herself as lacking them?) And frankly, even people with street smarts will sometimes pick the wrong partner. That's the breaks. Life is not without risk. If you take the risk and ends badly, you stick that on you, not the company and everyone else.
Celebrate Staying Married Instead Of Getting Married?
Here's an idea: Instead of having some big party for your wedding, get married relatively privately and wait five years and celebrate five years of staying married. (Your friends will feel that much more secure that you'll be sharing that blender, not fighting over who gets to keep it in the divorce.) And, while wedding presents are supposed to help a couple with no appliances or anything start a life together, that applied more when people got married at 19, not 32.)
Of course, this is easy for me to say as somebody who has never wanted to get married, but what do the rest of you think?
P.S. I hate weddings and I especially hate big spendy weddings. The most moving wedding I've ever been to was a small one in a close friend's wooded backyard in the mountains of upstate New York, followed by a BBQ in the front yard, accompanied musically by another friend's band. Varmints were invited. (Dogs, raccoons, and babies.)
A Child Is Not A Ficus Tree You Give To The Neighbors
Robert Franklin writes at Fathers & Families of one of the most amazingly egregious egregious cases of a father being denied custody or even visitation of his own child. The wife and mother who tried to murder him? She gets to visit the kid regularly:
This may be the single most outrageous case I've come across. I first wrote about Peter Spitz last December here. He's the Colorado man whose wife Teresa got up in the wee hours of one morning in 2004, bundled up their young son and took him to a neighbor's. She then returned to her house, put a pillow over her sleeping husband's head and shot him with a .38. But he wasn't dead, so she shot him two more times. Then she murdered his mother who lived with them.Despite all that, Peter lived. He's permanently blinded and has lost his sense of smell.
Peter is an ex-marine and an all around stand-up guy. So when Teresa was tried for murdering his mother and attempting to murder him, he testified on her behalf. He thought she was insane and said so under oath. She was acquitted of the charges by reason of insanity.
That was less than seven years ago and the doctors in the psychiatric facility to which she was committed have decided that Teresa is no longer insane. By itself, that's a trifle odd because apparently they don't agree on her diagnosis or even if her mental condition rendered her incapable of appreciating the wrongness of her deeds. Read the update here (Westwood.com, 4/4/11).
It's also odd because a few years ago Teresa may have sent a letter to a friend promising to "finish the job" when she was released. The letter can't be found, but a person who once had the letter claims that it said "she wants Peter dead, simple as that."
Given that, Spitz is none too enthusiastic about her release, but released she will shortly be. That will proceed gradually through a series of unsupervised trips away from the psychiatric facility leading eventually to "community placement."
In fact, that's already begun, which brings up the part of the story that's more outrageous than the first part. Teresa, you see, has more contact with their son than Peter does. Yes, the woman who tried to murder his father, did murder his grandmother and considered drowning the child in the bathtub gets to visit with him regularly.
The man who barely escaped death, who managed to call 911 on his own behalf and who stood up in court, in the darkness of his blind world to testify for the woman who tried to take his life, is being denied all access to his son.
Why? Well, it seems that while Peter was convalescing from his wounds, the court appointed a couple to be the child's guardians. As I said in my previous piece, amazing as it may seem, they still have custody of the boy and Peter isn't allowed to see him.
Filthy Sucre: Taubes On Lustig On Sugar
Gary Taubes analyzes the science behind Dr. Robert Lustig's video, "The Bitter Truth," I've blogged about many times before, about how sugar appears to be poison for the human body. An excerpt from Taubes New York Times Magazine piece, "Is Sugar Toxic?":
Lustig's argument, however, is not about the consumption of empty calories -- and biochemists have made the same case previously, though not so publicly. It is that sugar has unique characteristics, specifically in the way the human body metabolizes the fructose in it, that may make it singularly harmful, at least if consumed in sufficient quantities.The phrase Lustig uses when he describes this concept is "isocaloric but not isometabolic." This means we can eat 100 calories of glucose (from a potato or bread or other starch) or 100 calories of sugar (half glucose and half fructose), and they will be metabolized differently and have a different effect on the body. The calories are the same, but the metabolic consequences are quite different.
The fructose component of sugar and H.F.C.S. is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose). And if you take that sugar in liquid form -- soda or fruit juices -- the fructose and glucose will hit the liver more quickly than if you consume them, say, in an apple (or several apples, to get what researchers would call the equivalent dose of sugar). The speed with which the liver has to do its work will also affect how it metabolizes the fructose and glucose.
In animals, or at least in laboratory rats and mice, it's clear that if the fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat. This apparently induces a condition known as insulin resistance, which is now considered the fundamental problem in obesity, and the underlying defect in heart disease and in the type of diabetes, type 2, that is common to obese and overweight individuals. It might also be the underlying defect in many cancers.
If what happens in laboratory rodents also happens in humans, and if we are eating enough sugar to make it happen, then we are in trouble.
Don't miss the insulin/cancer bit at the end.
I highly recommend Taubes' book, Why We Get Fat?, for anyone who wants to know the actual science of how to lose weight (as opposed to the "science" pushed by the government and the AMA that's been making America obese).
Dipshit Companies That Stop Just Short Of Including Threats Of Mutilation And Death In Their Emails
I'm talking about the disclosure statements at the bottom that tell you you'll be prosecuted, persecuted, and have your toenails plucked off with a needle-nosed pliers if you forward the email to anyone.
Yeah, as you suspected, not worth the paper you're asked to please not print them on.
How Having An Adorably Dressed Baby Helps Me Stay Afloat
Thanks to all who've bought stuff through my Amazon links. Here was a particularly cute thing I saw in my reports -- Frankenstein Franky Good Looks Monster Baby Creeper Romper
If you go to Amy's Mall and just click "powered by Amazon" (in the top left corner), you can search for whatever item you want, and if you buy something (or somethings), I get a kickback (usually 6.5 percent, or 7 percent, if people buy a lot of things that month), which I really appreciate and which helps me stay afloat in these tough times for newspapers and publishing.
Dr. Barb Oakley Speaks At CFI/West, Sunday, April 17
Dr. Barbara Oakley is speaking on Pathological Altruism and her great new book, "Cold-Blooded Kindness" at Center For Inquiry Los Angeles on Sunday, April 17, 11 am (4:30 pm at CFI/Costa Mesa), and I am introducing in LA.
She's an amazing speaker and this is a fascinating topic -- on how people can play on your best qualities (like compassion) to get you to do things you'd otherwise never do.
From the posting at CFI:
Pathological Altruism - When Does Caring Go Too Far?Are some people predisposed to kindness - to the point of being destructive to themselves and others? How much of our help is fulfilling our own needs, including those of our hidden passions? Can neuroscience help us understand how we can keep from being hurt while retaining and building our best traits?
Dr. Barbara Oakley, author of the best-selling Evil Genes and who previously spoke at CFI-L.A., takes the audience on a spellbinding voyage of personal discovery through the lens of a murder case in her new book, Cold-Blooded Kindness. Harvard's E.O. Wilson has called her research "wonderful!", while National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates has called her writing "riveting and disturbing." Oakley will bring extraordinary insight to our deepest questions. Is kindness always the right answer? Is kindness always what it seems?
A professor of engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, Oakley also is the editor of the forthcoming academic book, Pathological Altruism. She is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science as well as the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineers, and a recent Vice President of the IEEE-Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society - the world's largest bioengineering organization. Oakley holds a doctorate in the integrative discipline of systems engineering, and her research highlights how neuroscience is informing our understanding of complex societal issues. Her colorful background includes stints in the U.S. Army, working experience in China, Russia, Germany, Antarctica, and New Zealand, and extensive travels throughout Europe, Asia, and the Balkans.
Copies of Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts
will be available for sale in the book store and for signing by the author.
Morons At The Polls
It can be the only explanation for how California is broke and yet voters keep giving the thumbs up to boondoggles costing the state billions like the "high speed" train from LA to SF...when you can fly to SF for $59 each way on Southwest.
LZ Granderson has a proposal on CNN -- don't let ignorant people vote:
So how do we weed out ignorant voters without harking back to the days of poll taxes and Jim Crow? I would start by making the U.S. Naturalization Test -- given to immigrants who want to become citizens -- part of the voter registration process.If knowing the number of years a senator is elected to serve is required of anyone who wants to become a U.S. citizen, is it too much to expect that information to be common knowledge for those of us who already are? This has nothing to do with who a person is or how they may vote but everything to do with a person voting as an informed citizen, not a sound bite regurgitator. Having a grasp of current events would be ideal, but if we could at least raise the required investment to engage in the political system, perhaps the tone of the rhetoric surrounding it can be elevated as well.
We wouldn't issue a driver's license to someone unable to pass the written test, knowing the potential damage that person could do behind the wheel. Why do we look at voting differently?
While the Constitution lists the reasons why a citizen cannot be denied the right to vote, it does not explicitly say it is a federal right. This is why felon disenfranchisement and mental competency laws, as they pertain to voting, vary from state to state.
I'm not suggesting we kick people out of the political process, only that we require them to have an agreed upon understanding of what that process is. If people are too busy to read up on the government, the Department of Homeland Security is not going to escort them out of the country -- or take away away their citizenship. At any point in which ignorant voters are fed up with being on the outside looking in, they can go to the post office, pick up a brochure with all of the questions and answers in it, and study free of charge.
At Least He Apologized!
Jihadist says he's sorry for trying to blow up D.C. Metro. (Just a guess, but he's probably sorrier that he's such a dipshit that he failed.)
"If You Get Shot At, You Can Have A Shot"
That, writes Glenn Reynolds in the WSJ, is the thinking behind Alaska State Rep and Vietnam vet Bob Lynn's effort to establish a drinking age of 18 for active-duty service members:
Defenders of the status quo claim that highway deaths have fallen since the drinking age was raised to 21 from 18, but those claims obscure the fact that this decline merely continued a trend that was already present before the drinking age changed--and one that involved every age group, not merely those 18-21. Research by economist Jeffrey A. Miron and lawyer Elina Tetelbaum indicates that a drinking age of 21 doesn't save lives but does promote binge drinking and contempt for the law.Safety is the excuse, but what is really going on here is something more like prohibition. A nation that cares about freedom--and that has already learned that prohibition was a failure--should know better. As Atlantic Monthly columnist Megan McArdle writes, "A drinking age of 21 is an embarrassment to a supposedly liberty-loving nation. If you are old enough to enlist, and old enough to vote, you are old enough to swill cheap beer in the company of your peers."
Interesting Theory On The Pantybomber
Lisa Simeone sent me a Wikipedia link and emailed this:
I believe the Crotch Bomber was also a false flag operation. Our security overlords will do anything to manufacture a state of fear so they can push through whatever practices they like, with the knowledge that the sheeple and the media will fall right into line. They have so far. Just wait until the next supposed plot is supposedly thwarted. Most of the public would bend over and spread 'em without a second thought. Al Qaeda must be laughing their asses off.
From Wikipedia, about the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, "...a terrorist plot to detonate liquid explosives carried on board at least 10 airliners travelling from the United Kingdom to the United States and Canada ... discovered and foiled by British police before it could be carried out and, as a result, unprecedented security measures were immediately put in place":
. . . On 18 September, retired Lieutenant-Colonel Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer with decades of anti-terror and explosives experience, declared the plot to be "fiction." He said the explosives in question could not possibly have been produced on the plane. "So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success, not deterrence by failure," Wylde stated. He further suggested that the plot was an invention of the UK security services in order to justify wide-ranging new security measures that threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the Human Rights Act of 1998.[62] Due to the mountain of evidence, including forensic material, he expected the men to face "a very long trial of (between) five and eight months."[63]
I'm highly skeptical about these attempts being government-sponsored plots, but I do think there's a push to get us used to our rights being disappeared "in the name of security."
Why Must We Be Given Orders?
I got an invite to a film and panel discussion:
Bag It - "Is Los Angeles ready for a ban on plastic bags?"
Grrr.
People can suggest stores stop giving out plastic bags or charge for plastic bags, and feel free to boycott stores that use plastic bags. But, why must they order that no store use plastic bags? Pretty soon, we'll have so many laws that very little beyond continuing to maintain a pulse will be legal.
By the way, I used reusable bags back when almost nobody did -- back when people would look at my bags and look at me like I was trying to steal something. These days, if I can, I get supermarket bags (ideally, paper ones, but plastic if they have no paper) because I use them to put out bottles for the homeless.
Yes, boohoo, a tree branch had to be chipped so the lady who collects cans from our alley (probably to feed herself and her family) would have to stick her hand in one less trashcan. Thanks, but I'll take human dignity over "I think I shall never see...a poem as lovely as yet another piece of nanny state legislation."
"I Am Man-Pussy, Hear Me Apologize"
A vomitus of new-age apology for being male. So ridiculous, creepy and awful that it's both ridiculous, creepy and awful and utterly, pathetically hilarious:
Newsflash: Men have been murdered, circumcised, and abused throughout history. (Most recently, by appearing in this video deballing.)
Policing Lunch
Students at a Chicago school are no longer allowed to bring lunch from home -- lest they bring something unhealthy. Crazy.
What's even crazier about all these "healthy" lunch programs they're talking about in schools and elsewhere is that they aren't healthy at all -- not according to scientific evidence. Just according to the scientific hearsay that has people drinking watery crap like skim milk, avoiding salt and saturated fat, and eating "whole grains," as if they're actually healthy for you. As regular readers here have seen, they're anything but. A few links from Heartscan blog about those so-called healthy whole grains, from cardiologist Dr. William Davis: This. This. This. This. This. This. This.
Liz Godwin writes on Yahoo about the school lunch thing:
Students who attend Chicago's Little Village Academy public school get nothing but nutritional tough love during their lunch period each day. The students can either eat the cafeteria food--or go hungry. Only students with allergies are allowed to bring a homemade lunch to school, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Can you be allergic to having the authorities tell you what to do -- without limits?
Godwin continues:
"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," principal Elsa Carmona told the paper of the years-old policy. "It's about ... the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke."But students said they would rather bring their own lunch to school in the time-honored tradition of the brown paper bag. "They're afraid that we'll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won't be as good as what they give us at school," student Yesenia Gutierrez told the paper. "It's really lame."
From the Chi Trib, Monica Eng and Joel Hood write:
At Claremont Academy Elementary School on the South Side, officials allow packed lunches but confiscate any snacks loaded with sugar or salt. (They often are returned after school.) Principal Rebecca Stinson said that though students may not like it, she has yet to hear a parent complain."The kids may have money or earn money and (buy junk food) without their parents' knowledge," Stinson said, adding that most parents expect that the school will look out for their children.
Ah, once again, the assumption that salt is unhealthy. That's never really been proved.
As for the the notion that most parents expect that the school will look out for their children, they expect them to look out for their education -- not turn school into a replica of a heavily policed work camp.
P.S. The reporters who wrote these pieces were apparently trained to leave out the parts everyone's most curious about -- exactly what food they're serving in the cafeteria. Meanwhile, the cafeteria food they show in the Chi Trib story looks like throwup on a tray with a side of milk.
Thanks, L.!
The Keynes To Saving The U.S. Economy
Via Tim Cavanaugh at reason. Holey hilarious:
Getting Us Ready For The Police State
...One Little League volunteer at a time.
Want to volunteer to coach Little League in Tenafly, NJ? It'll be as if you were caught robbing a liquor store. Yes, you're going to be fingerprinted, Bub. In fact, everybody from coaches to t-shirt vendors will. QPDSteve pointed out this link to a link by my friend Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Kids, who notes the danger with this fingerprinting business -- even if you do have "nothing to hide":
It changes the basic fabric of society from one of trust to distrust. It's the difference between the United States and the former Soviet Union. It makes us think we should look askance at all adults who love children. In fact, just typing that sentence made me realize how far society has already changed. It felt a little weird to write about people who "love children," because immediately it brought to mind pedophiles.That's a perverted way to think, and yet that's what's being encouraged.
Once again, what's unspoken here is that it's about demonizing men. If you're male, we'll assume you're a pedophile and treat you like a criminal. Never mind probable cause. Being a male is enough. To borrow from Lenore: "And that's a perverted way to think, and yet that's what's being encouraged."
There Are Disadvantages And Then There Are Disadvantages
I saw a tweet by @DrEades:
An example of why I get annoyed when people complain they have no opportunity because of an underprivileged youth.
A link to the story.
The Terrible Cost Of Unnecessary Surgical Procedures On Boys
I don't understand why we consider circumcision of girls barbaric, yet are so automatic about circumcising boys. There's the African AIDS study argument -- that circumcision prevents AIDS. Sure it does -- in that population. But, in ours, we can educate kids on wearing condoms -- and do -- and AIDS is really not a threat to the heterosexual and non-drug-using population.
Here's a press release I got this morning:
Native American boy bleeds to deathThe lawsuit involving a South Dakota Native American infant, Eric Dickson Keefe, from the Rosebud Indian Reservation, who bled to death from a circumcision in 2008, was settled this week for $230,000. The case involved an Indian Health Service doctor who circumcised the child at the end of the working day allowing for no period of post-surgical observation. Testimony showed the mother faced a long drive home on rural roads with other children in her care.
"This was sheer negligence and an ethical failure to consider the risk," says George C. Denniston, MD, MPH, President of Doctors Opposing Circumcision, a physicians' group based in Seattle, Washington, which assisted with the case. "Circumcision is unnecessary surgery, which the parents are never told holds a risk of death for their child."
Keefe bled to death during the night from his open circumcision wound in June, 2008. Medical professionals say that the loss of only two and one-half ounces of blood can cause the death of even a large eight-pound infant. "That amount of blood, just a few drops per hour, was easily hidden in the super-absorbent disposable diaper baby Keefe was diapered with." notes Denniston, "Parents are never told about that risk."
Doctors Opposing Circumcision has provided expert advice for numerous circumcision death cases. "Exsanguination, or bleeding to death, is hard to detect," says Denniston, "since the child slips away quietly, and no one wants to disturb what appears to be a sleeping child."
Death from circumcision is relatively rare, although a recent study* estimates that around 117 children in the United States die each year from circumcision. "These are entirely avoidable deaths," says Denniston, "caused by a pointless surgery that the child would never choose for himself."
*Bollinger, D. Lost Boys: An Estimate of U.S. Circumcision-Related Infant Deaths. Thymos: J Boyhood Studies, 2010;4(1), 78-90.
As I've said before, we have absolutely no right to perform medically unnecessary surgical procedures on a child -- procedures people justify for bogus medical reasons, but that are really about mutilating a child in the name of religion or custom.
A newborn child cannot consent or refuse consent, and we don't give babies nose jobs or tattoos, and we shouldn't be cutting off parts of their body unless they will die or suffer serious health consequences if we don't. (And maybe having problems with phimosis doesn't count. If there is such a problem, you deal with it then.)
Green Day
View from a stoplight, downtown Los Angeles, near the wholesale produce market, on the way to a friend's dinner party to celebrate publication of Nancy Rommelmann's amazingly beautiful and unblinking gem of a novel, The Bad Mother.
A Muslim Makes Excuses For Why No Muslims Speak Out
Yesterday, a student at UC Irvine who works for the food service identified himself as Muslim (he overheard a guy talking to me about Islam) and I asked him the question: Why is it only people like me -- American non-Muslims -- who speak out against things like the stoning of women for adultery and the hanging of two gay teen boys in Iran?
He told me that it's because people will have their relatives back in the old country slaughtered. (Which, on one end, pretty much confirms what I've been saying about the primitive evil that is Islam.) But, it just doesn't pass the smell test. Come on...do we really believe this is why almost no Muslims (save for ex-Muslims Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish) speak out against stuff like this -- and jihad attacks, and all the rest? (Not even anonymously, on my blog and elsewhere?)
Oh yeah -- was poor dead Theo Van Gogh's problem in speaking out against Islam some Muslim relative back in Pakistan? In Theodore Dalrymple's words:
Like most people in Western democracies, Van Gogh, by all accounts a brash and combative man, took his freedom of expression for granted. Most of us most of the time do not reflect much on the fact that such freedom is an historical exception rather than an historical rule, a reversible achievement rather than a free gift of God. There are still many who would rather kill than brook any contradiction of their opinions or beliefs, even while they live in the most tolerant of societies.
Being Poor Means Having Little Money, Not Necessarily Being Short On Brains
But, taking up the poor people are morons who can't figure out a cell phone plan for themselves argument is lefty activist Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice. Her more sensible self-proclaimed lefty friend, David Honig, blogs at the Huff Po about how dim and creepily paternalistic her view is:
Do you buy food? How would you like it if the Department of Agriculture required you to buy bean curd and steak, cheese wiz and caviar, as well as liquor and green tea so you wouldn't be denied the "full grocery experience?"...Now consider this:
Do you have a cell phone? How would you like it if the FCC required you to pay an extra $20 a month to get movie downloads, whether you want them not, or to allow your kids to access violent video games or adult content, whether you want them to or not, just so everyone would get what the government considers to be "the full Internet experience?" What if you're low income, and you'd rather spend that $20 on books? Or warm clothes? Or food?
My friend Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice doesn't want low income people to have that choice. She says it's "un-American to give low-income communities substandard Internet service that creates barriers to economic opportunity and democratic engagement."
Turns out PCS Mobile offers a cell phone plan with no video streaming ($40 for Plan A), a plan with metered multi-media streaming ($50 for Plan B), and for $60 (Plan C), unlimited video streaming. Honig continues:
Cyril is making a common mistake among us lefties when it comes to low income people -- she is being paternalistic. Those poor poor people. They can't think for themselves, so the government has to make decisions for them. In this case, Cyril argues, the FCC should outlaw Plan A (and maybe Plan B) and require every carrier to offer only full-menu service like Plan C. All this in the name of "net neutrality."If I've learned anything from my 45 years working with low income folks, it's this: they're intelligent and they're resourceful. They have to be in order to survive. They don't appreciate condescension or sloganeering in their name. And they have sense enough to know whether they'd rather use an extra $20 a month for movie downloads or for movie tickets -- and would rather get discounts for services they do not want or need.
Who's The Badass?
@JonHenke tweeted and answered that question: "The guy who cleans the cobra pit."
There's No Choice If You Don't Actually Let People Choose
City Of Boston Mayor Nanny Tom Menino signed an order on Thursday banning the sale, promotion, and advertising of sugary drinks on government-owned property. Amanda Carey quotes Menino on The Daily Caller:
"I want to create a civic environment that makes the healthier choice the easier choice in people's lives, whether it's schools, worksites, or other places in the community," Menino said in a statement after the ban was announced.
Again, as my blog item headline says, there's no "choice" if you don't actually let people choose. Furthermore, I'd be willing to bet money this guy's the kind of dimbo who thinks fruit juice is a healthy choice when, the truth is, if you're going to have a bottle of apple juice, you may as well have a Coke.
Even The Government's Determined To Promote "Most Men Are Abusers" Myth
Christina Hoff Sommers writes in a Feb 4 piece in USA Today:
"The facts are clear," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "Intimate partner homicide is the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 15 to 45."That's a horrifying statistic, and it would be a shocking reflection of the state of the black family, and American society generally, if it were true. But it isn't true.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Justice Department's own Bureau of Justice Statistics, the leading causes of death for African-American women between the ages 15-45 are cancer, heart disease, unintentional injuries such as car accidents, and HIV disease. Homicide comes in fifth -- and includes murders by strangers. In 2006 (the latest year for which full statistics are available), several hundred African-American women died from intimate partner homicide -- each one a tragedy and an outrage, but far fewer than the approximately 6,800 women who died of the other leading causes.
Yet Holder's patently false assertion has remained on the Justice Department website for more than a year.
How is that possible? It is possible because false claims about male domestic violence are ubiquitous and immune to refutation.
...Misinformation leads to misdirected policies that fail to target the true causes of violence. Worse, those who promulgate false statistics about domestic violence, however well-meaning, promote prejudice. Most of the exaggerated claims implicate the average male in a social atrocity. Why do that? Anti-male misandry, like anti-female misogyny, is unjust and dangerous. Recall what happened at Duke University a few years ago when many seemingly fair-minded students and faculty stood by and said nothing while three innocent young men on the Duke Lacrosse team were subjected to the horrors of a modern-day witch hunt.
Eugene Volokh fact-checks the stats here, and confirms. Carey Roberts, in ifeminists (the source for this blog items) also confirms them.
I'm going to be speaking in Colorado in May, and the money from the event is going to a domestic violence charity, and I told the paper that's bringing me in that it's essential to me that they don't just help women but all victims of domestic violence, including men -- whose victimization is too often laughed off or ignored, and who are often not helped with the refuges or other support women get.
Too Big To Arrest
Walter Moore, whom I voted for for mayor (against the ludicrously awful Tony The Teeth who most of the dim voters went for) blogs about city government justice -- how two building inspectors who took bribes to fast-track permits got jail time, and yet the mayor and four city council members who "receive 'gifts' from companies to who which they give fee waivers, subsidies, bonds, etc., merely have to pay minor fines":
Why are there no celebrity mugshots of Antonio Villagraigosa, Eric Garcetti, Jose Huizar, Tony Cardenas, and Herb Wesson? Anti-corruption laws should be enforced against those at the top, not just those at the bottom. Arrest the Ticketgate Five.
Links to the stories about the above sleazies are live at Walter's blog item. Does this go on where you live as well? And if so, is there any indication the voters care?
Feminists Looking To Big Government To Act All Big Daddy
Charges of sexual harassment underly a Title IX complaint by Yale students and alumni. In reviewing the charges, Feminist civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer observes in The Atlantic of how feminism -- "if feminism includes independence, liberty, and power for women" -- has been replaced by femininity -- "the assumption that women are incapable of fending for themselves in the marketplace of epithets or ideas, the belief that women are rendered helpless by misogynist speech and the sexist tantrums of their male peers":
The Yale group's confidential Title IX complaint to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reportedly includes testimony about sexual assaults, but the hostile-environment charge against the university rests as well on a litany of complaints about offensive exercises of First Amendment freedoms. A December 2010 draft complaint letter, obtained by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), focuses on these "incidents": In 2006, a group of frat boys chant "No means yes, yes means anal" outside the Yale Women's Center. In 2010, a group of fraternity pledges repeat this obnoxious chant outside a first-year women's dorm. In 2008, pledges surround the Women's Center holding signs saying, "We love Yale sluts." In 2009, Yale students publish a report listing the names and addresses of first-year women and estimating the number of beers "it would take to have sex with them."...The only incident of alleged harassment cited in the draft complaint that does not involve pure speech is an act of vandalism. In 2004 and 2005, fraternity brothers stole T-shirts featuring the stories of "rape survivors" from a Take Back the Night project and photographed pledges wearing the T-shirts. But, perversely, this theft to which free speech is irrelevant provokes the only expression of concern for it: "To steal these T-shirts is akin to stealing the voices of the victims," the draft complaint melodramatically asserts -- as if the victims were prevented from repeating and reclaiming their stories. If the T-shirt theft was intended to censor women, its success depended on their willingness to respond by censoring themselves.
What accounts for such feminine timidity, this instinctive unwillingness or inability to talk or taunt back, without seeking the protection of university or government bureaucrats? Talking is apparently beside the point. "I just want to be able to walk back to my dorm at night without hearing all this crazy stuff from these guys," one student complains. I sympathize (I was a young woman once, too), but "hearing crazy stuff" from people in public is part of life in a free society, a society in which you enjoy equal rights to say crazy stuff.
Ad-Horrible
They're, at the same time, adorable and horrible. I can't quite land on either one. Yes, I'm talking about eyelashes for your car.
Of course, they work better on your Mini Cooper than on your Ford 300 Miles Of Alaskan Tundra On Wheels. Or...do they?
On one hand, these are really stupid, and on the other, anything to make people smile in traffic so they won't go all "Fuck you, bitch, I'm running you off the road to get to work 30 seconds faster," is a really great addition to modern society.
No Humor Allowed In The New Police State
During the Valentine's Day weekend, Baul, a former traveling clown and community radio DJ, was traveling through the Philadelphia International Airport with a basket of confetti-filled eggs.That's when Baul says an inquiring TSA agent stopped her in her tracks.
"She wasn't investigating my eggs, I had already been through the x-ray machine (with no problems)," said Baul. "She said, 'What are those?' and I said, 'Well, they're eggs filled with confetti'."
Baul says that she then gave the agent a closer look at one of the eggs, by breaking it over the woman's head.
"I put it over her head," said Baul. "I did't think anything of it."
The TSA agent was not amused, and soon the Bunny Lady found herself in handcuffs and being hauled off to the airport's jail for three hours. She now faces a misdemeanor harassment charge.
via Lisa Simeone
It's Sooo Tough To Make It On $174,000 A Year!
Democratic Congresswoman Linda Sanchez says the government shutdown will just squeeze her to death financially. From the Daily Caller, Jeff Poor (no kidding!) blogs:
In an appearance on MSNBC Thursday, Democratic California Rep. Linda Sánchez talked about the downsides of a federal government shutdown. Some lawmakers, to the seriousness of the issue, have said they would forgo their paychecks in the event of that shutdown. Sanchez explained she just can't afford to go along with that idea."I have to tell you that I live paycheck-to-paycheck, like most Americans," Sánchez said. "I'm still paying off my student loans. I have a 2-year-old son who I have to support, and I have to maintain residences on both coasts. It's very difficult for me to say, 'Hey, I can give up my paycheck,' because the reality is, I have financial obligations that I have to meet on a month-to-month basis that doesn't make it possible for me."
Members of Congress receive an annual salary of $174,000, whereas the median household income for American is a little over $46,000 annually. Nonetheless, Sánchez said it is really tough for her to stretch her paycheck that covers everything.
Is it any wonder we have wild fiscal irresponsibility in the House and Senate? You're a Congresswoman and you can't manage to make ends meet on nearly $200K. Hoo frigging boo.
Welcome To The Police State. Have Some Cheap Wine.
Jim Harper blogs at Cato about the latest in the now-constant degradation of the right to privacy, free assembly, and to not be searched without probable cause.
Most shockingly, San Francisco's "Entertainment Commission" is considering some chilling rules for any gathering of 100 people or more:
3. All occupants of the premises shall be ID Scanned (including patrons, promoters, and performers, etc.). ID scanning data shall be maintained on a data storage system for no less than 15 days and shall be made available to local law enforcement upon request.4. High visibility cameras shall be located at each entrance and exit point of the premises. Said cameras shall maintain a recorded data base for no less than fifteen (15 days) and made available to local law enforcement upon request.
We're no longer citizens -- we're just data units in the suspect pool.
Dennis Miller: "Tired Of Treating Islam Like Fabergé Eggs"
For Or Against France's Burka Ban?
And why? Read Timothy Garton Ash's op-ed in the LA Times for background and some thoughts on the burka ban that goes into effect in France on Monday.
I will say that he's wrong about this below -- the part about the burka wearer who "has to put up with the cartoons."
And that's the deal in a free society: The burka wearer has to put up with the cartoons; the cartoonist has to put up with the burkas.
The actual deal? The cartoonist, in most Western societies, must put up with the disturbing image of women walking around covered in pup tents with eye slits. But, there's no exchange here. Quite the contrary. The cartoonist has to put up with censorship in return.
Cartoonists who draw cartoons critical of Islam live in fear for their lives, the cartoons end up going unpublished in papers and books about censorship out of fear from the publishers, and one cartoonist has had to disappear from her life altogether...lest she end up like one poor man who made a film critical of Islam.
Will You Miss Government-Printed Comic Books?
Government's role should not be trying to interest children in printing -- but it has taken on that role, printing (with taxpayer dollars) comic books about it starring Squeaks the mouse.
Where's My Government Welfare Payment?!
Matthew Boyle blogs at The Daily Caller that the WaPo and CBS got hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from the government:
Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare's Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) -- a $5 billion grant program that's doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans' money....In addition to CBS Corporation and the Washington Post Company, recipients of ERRP funding include the United Auto Workers union, which secured $206,798,086 in taxpayer money, AT&T, which took in $140,022,949, and General Electric (GE), which raked in $36,607,818. GE has made headlines recently for not paying any U.S. taxes last year. IBM got $12,989,690 in taxpayer money.
Verizon pulled $91,702,538 in taxpayer cash, too, and General Motors received $19,002,669. More than $6 million went to different Teamsters groups nationwide, and millions more went to the United Mine Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
Vile. Vile. Through these bastards out of office and wake the voters who voted them in.
What is this country that we're handing taxpayer dollars out like this, a game show?
Meanwhile, I'll not only be eating cat food by 50 but retiring five days after I'm dead thanks to all the money we all have to pay out to help employees of major corporations (surely with major pension plans) retire early under Obamanomics.
No Need To Be Guilty To Be Arrested!
You don't have to be a teen engaging in underage drinking to be arrested in Southern Massachusetts -- just be a teen who's standing next to a teen with a Bud. Michael Tracey posts about a party and the ensuing police response:
Southern Massachusetts is still reeling from news that area teenagers attended a party last Friday night. "And this wasn't a typical underage drinking party," reported Tom Langford, on the scene in Plainville for NECN-TV. The theme was "Business Hoes and CEOs," according to police, and "several of the youths were dressed up in suits, ties, miniskirts, and other office type attire."Behold the amazing ledes. "They may have been dressed like adults, but most of them were not," wrote John M. Guilfoil for the Boston Globe. "Now they are facing grown-up charges." All 53 partygoers -- mostly between ages 17 and 20 -- were arrested, loaded into vans, and processed as criminals. Even if they weren't drinking.
Plainville officer William McEvoy summarized his department's enforcement rationale as follows: Whether or not you partake in libations, "if the police show up, you can still be arrested for minor in possession of alcohol. [sic] So you shouldn't even be there in the first place."
Probable cause, anyone? It's echoes of the airport. Wearing underwire? Well, you'll be treated as a criminal. Merely because you have to do the entirely normal and usually thing of traveling by plane for your job.
Also, I strongly believe it's the demonization and utter illegalization of drinking for kids that causes them to binge-drink (and possibly end up drowning, drunk, in a swamp, as 17-year-old Taylor Meyer did in Plainville, Massachusetts, in the past. (More on the hysteria at the link -- with the "logic" recapped by Michael Tracey: "Anytime anyone between the ages of 15 and 22 drinks at a party in Plainville, Massachusetts, it should be considered an affront to the memory of Taylor Meyer."
I didn't get drunk once in college -- or even drink. Why not? Because I was allowed alcohol by my parents, and even offered it from time to time by my dad. It was no big deal to me -- not something forbidden. So, I had no need to "rebel" by getting smashed. (If I wanted a drink, all I had to do is ask for one, which I never did, because I thought alcohol tasted like, well, the stuff you use when you get an elbow scrape.)
via @FreeRangeKids
Stupid Overthrows
As I wrote the other day, "We can't spread democracy like it's peanutbutter." Romesh Ratnesar writes at TIME.com about the idiocy that it is that we try to impose regime change in countries like Iraq and Libya:
The idea of bringing down a terror-sponsoring tyrant may be appealing, but the success rate of regime changes imposed by foreign armies is dismal. According to Alexander B. Downes, a political scientist at Duke University, there have been 95 instances of "foreign-imposed regime change" (FIRC) worldwide since 1816. Downes has found that in countries where an external force replaced the existing regime with a new one, the chances of a civil war erupting within five years tripled. Rulers who are seen to be installed by outsiders are less able to command loyalty and more likely to encounter opposition, rebellion and armed insurgency. State institutions have a greater tendency to collapse, especially if FIRC happens as a result of war. (As would be true in Libya.) And poor, ethnically heterogeneous nations -- the kinds of places "where the United States and most other advanced democracies are most likely to undertake such [interventions]" -- are the most susceptible to post-regime-change instability.The historical data, Downes concludes, suggest that "overthrowing other governments is a policy instrument with limited utility because of its potential to ignite civil wars." But that doesn't mean the world is powerless to stop state-sanctioned aggression. In the 1990s, the U.S. used heavy air strikes to halt Slobodan Milosevic's campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. After the first Gulf War, a U.N.-sanctioned no-fly zone over northern Iraq kept the country's Kurdish population safe from Saddam Hussein. In 2000, British Prime Minister Tony Blair sent a force of paratroopers and Royal Marines to Sierra Leone to shore up U.N. peacekeepers and prevent the government from being overrun by militias commanded by Liberian warlord Charles Taylor.
In all three cases, the West stopped short of toppling leaders responsible for carrying out atrocities at least as extreme as those committed by Gaddafi. Hawks complained at the time that true stability was impossible so long as the rogues remained in power. And yet in all three cases, the core humanitarian objectives of protecting civilians and preventing mass killings were achieved, at a fraction of the human, financial and strategic costs of embarking on regime change by force -- as we later learned the hard way in Iraq.
(Read "Libya: Why Western Forces Selectively Police the World.")So should Gaddafi be allowed to stay in power? The Libyan people undoubtedly deserve to be rid of such a menace -- and maybe of his sons too. But it is folly for outsiders to determine how and when they go.
Phil Plait On The Moon Landing "Hoax" Dipshittery
At the ev psych conference in Binghamton this past weekend, a prof and I were talking about how great Phil Plait's blog is ("Bad Astronomer") and he reminded reminded me of this -- his debunking of the moon landing "hoax." An excerpt:
Bad: Ralph Rene, a self-proclaimed physicist, claims that the astronauts shifting in the cabin would change the center of mass, throwing the lunar lander off balance. They couldn't compensate for this, which would have crashed the lander. Thus, the landing was faked.Good: Rene is wrong. Evidently he doesn't know how the internet works either, because there is a website which describes how the attitude control was maintained on the lander during descent and ascent; it's the Apollo Saturn Reference page. There was a feedback control system on board the lander which determined if the axis were shifting. During descent, the engine nozzle could shift direction slightly to compensate for changes in the center of gravity of the lander (the technical term for this is gimbaling the nozzle). During ascent, the engine nozzle was fixed in position, so there was a series of smaller rockets which was used to maintain the proper attitude. Incidentally, every rocket needs to do this since fuel shifts the center of gravity as it is burned up by the rocket, yet Rene and the other HBs don't seem to doubt that rockets themselves work! So we have a case of selective thinking on the part of the HBs.
[Note (July 20, 2001): My thanks again to Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke for correcting a technical error in a previous version of this section. After describing the above scenario to me, he said the ascent stage of the lander was "a sporty ride".]
Path To Prosperity Or Path To Ruin?
Paul Ryan's excellent video showing how we have a choice of two futures, and we need to keep from going under by cutting Washington's unsustainable spending:
Next year, we'll spend 68 cents of every tax dollars for benefits. Before long, every cent of every tax dollar will be spent on benefits. Um, stop now? How can anyone argue otherwise? Answer: Dumb and gullible voters.
"Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong"
That's the headline on Slate legal writer Dahlia Lithwick's piece about the obscenity of the Obama admin giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a military trial:
Today, by ordering a military trial at Guantanamo for 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, Attorney General Eric Holder finally put the Obama administration's stamp on the proposition that some criminals are "too dangerous to have fair trials."In reversing one of its last principled positions--that American courts are sufficiently nimble, fair, and transparent to try Mohammed and his confederates--the administration surrendered to the bullying, fear-mongering, and demagoguery of those seeking to create two separate kinds of American law. This isn't just about the administration allowing itself to be bullied out of its commitment to the rule of law. It's about the president and his Justice Department conceding that the system of justice in the United States will have multiple tiers--first-class law for some and junk law for others.
Every argument advanced to scuttle the Manhattan trial for KSM was false or feeble: Open trials are too dangerous; major trials are too expensive; too many secrets will be spilled; public trials will radicalize the enemy; the public doesn't want it.
She notes that these claims could all have been made about numerous famous trials, including the Scopes Monkey trial and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's trial.
This is such a mistake they're making in terms of Muslim opinion around the world -- they'll be able to point to this as second-class justice. And for us, it's a horrible thing...another step (along with the TSA rights grab and other rights grabs) to removing our rights and freedoms. Surely, We The Sheeple will go just as docilely as we have been.
Lithwick points out the danger:
But make no mistake about it: It won't stop here. Putting the administration's imprimatur on the idea that some defendants are more worthy of real justice than others legitimates the whole creeping, toxic American system of providing one class of legal protections for some but not others: special laws for children of immigrants, special laws for people who might look like immigrants, different jails for those who seem too dangerous, special laws for people worthy of wiretapping, and special laws for corporations. After today it will be easier than ever to use words and slogans to invent classes of people who are too scary to try in regular proceedings.
via Lisa Simeone
TSA Enhanced Screening Procedures Explained
I hate these videos with the cartoon people, but this one is pretty good, save for the bullshit statistic that one in four American women have been sexually assaulted.
via David Gentile
Lindsey Graham Is All For Free Speech (Except If He Disagrees With It)
Via reason's Matt Welch, Robert Costa's NRO interview of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in the wake of his comment on "Face The Nation" that "Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war":
General Petraeus sent a statement out to all news organizations yesterday, urging our government to [condemn] Koran burning. Free speech probably allows that, but I don't like that. I don't like burning the flag under the idea of free speech. That bothers me; I have been one of the chief sponsors of legislation against burning the flag. I don't like the idea that these people picket funerals of slain servicemen. If I had my way, that wouldn't be free speech. So there are a lot of things under the guise of free speech that I think are harmful and hateful.
In Matt Welch's words:
You know what? We're always going to be in a war, thanks in no small part to the Lindsey Grahams of the world. Which means if we truly value our free speech, we're gonna have to bounce out every politician who subjects American expression to a wartime litmus test.
How Lucrative Is NOT Teaching For A Living?
Mike Antonucci blogs at Hot Air that retired teachers in California earn more than working teachers in 28 states. He looked at the most recent summary report for CalSTRS, the California State Teachers' Retirement System:
First note that the average annual salary in 2010 for active working educators enrolled in the system was $64,156. The next table states that the average retirement benefit paid out in 2010 was $4,256 per month. That's $51,072 annually. In other words, the average retired teacher in California made more than the average working teacher in 28 states, according to the salary rankings published by NEA....Last year, the CalSTRS CEO warned that returns of 20 percent annually would be needed to fund all pensions. Without further increases in revenue or cuts in benefits, the system could be completely broke in 35 years.
Paid To Plot The Destruction Of The West
Kathy Shaidle writes at Pajamas Media:
In 2008, the Toronto Sun reported that "hundreds of [Greater Toronto Area] Muslim men in polygamous marriages -- some with a harem of wives -- are receiving welfare and social benefits for each of their spouses, thanks to the city and province, Muslim leaders say."...Welfare abuse by Muslims appears to have metastasized across the Western world. Almost three years later, news stories about radical Muslims -- often immigrants -- engaged in social benefits scams emerge regularly from Europe, Canada, and Australia. Even when they are not involved in fraud, Muslims frequently are overrepresented on welfare rolls, compared with other communities. The statistics from around the globe are jaw-dropping, especially in economically uncertain times.
According to one 2007 source, immigration, of which Muslims comprise a significant part, "costs Sweden at least 40 to 50 billion Swedish kroner [approximately $7 billion] every year ... and has greatly contributed to bringing the Swedish welfare state to the brink of bankruptcy." Yet two years earlier, the country's finance minister declared counterintuitively that "more immigrants should be allowed into Sweden in order to safeguard the welfare system."
...Abu Qatada, sometimes referred to as "Osama bin Laden's ambassador in Europe," was found guilty of plotting to plant bombs during millennium celebrations in Jordan. After his release from prison in 2008, he was granted £150 a week in "incapacity benefits" for a bad back -- despite later being photographed wearing a knapsack and carrying groceries on the anniversary of the July 7 London bombings. Along with publishing that photo, the Telegraph revealed that "Qatada's family is understood to be claiming around £47,000 a year in benefits -- £500 a week in child benefits for the four of his five children under 18, £210 for income support, £150 for incapacity benefit, £45 in council tax benefit -- along with a council home worth around £800,000."
Similar situations have occurred in Australia. When Abdul Nacer Benbrika stood trial on terrorism charges, it emerged that the illegal Algerian immigrant and father of seven, who had been ordered deported three times, "never worked a day" in 19 years and "has cost us millions" in welfare payments, "baby bonus" checks, and other benefits, in the words of one broadcaster.
Do You Think The Terrorists Are At NASCAR?
This TSA guy at the Binghamton, New York, airport must think so, because he bopped over from the security area where he was working for about five minutes to watch NASCAR on TV.
He came back about five minutes later to watch some more.
I asked him how to turn off the TV, which was super-super loud and not unpluggable, and very high up, with no remote in sight. I was the only person in that part of the airport (a tiny airport) at the time, and NASCAR was blaring so loudly that it was not only boring a hole through my brain, you could hear it perfectly back in the TSA line, whaddya know. He told me they "couldn't" turn it off, as in weren't able to. Hmmm. Amazing how it was set to NASCAR, and not say, Lifetime Channel.
The next time he came back, I shot a little video of him, then went over and asked him again about turning off the loud TV or turning down the volume, and he said they didn't have the remote. His name is Officer Scott, saw it on his badge. Hey, if you want to know what to get Officer Scott for Christmas, make it something NASCAR related!
The Infidel 500 poster by my man Gregg Sutter
What Men Want
From a story in the Daily Mail, check out how women dress and how their men would dress them if they could. Your thoughts?
Thanks, AB!
Advice Goddess Free Swim
I'm a little exhausted this morning, and on deadline, and a bit jet-lagged, so you pick the topics today. One link per comment or my spam beast will eat your words. If you get caught up in the spam filter, be sure to e-mail me immediately, with "spam blocked" or something equally unclever as the header to your post, so I rescue your comment as soon as possible.
Eating Paleo, And Working Out Paleo, Too
I've referenced Steven Platek's research in my column before, in Dirty-Something, about a woman's worries about her husband's porn-surfing hobby:
Researchers Steven M. Platek, Stephan Hamann, and others have found that seeing pictures of hot women activates the reward centers in men's brains -- the parts of the brain that go "Yeah, baby!" to stuff like drugs, beer, and money. In other words, just as your husband doesn't connect on an emotional level with a can of Bud, his surfing the naked women of the Internet is driven by physiological hunger, not sentiment. So, while your brain sees Serena as another woman coming between you, to his brain, she might as well be a big, tennis-playing ham sandwich.
He gave a fascinating talk yesterday at NEEPS, the Northeast Evolutionary Psychology Society conference, about using imaging studies to show that reward centers in the brain are activated in men in response to "optimally designed naked women." He's found this to be true of pictures of Photoshopped real women with hourglass figures (.7 being the optimum waist-to-hip ratio for men), and even with avatars of women! He writes in the abstract for his talk, "These findings extend and support the hypothesis that optimal design of the female form serves as an honest biological signal to males" (of fertility).
During his talk, because this conference has a focus on applied ev psych (and because Platek's the applied kind of guy...eating and moving paleo), he said that regular women don't have to get surgery or create an avatar to get the optimal waist-to-hip ratio:
"If you do things like a cave man...to accentuate ancestral lifestyle patterns...eat and move like cave persons...you develop fat deposition and muscularity in ways that are considered sexy by opposite sex!"
I already eat low-carb and recommend that all the time here, but regarding moving/exercising paleo, I asked him what this means:
"You Pick up heavy shit, run a little, walk a lot, and don't sit down."
He gives an example of that on his old blog, noting that his "inner caveman" would've had to "chase an animal, drag an animal down, swing from branch to branch."
How to replicate that? "Run, squat, snatch, jump; pull, push, engage core; pull-up, core, balance."
Hmm...balance. An epidemiologist I know advised me to stand on one leg for 15 seconds and then the other. (It takes some practice.) And then, he said, do it with your eyes closed. This is supposed to help me maintain my balance when I'm an old lady.
I sat at Platek's table at the banquet/Dan Nettle keynote speech that evening, and asked about a friend who could lose a few pounds. He said he should join a cross-fit gym. Here's what he recommends on his cross-fit blog:
Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combination and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.
Regularly learn and play new sports.
It sounds like he's recommending something somewhat similar to (and yet a bit different from) what Fred Hahn, with whom the Eades wrote a book, Slow Burn, recommends in the comments on a post by Dr. Michael Eades lauding his methods (which Eades was skeptical about at first):
So, no, you do not NEED traditonal cardio for keeping your ticker healthy and strong if you strength train properly 1-2 (at most 3) times a week for 15 -20 minutes each time. The science exists. Even the AHA admitted, no, sent out a scientific advisory in May of 2000 stating that strength training does in fact improve cardiovascular health all on it's own.It's has been so hard for me over the years to explain to people the difference. Strength training, if you do it right, gives a person everything they need for health. Everything. Most people have been terribly brainwashed by the fitness industry - moreso than the diet industry I believe. Some people get so mad when I tell them they don't need aerobics it's like I said God doesn't exist.
BOTTOMLINE: Strength train properly to stay healthy and strong AND so that you can engage in your favorite pasttime activities (if that's your chioce) with more vim and vigor and for many more years than you would have been able to.
I asked Platek if he thinks I'm moving enough. (I barely ride my bike anymore, and I'm writing seven days a week on my book and column and have some other stuff in the works.) I do 100 little reps a day with tiny weights (sometimes 125) while I'm cooking my eggs (half squats, the rest arms). He said to do those fast while getting my heart going and I would be fine. I'm going to try to ask him today about the apparent conflicts between his advice and Hahn's, and whether I do have to move more.
I do need to do some walks around the neighborhood -- good for thinking, too (as Nietzsche used to say). But, I do know that people who eat like I do -- a diet that's filled with fat and protein and no carbs, save for the few in green beans and cheese and the very few in Italian sausage and the like -- have far less of a need to exercise (as opposed to the people who listened to the government and AMA "science" on diet...the science that made them fatter and unhealthier...and feeling the need to spend hours and hours of their week killing their knees running and going to a gym).
Meet The Parents
Notes from NEEPS, Northeast Evolutionary Psychology Society conference.
According to research by Catherine Salmon and Maryanne L. Fisher, there are some sex differences in why people want to meet their partner's parents. Women want to do it to understand their mate. Men, on the other hand, want to know what the woman will look like in the future.
I look back on when Gregg met my parents, and he did comment very positively about my mom's looks. It is, of course, easier to predict whether a woman will age well if you start seeing her in her 30s rather than her early 20s, when women tend to be more attractive just because they're young.
Check out Catherine Salmon's "Ape Girl" blog at Psychology Today. Maryanne L. Fisher's PT "Love's Evolver" blog is here.
I'll post more from the conference on Sunday and in coming days. I'm wiped out right now.
I had a big day today -- listening to some really fascinating work presented...and having a one-on-one, hour-long interview with an anthropologist I respect and admire: Sarah Hrdy, author of Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species
Libya Airstrikes: The Women Who Called for War
John Avlon writes at The Daily Beast:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the influential Office of Multilateral and Human Rights Director Samantha Power to argue for airstrikes against Libya. Their advice triggered an abrupt shift in U.S. policy, overturning more cautious administrations' counselors....In the last airstrike-driven effort to cease a mass slaughter, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was famously aggressive in her advocacy for military intervention in the Balkans during the Clinton administration, telling Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" Powell said later: "I thought I would have an aneurysm."
"Few Americans realize it, but our leaders who lack military experience tend to be more hawkish than leaders who have served in the military," said Matt Pottinger, a former Marine captain and the Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "In recent decades, we've had fewer veterans in the Executive and Legislative Branches than at any point since World War II. As a result, we've grown increasingly willing to use military force abroad, and for a broader range of reasons. For example, we're more willing today to intervene to prevent human-rights abuses. Leaders who are military veterans have been, on the whole, more reluctant to intervene in places like Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Iraq, and now Libya."
100 Percent(ish) Of Vehicles!
Dan Mitchell makes a great point. When the president says he's going to "green" the Federal fleet of vehicles, and that 100 percent of them need to meet energy standards, he should actually mean 100 percent. Mitchell writes:
I don't like it when politicians pass laws that undermine the freedom and prosperity of the American people. But I really hate it when politicians pass those laws and exempt themselves.Years ago, as a lowly Senate staffer, I recall watching a debate about whether politicians were going to increase fuel economy regulations and thus force people into cars that were smaller, less convenient, and less safe. One good Senator, I think perhaps Don Nickles of Oklahoma, offered an amendment that basically would have forced bigwigs on Capitol Hill to live by the same rules by requiring limousines for congressional leaders to meet the same onerous restrictions. Needless to say, the arrogant political class thought this was absurd and to this day they get driven in luxury gas guzzlers (paid for by you and me).
We now have another version of this laws-for-thee-but-not-for-me mentality from the Obama Administration. No, I'm not talking about Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary who is in charge of the Internal Revenue Service but got a free pass after illegally hiding $80,000 of income from the IRS. I'm talking about the President and his personal fleet of limousines...
The rest of the story at the link.
A Man And A Tiny Little Dog
Gregg is taking care of Lucy while I'm away at NEEPS...in such a very Gregg way.
(That's when he doesn't have her right here.)
Nando Pelusi On Applying Evolutionary Psychology In Therapy
Nando is an Albert Ellis-trained psychologist who uses evolutionary psychology in his therapy sessions with patients and was writing the Neanderthink column in Psych Today. He couldn't be here at NEEPS, the ev psych conference in Binghamton, but here's a podcast of him talking about what he does on WOR. (After the stuff about the pieces of the heads, at around 4:25.)
On a personal note, I was with Nando at the HBES at Penn at the moment when he looked across the room and spotted the woman who would become his wife. Even better, I met Gregg because of Nando, who had the iPod at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in Berlin. I thought it looked kinda dumb, but Nando is Mister Technology, so I figured he knew something, and went into the Apple store to check it out, and found Gregg at the iPod display. (Or, as I like to say, "I got my boyfriend at the Apple store.")
And back to the ev psych, a term mentioned in Kalman Glantz' and Gary Bernhard's session from today, "mismatch theory."
"Mismatch theory" is based on the idea that organisms possess many traits (including behavioral patterns) that have been preserved by natural selection because of their adaptive function in a specific environment [sometimes called the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA)] which for most of a species' evolutionary history might have been very unlike that in which it now finds itself. "Ancient" adaptive traits are thus frequently "mismatched" to the current environment -- and organisms thus find themselves doing the best they can to deal with contemporary stimuli using the traits they do possess.
I wrote about this in I See Rude People, but I'm exhausted and I have to go to bed, so I'll try to remember to update this in the morning.
Oh, but before I go to bed, Nando talks about paleolithic eating, which reminds me, Steven Platek made a great point in the discusssion today. We were both at the Applied Evolutionary Psychology preconference, which focuses on getting ev psych data out to be applied in practical ways to day to day life -- which is what I do in my column and book (and did in my anti-SUV campaign, which was designed based on costly signaling theory and "the Handicap Principle," by Zahavi and Zahavi).
Platek, who eats and encourages eating "paleo," asked something I was wondering myself: If we're encouraging practical application of evolutionary psychology findings...how come the ev psych conference is serving BAGELS as the snack?!
UPDATE: Vote for Nando's New Yorker cartoon caption here. (Or, if you have poor taste, vote for one of the others!)
I Smell Rude People
It was the rude woman, early 20s, on the tiny Buddy Holly deathplane I had to take from Dulles to Binghamton for NEEPS. The moment she boarded, it became clear that she prepared for the flight by diving into Eau de Ladies Bathroom. As the flight dragged on and the stench did, too, and I became convinced it was Eau de Zyklon B.
I don't have fragrance allergies, but I had trouble keeping my lunch down thanks to the strong and sickeningly sweet smell of Stinkychick. I love to wear perfume, but I don't put it on if I'm going to be in a theater or anyplace where somebody else will be seated next to me for a period of time because I know some people have fragrance allergies...or...just might not have the same idea of what smells sexywexygood that I do. How does this not occur to people?
Oh, and not surprisingly, Stinkychick had the little beeps on her phone enabled to sound -- for every character she typed -- beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep -- while the rest of us, at around midnight, were silently and exhaustedly waiting for the plane door to open.
"Comment Monster" Gets It About Islam
A person who calls him or herself "Comment Monster" posted this on my blog item, "Silence: How Peaceful Muslims Collaborate With The Islamists"
When ecumenically immersed Westerners say that Islam is a religion, they implicitly draw parallels with other religions in terms of how Islam should be treated, and they expect to find parallels in Islam that aren't there. Most naive Westerners believe this about all religions:* They all posit some kind of common humanity and divinity.
* They are all based on universal kindness and charity.
* They all have their dark sides or dark pasts, but the "true" message is benevolent.
* People should be granted wide leeway in doing things that they justify by appealing to their religion.
* They recognize a distinction between the secular and the sacred, and recognize there are areas of human activity that they shouldn't control.
* They evolve, generally in a better direction, and thus deserve tolerance and patience for the rough edges they still have.Well, Islam is right now in the middle of its "dark ages" and has been for the last 1000 years. It shows no signs of evolving, but instead is devolving as its inability to adjust to technology and freedom makes it less and less viable.
There isn't time for Islam to evolve on its own into something that can coexist with the West. The West has tried for 200 years now to civilize Islam, and it's been a rank failure. I'll eat my hat if even one of these revolts going on in the middle east results in anything approaching even the civilization level of Turkey.
Now, the West is separating itself from Islam. The Europeans have given up, and the only reason we Americans haven't is we have so few Muslims, and many of them are secular at heart. They will eventually turn on the radicals in their midst and help us expel them from the USA.
Without Western involvement, Muslim societies (I'm not going to say countries--that's a notion we tried to get them to accept, but they don't) will implode and millions will die of violence and starvation.
So be it. I'm done helping any country or society in the world that does not first accept Western civilized norms. And, funny, if they did accept those norms, they wouldn't need our help, would they?
Gloomytown
In Binghamton, New York, for NEEPS, the Northeast Evolutionary Psychology Society Conference. This is the view from my window. Gregg is talking me down from the ledge. Gregg, who is fatalistic and listens to music by Penderecki called "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" to cheer himself up, took one look at the photo and wanted to move here.
Welfare For Big Sugar
As Americans are growing fatter and fatter and more and more unhealthy from sugar consumption, our government is giving big sugar big handouts. Great piece by Senator Dick Lugar in the Wash Times. He's calling for other legislators to help him stop end these subsidies (cue big sugar lobbyists!):
The collapse of communism brought an end to many of the world's command-and-control economic systems and central planning by government bureaucrats. But a notable exception is the United States government's sugar program. A complicated system of marketing allotments, price supports, purchase guarantees, quotas and tariffs that only a Soviet apparatchik could love, the U.S. sugar program has actually lasted longer than the Soviet Union itself.It imposes a hidden tax of billions of dollars annually on consumers and businesses and has destroyed thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs. It substitutes the federal government for the private sector in basic decisions about buying and selling, supply and price.
...The beneficiaries of this Depression-era relic are sugar beet farms in some Northern states and sugar cane farms in Gulf states and elsewhere. But the biggest winners are a handful of huge industrial operations that cover thousands of acres.
In sugar land, as in communist countries, prices are set by the government, not the market. Agriculture Department central planners determine "marketing allotments" to assure domestic producers at least 85 percent of the market. They limit imports to keep prices inflated far above world levels. The planners set the split between cane and beet sugar and mandate a sales limit for each processor and mill.
If prices fall below the official level, a price-support system of "loans" to processors ensures that Big Sugar gets its federal share. The recipients get their loans in taxpayer dollars, but can repay them in (what else?) sugar.
...In 2006, the Commerce Department calculated that for every sugar-growing job saved by artificially high prices, three manufacturing jobs in the confectionery industry are lost.
We taxpayers have no business subsidizing any businesses. If you can't make it on your own, you should go out of business.
The Green Regulation Machine: Saving the Planet or Killing Jobs?
Another terrific video by reason's Ted Balaker:
Concealed Carry Equals Carnage?
Um, that's not what the stats say. Steve Chapman writes for reason, "The Unconcealed Truth About Carrying Guns -- What the gun control lobby doesn't want you to know":
What is extremely rare is a homicide committed by a permit holder in a public place in a fit of anger. Reviewing an earlier two-year database compiled by VPC, Kleck found only five cases "where possession of a carry permit may have contributed to the occurrence of the killing." Such episodes are not quite flying pigs, but almost.What the gun control groups don't tabulate is how many homicides have been averted by a licensed, concealed handgun. Kleck, who has done extensive research on the topic, says it is "quite reasonable to expect that thousands of lives are saved by defensive gun use by persons who carried guns in public places." Even if he's wrong, it would take only a handful of such incidents to offset the homicides "caused" by concealed-carry laws.
The problem for opponents is that they have sown fear from the beginning, only to harvest a meager crop. A generation ago, few states allowed concealed-carry. When Florida captured national attention by legalizing it in 1987, critics forecast mass carnage. When other states followed suit, the same predictions were heard.
But they turned out to be false alarms. Instead of an epidemic of violence, the nation saw a drop. Since 1991, the murder rate has been cut nearly in half. You don't have to believe that "shall-issue" laws caused the decline to grasp that they certainly didn't get in the way.
Welcome To Sharia
Think we're all a bunch of sillies, we who fear and loathe Sharia law? Check out the wages of Sharia -- a raped 14-year-old lashed to death for "adultery," as Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu report on CNN:
Hena was walking from her room to an outdoor toilet when Mahbub Khan gagged her with cloth, forced her behind nearby shrubbery and beat and raped her.Hena struggled to escape, Alya told CNN. Mahbub Khan's wife heard Hena's muffled screams and when she found Hena with her husband, she dragged the teenage girl back to her hut, beat her and trampled her on the floor.
The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan's house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201. Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes.
Darbesh Khan and Aklima Begum had no choice but to mind the imam's order. They watched as the whip broke the skin of their youngest child and she fell unconscious to the ground.
I'm reminded of those who call for "tolerance" of other belief systems. In a word: No.
via Steamer
Readin', Writin', 'n' Tannin'
From the AP, Rutgers paid "Snooki" of the reality show "Jersey Shore" $32K on Thursday to "dish on her hairstyle, fist pumps, as well as the GTL - gym, tanning, laundry - lifestyle." That's $2K more than the $30K they're paying Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison to deliver their commencement address in the late Spring. The money came from Rutgers mandatory student activity fee, reports the AP.
