Plant House
The Rapunzel of real estate.
If I were their mailman, I sure wouldn't go in there.
"I Have A Stupid Dream"
A friend of mine, a lauded researcher who's about 70, just told me she quit her professorship for the tango. In a few months, she's even moving to Brazil for six months to pursue it to the hilt. I love and respect her even more for that.
I don't care what your passion is (assuming it isn't pulling the tails off squirrels). I just respect and admire -- and identify with -- people with a passion for something. Sometimes, that passion can only be a hobby, not a living. That's unimportant. What I think matters is that you don't live out your life wishing you could do something.
Luckily, my passion is for thinking and writing, and it's the reason I've been hammering away at the keyboard from wildly early in the morning till late at night these days (a couple of nights, until 11 or 11:30 p.m., not quite sure how I did it), working on my next book. Unfortunately, the body eventually demands payment for such a punishing schedule, and I have a bad cold. Boo.
But, enough about me. Let's talk about you.
Claire Berlinski asks:
If you were to ditch it all to pursue some out-of-reach passion, what would it be? What stops you from doing it?Second: If you were giving advice to a young person who was thinking, "I really want to be a great martial artist, but my parents think I should do something sensible like get an engineering degree," what would you say?
Vell?
Oh, and P.S. I've always wanted to do radio -- pretty much all my life -- and in between all the rest of the insanity, I'm working on pursuing that, too.
How To Start A Low-Carb Diet
Very helpful new post -- the first of two in a series -- by Dr. Michael Eades, advising people on starting (or restarting) low-carb, drawing on his 30 years of experience in dietary medicine:
Listen to your body?The surest road to failure in the first few days of low-carb dieting is to listen to your body. The whole notion of listening to your body is one of my major pet peeves. In fact, just hearing those words makes me want to puke. In my experience, they are usually uttered by females with moist, dreamy looks in their eyes, but not always. I just read a ton of comments in recent Paleo blog post in which vastly more males than females actually wrote this drivel.
Listening to your body is giving the elephant free rein. If you're three days into your stop-smoking program, and you listen to your body, you're screwed. If you're in drug rehab, and you listen to your body, you're screwed. If you're trying to give up booze, and you listen to your body, you're screwed. And if you're a week into your low-carb diet, and you listen to your body, you're screwed. Actually, it's okay to listen to it, I suppose, just don't do what it's telling you to do because if you do, you're screwed.
Okay, end of rant. I just had to get it out of my system. You just can't imagine how many times people who have tried low-carb diets then abandoned them early on have said those words to me. Wait. I'm about to get started again. Stop!
...The period of low-carb adaptation is that time between starting a low-carb diet and feeling great on a low-carb diet. It can take anywhere from just a day or so to two or three weeks. During this adaptation period people tend to fatigue easily, experience a slight lack of mental clarity and be tormented off and on by the unbidden lust for carbs that seems to rise up out of nowhere. Why does this happen early on with a diet that ultimately works so well to increase exercise capacity, mental clarity, and feelings of satiation?
It happens because both your body and brain are going through a profound change in the way they get their energy. You can't run your car designed to burn gasoline on biodeisel...unless you install a converter. Then you can. We humans have the design for our carb to fat converters coded in our DNA - the low-carb adaptation period is simply the time it takes for the converter to be built and installed.
The rest of Eades' post is at the above link. A follow-up to this is coming soon, he says. And in that one, I'm guessing he'll also give the advice Gary Taubes gave me (for all who need it here), that it seems to help stave off "The Atkins Flu" in the early days of low-carbing if you drink a cup of salted chicken broth daily.
By the way, I always make sure I eat plenty of fat (along with the protein). On Sunday, I had such a crazy writing day that I didn't even eat lunch. Before I left the house, I had three strips of bacon, a big clump of Italian parsley cooked in some of the remaining bacon grease, and then two eggs with cheese.
During the day, I got a little hungry (and ate about 2 oz. of dry Italian sausage), but having eaten plenty of fat and protein in the morning meant that I could write like a madwoman from about 10 a.m. till 5:45 a.m. when Gregg called for me to pack up my computer and meet him at my house. Never could have done that in the days when I ate carbs.
Oh, and I do eat some carbs -- heavily buttered green beans, the parsley I make every morning (for the vitamin K in it), and a few in cheese, sausage, and wine. But, I've pretty much entirely cut out flour and sugar, save for a scoop of chocolate gelato I eat every week and a half or so.
In fact, I haven't had any sweets since I was in Colorado Springs, where I ate two small pieces of chocolate. That wouldn't have been possible in the past. But, ever since I got through the two or three weeks of carb withdrawal, I've had much more energy, and needed much more sleep, and I'm effortlessly thin.
I do exercise a little to benefit my bones and brain -- now walking 20 to 30 minutes a few times a week, doing some intense biking for a few minutes one or two days, and lifting small weights for 100 reps total, a few times a week. I must admit that I've shirking on the weights lately, while lifting my hands to the keyboard day and night to finish the first quarter of my next book and revise my book proposal.
The thing is, thanks to my avoidance of carbs, even when I don't exercise at all, well, this is your Advice Goddess, at age 47, on greasy bacon. 
The shirt is my F.O.T.C.-wear -- Friend Of The Corps, as in the Marine Corps -- a gift from Sergeant Hunter Ledbetter, who reads my column in the Stars & Stripes and mailed it to me from Afghanistan. I didn't say it yesterday, but thank you to everybody in the United States Armed Forces who lays their life on the line on behalf of the rest of us.
Exoplanet With A Traffic Jam
This is one reason I live in Los Angeles, because I see stuff like this Matchbox car-encrusted planet, suspended from a tree, on my morning walk. (There's a chandelier just to the left, also suspended from the tree.) 
Middle East History: Lebanon Was Destroyed From Within By Muslims
Bridget Gabriel on growing up Christian in Muslim-majority Lebanon:
Gabriel observes that Lebanon was the "Paris of the Middle East," but thanks to the tolerance and open borders of the Christian who were once the majority group there, the country was destroyed. Muslims who migrated there took multiple wives and pumped out children until they became the majority and Christians became the minority, and from then on, Lebanon was ruined.
This is surely what's to come in the West. Maybe not tomorrow or next week, but countries like France and Germany and certainly the Scandinavian countries will be under Muslim rule and Sharia law in my lifetime.
By the way, Gabriel contends that King Hussein of Jordan killed more Palestinians in Black September than the Israelis ever did.
Of course, Muslim-on-Muslim violence seems of little interest to anyone, as it's such a distraction from blaming the Joooos. The Investigative Project on Terrorism quotes poly sci prof Salim Mansur on Muslims who go after Muslims:
"This crime has been an ongoing thing in Muslim history and Muslim politics. I am a personal witness to that."He points to a more recent example taking place right now in Darfur in Western Sudan. Janjaweed militias linked with Sudan's Islamist government are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims. Yet major American Muslim organizations and Muslim governments around the world have been largely silent about the Darfur genocide, instead aiming most of their fire at targets like the FBI, the Transportation Security Administration and Israel.
Mansur calls bullshit on the idea that terrorists do their deeds because of poverty, and on much more, in a terrific and informative piece at the link just above.
Freemail Can Be Costly
Farhad Manjoo at Slate luvvvvs Gmail -- and then finds that when he wants to call about a problem, there's no phone number and nobody's home:
I want the standard, universally accepted way to ask for help from our corporate overlords: I want a phone number.And that's the one thing Gmail can't give me. For most people, Gmail is a free service (some businesses pay for Gmail through Google Apps accounts, and Google also lets individuals pay for extra storage--which I do). It's astonishing to think that we get so much from Gmail in return for so little. Google makes money on Gmail--from what I hear, it makes a profit--by running ads around your messages. It's a brilliant business model--until, that is, you encounter a problem, especially one that requires deep technical assistance to solve. Who are you gonna call when something gets screwed up?
The comment I left under Manjoo's piece:
I've had the same AOL email address since the early 90s, and people have been making fun of me for it for about that long. Beyond the fact that I love not having to send out change of email address notes every time Comcast or whomever gets eaten by some other company, I'm a newspaper columnist and I need to have access to my email at all times, no screwups. I pay about $10 a month, which I think of as insurance. And not only can I get somebody on the phone at all times should I have any problem, I actually have the email address and IM address of a guy at AOL that I message when anything seems to be dire (like one week when nobody seemed to have gotten my column email). And then, all the people getting their email hacked and those "I'm in London, send me money" emails are on gmail. If you're paying for your email address, somebody has to answer to you.
By the way, on my personal (non-column AOL address) I'm on AOL's Project Phoenix, which I like a lot -- save for the fact that somebody at AOL with lint for brains figured it was okay to release a program where "Beta" means users have no access to their sent mail. Genius! I try to remember to BCC myself and erase the copy that comes. Hoping they fix this soon, the nimrods.
Alzheimer's: Diabetes Of The Brain?
Dr. Michael Eades, among others, has wondered about this. On Sunday, he tweeted a link to the abstract of a study by Stephanie Seneff and her colleagues -- "Nutrition and Alzheimer's disease: The detrimental role of a high carbohydrate diet." Somebody tweeted me a link to a free PDF, but I think they're violating the journal's copyright, so I'll just post the abstract link:
Alzheimer's disease is a devastating disease whose recent increase in incidence rates has broad implications for rising health care costs. Huge amounts of research money are currently being invested in seeking the underlying cause, with corresponding progress in understanding the disease progression. In this paper, we highlight how an excess of dietary carbohydrates, particularly fructose, alongside a relative deficiency in dietary fats and cholesterol, may lead to the development of Alzheimer's disease. A first step in the pathophysiology of the disease is represented by advanced glycation end-products in crucial plasma proteins concerned with fat, cholesterol, and oxygen transport. This leads to cholesterol deficiency in neurons, which significantly impairs their ability to function. Over time, a cascade response leads to impaired glutamate signaling, increased oxidative damage, mitochondrial and lysosomal dysfunction, increased risk to microbial infection, and, ultimately, apoptosis. Other neurodegenerative diseases share many properties with Alzheimer's disease, and may also be due in large part to this same underlying cause.
Follow Dr. Eades on Twitter at @DrEades.
The Jefferson Memorial: A First Amendment-Free Zone
Via Boing Boing, utterly shocking incident at the Jefferson Memorial where police arrest citizens for dancing. "If you demonstrate by dancing," the officer warns them, you will spend the weekend in jail.
Even more disturbing, the court sided with the police. Eugene Volokh explains. In short, the court concluded:
1. the Jefferson Memorial qualified as a "nonpublic forum" for First Amendment purposes, so that restrictions on speech there were constitutional if they were viewpoint-neutral and reasonable, and2. the limitation on conduct in the Memorial "which involve[s] the communication or expression ... [and] has the effect, intent or propensity to draw a crowd or onlookers" was indeed viewpoint-neutral and reasonable.
See the comments also at the first Volokh link, like this one from dhlii:
I can not beleive everyone here does not find this decision offensive.What if they had actually been protesting something? The various memorials seem to be precisely the space for expressing views.
The memorial itself is an expression of views.
It is irrelevant whether Jefferson would have appreciated this particular way of celebrating his birthday -- this was done at the government owned public jefferson Memorial -- which is only slightly less open than the Lincoln memorial. If it is raining you may not get wet, but if it is winter you will be cold -- it is not an office building, nor is it really a museum. It is also not Montecello which I am pretty sure is privately owned. Like every other government memorial, its purpose is to celebrate our government. It is exactly the place you would expect and want people to express their own views. The Lincoln memorial was were Martin Luther King announced "I have a dream" Had his podium been a few feet further back apparently he could have been arrested.
And exactly why is it the responsibility of the "speaker" to demonstrate that they have a right to speak. Seeking permission to excercise a right might be good manners, but it is not a requirement for having that right.We grant far too much respect for authority. Even presuming that in some screwed up universe this is not protected expression, absent a clear compelling immediate danger the park police should have left well enough alone. Why is the limit to what we can do in any circumstance only what we have a clear constitutional right to?
Even if I were to grant that the dancers should have been more deferential to the Park cops -- which I am extremely loath to do, why doesn't exactly the same standard apply to the cop ?
It seems pretty clear that in this instance the Cop in question was acting to enforce his preferences. He was unable to articulate even the in my view unconstitutional law that was being broken -- therefore he was not acting to enforce law, he was essentially acting as a censor. He decided this particular activity was unacceptable and therefore must be illegal.
Finally, though I am not quite sure that was the intent here, one of the purposes of civil disobedience is to call attention to bad laws. While engaging in civil disobedience voluntarily subjects you to the full force of the purportedly bad law, the purpose is still to expose the bad law in its worst possible context -- seeking a confrontation with a bad law is dangerous, but it is not morally reprehensible -- it is admirable.
I only regret that I am too old, too bad a dancer and personally too fearful of authority to have participated -- but somebody has to do it.
Greg Betson comments:
This claim of right to restriction of access to public places seems to be based on the false premise that government is separate from, and authorized against the people. The Memorial is fully owned by the people and the people have full and exclusive right to the use of the memorial, including destroying it if they wish. The Federal government and its agents must apply to the people to use the memorial and may be found to be trespassers upon it and may not claim control of it. Public use of the memorial is de facto exclusion of Federal interference. There is no Federal authority to exclude restrict or infringe the people from use of their property. Any Officer who attempts to do so is an impostor under color of authority and is committing treason. All individuals and agencies complicit in the unauthorized use of force depriving the public access to their property are also liable for criminal and civil prosecution.
The inscription on the memorial -- Jefferson's words, "I have sworn ... eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
The Tunnel At The End Of The Light
Gretchen Morgenson writes in The New York Times that the US has binged and the tab will soon come due:
Into the fray comes a thoughtful new paper by Joseph E. Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which studies economic policy. Written with Marc Hinterschweiger, a research analyst there, the report states plainly: "That government debt will grow to dangerous and unsustainable levels in most advanced and many emerging economies over the next 25 years -- if there are no changes in current tax rates or government benefit programs in retirement and health care -- is virtually beyond dispute."...What needs to be done now is to design a long-term plan to reduce fiscal deficits in the future. The authors contend that such a program would "reassure the markets, keep interest rates low and instill greater confidence and certainty about future tax and spending policies, thereby encouraging businesses to commit their resources to job-creating investment projects."
...Under a best-case outlook, according to the authors, the nation's net federal debt will rise to 155 percent of gross domestic product in 2035, more than double the current levels. (Net debt is defined as the government's financial liabilities minus its financial assets.)
Under a more pessimistic view on growth rates, that load ratchets up to 302 percent of G.D.P. that year. As the paper notes, "debt ratios of around 200 percent of gross domestic product are at the extreme limit of what advanced economies can experience without becoming destabilized."
The authors of the paper estimate that we have (at least) a five year window to start addressing our fiscal emergency, but that fiscal disaster looms if we do nothing.
The Anthrax Killer: Nobody Noticed He Was A Nut Job
Bruce Ivins, who, as a child, was abused by his mother, became a respected Army scientist and an authority on lab use of anthrax -- and had a penchant for vendettas, especially against women who wouldn't go out with him, writes David Willman in the Los Angeles Times.
Five people ultimately died from the anthrax in his mailings. Ivins was given "secret" level security clearance by the army, sans any evaluation of his mental health. He killed himself with an overdose of Tylenol at age 62.
Amazingly, as with mass murderer for Allah, Major Hassan, none of the mental health "professionals" he had contact with seem to have made a peep about him to anyone:
Near his new place of work, the Defense Department's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., Ivins spilled out his feelings about Haigwood to a psychiatrist, Dr. Naomi Heller. He said he experienced Haigwood's brush-off as a replay of his mother's mockery of him during childhood.Ivins confided that he had thought through plans to kill Haigwood.
...Over the years, he sought help from psychiatrists and counselors and was prescribed a battery of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs.
A psychiatrist who treated him in the late 1990s, Dr. David Irwin, confided to a therapist that Ivins was the "scariest" patient he had ever known.
Army officials seemed oblivious to his instability -- even if he was not. In emails to his current and former lab technicians, Ivins described disturbing thoughts and impulses and said he was struggling to control his behavior.
On July 18, 2000, Ivins told a mental health counselor that he had recently planned to poison his former assistant, Mara Linscott. In addition to having cyanide, he said that he had once obtained ammonium nitrate, to make a bomb.
He saw himself, Ivins said, as an "avenging angel of death."
But, did the government get the right guy? Noah Schactman writes at WIRED:
There's still the possibility that the government was as wrong about Ivins as it was about Hatfill. If that's the case, the anthrax mailer is still at large. And that means someone launched the deadliest biological attack in the history of the United States--and got away with it.
Venice, California
Separation Of Charity And State
A. Barton Hinkle writes at reason that a bunch of non-state agencies are gobbling up taxpayer dollars:
"It's our worst fear," a director of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts told The Washington Post a few days ago. From 2004 to 2008, Wolf Trap--one of a laundry list of non-state agencies to enjoy the state's largess--received more than $3.5 million from Virginia taxpayers.Doling out money to non-state agencies is a bipartisan activity, and members of both parties are trying to figure out how they can continue doing what the constitution plainly says they may not do. "Many of these organizations and institutions provide an enhanced quality of life for Virginians," says Republican Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment.
Nobody disputes that--just as (nearly) nobody disputes the assertion that America's churches, synagogues, and mosques greatly enhance the quality of life in the United States. The fact that they improve the quality of life, however, does not --or at least should not--override constitutional constraints on what the government may do. Henrico Del. Jimmie Massie is right to suggest lawmakers should not "do cartwheels around the constitution."
Doing cartwheels around the constitution, however, is precisely what so many would like to do whenever they think the ends justify the means. Indeed, throughout the Bush years liberals complained loudly about how conservatives in the Bush administration felt the war on terror justified constitutional contraventions such as warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detention without trial, and even torture.
The response from those on the right sometimes gave the impression that they felt it was worth trashing the constitution if doing so would save the nation. Now, some in Virginia seem to give the impression that it's worth trashing the constitution to save the Chatham Train Depot and the Steamboat Era Museum in Irvington.
I'll go further than Hinkle does and ask why charities and "non-profit" organizations -- including churches, mosques, and synagogues -- aren't paying taxes on the money they take in? Do you think they should be?
Commenter BRM over at reason lays into another kind of "charity":
There is no reason that a family who chooses to have 8 kids should expect their neighbor with 2 kids to help pay the bills for their 8. There is no reason that the guy who buys a McMansion should look over the fence at the family living in an apartment and expect them to help pay the mortgage.Same with charity. You do it because you want to, not because you get a reward for it. The tax rates should be silent on this matter. People should do as they see fit and support their churches, etc or some other charity as they determine is best.
Everyone else should be left out of the cost just like they are left out of the decision.
Why Not Give Each An Armed Guard Of His Or Her Very Own?
Instead of having maids clean hotel rooms, we could do one better than New York overlegislator Rory Lancman pass a law that hotels have to hire S.W.A.T. cops to do it.
From AFP:
Assemblyman Rory Lancman, in the New York state legislature, told AFP that his bill proposes arming hotel staff with a portable device connected to a central security official.The bill "requires all the hotels and motels in New York to have a panic alert system where every hotel worker who regularly enters hotel rooms is given a button, a device with a button, and you push the button and it notifies hotel management of an emergency," he said.
Lancman, a Democrat, said the device would protect the mostly female staff cleaning hotel rooms when they are at their most vulnerable.
Mostly, it would protect Lancman, from having to busy his pretty head with legislation to solve New York state's myriad problems.
And re-read this: "a portable device connected to a central security official."
Yes, we all have them these days. They're called "cell phones," and they can be programmed to speed-dial a "central security official" called 911 and/or hotel security. Imagine that.
Two Hollywood Showrunners Insulting Each Other
Saw this tweet this morning from TV critic @HHavrilesky:
Why is this old scrap between Judd Apatow & Mark Brazill (in 2002 Harper's) so enjoyable to revisit? http://bit.ly/2RvC0h
A bit from one of Brazil's emails to Apatow:
I noticed how outraged you were to not get a writing credit on "Cable Guy" until it came out and was panned. You dropped that cause like the showbiz weasel you are. You may not think you're a thief, but most comics know otherwise. And again, you know that too. Have you ever read "What Makes Sammy Run"? I think you'd like it. Get cancer.Love, Mark
Apatow writes back:
As for the cancer, I'll wait till you get it and then steal it from you. By the way, that joke was one of my writers', Rodney Rothman (see, I credited him). See, I have no original thoughts. Sorry I bothered to figure this out.Judd
I'm A Neither
I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but somebody who knows that the parties are corrupt and that politicians are mostly self-interested sleazebags. Law-stretching, law-bending and law-breaking sleazebags.
Most recently, the campaign of brainy-like-a-ficus-tree Janice Hahn, who's running for Jane Harman's vacated Congressional seat, made FOUR illegal robo-calls to my house (and maybe more when I wasn't home).
For a political robo-call to be legal, it has to be preceded by a live person on the line. Hers (which originated in California, per Caller ID) were not -- which makes them illegal. So, her first act in trying to win herself this lawmaking office was to break the law. Lovely. But, no surprise.
This is just a small thing, but I think it's emblematic of the sleaziness that gets people to high-placed positions in government, and the sleaze so many are busy spreading while they're in office. I consider the honest and country-serving politician the exception. Can you name any? One, even?
Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of reason, and a guy and a thinker I have great respect for, quotes from the book he and Nick Gillespie wrote to set people straight on the crap America is being served by both parties (no, that isn't the smell of bread baking):
This book intends, in part, to document the fact that the two major parties are not what they say and that you are right to be angry with their false claims about core beliefs. It is a shock to tender ears, we realize, but by any meaningful yardstick, Democrats do not care about free speech, and Republicans do not care about free enterprise. They are much more concerned with convincing you that the other guy is a Nazi than they are about relaxing government's control over activities it has no business meddling in.
The book: The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America
Think of it as a political alarm clock.
Oh, and my comment about Hahn's brains comes from personal experience, from speaking with her. I demanded her home number from her campaign -- still haven't gotten it.
Since she thinks it's okay to bother me at home with her business, I wanted to call her and lecture her on how she has no right to steal my time and hijack a phone line I pay for to make her marketing costs cheaper.
In hopes of derailing my demands for her number, her campaign manager had her call me at home (for the purposes of making an apology to me -- an utterly insincere apology, since she clearly wasn't sorry she robocalled; she was just sorry she robocalled a pain in the ass/refuse to be abused by lawbreaking aspiring lawmakers person like me).
I found her about as easy to push around conversationally as my 10-year-old neighbor -- not that there's any need to do it to him, because he's a sweet kid who shows integrity already.
Hahn, meanwhile, wouldn't agree to stop the harassing calls -- to pay her own advertising freight instead of sticking voters with the cost by robocalling them.
And her rationale for not stopping? Basically that everybody does it.
That wouldn't fly with my mother in second grade, and it ain't gonna fly with me. Oh, and P.S. Jane Harman, who resigned from the seat she was elected to, should be paying for the makeup election to find whichever lowlife will replace her.
Still Out Of A Job? Maybe Blame Legislators With Their Fingers In The Regulation Jar
Yale Law prof Stephen L. Carter writes on Bloomberg:
The man in the aisle seat is trying to tell me why he refuses to hire anybody. His business is successful, he says, as the 737 cruises smoothly eastward. Demand for his product is up. But he still won't hire."Why not?"
"Because I don't know how much it will cost," he explains. "How can I hire new workers today, when I don't know how much they will cost me tomorrow?"
He's referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when. His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can't afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he's hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost.
...I ask him what, precisely, he thinks is the proper role of government as it relates to business.
"Invisible," he says. "I know there are things the government has to do. But they need to find a way to do them without people like me having to bump into a new regulation every time we turn a corner." He reflects for a moment, then finds the analogy he seeks. "Government should act like my assistant, not my boss."
The Most Annoying Habits Of The Opposite Sex
What bugs the skin off you?
Boycott Urban Thief-fitters
Pretty scummy. It appears they search out designs by independent artists, knock them off, and sell them at a premium. Details here.
How It's Going To Work In Syria
Prediction from a guy who's been there on the ground in the Middle East -- war correspondent Michael J. Totten who blogs at Pajamas:
After Assad shoots enough young men in the head that he quells the uprising against him, you can bet your bottom dollar that he'll initiate a few cosmetic reforms. They'll amount to less than a mound of piled up trash, but he'll do it for the PR points he's accustomed to earning from those who yearn to be suckered. And there's a decent chance he'll hint at starting a new peace process with Israel in the hopes of convincing Western powers that he's once again indispensable.
Totten is the author of a fascinating book I've read a good bit of (in between my current work insanity), The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel.
It's his first-person account of revolution, terrorism, and war in Lebanon -- "one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie."
Not Being Naked Just Got Cheaper
Big Memorial Day Weekend sale at Amazon on Women's clothes
Even better, entering code AFASHION at checkout will make these sale items an extra 20 percent cheaper.
Fat City, Illinois
"Thank you, Illinois taxpayers, for my cushy life," writes writes recently retired sociology prof David Rubinstein in The Weekly Standard:
After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I "worked." But that's not all: There's a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites. Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and--when it rains, it pours--another for unused sick leave. I was also offered the opportunity to teach as an emeritus for three years, receiving $8,000 per course, double the pay for adjuncts, which works out to over $200 an hour. Another going-away present was summer pay, one ninth of my salary, with no teaching obligation.I haven't done the math but I suspect that, given a normal life span, these benefits nearly doubled my salary. And in Illinois these benefits are constitutionally guaranteed, up there with freedom of religion and speech.
Why do I put "worked" in quotation marks? Because my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation: reading and writing about topics that interested me. Maybe this counts as work. But here I am today--like many of my retired colleagues--doing pretty much what I have done since the day I began graduate school, albeit with less intensity.
As for the rest of us, we'll be struggling to pick up odd jobs at 97 to keep guys like this in benefits.
Power Boors
David DiSalvo blogs on Forbes about a new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggesting that the ruder somebody acts, the more people looking on are convinced that the person is powerful -- and thus doesn't have to respect the same rules as the rest of us:
In one of the experiments, study participants read about a visitor to an office who marched in and poured himself a cup of "employee only" coffee without asking. In another case they read about a bookkeeper that flagrantly bent accounting rules. Participants rated the rule breakers as more in control and powerful compared to people who didn't steal the coffee or break accounting rules....What this study appears to indicate is that violating norms is viewed by others as a sign of power, even if the observers would otherwise judge those violations as rude or flatly wrong. Considering many of the public personalities we venerate, these findings make a lot of sense, though I would like to see a follow on study that examines observer perceptions when the rude rule breakers are caught. Perhaps it's less the rudeness and corruption we admire, and more the ability to get away with it that intrigues us. Maybe we're just a little smitten with the charisma of villainy.
Be honest: Do you think you give rulebreakers like these a pass?
No More Shoe-Leather Chops
Think pink! (When cooking pork.) Steve Cavendish writes at the LA Times that the USDA changed its guidelines, recommending that pork be cooked to 145 degrees -- 15 degrees less shoe-leather'y than the previous 160 degree standard. Andrew Zimmerman of Sepia (a Chicago restaurant) agreed:
"I think it's great. It's a long time coming, especially as the quality of pork - particularly heirloom pork - continues to improve. The original reasons for cooking pork to a higher temperature (namely trichinosis) are no longer much of a problem these days," he said."Really good heirloom pork is best served at medium/medium-rare. I'd still love to see it go down a bit more, to about 135, but it's a huge improvement over 160. Our guests request their pork chops cooked medium rare all the time, so chefs and consumers are both winning here."
But food writer Michael Ruhlman said even 145 degrees got it wrong.
"It's a good thing they lowered the temperature because the 160 degrees is not only ridiculous, it is inaccurate and therefore harmful," he said. "But 145 degrees still doesn't make sense to me because it fails to include time. I cook my pork to 135 degrees because that is the point at which its flavor and texture are best."
In news going the other way ("cooked beyond recognition"), North Carolina has killed the rare hamburger. Ben Muessig writes on AOL:
From Winston-Salem to Nags Head, meat eaters are unable to order their burgers rare or even medium rare thanks to a state restriction that requires restaurants to cook ground beef to an internal temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit.That's enough heat to sufficiently kill dangerous bacteria like E. coli, according to state health officials. But it's also enough heat to kill all of the flavor, according to Raleigh resident and rare burger aficionado Steven Elliot.
"I don't believe in a nanny state when it comes to food," said Elliot, who told AOL Weird News he would order his burgers "bloody" or "ready to moo" if he could.
"I don't like the government telling us what we can and cannot eat," he added.
Red meat eaters who prefer their meat, well, red, can still legally grill up their own rare burgers at home. But North Carolina's restaurants can't go a step below medium -- or medium well, according to some restaurants -- if they want to stay in the good graces of the state's Division of Environmental Health.
Assuming they're serving adults, can't they let the adults decide for themselves? Same as they decide whether to risk going hangliding, getting behind the wheel of a car, and walking across the street. I'd guess all of these activities kill far more people than rare hamburgers...yet, I bet thousands upon thousands of North Carolina residents cross the street every day.
I eat nearly raw meat at home and at restaurants and have been for years, and it hasn't killed me yet. The other night, it was two little lamb chops Gregg left me when he brought over some steak he cooked me for dinner. Well, "cooked." Naturally, he made my steak very rare, just the way I like it; or, as they say when ordering in Texas: "Just wipe its ass, knock off its horns, and throw it on a plate."
Thomas Friedman Calls For Israel To Get Lara Loganed
Phyllis Chesler blogs on Thomas Friedman's call, in The New York Times, to bring Tahrir Square to Jerusalem -- vis a vis the Israel-"Palestine" impasse:
Tahrir Square? Did the man sleep through journalist Lara Logan's mass gang rape there? Does he view such a mob as "peaceful" or "non-violent?" Does he not understand that the young Egyptian Wael Gonim has, perhaps unintentionally, paved the way for the far more organized Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists to assume power? Does Friedman actually believe that the Islamist factions at war with each other and with their overlords, chieftains, and dictators, are all engaged in "non-violent" social change?Friedman does not focus on Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya's Moammar Qaddafi or Bahrain's King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa --all of whom have been shooting down their own people in cold blood in the streets. He does not call for people of good will to "nonviolently" go and face these evil men down. No. Instead, listen to Friedman's clarion call. He suggests that we should:
Announce that every Friday from today forward will be 'Peace Day,' and have thousands of West Bank Palestinians march nonviolently to Jerusalem, carrying two things -- an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other. The sign should say: 'Two states for two peoples. We, the Palestinian people, offer the Jewish people a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders -- with mutually agreed adjustments -- including Jerusalem, where the Arabs will control their neighborhoods and the Jews theirs."
Yeah, except that's not what the Palestinians want. They want the Jews dead and all the land for themselves. There's that quip, "If the Arabs lay down their arms there will be peace. If the Israelis do, they'll all be dead."
Chesler asks the right questions -- among them:
Alright, the man's a regular Gandhi, hand him his dhoti (loincloth). However, why doesn't Friedman also call for an international delegation to march to Sderot to serve as human shields against Hamas rockets?
How cute that he thinks the Palestinians want peace. But for the Israelis being there to hate and murder (per the Quran's calls to kill the Jews), these Muslims would likely be like the tribal, warring Muslims in its neighbor-states, murdering each other for belonging to the "wrong" branch of Islam. The choicest example is the Iraqi woman who blew herself up -- taking out a bunch of other Iraqi women and children who were waiting in a U.N. food line. Please tell me how that was about the jooooos.
Dead Kids Make Bad Laws
Dumb legislators always forget the law of unintended consequences. A law in New Jersey to let people know (with a big red sticker) that a young teen "probationary" driver is behind the wheel, lets all sorts of people know.
Michael Tracey writes at reason about "Kyleigh's Law," named for a teen killed in a 2006 car accident that seemed to have resulted from a friend's distracted driving:
Go to Facebook and you'll find plenty of groups with names like "Kyleigh's Law lets creepers know I'm young and alone."...For another tale of decal-related trouble, Schroeder puts me in touch with Woodcliff Lakes Police Chief Anthony Jannicelli, who wrote the assemblyman to report an incident he experienced firsthand. Jannicelli, whose teenage son occasionally uses his Chevy Tahoe, said the decals usually stay on the car regardless of who is driving. One day, the chief was on his way to work, and somebody in front of him was speeding like a maniac. Jannicelli signaled his disapproval with a stern beep, and at the next traffic light, the speeder leapt out of his car in the middle of the road and began to approach the chief's vehicle.
Based on the decals, Jannicelli reckoned, the guy must have assumed he was about to chew out a lowly teenager; the Tahoe's windshield is high and usually obscured by glare, so from street level it's hard to tell who is behind the wheel. Needless to say, Mr. Road Rage quickly backed off after discovering that he was about to confront a uniformed police officer, but the episode left Jannicelli convinced that the decals are a safety hazard. "If it was my son in the car and not me," he says, "my feeling is this guy probably would have come back and had a fist fight."
Pay To Pee
Via Consumerist, this coffee shop's restroom policy is, "a real thirst whetter," and apparently the first thing they want you to know.
His Journey Toward Islamoawareness
Excellent piece echoing my increasing awareness about Islam by Lawrence Meyers on Big Peace (reporting the words of a good friend who can't publicly state his views):
I learned about "The Verse of the Sword" (9:5) that says "slay infidels wherever you find them", the verse condoning wife-beating (4:34), the hundreds of other violent, intolerant verses, and the all-important distinction between Meccan verses and the Medinan verses in the Qu'ran. (The more violent ones are considered "more true" to Islamic theologians.)I learned about the countries where Islam rules, and saw that they almost always are places where freedoms are denied, economies stagnate, ideas are repressed and human rights violated.
I learned about the barbaric system known as Sharia law and its death penalty for homosexuality, adultery, and apostasy, and how it codifies second-class status for non-Muslim and all women. Iran actually executes gays routinely, simply because they are gay!
I learned about Muhammad; how he is held as an "excellent example of conduct" (33:21) for Muslims to follow even today, but then I learned the historical record (in the hadith; the collections of his doings and sayings, and in biographies written by pious Muslims) shows that he owned slaves, raped the female ones (in a couple of cases shortly after having their husbands killed), robbed caravans, tortured a man to find out where he hid his treasure-by building a fire on his chest, married a 6 year-old, and had sex with her when she was 9-and he struck her, too. He had all the men of an entire tribe slaughtered, and had his critics assassinated. And these are excellent examples of conduct?
...Not every thing I learned reflected poorly on Islam, but the more I looked into the doctrine and history of Islam the more "aware" I became of the existence of serious totalitarian, xenophobic, supremacist, expansionist elements of Islamic ideology and theology.
More: Why saying "But what about Christianity?!" doesn't cut it -- at the above link.
They Want The Really Good Gropers
TSA agents were supposed to have been brought in to oversee the groping of underage girls and boys at a Santa Fe high school prom, but were not there, despite a Federal judge's ruling saying they had to be.
Excuse me, but pat-downs at prom? I really appreciate the Herrera sisters, mentioned in the piece, who filed a case against Santa Fe Public Schools, saying they were groped (and I don't think they mean by some randy boys) at a recent dance.
More from Candice Herrera at KOB.com:
One senior tells Eyewitness News 4 the pat down was so invasive she felt like she was being molested.Capital High School senior Candice Herrera says while waiting in line to enter the prom she watched other students patted down by private security guards while faculty checked bags and purses for contraband.
When Herrera was up to be searched she says the female security guard made her extremely uncomfortable.
"She grabbed my breast and grabbed the inner part of my bra and shook it and then picked up the front of my dress to like mid thigh." Herrera said. "She was patting down my bare legs which kind of didn't make sense."
Herrera says she saw similar pat downs happen to other students as they entered the prom. "
I felt really awkward, I felt like I was being molested in some sort of way," Herrera explained. "It's not right to be touched in that many ways."
The class action lawsuit filed in federal court on Tuesday also alleges that school administrators confiscated nail clippers, a small bottle of lotion and prescription pills from the sisters as they passed through security.
According to the lawsuit, neither Herrera or her younger sister had ever been in trouble at school and the younger sister, who is a minor, is ranked first in her class with a perfect G.P.A.
Yoohoo? Anybody awake?
Everything's Whiter With Dove!
GB, who I follow on Facebook, linked to copyranter's blog item about a Dove VisibleCare ad (see it at the link).
GB wrote:
A shot of obviously 3 different women but the way the ad's laid out with "before" and "after" behind them, it seems to imply that Dove Bodywash should be renamed Dove Bodybleach.
copyranter wrote:
Dove body wash turns Black Women into Latino Women into White Women.
And it really does look that way. Also, they not only get lighter, as a commenter on copyranter's site observed, they get thinner, too!
Courtney Luv asks:
What do you think? Is this a form of subtle racism?
As I commented on her site:
I think it's a sign of not-so-subtle stupidity and dunderheadedness on the part of the 42,000 committee members any ad has to go through these days.
I Just Became A Sports Fan
From Fox Sports, Chicago Bears rookie linebacker J.T. Thomas escorted a wheelchair-bound teen to her middle school dance:
The former West Virginia standout last month met 14-year-old Joslyn Levell, who uses a wheelchair. During that meeting, she told him that all of the boys she had asked to the dance turned her down.Levell, who attends Suncrest Middle School in Morgantown -- where the university is located -- has spina bifida, a condition that prevents the spinal cord from developing properly.
"I hugged her and signed a few things and we talked for awhile and she cried a bit," Thomas told NFL.com about meeting Levell. "I gave her a hug and told her everything would work itself out."
Shortly after the meeting, Thomas' stepmother called the school and Levell's parents to make sure it would be OK for her hulking stepson to pop the question.
"After so many people turned me down, this was so big especially, because he asked me instead of me asking him," Levell said.
LA Press Club Awards Finalists Announced
It's been a little crazy, so I'm just getting around to mentioning it. LA Press Club Awards finalists were announced Friday, and I'm a finalist in six categories. (It got pretty expensive to enter, so I didn't enter headlines this year -- even though I've won for my headlines every year I have entered.)
A. JOURNALISTS OF THE YEAR A1. PRINT (Over 50,000 circulation)
*Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate
*David Evans, Bloomberg Market Magazine
*Mariel Garza, Los Angeles Daily News
*Patrick Range McDonald, LA WeeklyA2. PRINT (Under 50,000 circulation)
*Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate
*Radley Balko, Reason Magazine
*Dan Evans, Glendale News-Press
*Ryan Vaillancourt, Los Angeles Downtown NewsB6. *COMMENTARY
*Amy Alkon, Syndicated columnist
*Larry Allison, Long Beach Press-Telegram
*Daily News Editorial Pages, Los Angeles Daily News
*Thomas Elias, California Focus syndicated columnC6. *COMMENTARY
*Amy Alkon, Creators.com, 'The Advice Goddess'"
*Burbank Leader, "Burbank Leader Editorials"
*Thomas Elias, "Thomas Elias California Focus Syndicated Column"
*Bennet Kelley, Santa Monica Daily Press, "Movement to Reality-Based Politics?"
*Joe Piasecki, Burbank Leader, "Olive Avenue Confidential"C7.* COLUMNIST
*Amy Alkon, Syndicated columnist, "The Advice Goddess"
*Charles Crumpley, LA Business Journal, "Drawing a Line at City Hall"
*Dan Evans, Burbank Leader, "Columns - Dan Evans"
*Ted Johnson, Variety.com, "Prop 8"
*Jon Regardie, Los Angeles Downtown News, "Four Regardie Report Columns"G2. FEATURE/COMMENTARY
*Amy Alkon, Psychology Today, "The Truth about Beauty"
*Damon W. Root, Reason, "Conservatives v. Libertarians: The debate over judicial activism divides former allies"
*David Schneider, Slake: Los Angeles, "Ballad of the Trunk Monkey"
*Richard Siklos, Business Week Magazine, "Extreme Moneyball"
*Peter Suderman, Reason, "The Gatekeeper - How a little bureaucratic office became the biggest impediment to Barack Obama‟s health care plans"
Stef Willen, the enormously talented woman who edits me part-time, is also a finalist for her wonderful and fascinating column in McSweeney's about her other job -- part-time fire insurance work. Her columns are here: Total Loss.
Sliming Their Way To Free Labor
Molly Fischer reviews Ross Perlin's Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy
As Ross Perlin writes in this sharp new study, today's teens and twenty-somethings have been taught that they must first work for free if they ever hope to get paid--and they are getting a raw deal. In what he bills as "the first book-length analysis of internships," Perlin puts the annual value of intern labor at a conservative estimate of almost $2 billion, performed free of charge, often for companies that could probably afford a minimum-wage employee or two.The economic and legal problems with this arrangement are glaring. Internships exclude those whose families cannot afford to support them; they displace paid workers; they allow companies to dodge liability and colleges to cash in on "internship for credit" tuition dollars.
...Still, Perlin's point is unequivocal: "By law, there are very few situations where you can ask someone to do real work for free." The Labor Department's provision for unpaid on-the-job training was originally formulated for railway brakemen, and it permits periods of uncompensated learning only when certain criteria are satisfied--for example, that the work "is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school." Few internships would satisfy such a requirement. Perlin dismisses the "convenient myth" that requiring interns to receive academic credit somehow absolves employers of responsibility to pay them. In reality, all that this "urban legend" has done is create a revenue stream for colleges, who can now receive tuition from students sitting in cubicles far off campus.
Wile E. Coyote Made Them Do It
Absurdly (but not surprisingly) the Church is reaching far and wide to assign blame for the priests who engaged in kiddie raping. From an LA Times op-ed:
Blame the flower children. That seems to be the chief conclusion of a new report about the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal. The study, undertaken by John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the request of America's Catholic bishops, links the spike in child abuse by priests in the 1960s and '70s to "the importance given to young people and popular culture" -- along with the emergence of the feminist movement, a "singles culture" and a growing acceptance of homosexuality. It also cites crime, drugs, an increase in premarital sexual behavior and divorce.The problem with this conclusion isn't that it absolves molesting priests of responsibility. Even the study's authors wouldn't go that far. Rather, the flaw with the theory is that it's unsupported by any data or evidence. It thus detracts from the report's other findings, which are based on empirical research.
I think this, from the LAT's comments, had it right:
lschaumberg:
As a historian, I can assure you that sex abuse within the Church has been going on for centuries.
And another choice one:
Carolyn14:
Statement by Barbara Blaine, SNAP President, May 18, 2011 It's 'garbage in, garbage out.' Two academics, paid by bishops and using information from bishops reach the conclusions bishops desperately want to reach themselves.The document is yet another reminder of the sad, simple truth that keeps getting overlooked here: no institution can police itself, especially not an ancient, rigid, secretive, all-male monarchy. The report is a clarion call to police, prosecutors, lawmakers and judges to end decades of dangerous deference to church officials and start reforming secular laws so that those who commit, ignore and conceal child sex crimes can be held responsible for the devastation they cause.
Full quote from the above comment at this link. Criticism of SNAP here -- but I don't think that invalidates Barbara Blaine's words above.
Children At Risk
Via commenter Number Six, interesting Slate piece by Tom Vanderbilt on how those "Children At Play" signs don't make children any safer. (Once again, it's the mere appearance of "safety," and the signs have neither been proven to change driver behavior nor to do anything to improve the safety of children in an area with traffic.) Vanderbilt writes:
"I find it amazing that people think that a 30-in X 30-in square sign (that is only a little less than 6.25 square feet of sheeting material when you make the corners rounded) will make a difference in driver behavior," one engineer complained on an Internet forum. "If the driver does not notice the characteristics of a neighborhood as they drive down the street, why would they notice a sign as they pass it, or remember it for more than a few seconds once they have passed it."
You really need to be oriented as a person to care: Be thinking about other people as you drive through a neighborhood, be worried that you might hit someone and hurt them.
Also, Vanderbilt writes, among other problems, overdoing it with signage seems to breed disregarding of signs in general, notes a Fed highway sign manual.
Parents, apparently, are the reason these signs go up.
People clamoring for "Children at Play" signs are often living on residential streets that are inordinately wide, lacking any kind of calming obstacles (from trees to "bulb-outs"), perhaps having unnecessary center-line markings--three factors that will boost vehicle speed more than any sign will lower them.It is, of course, no secret that children are risky pedestrians. "Children are particularly vulnerable to pedestrian death because they are exposed to traffic threats that exceed their cognitive, developmental, behavioral, physical and sensory abilities," reads a typical child safety document. "Children are impulsive and have difficulty judging speed, spatial relations, and distance."
Once again, parenting -- including moving to an area conducive to raising small, impulsive beings -- seems to be called for. Not signage. But, hey, whatever gives you and yours a false sense of security!
Random Acts Of Firestone
There's the massive Uniroyal tire on the way to the airport in Detroit, and then there's this randomly placed apparent art object in Colorado Springs. Having spent years passing the huge Detroit tire, I found the little Colorado Springs one hilarious. 
Of course, the other vast difference between Colorado Springs and Detroit is in one's need to duck tree branches and errant birdies dropping poo instead of gunfire, home invasion robbers, and carjackers.
The Tease Party
Boyfriend: "That's not condescending; it's lovingly dismissive."
Love that.
Indiana Erases The Fourth Amendment
J.B. pointed me to this one, an unbelievable ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court saying that residents have no right to resist unlawful entry by police into their homes. Dan Carden writes at nwi.com:
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry."We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."
David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.
How lovely. Never mind your rights. You can have a public defender try to sort them out afterward.
Have you noticed that these unbelievable violations of our rights are popping up almost daily? It doesn't seem many people are getting concerned -- or even noticing. What will it take for Americans to wake up? Or, will we?
Are We Impressed? Or Even Interested?
Loved this dumb tweet from @NBCLA:
Royalty Alert: The Prince Consort Henrik of Denmark is visiting California in June.
I tweeted back:
Amy Alkon will be visiting Westwood on Sunday.
Apocalypse Not Quite Yet
I'm really glad the world didn't end because I have plans with Sergeant Heather on Sunday night.
What do all those people who didn't...I dunno...get sucked up into heaven, do or say now?
Vaughn Bell writes on Slate about psychologist Leon Festinger's notions about an earlier group of prophecy adherents and about how nitwitthink works:
Festinger was fascinated by how we deal with information that fails to match up to our beliefs, and suspected that we are strongly motivated to resolve the conflict--a state of mind he called "cognitive dissonance."...What Festinger failed to understand is that prophecies, per se, almost never fail. They are instead component parts of a complex and interwoven belief system which tends to be very resilient to challenge from outsiders. While the rest of us might focus on the accuracy of an isolated claim as a test of a group's legitimacy, those who are part of that group--and already accept its whole theology--may not be troubled by what seems to them like a minor mismatch. A few people might abandon the group, typically the newest or least-committed adherents, but the vast majority experience little cognitive dissonance and so make only minor adjustments to their beliefs. They carry on, often feeling more spiritually enriched as a result.
Oh, but wait -- there we all are:
For those not waiting for the world to end in a storm of fire and light it is easy to write off the believers as deluded, but Festinger was not so wide of the mark when he suggested that we adapt to even the most unlikely of contradictions using nothing more than our methods of everyday rationalization. The faithful could just as easily be those who stubbornly stand by disgraced politicians, failed ideologies, dishonest friends, or cheating spouses, even when reality highlights the clearest of inconsistencies. Armageddon is unlikely to arrive this weekend, but most of us have lived through it many times before.
A terrific book about human cognitive failings -- and a good tool for helping yourself avoid common irrationalities: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
Parenting, Not Policy
Freakonomics co-author, economist Steven Levitt, has a "daughter test" for paternalistic policies -- policies against "gray area" stuff like illicit drugs, prostitution, abortion, or gambling:
It wasn't until the U.S. government's crackdown on internet poker last week that I came to realize that the primary determinant of where I stand with respect to government interference in activities comes down to the answer to a simple question: How would I feel if my daughter were engaged in that activity?If the answer is that I wouldn't want my daughter to do it, then I don't mind the government passing a law against it. I wouldn't want my daughter to be a cocaine addict or a prostitute, so in spite of the fact that it would probably be more economically efficient to legalize drugs and prostitution subject to heavy regulation/taxation, I don't mind those activities being illegal.
Ilya Somin blogs at Volokh:
It's easy to poke holes in Levitt's "daughter test." If I had a daughter, I wouldn't want her to not go to college. Does that mean college attendance should be mandatory for anyone with the requisite academic skills? I wouldn't want my daughter to advocate racism or communism. If forced to choose, I'd much rather have a daughter who uses marijuana or cocaine than one who is a racist or communist. Does that mean that the government should ban racist and communist speech?Levitt's "daughter test" is useful, however, in highlighting an important aspect of paternalism. Many of its advocates, including some sophisticated scholars such as Levitt, too readily generalize from their own personal values and use those preferences as justification for prohibitionist policies.
...Even worse, Levitt's approach ignores the harmful indirect effects of prohibition. Even if the health risks of illegal drugs are very great, it doesn't follow that the War on Drugs is justified. That policy kills thousands of people every year, imprisons hundreds of thousands more, and undermines family values in poor inner city communities. These costs far outweigh the health risks posed by illegal drugs themselves, especially if many of those risks are born by users who knowingly accept them.
1967 Borders? Okey-Dokey...Then You Do 1845 Borders
Hilarious parody posted by Dan Friedman on BigPeace.com -- "Netanyahu Urges U.S. Return to 1845 Borders" -- Netanyahu's response to Obama's call for Israel to return to its 1967 borders (or more specifically, "new borders "based on the 1967 lines"):
...Netanyahu spoke of the injustice and hardship Mexicans have endured since American forces annexed Texas in 1845. "Tens of thousands of ordinary Mexicans were driven out of their homes - the only homes they had known for centuries - and forced to live in poverty and squalor south of the border imposed by American aggression," Netanyahu said."The Israeli and Mexican people agree on this: This festering wound will never heal until America takes bold steps to return to the internationally accepted lines of 1845. Clearly the settlement activity that's taken place in occupied Mexico since then is illegal. When I meet the President tomorrow I will tell him to halt all building activity in Texas immediately...
That's The Sound Of Your Rights Going Down The Toilet
Are you flushing because you're destroying evidence or because what's in the bowl doesn't fit the criteria of "if it's yellow, let it mellow"?
The Supreme Court just gave the big A-OK (minus Ginsburg...thank you, Justice Ginsburg) to giving police officers leeway to break into a home if they hear evidence being destroyed. And that's huge leeway, since officers can say they heard what they thought were those sounds. And whoops, not quite, it turns out, but wow, there was a huge pile of pot on the coffee table.
Disgusting. We are seeing a massive trend to degrade our rights on so many levels -- from the TSA violation of our Fourth Amendment rights to this sort of thing -- and most people seem to be sheeple about it.
David G. Savage writes in the LA Times:
Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame" when police burst in, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. for an 8-1 majority.In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she feared the ruling gave police an easy way to ignore 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. She said the amendment's "core requirement" is that officers have probable cause and a search warrant before they break into a house.
"How 'secure' do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and ...forcibly enter?" Ginsburg asked.
An expert on criminal searches said the decision would encourage the police to undertake "knock and talk" raids.
"I'm surprised the Supreme Court would condone this, that if the police hear suspicious noises inside, they can break in. I'm even more surprised that nearly all of them went along," said John Wesley Hall, a criminal defense lawyer in Little Rock, Ark.
In the past, the court has insisted that homes are special preserves. As Alito said, "The 4th Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house." One exception to the search warrant rule involves an emergency, such as screams coming from a house. Police may also pursue a fleeing suspect who enters a residence.
"If Only We Had A Brain..."
The New York Times' Ashley Parker reports on the religious nitwits who believe the world will end on Saturday:
The Haddad children of Middletown, Md., have a lot on their minds: school projects, SATs, weekend parties. And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday.The three teenagers have been struggling to make sense of their shifting world, which started changing nearly two years ago when their mother, Abby Haddad Carson, left her job as a nurse to "sound the trumpet" on mission trips with her husband, Robert, handing out tracts. They stopped working on their house and saving for college.
Last weekend, the family traveled to New York, the parents dragging their reluctant children through a Manhattan street fair in a final effort to spread the word.
"My mom has told me directly that I'm not going to get into heaven," Grace Haddad, 16, said. "At first it was really upsetting, but it's what she honestly believes."
Thousands of people around the country have spent the last few days taking to the streets and saying final goodbyes before Saturday, Judgment Day, when they expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as the rapture. Nonbelievers, they hold, will be left behind to perish along with the world over the next five months.
Oh, good, because I have plans with Sergeant Heather on Sunday night.
"Will You Be Horrified By Me?"
What do you think of showy, public marriage proposals? John Hawkins tweeted:
I usually assume that men who do showy public proposals are trying to use it to pressure their reluctant GF's to say yes.
"The one that inspired that tweet was at a food court," Hawkins later tweeted.
If you're a woman, would you be charmed or put off by one of these?
Dangerous Flacking
Got this crapthink in an emailed press release:
Subject: STORY IDEA: SEXUAL ASSAULT GROWING TREND AMONG ONLINE DATERS/CAN BE PREVENTED WITH BACKGROUND CHECK
The gist of it in this line from the press release:
Online daters need to know that they can protect themselves by easily initiating a comprehensive background check on potential dates for as little as $15.
I wrote back:
This is crap.Online daters will have a false sense of security from this. They will not find criminals who do not yet have a criminal record -- for example, Carole Alden, subject of Dr. Barbara Oakley's "Cold-Blooded Kindness," who murdered her husband but was never tripped up by the law before that (despite not exactly being a church lady).
You are promoting endangering people in order to earn a living. Nice.
Your Money, Their Say
I already have a mommy and a daddy and they long ago taught me to squirrel money away for a rainy day -- or a lot of rainy days. But, two Senators are vying to be my designated grownups and yours by offering legislation to "protect" 401K retirement savings. From a press release at Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi's site:
While having access to a loan in an emergency is an important feature for many participants, a 401(k) savings account should not be used as a piggy bank.
I happen to agree, and live accordingly, but especially while we're in tough economic times, it's not for these Senators to say (or put the kibosh on) who dips into which part of their savings and for what.
Here are a few bits from their SEAL Act (aka Savings Enhancement by Alleviating Leakage in 401(k) Savings Act of 2011):
...limiting the most 401(k) loan practices that provide easy access to retirement funds but adds costs and fees to pension plans.
Sounds like a good idea, not adding costs and fees to the plans, but shouldn't creating policy be up to the companies that offer them, not a bunch of Senators? Here's more:
Bans products that promote leakage, such as the 401(k) debit cardCertain products actively encourage participants to tap into their savings before retirement, often accruing large fees in the process. One such product is a debit card linked directly to one's 401(k) savings account. In 2008, Sens. Kohl and Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced a bill barring companies from offering 401(k) debit cards. The legislation followed a hearing on the topic that Kohl held as Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Although 401k debit cards are not currently prevalent, a number of different companies have offered them in the past and some companies continue to market these cards online. The SEAL Act bans products like the 401(k) debit card.
While there's no accounting for the vast number of people who behave without sense, I don't think the 401K accounts all of those taking loans are "leaking" all the way to furs, yachts, and new cars. Again, these are tough times. If you're taking money out of your 401K, I'm guessing you're either on meth or you've long been out of a job and haven't got a lot of prospects for one on the table.
More on the SEAL Act here.
via Consumerist
Take Reality To Work
Thursday is supposed to be "Bike To Work Day" in Los Angeles. I love these people with these utopian ideals. A quote from the Paul M. J. Suchecki article on Patch:
To encourage this eco-friendly way of commuting, if you pledge to ride to work, you could be eligible for a range of prizes from $100 Macy's gift certificates to a bicycle from REI.
If you pledge to ride to work anywhere but on the bike path on the beach (which doesn't exactly go to a lot of workplaces), you could be eligible for a steel plate in your head after some Malibu housewife texting her six nannies mows you down.
Wave Goodbye To Your Spouse!
Imagine you're an American man who falls in love with a Venezuelan woman. Now, imagine you're an American man who falls in love with a Venezuelan man. Here's how that works if you're not allowed to marry the person you love:
As Long As We Don't Have To Pay For The Body Bag, Too
A sexual fetish is not a disability; it's a hobby.
A man is living as an "adult baby," with a roommate who plays his "mommy," and is collecting disability benefits for it, and threatening suicide if the payments stop. Stephan Dinan writes in the Washington Times that Senator Tom Coburn, whom he calls the Senate's "top waste watcher," says it's unclear why these two are collecting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits instead of working:
"Given that Mr. Thornton is able to determine what is appropriate attire and actions in public, drive himself to complete errands, design and custom-make baby furniture to support a 350-pound adult and run an Internet support group, it is possible that he has been improperly collecting disability benefits for a period of time," Mr. Coburn wrote in a letter Monday to Inspector General Patrick P. O'Carroll Jr...."You wanna test how damn serious I am about leaving this world, screw with my check that pays for this apartment and food. Try it. See how serious I am. I don't care," the California man said. "I have no problem killing myself. Take away the last thing keeping me here, and see what happens. Next time you see me on the news, it will be me in a body bag."
...In an extensive biography on his web page, Mr. Thornton says he worked as a security guard for a year and a half but said trauma stemming from childhood abuse, combined with other mental problems, made it impossible for him to hold the job, and he has been receiving SSI payments for most of the last 10 years.
What has made it "impossible for him to hold a job" is the lack of any need whatsoever to do so while the rest of us taxpayers are keeping his lardass in mommy and diapers.
Hey, Freshmen...Have You Taken Your Mandatory Male-Bashing Class?
The government seems to find no area of our lives it can't worm into. A bill was introduced into Congress this month -- the Campus saVE Act -- that seeks to mandate relationship and sexual assault counseling for students at universities nationwide.
Robby Soave speculates at the Student Free Press that it could look something like the vile workshop at Hamilton College from last year:
The name of the workshop? "She Fears You."The workshop is run by Keith Edwards, who has spoken on dozens of campuses over the last ten years as part of his program, Men Ending Rape. His message--that male students are complicit in a culture of rape that pervades all university campuses--is controversial. But it was his visit to Hamilton College last September that provoked widespread criticism from students, alumni, and free speech organizations--largely because administrators at the college required students to attend.
Students received a campus-wide e-mail a week before the workshop with the instructions, "First-Year men are required to attend." Freshmen women were instructed to show up for a separate event.
Samantha Harris of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) said that mandatory programs stuffing a particular viewpoint down students' throats are a violation of the First Amendment:
And though private universities like Hamilton College are not bound to follow the First Amendment, most make promises to uphold students' rights, she said."It's a violation of those promises to either censor students or intrude on their freedom of conscience the way 'She Fears You' did," Harris said.
Mandatory sexual harassment sessions have their defenders. Security On Campus, a crime victims' rights and campus safety advocacy organization backing the Campus saVE Act, supports them. Melissa Lucchesi, outreach coordinator for SOC, listed mandatory relationship counseling as one of the bill's major strengths.
"Now they'll be required to have education programs on campus so that students will be aware of these issues, and also how they can get help, and what their rights are," she said.
And it's so much easier to just teach male bashing workshops than put up posters!
As for how likely women are to be raped on campus (and yes, some rapes do go unreported, and that should be taken into consideration), here are some stats from Chad Hermann at genderfairness.com:
At the University of Pittsburgh, there are roughly 14,800 female students. If their chances of being sexually assaulted are 1-in-4, there should be about 3,700 sexual assaults each year. In 2009, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, Pitt students reported 4.At Carnegie Mellon University, there are roughly 3,900 female students. If their chances of being sexually assaulted are 1-in-4, there should be about 975 sexual assaults each year. In 2009, CMU reported 6. (That figure was a three-year high.)
At Duquesne University, there are roughly 5,700 female students. If their chances of being sexually assaulted are 1-in-4, there should be about 1,425 sexual assaults each year. In 2009, Duquesne reported 3.
More about figuring in unreported rapes at the link.
Car Envy: If Only I Were Chinese
Single seater car, by Volkswagen, going for about $600. I'd pay extra for airbags.
Food Stamps For Thought
Leroy Fick, a Michigan man who won $2 million on the state's lottery TV show and is driving a brand new Audi convertible is still using food stamps, he told a TV station. From an AP story in the Freep:
Fick says the Department of Human Services told him he could continue to use the card, which is paid with tax dollars. He told WNEM: "If you're going to ... try to make me feel bad, you aren't going to do it."
The Real Secret Of The Secret Service?
Could it be that at least some of them are not too bright?
Seth Abramovitch posts on Gawker that a 13-year-old from Tacoma posted his observation (that's observation, not suggestion, or incitement) on Facebook that President Obama should be "careful because there could be suicide bombers" seeking vengeance for Osama bin Laden.
A week after writing that, Vito recalled for the local Fox affiliate, he was pulled out of class and brought to the principal's office:"A man walked in with a suit and glasses and he said he was part of the Secret Service. He told me it was because of a post I made that indicated I was a threat toward the President. I was very scared."After a half-hour of questioning, Vito was deemed not a threat, and was released.
While this seems like some dim agents at work, it fits a pattern of the constant and extremely worrisome degradation of and punishment for free speech that I see so frequently now.
The College Bubble
This video is long, but absolutely worth watching. It's about how Americans are still being misled that college -- and all the debt Americans go into to pay for it -- is the key to a successful future.
Meanwhile, college kids (except maybe those who studied engineering) are graduating right and left to jobs in coffee shops and grocery stores.
There's also a scary bit about how the college loan market has been taken over by the government and how taxpayers will, at a very low rate of interest, be paying for all the useless college educations (mirroring the Fannie and Freddie debacle).
Some of the thinkers I respect (Matt Welch, Wendy McElroy) did not go to school or did not finish school. I didn't study anthropology in college or take a single psychology class, but that didn't stop me from mowing through the entire canon of psychology (and figuring out that Freud was largely full of shit -- just making pronouncements without a shred of evidence). For example, from my column about introverts, The Larva Of The Party:
Ever since Freud decided (sans evidence) that introverts were repressed, narcissistic trolls under the bridge, extraversion has been considered the ideal and introverts have been seen as socially stunted. Introversion is also wrongly conflated with shyness, but shyness is fear- and shame-based -- quite different from seeing no reason to say anything to strangers unless you or they are on fire.More and more, research points to a strong biological basis for personality. Brain imaging shows distinct differences in introverts and extraverts. Studies by neuroscientist Debra L. Johnson and others found that extraverts, who get energized from external stimulation like meeting new people, have increased blood flow to rear areas of the brain for sensory processing (like listening, touching, watching). Introverts, who tend to be more pensive and introspective, and are easily overwhelmed by too much external stimulation, showed more blood flow altogether (indicating more internal stimulation), over more complicated pathways, with more activity in frontal regions for inward tasks like problem-solving, reasoning, and remembering. Put that together with a Chinese study adding evidence that introverts get socked with a higher level of cortical arousal from stimuli, and you get the idea that urging introverts to be more outgoing is a bit like urging scissors to be more like a stapler.
That column didn't cost my parents or me one red cent in college dollars...although I do send myself to evolutionary psychology conferences and read journal articles about daily. It wouldn't be hard to get a Ph.D. in ev psych or get licensed in psychology, but as the late Albert Ellis, the father of cognitive behavioral therapy (with Aaron Beck) and a fan of my column, once told me over lunch: "You know what you need to know; it would be a waste of time."
UPDATE: More here, from The New York Times, about the poor quality of an undergrad education. Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa write:
In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week, and 50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester. The average student spent only about 12 to 13 hours per week studying -- about half the time a full-time college student in 1960 spent studying, according to the labor economists Philip S. Babcock and Mindy S. Marks.Not surprisingly, a large number of the students showed no significant progress on tests of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing that were administered when they began college and then again at the ends of their sophomore and senior years. If the test that we used, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, were scaled on a traditional 0-to-100 point range, 45 percent of the students would not have demonstrated gains of even one point over the first two years of college, and 36 percent would not have shown such gains over four years of college.
...The situation reflects a larger cultural change in the relationship between students and colleges. The authority of educators has diminished, and students are increasingly thought of, by themselves and their colleges, as "clients" or "consumers." When 18-year-olds are emboldened to see themselves in this manner, many look for ways to attain an educational credential effortlessly and comfortably. And they are catered to accordingly. The customer is always right.
Auto Eroticism
Walter Moore asked:
If you could have any car -- to drive, not sell -- which would you pick?
My reply:
I love my 2004 Honda Insight, but I would love it more if it were the flying car it looks like. I'd also like a Smart car. They're so cute. I hugged one in Beverly Hills. It looks like a four-wheeled pet.
Gregg took a picture, but we have no idea where it is right now. I really did hug it. It was black and hot pink.
Two Muslim Mothers Feel No Remorse For Murdering Daughters
From the BBC:
The women, who were neighbours and are both Muslim, were reportedly furious with their daughters for eloping with Hindu men, police told the BBC.Zahida, 19, and Husna, 26, were strangled last week after they returned home to make peace with their families.
The two mothers are yet to make an official response to the accusations.
One of the accused is quoted by the Indian Express newspaper as saying after being arrested, "How could they elope with Hindus? They deserved to die. We have no remorse."
From Bin Laden To The Muslim Brotherhood?
In the Christian Science Monitor, Ayaan Hirsi Ali ponders the future of Egypt under The Muslim Brotherhood:
Make no mistake: The Brotherhood are working to realize the vision summarized in their motto: "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Qur'an is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."...Among the "sub-goals" of the Muslim Brotherhood:
•Building the Muslim individual ... with a strong body, high manners, cultured thought, ability to earn, strong faith, correct worship, conscious of time, of benefit to others, organized, and self-struggling character;
•Building the Muslim family: choosing a good wife or husband, educating children Islamically;
•Building the Muslim society;
•Building the Khilafa (a form of union between all the Islamic states);
•Mastering the world with Islam.True, the Brotherhood's leaders have insisted that they are committed to democracy and the rule of law. But they will give an idiosyncratic twist to these commitments.
I expect them to establish a political order based on the Sunni version of an Islamic state. Based on lessons learned from their Islamist brethren elsewhere, they will seek to establish a political order of shariah, or Islamic Law. This would include a judicial system that does not question but merely applies shariah law, a "virtue and vice" police to enforce the Sharia lifestyle and an education and information system that seeks to indocrinate the youth and build "the Muslim individual."
She calls the prospects of a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood "alarming":
Repression at home will cause human rights violations, economic crisis and an exodus of refugees, beginning with those who have money and a reasonable level of education, deepening Egypt's poverty and destabilizing the region and perhaps even Europe. Growing conflict with Israel could lead to war.For all these reasons, Western policymakers should be exceedingly wary about the influence of the gradualist jihadists on the events now unfolding in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda may soon follow him to the grave. But the doctrine of jihad lives on.
Saturated Fat Panic Is Making Us Fat And Dead
Fat Head's Tom Naughton's great talk.
Free Speech Rights Degrading Left And Right
And it's not just our right to free speech, but our culture as a place of free speech, and the valuing of free speech as a way to maintain a healthy, democratic society.
Erica Goldberg writes at campus free speech defender TheFIRE.org (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) of yet another college administration punishing a student for his speech -- and the most innocuous speech at that:
Roman Caple, the graduating senior at St. Augustine's College (North Carolina) ... was denied the ability to walk at his graduation because of what the college called "a negative social media exchange" in a letter to Caple. Given no specific information, Roman could not discern exactly why the college required him to pick up his degree from the campus security booth instead of allowing him to participate in his graduation ceremony. Roman told news sources that he believed the university was punishing him for a post on his personal Facebook page, written after a deadly tornado that struck Raleigh, North Carolina, that said, "St. Augs is holding classes tomorrow and students in Falcrest still don't have power. Like, wtf. Really? #dumb."As innocuous as this Facebook post is, the college recently told media outlets their real reason for punishing Caple, and it's even more offensive to free speech principles. In a statement to The Huffington Post, St. Augustine's College claimed that Caple posted "inappropriate comments" to the school's official Facebook page that it uses to communicate with students. The college provided a screenshot of one of these comments:
Unbelievably, the college accused him of trying to "create chaos."
Goldberg continues:
Moreover, the college's justification for its punishment displays a shocking ignorance of free speech principles. Caple's Facebook post cannot be described as "incitement," as he was certainly not provoking students to engage in imminent lawless action. (Incitement to what, St. Augustine's, provide documents?) At most, Caple was expressing an opinion in an attempt to influence students' beliefs and behavior--the very purpose of having free speech.
On a side note, perhaps Caple just posted way too fast, but the guy doesn't seem to have the greatest command of English as a graduating college senior. Exclamation points galore, also -- the mark of a lovesick, Hello Kitty'd-up 14-year-old girl.
How Can We Insult You Into Dumping Our Company Today?
Yoohoo...Time-Warner, your customerservicespeak, "To whom do I have the honor of assisting?" comes off as condescending bullshit it is.
Chilling: How Doctors Make Money By Making You Ill
A Hawaii medical doctor, Catherine Shanahan, explains how she and others in her medical group get paid more if they prescribe statins:
You may have read that doctors receive payment or bonuses for prescribing statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs. I'm a chapter leader in Kauai, and a family physician, so I'm in a good position to fill in some details about how doctors actually get paid more for writing more statin prescriptions. The mechanism is a little cumbersome to describe clearly, but I'll take a stab at it.We have a series of "quality measures" that are tracked by the insurance company. One quality measure is the number of mammograms we do on our patients between ages 40 and 69, another is that we send our diabetic patients to the eye doctor once a year for retinal exams. For our patients who carry a diagnosis of "coronary artery disease," we have to write them a prescription for a cholesterol-lowering drug. If any one doctor doesn't follow any one of these imperatives, he loses points toward a cash bonus, and the entire group is similarly penalized. As you can imagine, there is lots of peer pressure to prescribe!
Actually, we don't get our bonus unless the patient goes and buys the drug or gets the test or sees the eye doctor and so on, so it's not enough just to write the prescription, we have to talk up the drug enough to get them to go out and buy it. Currently, there are only a few means by which a person can be labeled as a patient with coronary artery disease. Having a heart attack is one, and having abnormal results on heart tests (like angiograms) is another. Diabetes is now considered a "coronary artery disease equivalent" and so, in the near future, doctors may be required to get all our patients who have type one or type two diabetes to take their statins, or lose more money.
And the truth about statins? Thank you, Dr. Michael Eades, for this:
In the last paragraph in the quote above, the authors confess that the data from actual randomized control trials show that statins confer no all-cause mortality benefits to women of any age and to men over 69. They are playing a little fast and loose with the truth here because as I have posted before, the gold standard trials have shown no benefit for women and no benefit to men over 65 or to men under 65 who have never had heart disease. The only improvement in all-cause mortality has been in men under 65 who have been diagnosed with heart disease, and even that benefit is so small that many people question if the extra cost and side effects of the statins are worth it.
Side effects of statins? Oh...you mean like these?
The U.S. In The Middle East In A Single Paragraph
Arthur Silber writes:
Intervention always leads to more intervention: the first intervention leads to unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences, which are then used as the justification for still further intervention. That intervention in turn leads to still more unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences, which are then used as yet another justification for still further intervention. The process can go on indefinitely, and the ultimate consequences are always disastrous in the extreme.
More here.
via Lisa Simeone
Jewelry For Idiots
Ugly, too. Posted on Science-Based Medicine.
The bracelets do seem incredibly powerful at separating fools and their money.
If you do worry about maintaining your balance, do as an epidemiologist told me to do: Stand on one leg and raise your other knee into the air (perpendicularly) for 15 seconds. Repeat with the other leg. You'll probably have to work up to the 15 seconds.
I used to do this when I brushed my teeth in the morning.
After you can stand on one leg without falling or moving for 15 seconds, repeat -- with your eyes closed.
This, says the epidemiologist, should help you maintain your balance (or maintain it better) into old age.
Man Insists On Justice -- All The Way To Jail
Via ifeminists, yet another disgusting story of paternity fraud:
Jody Murphy writes in the Vienna, VA News and Sentinel that 37-year-old Sean Keefe has opted to go to jail rather than to pay $1,800 a month in alimony to a wife (Tina) who had a son he says a DNA test proves is not his.
Just to be clear, he is paying $1,300 a month in child support for that child, but he doesn't want to reward the wife who screwed around on him -- as the court has ordered him to do:
"I didn't kill anybody. I didn't assault anybody. And I didn't steal from anybody and I am going to jail. I am in jail," Keefe said in a YouTube video posted Saturday.Keefe alleges two years after he divorced his ex-wife, he discovered he was not the father of the couple's youngest son.
"Just before our divorce was finalized I was told I should have a DNA test performed. I was told there was zero-percent chance I was his biological father," he stated on the video. Caroline Keefe, Sean's (current) wife, provided The News and Sentinel copies of the test results.
Under West Virginia laws, Sean Keefe is financially bound to support the child. The man who fathered the child bears no responsibility.
"Any child born under your marriage is your responsibility," Caroline Keefe said.
Crazy. So your wife can cheat on you all you can do is hang your head and sign away your income every month for 18 years?
Keefe feels, as I do, that men who find they aren't the father of a child shouldn't be required to pay for that child. Despite that feeling, he is willingly paying $1,300 a month in child support:
"I don't need my DNA coursing through his veins to know I was the father," he said on the video."I was there throughout the pregnancy. I spoke to him through his mother's belly. I was there the day he was born. And I have been there ever since. I love my son. He will always be my son, and I will always be his father. And I will always take care of him. And I will always pay his mother child support."
His YouTube video:
A Man's Home...Is Somebody Else's Mall
Or so it's been in recent years -- just disgustingly. Daren Bakst writes in American Thinker that a bill now pending in the United States House could dial back eminent domain abuse:
In Kelo v. City of New London, the Court held that the government can seize private property from one private citizen and transfer the property to another private citizen for economic development. If a home would generate more tax revenue as a mall, then the government can seize the home.The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution states "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." This language is supposed to limit the government's power to take private property except for a "public use."
However, for decades, the term "public use" has been effectively deleted from the United States Constitution, and instead replaced by "public purpose" or "public benefit." These terms are judicial creations that drastically broaden when the government can seize private property.
Yet, even with these terms, it was not a given that the Court would allow these economic development takings that were at issue in Kelo. By allowing these takings, the Court has rendered the "public use" limitation virtually meaningless and gutted the Fifth Amendment.
...This bill would be an important step in ensuring that all Americans, not just those in some states, have protection from eminent domain abuse.
First, the bill would prohibit the federal government from engaging in economic development takings. Second, it would deny federal economic development funds for two years to any state or local government that engages in economic development takings.
...The bill wisely puts the burden of proof on the government to show that a taking is not for economic development. By doing so, it makes it far more difficult for the government to seize property using a legitimate public use as a pretext for taking the property for economic development.
One thing I love about this country is the way the different branches of government provide checks and balances on each other. We really do need to correct the Court's error here, and before any more homes or small businesses get seized because somebody powerful and influential wants to build a casino (scummy Donald Trump) or a mall.
Race Ridiculous
Hank Aaron was just on CNN saying we need to "sell baseball better to blacks" (meaning black kids). Outrageous. We don't "sell" baseball to anybody in particular. You want to play, you play. You're good, maybe you can do something with it.
P.S. Where we're really coming up short in the race/ethnicity department is on baseball players from South Korea. Should we "sell baseball better to South Koreans"?
Time To Fly Out Of Texas
That is, until we can use civil disobedience, with travelers in large numbers acting up (sobbing, for example, as they're being searched) as our only hope of getting the TSA pulled back.
As a pilot told me when we spoke at the airport, bureaucracy doesn't usually get revoked. In fact, bureaucracy protects itself, which is why it will take extraordinary (emotionally flamboyant) measures by large numbers of travelers to maybe lead the way to change.
The need for that seems even more evident after my last sexual assault by a TSA lackey (they aren't "officers," although they call them that to encourage our sheepleness), and after talking to the TSA airport supervisor who was called. More in the next few days on why showing a lot of emotion is the key to civil disobedience in the TSA line (without them being so able to arrest you -- which isn't to say the power-mad McDonald's workers in faux police officer uniforms won't do it or try).
Unfortunately, when I'm searched, I hear other travelers around me being searched and being polite and compliant. Even pleasant about it. There's a time for incivility, and it's when your Fourth Amendment rights are being violated. (And no, the fact that I need to travel for my work is NOT probable cause.)
And yay, Texas -- the land of "We aren't just going to stand there and take it like big wussies." CBS/DFW posts an AP story that says the Texas House passed a bill criminalizing inappropriate touch of travelers by government employees:
Approved late Thursday night, the measure makes it illegal for anyone conducting searches to touch "the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person" including through clothing.It also prohibits searches "that would be offensive to a reasonable person."
Everything Is An Infraction
Show a little inventiveness in asking a girl to prom, and climb a ladder to do it, and you'll be suspended and banned from prom for a safety violation. From Patch, Leah Salomoni writes about James Tate:
Tate was suspended from school and banned from attending the annual dance after Tate and some friends taped some cardboard letters outside the school's main entrance to form a message asking Rodriguez to be his date.While Rodriguez responded with a "yes" to the extraordinary gesture, Tate and his friends received an in-school suspension for the act of taping up the message on the school wall. School officials claimed in media accounts that the suspension was given for trespassing on school grounds, and for the jeopardy Tate placed his safety in using a ladder to post the letters.
Oh. Please.
Edecio Martinez at CBS.com writes that the invitation read:
"Sonali Rodrigues, Will you go to the prom with me? HMU -Tate." HMU means hit me up, or call me....Two state lawmakers said they were introducing legislation that would allow Tate to attend his prom. Reps. Jason Perillo, of Shelton and Sean Williams, of Waterbury said they were in the process of drafting a new amendment that will force school officials to give parents an option of completing community service when their child is barred from a school event for a policy violation within one month of the school year being completed.
Do state lawmakers not have a better way to spend their time than legislating around the idiocy taught by example in our schools?
Of course, they should be rewarding kids for ingenuity and creativity, not punishing them. When I speak to kids at an inner city school (for the program I created to demystify "making it"), this creative prom invite thing is exactly the sort of example I give from my own life.
For example, when my parents wouldn't pay for film school, I decided I would learn production on somebody else's dime. I got my job as an assistant producer at an ad agency by trying to sneak in, getting caught, then waiting outside to give my [funny, creative] resume to somebody who looked important). I ended up giving it to an interesting looking guy who turned out to be Norman Berry, head of creative for Ogilvy Worldwide. He got me an interview with the heads of production, I showed my cute little film, and I got the job.
Before I'd approached Norman, I'd written a bunch of letters to try to get an interview (I'm nothing if not persistent), but my parents are midwestern nobodies who did not go to Dartmouth with anybody else's parents, so I'm sure all my letters were all circular filed.
Oh, and regarding ladders and danger, what teenage boy doesn't climb one on a regular basis to help his dad around the house? We really are becoming a nation of wussies.
UPDATE: They're letting the kid attend prom.
Thanks, Snakeman
Allah Have Me A Look At The Dirty Pictures!
Porn found at Bin Laden's compound, CNN reports. Slightly more here, from Reuters.
Doggie On The Home Stretch
Gregg brought her back to my place before picking me up at the airport and taking me for breakfast at The Rose Café. Of course she travels in leopard! 
Ted Lieu Thinks It's Okay To Make Illegal Robocalls
California State Senator Ted Lieu left me a long recorded message (coming from a California number) endorsing the awful candidate Janice Hahn for the congressional seat Jane Harmon is vacating. It's California law that any political robocall has to begin with a live person on the phone. His call for Janice Hahn did not include that live person. In other words, we have yet another lawmaker breaking the law.
As I wrote in I See Rude People, I do not pay a good deal of money every month to maintain a phone line so I can make telemarketers' (or political candidates') marketing costs cheaper. And my time is my own. You don't get to grab it by invading my life with your phone call. And no, I don't maintain a phone line so I can screen my calls, either.
Since Ted clearly thinks it's okay to steal my time and hijack my phone line, I'm sure he won't mind if a lot of people call him at home and tell him which political candidate they favor (or brand of coffee or deodorant). Here's what I just tweeted:
Did you get call w/recorded message from Ted Lieu endorsing (awful) Janice Hahn? Call Ted at home to tell him how you like that 310-373-0271.
I hope people do call him at home. Only by imposing a cost on these people who abuse us with impunity will they change their ways. You want to send me a political message? Send it to me on your dime, in a way that doesn't interrupt my life, by mailing me a letter.
Ted's call for Hahn that came when I was in Colorado Springs was number four of scummy Janice Hahn's robocalls. In the middle of a particularly tough deadline, on Tuesday, Janice Hahn's campaign made their third robocall to me. (This one from Lieu was the fourth.) On Tuesday, I called to demand her home number (a third time) from her campaign manager. He hasn't called me back. How scummy. She gets to abuse me repeatedly at home, but she gets to hide out from similarly being bothered at her home?
As for calling Hahn at home, I have a home number for her that is never answered. So...is it that she doesn't live in her district? One has to wonder. Since my calls are not answered, I can only speculate.
By the way, probably in order to deter me from calling her at home, they had her personally call me at home to apologize. But, it was an utterly insincere apology since she didn't say she'd stop stealing people's time and hijacking her phone lines. It was alos worthless since her campaign has continued to call me. Hahn also was clueless about the law regarding these political calls (how there has to be a live person on the line before the robocall comes on). And in general, from speaking to her, it was my impression that she was no bright light (the words I used when describing her after the call were "dumb as a ficus tree"). She actually seemed sort of surprised that I asked her pressing questions, and was ill-prepared to field them. If she really wanted the best for people in this district, she'd drop out of the race to "spend more time with (her) family."
One of her lame-ass opponents, Dan Adler, is no genius, either. A few weeks ago, he had a double-decker bus come to my neighborhood, at midnight, and 20 feet from residences, had rap music playing and somebody shouting on a microphone, "Vote for Dan Adler! Vote for Dan Adler!" (Breaking L.A. noise laws against amplified sound.) Yeah, I'll be voting for him already -- for asshole/idiot of the year. He'll surely tie with Janice Hahn.
Foer A Crappy (And Unhealthy) Meal...
Loved this sensible Heather Horn piece in The Atlantic, "The French Consider Foer's Vegetarianism: 'We Are Not Elves!'"
In January, a great controversy was unleashed upon poor, unsuspecting Gallic diners: the publication of the French edition of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. The continental connoisseurs of steak frites were treated to a peculiarly American strain of modern foodies: the eco-moral-foodieism of le yuppie.
...It Reminds Them of Michael Moore
Adrien Gombeaud for Les Echos says the book's argument is "based on the accumulation of examples, of anecdotes, of funny or scandalous situations which Foer attends more or less clandestinely," and thus "is constructed like a Michael Moore film." His derisive conclusion:The author spent three years investigating to find what he wanted: the conditions of raising and slaughtering animals described here are indeed shameful and disgusting. But if he had spent three more years investigating agriculture, doubtless he would have stopped eating vegetables, too... he would have therefore written a book even more surprisingly titled 'Should We Really Eat?'...'We Are Not Elves, for Heaven's Sake!' That's the reaction from Maryline Patou-Mathis of the National Centre for Scientific Research to Le Nouvel Observateur's Elodie Lepage. Patou-Mathis adds, "People who refuse to eat meat are simply denying their animal side. They are forgetting that humans are omnivorous and that our metabolism is perfectly fit to assimilate meat."
Here's Dr. Michael Eades blogging on Lierre Keith and The Vegetarian Myth
Atlantic link via @melissamcewen
Replay Of My Live Chat From This Morning
Just click this link.
And while this was going on, Lucy was hard at sleep at Gregg's.
That'll Be Me, The Woman Barricading Herself In Her Hotel Room
I'm in Colorado Springs, brought in by the wonderful Colorado Springs Independent, the local alt weekly that runs my column. I'm speaking Thursday night to raise money for...well, here's the bit from the CSIndy:
Tomorrow, May 12, columnist Amy Alkon will be appearing at Stargazers Theatre and Event Center as a benefit for Stop Family Violence, and to discuss and sign her book I See Rude People.
I was really fond of them before they brought me here, but really, really, really, really fond of them when I got up to my hotel room at The Cliff House.
The desk clerk told me I was staying in the "Thomas Edison Suite." Mmmkay...I'll just toss my stuff in the room and come down and go to dinner with Jack, the CSIndy marketing manager. My room was up an elevator and flight of stairs, so the very sweet bellman had to carry my suitcase up (and he said he'd also show me around the room). Well okay, but what was he going to point out the bed?
And then, he opened the door.
That's the fireplace over on the other wall. Steam shower, jacuzzi (which the bellman showed me how to work), groovy appointments like an antique wood phone on the wall and some beautiful furniture and lamps...and a...HEATED TOILET SEAT! 
And if you're around tomorrow morning at 10 am Mountain Time (converter here):
Amy Alkon will be appearing on our Facebook page at 10 a.m. tomorrow to answer your question for one hour. Look for her initial post and feel free to receive advice directly from the goddess who knows.
Oh, and should you be here in Colorado Springs at any point, Jack from the CSindy took me to the steakhouse The Famous, where I got a terrific steak. They cooked it just the way I like it (rarer than rare), and were even nice enough to cut up the leftover part so I could eat it in my hotel room tomorrow. (Can't wait -- it is a really fantastic steak.)
Oh, shoot...now I'm half-remembering some line Jack told me about his grandfather (he goes way back in Colorado). It was about ordering your meat so you get it rare. He'd say something like, "Wipe its ass, cut off the horns, lick it with a little flame and throw it on a plate." (I got the ass and horns part kind of right -- the rest I tried to keep in the spirit of the line, but Jack'll have to come by here with a correction tomorrow.)
(Yesterday's LAX TSA excitement to come after I'm home and have time to write it up.)
A Wise Take On Porn Use
Smart piece on men and women and conflicts over porn use by Dr. Marty Klein on PsychologyToday.com -- "Porn Addict or Selfish Bastard? Life Is More Complicated Than That." An excerpt:
I'm seeing an epidemic of "porn addiction" in my office. Not of porn addiction, but of "porn addiction."Here's how it looks: Wife/girlfriend somehow assumes that husband/boyfriend does NOT watch porn (guess that's what she means by "he's one in a million"). One day, his porn watching comes to her attention (he leaves something on the screen, she searches his website history, he gets an email or bill from some friendly porn site, etc.).
She freaks.
She decides what his porn watching "means":
* He doesn't care for her
* He's been faking sexual desire or enjoyment
* He'd rather be with other women (or men, or kangaroos, or whatever he's been watching)
* He's a pervert
* He's unfaithfulNeedless to say, these interpretations make his porn watching her business. And frequently, she decides she has the moral high ground from which to dictate what his problem is, the fact that he must get it fixed, and what the treatment needs to be. With slight variations, a new version of this case walks into my office almost every week.
In a different world, Mr. Porn Consumer would turn to Outraged Wife/Girlfriend and say "Wow, I can see that you're really upset about what I'm watching. Let's talk about it and see what we can do." In the real world, however, most men are so loaded down with shame about their sexuality that the second their partner attacks them for watching porn, they collapse and allow their partner to seize control of the relationship.
She then drags him into my office so I can fix the poor guy. I'm supposed to turn him into a non-perverted, non-selfish, non-hiding, aroused-by-her-and-only-her ex-porn consumer.
Here's an excerpt from a recent column of mine on porn, Triumph Of The Willie:
It's hard to have a rational conversation about porn because people's first reaction is so often knee-jerk hysteria. I got a lot of that in response to this particular column; for example, as one guy wrote, "Porn focuses on body parts, not on sex. This is how bestiality develops." Yes, we see that all the time: One week, a guy's surfing the net for busty blondes; the next, he's got the hots for the neighbor's Labradoodle....Sure, porn can pose problems in a marriage or relationship -- when used to excess. The same goes for golf clubs, credit cards, and Hostess Ding Dongs. Of course, when there are problems, people love to blame the thing being used instead of the person doing the using. This thinking is fed by the damaging contention that addiction is "a disease." Multiple sclerosis is a disease. You can't decide to not have multiple sclerosis. You can decide to stop engaging in some behavior. You might not want to stop, it might be terribly hard to stop, but if the stakes are high enough, you will. Just ask some guy who tells you he can't stop looking at porn. Sorry, but if his house catches fire, he's not going to sit there at the computer simultaneously getting off and getting crispy.
The hysteria about porn is reminiscent of the hysteria surrounding pot from early on, ever since the propaganda classic "Reefer Madness" depicted it as a demon weed that causes rape, murder, suicide, crazed piano playing, and hit-and-run driving. Of course, if you know any potheads, you know the stuff is far more likely to cause them to lie on a beanbag chair polishing off the collected works of Sara Lee. Similarly, shrill ravings about porn keep the facts about it from being heard, keeping people from being able to differentiate between porn as a problem and porn as a pastime.
This woman's husband hadn't stopped showering, going to work, or having sex with her to lock himself in a room with the naked sex workers of the World Wide Web. In fact, she described him as a sweet, loving, "deeply caring" man who only watches porn when she's out and he's bored. The actual problem in her marriage was her unfounded fears about his porn consumption -- which led to her feeling resentful and shutting down between the sheets. This sort of sex and affection strike can compel even a man who wants to be faithful to expand his horizons from sightseeing in the virtual world to getting naked with co-workers and rent-a-booty in the real one. So, as I advised this woman, no man "only has eyes for you," but if you'd like keep the rest of your husband's body parts from wandering, you should see to it that your bedroom isn't the one place in the world that he can't get sex.
This column I wrote was the precursor.
Pat Condell: Justice for Osama
And beyond. Condell: "Can the Pakistani 'intelligence' find their ass in the dark with both hands?" Doubtful.
Thanks, Norm
Why Men Lie Up And Women Lie Down
Satoshi Kanazawa blogs at Psychology Today:
Both men and women lie, but they lie about different (and predictable) things.Whether in personal ads or in face-to-face conversations, men tend to lie about their earnings and their height. In contrast, women tend to lie about their age and their weight. And both men and women often lie about the number of sexual partners they have had in their lives.
On all of these dimensions, men typically lie upwards and women typically lie downwards. Men pretend that they make more money than they actually do, they pretend that they are taller than they actually are, and they pretend that they have had more sexual partners than they actually have. In contrast, women pretend that they are younger than they actually are, they pretend that they are lighter than they actually are, and they pretend that they have had fewer sexual partners than they actually have.
...In other words, women lie and pretend to be what they used to be before in the past, whereas men lie and pretend to be what they will be in the future (or what they hope to become in an alternate universe or in their fantasy).
He doesn't exactly mince words on feminism. My problem with it: Modern feminism is too often about how things "should" be instead of how they are. I got piles of hate mail for explaining how they are in a piece I wrote for Psychology Today about the realities about beauty.
As I recently told a reader of my column who wrote me a snarly letter, women's worth devalues as they get older and men's tends to go up. Women get less attractive over time, and less valuable as partners, and men have the possibility of getting more valuable as partners by getting richer and more powerful.
Sorry if that's not how you think things "should" be -- it's just how they are.
"Allahu Akbar!" Means "Pardon Me, But Where's The Bathroom, Ma'am?"
So that was what Major Hassan was asking when he shouted the same thing as he murdered 13 people for Islam?
Now, the family of the Yemeni man who yelled that as he pounded on the cockpit door of his O'Hare to SF-bound flight is claiming he may have mistaken it for the bathroom.
Cute.
How Obamacare's Working In Massachusetts
It's not looking good. From the WSJ:
A new survey released yesterday by the Massachusetts Medical Society reveals that fewer than half of the state's primary care practices are accepting new patients, down from 70% in 2007, before former Governor Mitt Romney's health-care plan came online. The average wait time for a routine checkup with an internist is 48 days. It takes 43 days to secure an appointment with a gastroenterologist for chronic heartburn, up from 36 last year, and 41 days to see an OB/GYN, up from 34 last year....Massachusetts health regulators also estimate that emergency room visits jumped 9% between 2004 and 2008, in part due to the lack of routine access to providers. The Romney-Obama theory was that if everyone is insured by the government, costs would fall by squeezing out uncompensated care. Yet emergency medicine accounts for only 2% of all national health spending.
...The Medical Society also finds "a continued deterioration of the practice environment for physicians in Massachusetts." Perhaps you should book your checkups now, in advance of the national sequel.
Lifeguard Pay Is Mad
Life is priceless, I know, but could lifeguards manage to save lives for a little less? (Or are they like supermodel Linda Evangelista, who, back in the day, sniffed that she doesn't get out of bed for less than $10K a day?)
Via Cato's Dan Mitchell, David Spady writes at Townhall:
Like many communities across California, the city of Newport Beach is facing the harsh realities of budgeting with less revenue after housing values and the stock market plummeted. Now the city's full-time lifeguard force has finally come under scrutiny. Next week the city council will decide if cuts are needed to the full-time lifeguard force where last year the top earner received $211,000 in pay and benefits, including a $400 sun protection allowance. In 2010 all but one of the city's full-time lifeguard staff had annual compensation packages worth over $120,000.Not bad pay for a lifeguard - but what makes these jobs most attractive is the generous retirements. These lifeguards can retire at age 50 with full medical benefits for life. One recently retired lifeguard, age 51, receives a government retirement of over $108,000 per year--for the rest of his life. He will make well over $3 million in retirement if he lives to age 80. According to the City Manager, a new full-time guard costs less to hire than what is spent on this one retiree. The city now spends more taxpayer dollars on retired lifeguards than it does on those who are working.
Reports of excessive pay and generous pensions have fueled a debate across the nation over union influence on government spending. Government unions were able to take full advantage of the good old days when surpluses were plentiful and the economic future was bright. They effectively demanded politicians agree to contracts for higher union wages and benefits. Creating a situation that was simply not sustainable over the long-term.
It Gets Crazier: Criminal Staring At Children
Yesterday, I blogged about a New Jersey bill being considered in New Jersey to outlaw the photographing or videotaping of kids in situations in which "a reasonable parent or guardian would not expect his child to be the subject of such reproduction."
Today, I find that in Maine, merely looking at children is criminal as of 2008. Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Kids has the story. First, some background from Seacoastonline.com, from a 2008 story by Dave Choate:
A bill that passed the House last month aims to strengthen the crime of visual sexual aggression against children, according to state Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York.Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.
"There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with," Alexander said.
That has changed:
...Under the bill, if someone is arrested for viewing children in a public place, it would be a Class D felony if the child is between 12 to 14 years old and a Class C felony if the child is under 12.
It is totally creepy to have some apparent pervo staring at you. It's far creepier if they're staring at your children. But, we cannot, cannot criminalize every facet of life.
It's very dangerous -- it means that any of us can be arrested on any trumped-up charge at any point.
Love the way Lenore put it about the bathroom perver that inspired the bill:
Oh darn! You mean we couldn't throw him in jail for just standing there, giving us the willies? What kind of country IS this? It's like the place is crawling with civil rights!
On a related note, here, from Lenore, is how your innocent son could end up on a sex offenders list. Seriously.
How Can It Be Illegal To Be An Asshat?
There was a grownup, middle-aged white man with his wife and child at the grocery store the other night...wearing his pants floating halfway down his ass with his boxers showing. I wanted to sneak a picture from the rear but Gregg yanked me along.
Now, in Florida, they've passed a bill to keep students from wearing their pants so they reveal their undies. I think it's targeted at males, so I'm guessing that they won't go after girls who bend over and reveal their thong. Jon Swaine writes for the Telegraph/UK:
Senate Bill 228, also known as the "Pull Your Pants Up" Bill, was last week overwhelmingly approved by the state legislature. It is expected to be signed by Governor Rick Scott this week.The measure prohibits students from wearing clothing that "exposes their undergarments" or "indecently exposes their body parts" while they are at school.
It is aimed at putting an end to the Hip-Hop-influenced trend, favoured especially by young men, in which jeans are worn around the buttocks rather than the waist.
State Senator Gary Siplin, a Democrat of Orlando and a longstanding advocate of a ban, described it as "pro-family, pro-education, pro-jobs"."It is necessary to put the focus back on learning in the classroom," said Mr Siplin. "We can eliminate inappropriate dress as one of the many distractions in public schools today."
Yeah, right -- as if telling students to pull up their damn pants from around their knees is going to teach them to read, or help any other students focus.
On the face of this, the problem seems to be, as I learned working on the high school newspaper, that the Constitution doesn't end at the school house door.
Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, it seems looking like a total fucking idiot to school doesn't seem to count as speech, and has not been protected as a First Amendment right.
But, hey, Florida lawmakers, way to make it look like you're doing something about our country's massive education problems!
Keep Groping Those 6-Year-Olds, TSA!
All the better to wave on through that Yemeni guy who made a run for the cockpit, and battered on the door, shouting "Allahu Akbar" as his Chicago to SF-bound flight was 10 minutes from landing.
From the Daily Mail, an air steward and passengers took down the latest Jihadi Joe:
Crew members and passengers wrestled a 28-year-old man to the cabin floor after he began pounding on the cockpit of a plane approaching San Francisco.The man was yelling as he brushed past a flight attendant about 10 minutes before American Airlines Flight 1561 from Chicago was due to land on Sunday night, police said.
Rageit Almurisi, 28, carried a Yemen passport but his nationality is not clear, a spokesman said.
His religion, however, is. Why, "the religion of peace," of course! Like his fellow "Allahu Akbar!" campadre, Major Hasan, who murdered 13 people after shouting that -- people guilty of not being Muslim. Transcript from an NPR post:
A couple of years ago...he gave a Grand Rounds presentation....instead of giving an academic paper he gave a lecture on the Koran...it seemed to be his own beliefs...He talked about how if you are a non-believer the Koran says you should have your head cut off...you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire...
Thanks, if you don't mind, I think we'll stick to Christians' "turn the other cheek," and, at worst, merely telling us we're going to burn in hell.
Funny When Wet
Take more arresting showers: Police Line Shower Curtain
First Amendment? Not If There Are Children Involved!
Yes, it's that question again: "But, what about the chilllldrennn?!"
Lenore Skenazy blogs at Free Range Kids about a bill being considered in New Jersey:
It would outlaw the photographing or videotaping of kids in situations in which "a reasonable parent or guardian would not expect his child to be the subject of such reproduction."How's that for vague? So, suddenly, a kid in the background of your park pictures is taboo if his dad is mad you're taking a pic? Or maybe you're breaking the law if you're videotaping your child's pool party and the other parents haven't signed a waiver? Since when is photography a crime? The camera really does NOT capture anyone's soul. Promise!
...If photographing kids becomes illegal, we will have entered a new kind of society. A kind of totalitarian one, where our everyday rights have been stripped away, supposedly for our "protection."
Amtrak Is Already On America's "Do Not Ride" List
Hilarious observation by radio host and blogger Mitch Berg, regarding Senator Charles Schumer's response to the news Bin Laden had his eye on trains (demanding a "Do Not Ride" list):
In vast swathes of the US, terrorists would be the only person on an Amtrak train.
via Hot Air
Protecting Us Out Of The Drugs We Need: Why There's A Ritalin Shortage
I call Ritalin my "concentration vitamin." I was diagnosed with ADHD about 15 years ago, and prescribed the generic for Ritalin, which I take to help myself focus when I write.
Basically, I sometimes feel like I have 16 squirrels in my brain running off in 16 different directions and Ritalin makes most of them sit down at their little desks and shut the hell up so I can think about what I need to think about.
By the way, I don't consider ADHD a "disorder," but they have to call it that to give you pills. Martin Seligman talks about how ridiculous it is that psychology and psychiatry are largely targeted to "curing" people who are sick, and not helping functioning, productive people become even higher functioning and more productive -- or as Seligman puts it in his terrific new book, to Flourish.
So, a week or so ago, I got to Kaiser's 24-hour pharmacy in the middle of the night (best time to go). Most annoyingly, I learned that Ritalin is in extremely short supply across the country. They told that they could only fill one month's worth of my prescription -- while charging me my full co-pay.
Of course, that charge is in addition to the time cost of needing to get my prescription from my doctor and drive to Kaiser again in a month -- no big deal for many people but a big deal for me. (I'm writing seven days a week these days, day into night, and I try to minimize all incursions of chores and errands into my life. As I like to joke, I don't even cook; I heat.)
Regarding the Ritalin shortage, it seems the Drug War-ocrats are so worried that people will make meth that the DEA has been capping the supply of ingredients needed to manufacture Ritalin. Utterly disgusting.
Also very disturbingly, when I asked to buy Mucinex-D (now kept behind the counter), I had to hand over my driver's license, and have my name and license number written down...although I have all my teeth and clear skin and no history dealing anything but my writing.
Need for probable cause, anyone? We're seeing the end of privacy and the continual gnawing away at our rights in general.
By the way, I noticed after I bought the Mucinex-D that they've lessened the dosage of one of the active ingredients, pseudoephedrine (from 120 mg., from a box I had from last year, to 60). Also, it's now outlandishly expensive -- nearly $1 per pill. I don't remember whether it was that pricey in the past. Anyone have any idea?
There is a version of Mucinex-D right on the store shelves at my drugstore -- now made with with a less effective ingredient than pseudoephedrine. Handy!
I bought the Mucinex-D because I discovered, when I had a cold a month or so ago, that the pseudoephedrine seems to really increase my focus when I'm writing. I can even take a little less Ritalin if I take it, but I'm afraid to take it every day.
I'm concerned as to whether there are any longterm side-effects from it that I should worry about, from the pseudoephedrine and/or the 600 mg. of guaifenesin that's part of the formula. (I like Mucinex-D because it's 12-hour release -- pretty much the length of my usual writing/work day.)
I'd like to ask my shrink about whether this stuff is safe for me when I see him in June, but I'm kind of afraid that it'll flag me as some druggie when I just want to put more time into writing my book and less time into trying to catch the squirrels in my head and shove them into their little seats.
I spoke to my doctor ex-boyfriend a few weeks ago (he called on his way to Africa) and he said he'd look up pseudoephedrine for me when he gets back. My sister, who's studying biology, thinks it's a big mistake for me to take. If I'm lucky, I'll run into somebody chatty at some cocktail party who's really versed in this.
Crazy that it's come to this.
I'm so sorry people are making and selling meth. It's a really destructive drug. But, hey, U.S. government, I just want to write my column and my book and blog and maybe do some TV and radio. Stay the hell out of my rights and freedoms and my pill bottles.
Time For Tax Brakes
Walter Moore asks the right question on his Facebook page: "How furious would you be if you owned a tax-paying company in Illinois that is NOT getting bribed to stay there, but is instead being taxed to pay for this?"
He's asking it about this ChiTrib story by Kathy Bergin and Wallin Wong. The headline:
$100 million keeps Motorola Mobility in Illinois Illinois boosts tax incentives in 10-year deal to keep smartphone company in Libertyville
And an excerpt from the story:
Gov. Pat Quinn put up more than $100 million in financial incentives to persuade smartphone company Motorola Mobility to keep its corporate headquarters in Libertyville -- the largest package he has offered a company to date and a signal of how badly the state wants to hold on to high-tech jobs.To persuade the maker of mobile devices and cable TV set-top boxes to stay, rather than move to California or Texas, state lawmakers sweetened terms of its tax-credit incentive program as it has for automakers, including Mitsubishi, and truck- and engine-manufacturers, including Navistar International Corp.
Navistar landed a $64.7 million package last year to keep its headquarters in Illinois, the second-largest deal during Quinn's tenure.
Move to California? We have the palm trees -- and lawmakers taxing the paint off businesses.
Meanwhile, Walter presciently blogs:
Your Guide To Fleeing L.A.: Costco Locations In America
As you consider where to re-locate upon fleeing Los Angeles, you may want to make sure there's a Costco nearby
Prison Reform By Stats Geek Bill James
Brian Rafferty writes in Wired:
James also posits a way to reform prisons, which he dubs "violentocracies." His proposal: smaller facilities that house no more than 24 inmates and are part of a larger, incentives-based system. At a Level 1 prison, for example, you get a lawyer, a Bible, and around-the-clock supervision; at Level 5, a cat and a coffee machine. At Level 10, you can earn a living and come and go with relative ease. The idea, James says, is not only to reduce the paranoia-fueled violence in large prisons but to encourage prisoners to work their way up the ladder....Of course, these ideas, as well-researched and cogently argued as they may be, are not necessarily workable. Take that utopian prison system, for example: What possible motive would a prisoner have for wanting to leave one of those Level 5 cells, which seem to have more amenities than some New York City apartments? James knows many of his notions are impractical and that readers will pick apart each idea. In fact, that's his hope: that people will start asking some of the same questions he does. "It's simply to get a few people to start talking," he says, "to get a few people to look at this and ask, how can I do better?"
My idea for prison reform is for prison finance reform: To make prisoners work for their room and board instead of making the taxpayers pay for it.
On a less economic note, here's an unsual approach to imprisonment that I read about a while back in Der Spiegel. Nicola Abé's story about Norway's Island Prison is subheaded:
No bars. No walls. No armed guards. The prison island of Bastøy in Norway is filled with some of the country's most hardened criminals. Yet it emphasizes self-control instead of the strictly regulated regimens common in most prisons. For some inmates, it is more than they can handle.
From the story:
The warden, Arne Nilsen, ... is a man who deals in freedom. He is also a visionary. He wants the men here to live as if they were living in a village, to grow potatoes and compost their garbage, and he wants the guards and the prisoners to respect each other. What he doesn't want is a camera in the supermarket. He doesn't want bars on the windows, or walls or locked doors.The inmates on Bastøy have been convicted of crimes such as murder, robbery, drug dealing, fraud, violent crime and petty theft. "We don't pick out the mild cases," says Nilsen. Some inmates serve their entire sentences on the island. Murderers can only apply to be transferred to the island once they have served two-thirds of their sentences elsewhere. Some 115 prisoners live on Bastøy, and those who wish to stay are required to work and integrate into the community. Anyone caught drinking alcohol or fighting is thrown out.
The ferry operates on a regular schedule. It would be possible to swim to the mainland or find a boat in the summer, and the ocean often freezes over in the winter. The idea is that the prisoners should have an incentive to stay, and that they are still there when the count is taken -- four times a day.
...This paradise has been around for 20 years -- and has a warden who loves statistics. The numbers, after all, prove him right. Only 16 percent of the prisoners in this island jail become repeat offenders in the first two years after leaving Bastøy as compared with 20 percent for Norway as a whole. In Germany, where recidivism is measured after three years, the rate is 50 percent.
...(Nilsen) doesn't see criminals as victims, but as citizens who will return to society one day. "On Bastøy, everyone has to learn to handle his freedom and set his own boundaries," says Nilsen, "which is what they have to do outside, too."
'Training Ground for Responsibility'
Even the sailors on the small ferry are inmates. They set sail for the mainland nine times a day, but no one has ever escaped. Each time they return to the island, a sign greets them that reads: "Bastøy, A Training Ground for Responsibility."
You think there's the slightest hope in hell this could work here?
Things Your Mother Taught You
A few of the things I've learned from my mother that have taken me far:
1. Talk to strangers.
2. When somebody offers you an opportunity, say yes, and then figure out how to come through.
3. Read.
4. Think, research and ask questions far beyond the point where a "normal" person would have stopped.
And a note on the first one. I learned from the example of my mother to be friendly to everyone, and that the busboy or the train conductor could be an interesting person. Talk to them and find out.
I get into these conversations with strangers everywhere, and doing that has really enriched my life -- both in the amazing friends I've met, and sometimes, in practical ways.
Two weeks ago, I went to Kaiser's 24-hour pharmacy in the middle of the night (best time to go), and was told there was a shortage of Ritalin and there was no way they could give me more than a month's worth (more on that tomorrow).
I asked to talk to the pharmacist. She told me sorry, it was just policy at the moment due to a nationwide shortage and they just couldn't fill my whole prescription. No way, no how. I grumbled, fine, I'd just take what I could get, but I wasn't happy about it.
I thought I caught a French accent from the pharmacist. "Vous etes française?" I asked. I asked her where she was from (Lille, I think it was). I mentioned briefly in my rather lame French that I love going to France, that I go often to Paris, and that I was hoping to go to a science conference in Montpelier this summer.
I didn't do this for any particular reason other than that I like people and like to connect with them, but when my prescription was ready, I was amazed when they brought me six bottles instead of the three they said I could have. They'd filled my entire prescription -- to the pill. Was it because of my conversation with the pharmacist? Well, I can't see why else. (Thanks, Mom!)
Last week, I meandered over to a table and sat down next to this Irish poet, Thomas McCarthy, at LA Times Festival of Books and started talking to him. Fascinating guy, and lots of fun to talk to, and I'm now reading and loving his latest book of poems, The Last Geraldine Officer
When Gregg came into the green room -- Gregg whose orientation to strangers is rather different -- I laughed because I knew what he was thinking: "Oh no...do you really have to talk to this guy?" And then he sat down, found him fascinating, and found that he had some pretty important insights into tracking Elmore Leonard's genealogy back to Irish soil.
Professort Maurice Harmon writes of McCarthy's book:
The Last Geraldine Officer is a major achievement, varying from playful and sophisticated lyrics to a serious account of the progress of a son of the Big House as he engages with and is changed by the disruptions of the Second World War and its aftermath. W.B. Yeats could commemorate the Protestant Ascendancy, Thomas McCarthy can enter more intimately into the individual life of Sir Gerald Fitzgerald, who tries in vain to fuse his legacy as a member of a privileged aristocracy with that heritage in Irish language and literature that had inspired Dr Douglas Hyde, founder of the Gaelic League, collector and translator of seminal anthologies of folk poetry, and first President of Ireland. Fitzgerald's encounters with events outside of Ireland loosen his attachment to the settled Ascendancy life of Templemaurice. His reading of Máirtίn Ó Direáin confronts him with a poetry of quotidian realities. His own poems of love and war describe an alternative truth. In the long run it is his love-affair that endures. Together he and his beloved 'come to terms' with disruption and dislocation.
What are the best things you've learned from your mother?
Religious Nitwits
Women might be temptation to sin to you Hasidic Jews (Hey, 1854 Poland called -- they want their look back), but to us, one of them is the Secretary of State.
Pathetically, a Hasidic newspaper removed Hillary Clinton (and one other woman) from the picture of the President, Vice-President, and other top U.S. officials watching the Osama operation.
The Celebrity Halo Effect
The "green halo effect" is the term for how, per a University of Toronto study, people who buy green products feel virtuous -- so virtuous that they're more likely to lie, cheat or steal.
Vanessa Grigoriadis writes in New York about celebrity giving:
Everyone can agree that giving is a beautiful thing, and that the rich and famous among us should be encouraged to donate as much as they possibly can. The problem is that celebrity charities are rarely run well; for every impeccable foundation by Martin Scorsese, there's a Yele Haiti, Wyclef Jean's charity, or a nonstarter like Kanye West's educational foundation, which was shuttered in April. In fact, some philanthropy advisers say that many of the celebrities they counsel don't even want to donate to their own charities. "Very few sports stars, other than Lance Armstrong, actually donate to their own charities," says a tax adviser. "Most of them say, 'My fans will donate.' Their attitude is 'I'm contributing my celebrity to this cause.'"
Cookie Cutter Medicine
Terrific video by philosopher Diana Hsieh about her experiences with hypothyroidism and why the one-size-fits-all medicine being pushed on us with Obamacare is so dangerous to our health.
If you're tempted to trust the government with your health, remember that it's the government that caused the obesity epidemic in this country by pushing bad science -- the high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet.
Of course, the evidence shows that it's carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Baby Dies After After Elective Nose Job
Actually, the non-medically necessary surgery was on another protuberance. Cynthia R. Fagen writes in the New York Post about the barbaric and primitive practice of circumcision, which rarely, but sometimes, goes terribly wrong:
The grieving family of a tragic Queens toddler are blasting doctors at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan -- accusing them of botching a simple circumcision that led to the boy's sudden death.Jamaal Coleson Jr. died Tuesday, about 10 hours after what was supposed to be a routine procedure, according to his uncle Jabbar Coleson, 23.
Coleson said the hospital was supposed to give his nephew a local analgesic, but instead administered a general.
The boy, who would have turned 2 next month, "Woke up and laughed and called for his mother and then went critical.
Studies (studies I have not read) find between 100 and 200 babies' deaths a year in the USA from this medically unnecessary practice. From DrMomma.org:
...These studies have found approximately 230 baby boys die each year in the U.S. as a result of circumcision surgery. (1) Another study published last week found at least 117 boys die annually from circumcision surgery as it is reported by hospitals. (2) We're not alone in our estimation that there are likely at least twice as many deaths due to circumcision, because of our non-structured and easy-to-cover-up means of infant mortality reporting. But if we are only looking at research-based documentation, we find an average 174 boys die each year with the documented cause being circumcision surgery.Especially disturbing in these statistics is that the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) continues to issue widespread warnings about choking as one of the highest causes of death among children, despite the fact that a greater number of infants die from circumcision than from choking. (3)
In an AAP cited study, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission concluded that choking on non-food objects causes approximately 22 deaths per year among all children in the United States. (4) In a national analysis, also cited by the AAP, it was found that choking while eating food causes approximately 73 deaths per year among all children under the age of 10 in the U.S. (5) The AAP teaches parents to be cautious because "choking on food causes the death of approximately 1 child every 5 days in the United States." (6) The rate of boys vs. girls who die from choking is not significantly different, which this means that approximately 1 boy under the age of 10 dies every 10 days from choking in the United States, or 36 boys per year.
Compare this to 1 infant boy dying every 2 days as a result of circumcision in the United States, or an average of 174 boys per year.
All of the deaths due to choking (which are most often related to eating - something we humans must do) are a mere fraction of the deaths due to circumcision (an unnecessary and medically contraindicated surgical amputation). If the AAP were to issue a similar warning for circumcision, they must state that circumcision causes the death of approximately 1 child every 2 days. Not only that, but 1 infant dies every 2 days from circumcision, as compared to the estimate that 1 "child under the age of 10" dies every 5 days from choking. And these are solely using the hospital statistics for death due to circumcision (again, the real numbers are likely much higher).
If choking is otherwise to blame for the some of the highest rates of childhood death in the United States (as the AAP claims that it is), and there are more infant deaths per year as a result of circumcision surgery, it is therefore urgent that we correctly inform parents that one of the greatest causes of death for children in the United States is circumcision.
Obfuscation Is In Vogue
Pamela Geller writes in American Thinker about a story on Egypt in Vogue magazine:
In this issue is an article entitled "Cairo on my Mind." The story is written by a "Carol Sidky," who "fell in love with Egypt at eighteen" when she volunteered for the British International School in Cairo as a "Project Trust volunteer." She goes on to wax poetic about the country where her husband married his secretary when Sidky was eight months pregnant (it seems she was satisfied with the never explained "plausible explanation").Sidky dismisses this as an Egyptian thing, when in fact she knows, and Anna Wintour knows, that it is an Islamic thing. It is the Sharia. She damn near loses her children, but flees instead and then laments her "exile" from her adopted home of Egypt. Sidky further describes how a man and woman cannot check into a hotel unless they are married, and how adulterous women get jailed for at least two years (though the Sharia punishment can be far more punitive).
She speaks of stories of "intrusive morality policing," all without ever mentioning Islam, Sharia, or gender apartheid in this dhimmi puff piece. Sidky goes on to paint Egypt's "revolutionary road" as pure fantasy. Her hope for the new Egypt is "a new constitution" (what's new about Sharia, which has already been decided will be part of the system of governance?). She envisions a democratically elected parliament with a broad base of political parties, and more equitable distribution of wealth (of course). Nowhere in the article does Sidky accurately or honestly portray the rise of the jihad and its implications for that country, or the women and children who are forced to live under their brutal boot. The omissions from Sidky's article are striking. Nowhere does she mention that over 96% of the women in Egypt have been clitorectomized. No mention is made of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is clearly in the lead to seize control of the newly belligerent Egypt, or the calls for the abandonment of the 30-year peace with the Jewish state of Israel. Instead, she relates the revolution to an "exquisite dinner" that very few Egyptians would be able to afford, and oh, how did she miss that stunning injustice all these years that she has been living, loving, submitting in Egypt?
The culture is the enemy. Call them out on it. This outrages me, because I expect more from Wintour. She is tough as nails, eating bullets for breakfast. I loved the way she stood down PETA, and frankly stands down anyone who crosses her, though her treatment of Grace Coddington is unforgivable (clearly Grace is the heart and soul of Vogue). But that for another day. Wintour knows. Wintour is British; she knows firsthand how Islamic supremacism is destroying the fabric of her native (and now adopted) country. She knows. Vogue does photo shoots all over the world. They are an eyewitness to the brutal subjugation of women in Muslim countries.
Clearly Wintour is not what she works hard to appear to be -- tough, modern, and independent, unafraid. No maverick she. Another railroad worker for the jihad train. More's the pity.
The Audio Taubes: Is Sugar Toxic?
Gary Taubes interviewed on Think Out Loud.
And Dr. Michael Eades has just posted a wonderful blog item explaining Gary Taubes' book, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It
We now know why we get fat. Excess insulin drives fat into the fat cells increasing the fat cell mass, ultimately leading to the state we call obesity. If we keep walking this progression back, the next question has to be, Why do we make too much insulin?We make too much insulin because we eat too many carbohydrates, especially sugar and other refined carbohydrates. With that statement, we're starting to edge into controversial territory, but it's only territory populated by the ignorant. The hard science is emphatic that carbs are a pure insulin play. Eat them and your insulin goes up.
Some people with a little learning may be quick to point out that protein drives insulin up as well. This is true, but with a catch. Protein drives both insulin and glucagon up, so you don't have the pure insulin effect. Only carbs will give you that. With carbs, insulin goes up while glucagon goes down. With meat and other proteins, the effects of the elevated insulin are muted by the concomitant rise in glucagon. (Glucagon isn't called insulin's counter-regulatory hormone for nothing.)
As Gary lays out the progression, carbs increase insulin, excess insulin drives excess fat into the fat cells, the fat cell mass grows, and we become fat. This chain of cause and effect leads to the ineluctable conclusion that excess carbohydrate intake leads to obesity. And each and every link forged in this chain is scientifically unimpeachable.
So if you are fat and want this progression to reverse itself, wouldn't it make sense to reduce your carbohydrate intake? All the science is valid. But don't just take my word for it. Gary writes of a former Harvard professor responsible for much of the early work in the field of the regulation of fat accumulation who summed it up like this:
Carbohydrate is driving insulin is driving fat.If you put that in reverse, you should cut the carbs, reduce the insulin and lose the fat. Seems simple, but here is where all kinds of controversy rears its head. Even the very smart Harvard professor who did the original work and uttered the above quote, when asked by Gary why there is so much obesity, responded that people didn't exercise enough. Which also proves true what Saul Bellow wrote years ago:
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
"Nice Weather We're Having"
Free speech in many places in Europe amounts to the freedom to make statements like the one above. Say anything more opinionated, especially about Islam or anyone Muslim, and you're likely to find yourself dragged into court. Bruce McQuain writes at Hot Air that German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently remarked on the death of mass murderer Osama bin Laden, saying she was "glad" he'd been killed. A German judge, Heinz Uthmann, responded by hitting her with a criminal complaint:
In his two-page document, Uthmann, a judge for 21 years, cites section 140 of the German Criminal Code, which forbids the "rewarding and approving" of crimes. In this case, Merkel endorsed a "homicide," Uthmann claimed. The violation is punishable by up to three years' imprisonment or a fine."For the daughter of a Christian pastor, the comment is astonishing and at odds with the values of human dignity, charity and the rule of law," Uthmann told the newspaper.
More on the curtailing of free speech in Europe. And here's a Muslim reaction to free speech -- luckily curtailed before they were able to murder anyone.
UPDATE: Will Germany try to prosecute the Dalai Lama, too, for saying, when asked about Bin Laden's assassination, that "If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures"?
Proposing An End To Dead-End Jobs
Richard Florida writes at Creative Class about upgrading low-wage service jobs into high-paid, family-supporting careers:
...Service work and service workers are not just a necessary cost of doing business, part of the overhead, but a potential profit center. Service workers can produce real value and there's no reason that they can't have real careers.A month or so ago, I met with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and his top executives and toured Zappos' facilities outside of Las Vegas. Zappos not only pays its employees a living wage, more importantly it enables them to move up through the ranks of its internal career ladder. I met many workers who had done just that. Zappos views its workers as a source of innovation and its culture and community as a mechanism for delivering better service to customers. Now, Hsieh and his team are moving their headquarters to downtown Las Vegas where they are aiming to develop a mixed use neighborhood that will have more affordable housing options for its workers, strengthening community but also allowing their pay checks to stretch further.
I disagree with him entirely that it's the government's job to encourage people to create paths for promotion for their service workers.
I do think there's benefit to treating your employees well -- both in not feeling like a creep and in how employees who like their jobs and feel they're being treated fairly are more likely to do a good job (in my experience). Of course, this assumes you've hired well to begin with.
If you show companies that it is good for their bottom line to be good for their workers, that's how you get them to change.
"Imagine" (Sung By Vladimir Ilyich Lenin)
What if everyone had a California state pension, asks Ed Ring in City Journal:
Assume the average worker begins his career at 25 and would retire after 30 years, like many state employees. The latest U.S. Census Bureau data show 128 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, and 81 million Americans who are 55 or older--a ratio of 1.58 to one. If every American over the age of 55 received a pension of $55,000 per year, it would cost current workers $4.45 trillion per year, an amount equivalent to nearly one-third of America's annual GDP. Put another way, it would cost every one of the 128 million Americans of working age $34,800 per year to support retirees.Over the coming decades, the financial burden on U.S. workers to support retirees will worsen as life expectancy continues to improve and birthrates decline. America is fortunate compared with most nations, having the highest birthrate of any developed nation as well as significant immigration of young people. But by 2030, the Census Bureau projects the United States will have 139 million citizens between the ages of 25 and 55, and 112 million citizens 55 or older--a ratio of 1.24 to one. That works out to $44,300 per worker per year to support the retired population.
California's generous public-employee pensions yield awards that are, on average, more than three times the standard Social Security benefit. And given the earlier retirement age, workers will necessarily pay into the system over a shorter period of time. Understood this way, the ratio of workers to retirees would change from roughly two to one (40 years working, 20 years retired), to a more perilous one to one (30 years working, 30 years retired).
Apologists for California's current public-pension schemes insist that there is no crisis, and that despite the financial collapse and late recession, future investment returns should easily cover the costs. But it's hard to imagine stock market dividends alone funding California's unfunded liability of more than $500 billion, let alone the $5 trillion in pension payouts we're imagining. When more than 100 million people are withdrawing funds on that scale each year to fund their retirements, the market has too many sellers to permit meaningful rates of return.
Think Taxes Should Be Higher?
Groovy! Feel free to write a check to the Federal government. Stephen Moore writes in the WSJ that those who say they want higher taxes don't bother to contribute more voluntarily -- thought they could:
There is a special fund at the Treasury Department for taxpayers who want to make "gift contributions to reduce debt held by the public." But very few do. Last year that fund and others like it raised a grand total of $300 million. That's a decimal place on Mr. Zuckerberg's net worth and pays for less than two hours worth of federal borrowing.There are also a handful of states, including Arkansas, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, that have set up accounts for people who want to contribute more to the public fisc, but the amount raised in these states is generally in the thousands of dollars, the equivalent of a rounding error in state budgets.
...Groups like Responsible Wealth, a network of more than 700 individuals in the top 5% of income in the U.S., have raised millions of dollars in contributions from their "patriotic members," arguing for the need for more income and estate taxes to balance the budget. But that money isn't used to help balance the budget. It's used in lobbying efforts to force higher taxes on millions of other, often less wealthy Americans--which is hardly a self-sacrifice.
...Eric Schoenberg, a professor at Columbia University's Business School and a lobbyist for Responsible Wealth, recently told the Associated Press that "This voluntary idea clearly represents a mindset that basically pretends there's no such things as collective goods that we produce. Are you going to let people volunteer to build the road system? Are you going to let them volunteer to pay for education?"
Nonsense. Just because something is a collective good doesn't mean it has to be paid for out of coercive taxes. Central Park in New York is a collective good, but its remarkable renovation in the early 1990s was almost entirely financed through private donations, as have been many of our national monuments. Throughout history Americans have made heroic acts of patriotism, not because they were required to by law but for love of country.
How Islam Subjugates Women
Phyllis Chesler interviewed by Infidel Task Force. An excerpt:
Gender apartheid--and I am mainly talking about Islamic gender apartheid--consists of all those practices which condemn girls and women to a separate and subordinate sub-existence and which turn boys and men into the permanent guardians of their female relatives' chastity. Because of polygamy, boys and men are condemned to compete with siblings and half-siblings for a wealthy and polygamous father's attention and inheritance; and condemned to lead lives in which men are extremely uncomfortable with women, whom they have been taught to view as only sex objects and breeders. Any other emotion might fill a man with shame.Islamic gender apartheid is also characterized by normalized daughter- and wife-battering, forced veiling, arranged marriage, child marriage, first cousin marriage, and sometimes, female genital mutilation. In addition, women are honor murdered if they resist such practices. Imagine growing up female in such a setting: You know that your family-of-origin intimates and protectors might become your executioners based on idle rumor or fact.
Male homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia is also, therefore, rampant in the Islamic world but is hotly denied. Fifty years ago, I saw men openly holding hands on the streets of Kabul, some wearing lipstick and rouge, some with flowers behind their ears--both armed with ancient rifles. Liberatory, Western-style homosexuality is also officially persecuted. Islamic homosexuality, which includes child rape and prison-style sex, is a given that is never mentioned.
Today, at its most extreme, Islamic gender apartheid is characterized by acid attacks and the public stonings to death, hangings, and beheading of women in Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia--countries in which girls and women who are raped or who report being raped are often accused of adultery and sometimes jailed and executed. Islamic gender apartheid is also characterized by the honor murders of girls and women who want to choose their own husbands, or who have dared to resist total subordination. Women, both veiled and unveiled, are routinely harassed by men in extreme ways on the streets in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, and in North Africa.
Islamic gender apartheid in an Islamist era is the most anti-woman system known to humanity. Feminists should be crying out from the rooftops against it. Some are. I am.
Unlike most academics and feminists, I am not a multicultural relativist. I believe in universal human rights, one standard for all. I have chosen to speak out about the criminal misogyny both among Muslims and among Islamists. For doing so, I have been demonized as an Islamophobe and a racist. And, by the way, I have long condemned and actively opposed misogyny in the West. I have been doing so as of 1967. I am not now just targeting Islamic misogyny because it is Islamic but rather because it is criminally misogynist.
In my view, western academic feminists, including gay liberationists, have deserted their own vision of gender equality and human rights by refusing to take a stand. They fear that doing so will be seen as a new form of "colonialism" or "racism." That concern - that of their own reputations - trumps any concern they should have had for Arab and Muslim women's rights and human rights. In my opinion, this is a new form of racism.
The Quran and Hadith on women. In short, "At best, Islam elevates the status of a woman to somewhere between that of a camel and a man."
Chesler also writes about the most recent U.S. honor murder, Jessica Mokdad, 20, killed by her stepdad:
Why was she killed? Because, according to the police, her stepfather's believed she was "not adhering to Muslim customs." And, because her biological father was "letting her be a little more Americanized than what (the defendant) wanted."What's different about this case is that Jessica fled to the safety of her biological father's home in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Thus, her own father was supporting her as was her paternal grandmother, in whose home she was when Alfetlawi found her and shot her with a 9mm handgun.
...Why is the mainstream media silent about this outrage? Why are Muslim-American organizations silent?
Why are Muslim women's organizations also silent? Please speak out. Why is her mother, Wendy, silent? Was she complicit in this decision as were the mothers of Toronto's Aqsa Parvez and the mother of the Said sisters in Dallas?
Detroit: The Motor City Becomes The Moron City
47 percent of Detroiters can't read, according to a new report. From WWJ radio:
According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are "functionally illiterate." The alarming new statistics were released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund on Wednesday.WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke with the Fund's Director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, who explained exactly what this means.
"Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job -- those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what's on the bottle, how many you should take... just your basic everyday tasks," she said.
This is a major American city, not Calcutta. The question is, how many other cities are like it?
When I spoke to one 11th grade class at the inner city school here in LA, the teacher told me they read at the first, second, or third grade level. And they weren't special ed -- just a regular class.
Pregnant Woman Gets A Really Good Groping
Why do people stand there so calmly, being so pleasant, when their rights are being violated by the TSA?
Remember: The TSA is violating your right to not be searched without probable cause. Don't go quietly.
However you do that:
"Go Blue!" As they say at U of M -- and Pfizer.
Dr. Helen On Kids Who Kill
On CBS Atlanta. She writes on her blog, "Notice that in the story, several of the featured killers are girls."
She writes in the comments:
I agree that the kids were hardly "normal" people who snapped. For example, the twin girls described in the show were stealing and their grandmother was so terrified of them that she kept herself locked in her bedroom.
Dr. Helen says we're raising kids to be narcissists, with no sense of consequences. I see the narcissism playing out on a manners level -- and you see it here taken to the extreme.
You Can't Please Everyone - But The Obama Admin's Gonna Try
Vodkapundit writes that the plan for killing Bin Laden was "as perfectly executed as any special forces operation since Israel's raid on Entebbe," but the administration's follow-through has been "strange at best, sometimes bordering on incompetence":
First, there was that weird burial at sea "in accordance with Islamic tradition." There, the White House managed to annoy most everyone. There are those like me, who thought Bin Laden's corpse was treated with too much respect, to those in the Islamic world now inflamed because it wasn't really done properly after all.Then there was the president's oddly bloodless speech Sunday night. For almost ten years we'd been trying to get the guy who murdered 3,000 Americans, attacked our military HQ, and ripped the heart out of the New York City skyline. The effort spanned two continents, four or five countries, a Caribbean Navy base, and the persistent efforts of two presidents, the American intelligence community, and the best of the best of our special forces. And yet President Obama sounded as if he were announcing a "worthwhile Canadian initiative."
Now the Administration can't even decide whether or not to release a photo of the body. They didn't have a PR plan in place before the killing? It must be amateur night at the White House, because what I'm hearing sounds increasingly like karaoke. More specifically, a Last Call group chorus of "My Way," with the participants too drunk to remember all the words.
via Instapundit
Criminals Getting Younger: Playing Doctor Is Now A Crime
Via @mpetrie98 and Human-Stupidity.com, 6-year-old charged with sexual assault for consensual doctor play:
Dr. Lucy Berliner, director of Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress in Seattle, Wash., said it is "completely outside" accepted medical practice to characterize a 6-year-old's actions as sexual assault.
Which doesn't stop them from doing it. Sandy Cullen writes for the Wisconsin State Journal:
Grant County authorities have accused a 6-year-old boy of first-degree sexual assault of a child for allegedly playing "doctor" with a 5-year-old girl in September.The case, which is plowing new legal ground in Wisconsin, calls into question when a child's act can be considered criminal -- particularly when it involves behavior some experts say is normal for children that age -- and who makes that determination.
Under state law, the boy is too young to be charged with a crime or in a juvenile delinquency petition, the equivalent of a criminal complaint for juveniles. Instead, prosecutors have included the allegations in a petition seeking protection or services for the boy. Such petitions are typically used by parents or authorities to identify children under 10 who need services to change inappropriate behavior.
In the old days, we had parents instead of "services" when kids did bad things. I'm a libertarian, and don't believe in ever physically hurting somebody, except in self-defense or defense of some weaker person they're hurting, but early on, I was guilty of assault. I was an 8-year-old criminal -- hitting classmate Jeannie Willaker over the head with a dustpan when she refused to do her part in sweeping up that Mrs. DeMaio had assigned the two of us. I got sent to the principal's office, my parents got sent a note, and I got a stern talking-to from them about the inappropriateness of my behavior, and my criminal ways and I were very soon parted.
More from the story:
According to the petition for protection or services filed Nov. 12, the girl's mother found her daughter in the boy's yard "with her skirt and underpants around her ankles" and the boy sitting underneath her, penetrating her with his finger. The petition alleges the boy "did have sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 12."State law defines sexual intercourse, in part, as "intrusion, however slight, of any part of a person's body."
The girl told her mother they were playing "butt doctor" and told authorities the boy only touched her on the outside of her body, court documents state. A third child, a 5-year-old boy, also was with them, but he did not touch her inappropriately, the girl said.
Judge Leineweber refused to dismiss the petitions, saying the relevant part of the sexual assault allegation is the mother's observations.
The boy needed only to have penetrated the girl and known she was under a certain age, he wrote, adding, "Even the most immature 6-year-old could appreciate these two concepts."
In what universe?
Turley On Torture: New Administration, Same As The Old Administration
The current set of lying, lying liars in The White House are claiming that torture paid off in finding Bin Laden. Law prof Jonathan Turley writes:
What is striking is not only the lack of any support for the claims, but the immediate effort of Obama officials to justify torture. No doubt these are the same officials supporting Obama's decision to bar prosecution of individuals who carried out the torture -- and later barring the investigation of those who ordered the torture....Just as the Bush officials continually responded to war crime allegations by claiming that the torture produced good intelligence, international law does not have an exception for beneficial acts of torture. It is a prohibited act and a war crime. Yet, Obama officials are not only justifying torture but suggesting that the use of torture is somehow legitimated if anything usable is derived from it.
It is equally interesting to see CIA officials stoking such stories and (rightfully) questioning the culpability of Pakistani intelligence. However, what does Bin Laden living for years in a huge compound say for our current intelligence capabilities? We heard continual CIA reports of Bin Laden being in caves and other locations. If the story is true that he was in area for years, shouldn't there also be some question of our own capabilities since we have long said that we could not trust Pakistani security officials?
She Is Pretty. Do We Have To Pretend She Isn't?
Some grandstanding California state Senator is demanding that an Assemblyman apologize for his comments on the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court -- who happens to be quite the looker. I think so, too, by the way, and I'm fine with saying so (although if she were a hag, I'd hope I'd find my manners in time to avoid mentioning that).
Women are appreciated for their looks. Why? Because the features we consider beautiful are actually signs of fertility -- signs we evolved to appreciate. (In Don Symons words, "Beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder.") And because if they weren't appreciated for these signs, these human beauty universals, the human race would likely have died out from nobody looking over and seeing something they wanted to drag into the bushes and hump.
Yet, there are always those who are horrified that anybody would ever notice -- or, perish forbid, mention! -- a woman's looks. Even if they aren't saying she's dumb. Even if they value her other (less physically lovely) contributions in life.
Patrick McGreevy writes for the LA Times:
The head of the state Legislative Women's Caucus called Tuesday for a state Assemblyman to apologize for remarks that referred to the physical appearance and personality of the chief justice of the California Supreme Court.Sen. Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) sought the apology from Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) for comments he made during a legislative hearing on a bill he introduced to give judges more say in the running of the state's courts. Calderon said he meant no disrespect to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye.
A transcript and tape of the Judiciary Committee meeting were not immediately available, but the Assemblyman said in an interview that he was making a point that the bill was being advocated on policy merits rather than based on some bias against the chief justice. The assemblyman recalled saying his support for the bill has nothing to do with how "smart" or "nice" the chief justice is.
"It isn't that she isn't pretty," he said in the interview, recounting his comments in committee.
Evans fired off a letter asking for a formal apology.
"Your remarks regarding the chief justice were degrading and inappropriate," Evans wrote. "As the leader of California's Judiciary, Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye should be taken seriously and not spoken about in such a dismissive and frivolous manner."
"It is crucial that women be valued for more than just being 'nice' or 'attractive,' " Evans added.
Which is why what we really need, along with take your daughter to work day, is wear a bag over your head to work day.
When people stop laughing their asses at you, they can appreciate you for all the wonderful things you have within.
The Saturated Fat Myth Debunked In Two Minutes And 35 Seconds
The truth will set you slim -- and while eating a lot of bacon. Via The Healthy Skeptic:
I Guess It Didn't Fit Across The Shirt
That would be the message "I have never read a book or the newspaper or looked at anything on the Internet but porn, sports, or shoes, and I have all the intellect of a ficus tree."
I came to that conclusion as Gregg and I were leaving the book fest and going to where he parked his car, and I passed a 30ish Hispanic-looking guy wearing a Che shirt. "Che was a mass murderer of innocent people!" I snarled.
And no, I don't consider it rude to respond to a stranger who speaks to me -- whether by moving his lips or by wearing a t-shirt with a message (the meaning of which he's clearly clueless about).
The ignorance gets worse.
Don't Mess With Texas
Finally, an elected official is standing up to the Federal Bureau of Groping Sans Probable Cause -- aka the TSA. Gig Veres writes at Gather:
It was bound to happen, and Texas is taking the lead in making invasive airline pat-downs a felony. A bill sponsored by State Rep. David Simpson is gaining support in the Texas legislature, and Miss USA 2003 is an ardent advocate.Last April, crown winner Susie Castillo said she was "molested" at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as she passed through security. Under the new bill, the invasive airline pat-down would be considered a felony because the procedures require security employees to intentionally touch someone's private clothed areas without probable cause.
Not being a legal or legislative beagle, I have no idea whether this bill is viable, but the spirit of it is right on. As I blogged recently -- when you're going through the TSA line, avoid going quietly, however you do that: sobbing, moaning, complaining loudly throughout.
In one way or another, see that you don't stand there and let them grab your freedoms from you and do nothing. (I'm not asking you to go to jail -- but to do something to speak or act up.) If you aren't willing to defend your freedoms, do you really deserve to have them?
I often find that the people most appreciative of the rights and freedoms this country has to offer are those who grew up in Communist countries. Do we really need to suffer that sort of regime to appreciate what we have?
via ifeminists
If Only The LAPD Had Access To Snopes
Some nitwit there fell for an eight-year-old Internet urban legend. C.J. Lin writes for the Daily News:
An email sent to subscribers of the station's notification service and posted to its Nixle website Friday warned of a possible terrorist threat after $32,000 worth of United Parcel Service uniforms were supposedly bought on eBay in the last month.The message includes a U.S. Department of Homeland Security signature and warns residents to be aware of bogus deliverymen wearing the uniforms who could drop off packages to anyone "with deadly consequences."
Make sure the UPS worker is driving a company vehicle, and ask for valid ID, the warning states.
But the email is an urban myth that has been circulating on the Internet since early 2003, likely born of Sept. 11 fears. And it's one that's been widely debunked by the FBI, UPS, eBay and even Homeland Security itself.
"This urban legend, and a variation with a Department of Homeland Security signature block, are all equally untrue," reads a statement on Homeland Security's webpage dedicated to identifying hoaxes and urban legends involving the agency.
It was unclear how many people the notice was sent to, but West Valley station officials later retracted the warning, acknowledging that it was an Internet myth. They issued an apology more than an hour later after several people called the station questioning the authenticity of the information.
But they also took the opportunity to point out that the warning wasn't all bad.
"However, the advice is good in that you should always verify the delivery service has arrived with their own company vehicle," reads the notice. "Our deepest APOLOGIZES (sic) from the LAPD WVY Area !!!"
Bin Laden Wedding
"Do you take this woman to be your human shield?..."
More.
UPDATE: The Administration backs off the human shield claim.
Radley Balko On How Osama Won
He writes on his blog:
In The Looming Tower, the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11, author Lawrence Wright lays out how Osama bin Laden's motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the September 11 attacks, was to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war--an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.Osama got both. And we gave him a prolonged war in Iraq to boot. By the end of Obama's first term, we'll probably top 6,000 dead U.S. troops in those two wars, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The cost for both wars is also now well over $1 trillion.
...Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot more. He forever changed who we are as a country, and for the worse. Mostly because we let him. That isn't something a special ops team can fix.
Points on how Bin Laden changed America -- or was used to change America -- at the link.
Serving All Your Needs For Hookers And Muffintops
Downtown LA store:
Bin Laden Is Dead: So Now What?
(UPDATES BELOW.) Fox News reports:
The architect of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil was killed a week ago inside Pakistan by a U.S. bomb.President Obama announced the stunning development during an address to the nation late Sunday night from the White House.
"Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Usama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda."
The U.S. had been waiting for the results of a DNA test to confirm his identity before going public. Sources said the vice president informed congressional leaders late Sunday night that the world's most wanted man had indeed been killed.
I remember the moment I found out about 9/11. It was around 6 a.m. in California, and I was on my computer and Mark Ebner IM'd me on AOL: "Turn on the TV..." I think he added that something horrible was happening in New York.
The World Trade Center was just blocks from where I lived in New York (at Greenwich Ave at Canal), and looking up to see it was how I found my way home at night. I loved New York and New Yorkers, and frequently cut through the World Trade Center on my way further downtown, and the thought that ordinary people could be mass murdered simply by virtue of going to their jobs or taking the PATH train was unfathomable to me.
A friend's husband (and father of their three children) is only still alive today because she had a meeting, and he had to take their kids to school, making him late to his job on a high floor of the World Trade Center. Many (or perhaps most) of his co-workers were killed.
As for how Bin Laden's death changes things -- if at all: Bin Laden has been the face of global terrorism but does his death really mean all that much -- in more than a symbolic way? Islam has not changed. It is a totalitarian system that commands the death or conversion of non-Muslims and the installation of The New Caliphate around the world (contrary to what the ignorant or those who'd rather believe otherwise think). The very name of Islam means "submission." While there are many peaceful Muslims, who surely don't know the reality of the evil commanded by the Quran (which is to be taken literally, unlike the Bible), there are far too many who obey its dictates.
Predictions for the future?
UPDATE: Details from Mike Allen on Playbook at Politico.
UPDATE 2: More details here, from Marc Ambinder at National Journal.
Illegal Immigration Should Be "A Serious Crime"
It is in Mexico, where you are jailed as a felon for illegal immigration. But, here in the USA, there's whining that people are deported...boohoo...merely for the crime of being here illegally. Lee Romney and Paloma Esquivel write in the Los Angeles Times about "noncriminals" swept up in a federal deportation program. Um, noncriminals in the sense that they didn't murder and chop up anyone with an ax. Criminals in the sense that they're here ILLEGALLY!
More than once, Norma recalls, she yearned to dial 911 when her partner hit her. But the undocumented mother of a U.S.-born toddler was too fearful of police and too broken of spirit to do so.In October, she finally worked up the courage to call police -- and paid a steep price.
Officers who responded found her sobbing, with a swollen lower lip. But a red mark on her alleged abuser's cheek prompted police to book them both into the San Francisco County Jail while investigators sorted out the details.
With that, Norma was swept into the wide net of Secure Communities, a federal program launched in 2008 with the stated goal of identifying and deporting more illegal immigrants "convicted of serious crimes."
But Norma was never convicted of a crime. She was not charged in the abuse case, though the jail honored a request to turn her over to immigration authorities for possible deportation.
"I had called the police to help me," said Norma, 31, who asked that her last name not be used because she fears that speaking out may jeopardize her case. "I think it's unjust.... Even with a traffic ticket we can now be deported."
Under the program, fingerprints of all inmates booked into local jails and cross-checked with the FBI's criminal database are now forwarded by that agency to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be screened for immigration status. Officials said the new system would focus enforcement efforts on violent felons such as those convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping.
How about on anybody who's here illegally? Is that really too much to ask?
Where In The World Is Osama Bin San Diego?
Loved this revision of the sign in Red Hook, photographed and posted by @tina24hour:
Art Of The Deal
This is one of the many colorful little stores we passed on the way home from LA Times Festival of Books yesterday. (We took surface streets part of the way back from downtown when the freeway looked like a really bad idea.) 
My Saturday morning session with Rainn Wilson went well (preparation is the mother of not fucking up), and Sunday, I'm moderating a panel at 11 a.m. -- Fiction: Lives Interrupted -- of novelists Sonya Sones, Rachel DeWoskin, Luanne Rice, and Lian Dolan.
At Saturday lunch, I talked with a very interesting Irish poet I really liked -- Thomas McCarthy. His latest book is The Last Geraldine Officer
Another book on my list: Oren Harman's The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
There are many, many more, but I have to go to bed!
The Yard Vs. Harvard Yard
Allysia Finley writes in the WSJ that a job as a California prison guard beats the kind of job you can get with a Harvard degree:
The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it "has been called 'the greatest entry-level job in California'--and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can't find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy." That's right--instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.It gets better.
Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.
As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he's not even the highest paid.
Sure, Harvard grads working in the private sector get bonuses, too, but only if they're good at what they do. Prison guards receive a $1,560 "fitness" bonus just for getting an annual check-up.
...The cherry on top is the defined-benefit pension. Unlike most Harvard grads working in the private sector, prison guards don't have to delay retirement if their 401(k)s take a hit. Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year's salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits.
The big difference between Harvard and being a prison guard: Somebody's mommy and daddy are funding Harvard, and probably for only four or five years, depending on how many years their little golden child spends binge-drinking instead of studying. As far as the prison guards go, it looks like the rest of us in California will be paying those prison guard pensions until we die.
"We Were Ambivalent About The War Before We Were Ambivalent About The War"
My answer tweet about our non-strategy in Libya, after reading John Hawkins' tweet:
@johnhawkinsrwn So, if we aren't trying to kill Gaddafi, why are we bombing his house? If we are trying to do it, why won't we admit it?
