Amy Leaves The Computer For Six Hours: The Warhol Version
Gregg goes all Andy with it: 
Smart: Term Limits For Employees
Harry Bradford writes at the HuffPo of a smart idea by Atlantic City's Revel Casino:
Workers at Atlantic City's highly anticipated Revel casino, including bellhops and blackjack dealers, will be subject to term limits of four to six years, at the end of which they will repeat the hiring process, NPR reports. The policy will "attract the most highly professional people who are inspired by a highly competitive work environment," Revel wrote in a statement.Gaming employees earned between $16,310 and $68,290 a year according to the most recent statistics available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The policy could just be an excuse for the casino to take advantage of desperate job seekers, experts told NPR.
Um...by hiring them?
It actually costs a lot to hire and train employees. If somebody's great at what they do, won't an employer want to keep them?
And of course people in the HuffPo comments mewled about how this will be a "benefits-free" environment. This isn't a bad thing in terms of health care. It is completely stupid that healthcare is tied to one's workplace. I have a friend who has Crohn's, who'd planned to stay in a job for five years or so to learn and then leave for a more entrepreneurial goal, but was chained to that workplace to continue her health insurance.
If you're in your early 20s, what's smart is to do what I did: Engage health insurance on your own -- ideally, an HMO like mine (Kaiser) that says once you're in, you're in...no booting you because you develop some condition -- and do not take your workplace's insurance. Try to negotiate a better pay deal for not taking it. (If there are legalities I'm missing here -- I'm obviously not a labor lawyer -- please advise, legal beagles commenting here.)
Mess With The Taxpayer-Paid Stupids At DHS
There's a sidebar to the Daily Mail piece I linked on the catatonically stupid drooling morons at the Department of Homeland Security who deported British tourists for supposedly dangerous tweets (one of which is ripped from Family Guy). On that sidebar, there's a list of all the words that get your tweets flagged by DHS, (as if that's a form of security!).
I recommend that you all use as many of these words as possible in your tweets (and then whore for retweets by all your followers) in hopes of making it less possible for government-employed morons to inflict their tiny minds on visitors to this country in the name of "security":
The DHS no-no words include:Illegal immigrant
Outbreak
Drill
Strain
Virus
Recovery
Deaths
Collapse
Human to animal
Trojan
I had a hard time fitting them all into a single tweet in any coherent and slightly amusing manner, so I've split them into two. I hope you'll all tweet them, those of you who have twitter accounts, or retweet my tweets (@amyalkon).
And all you wordsmiths here, do make up your own tweets...in the name of putting actual intelligence into our "intelligence" operations!
And the more, the merrier! Make idiotic invasions of privacy and ridiculous bullying of the state too hard for the dim government functionaries to accomplish!
My two tweets:
We've had an illegal immigrant outbreak of human to animal cheerleader squad drills, with a few naked guys wearing a Trojan.Sex exhaustion virus caused a collapse, deaths, and a total strain on creduility. (Cheerleaders! Away from those goats!)
I know...easy barnyard animal joke. I'm so ashamed. Sort of.
Is Being A Moron A Requirement For A Government Job?
Thom Patterson writes on CNN.com about intelligence issues in the TSA rail and subway spot-checks (as in, the only meaningful thing anybody's uncovered is a serious lack of intelligence):
A high-profile example of VIPR's growing pains, transit officials say, is a VIPR-assisted passenger screening a year ago at Amtrak's station in Savannah, Georgia.Instead of screening passengers as they boarded trains -- which is standard security procedure -- officers were screening passengers as they were getting off trains.
Security experts know that makes no sense, because potential terrorists probably would be interested in bringing explosives onto trains, not taking them off.
Can anybody help them spell...DUHHHHH!?
Breaking News: Amy Leaves Computer For Six Hours
Photo by Gregg Sutter, who called this my "millisecond sunbath." 
The book I'm carrying in the photo went to Access Books, a terrific organization that provides books to inner-city schools in the LA area.
DHS Deports Tourists For Twitter Jokes
Unreal. Unreal!
Rob Beschizza blogs at BoingBoing that two tourists from the UK were detained and deported because of tweets joking about "diggin' up" Marilyn Monroe and "destroying" America. 
This is not the America I want to be living in and we all need to stand up to every incursion into our civil liberties (and basic common sense) or we're going to be on an express path to living in a police state.
More here, at this Daily Mail link (don't they look all al Qaeda-scary?). Seeing the picture of them really underscores what morons we have "guarding" this country. And then here's another one of their "terroristic" tweets:
'3 weeks today, we're totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin' Marilyn Monroe up!
Hey, DHS, thanks for all the dollars they didn't spend in Los Angeles!
Be very, very, very afraid of what this country is becoming.
P.S. As a sidebar to the Daily Mail piece, there's a list of all the words that get you flagged by DHS. I recommend that everyone use as many as possible in tweets to make it less possible for the morons to inflict their moronism on visitors to this country.
The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include:Illegal immigrant
Outbreak
Drill
Strain
Virus
Recovery
Deaths
Collapse
Human to animal
Trojan
The Criminal Practice Of Science
The policy we really need in this country is "don't feed the legislators," because the best case scenario would be that they're too hungry to do much.
Whale-watching biologist Nancy Black has gotten indicted by a grand jury for violating the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, banning the feeding of protected dolphins, seals and whales, lest it harm their ability to forage for themselves. Walter Olson blogs at Overlawyered that Black was looking to record killer whales' behavior. From the Economist op-ed that he linked to:
As Lawrence Biegel, her lawyer, tells it, one day Ms Black was in her research boat with assistants when killer whales attacked a pod of grey whales and killed a calf. Its blubber floated to the surface, and the killer whales were about to feed on it. Seizing this opportunity to film their behaviour, Ms Black threaded ropes through some pieces of blubber, then lowered a camera underwater.For this, Ms Black might now face up to 20 years in prison and half a million dollars in fines...
...Just as ridiculous, says Mr Biegel, is the accusation, increasingly common in federal cases, that Ms Black lied to the authorities, which carries its own prison terms. Ms Black always edits the commercial videos of her whale outings to make them more interesting. When investigators demanded footage, she gave them one of these edited videos. Prosecutors now claim that she had tampered with evidence.
To Harvey Silverglate, the author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
, this is par for the course in America's federal justice system today. A couple of trends have combined to threaten justice and liberty. First, federal statutes are often so poorly written and so vague that they are in effect incomprehensible. This gives excessive discretion to bureaucrats and prosecutors, with their own career ambitions, who apply them haphazardly.
Second, federal law has been moving away from mens rea ("guilty mind"), a common-law tradition that suggests that a person who had no idea he was breaking a law should not be accused of doing so. With bloated federal legislation and without mens rea you can accuse most people of something or other, says Mr Silverglate. The question should be, he says, whether charges are reasonable when they run "counter to all human instinct and experience".
Don't Be Too Quick To Trust A Dietitian Who Sounds Like She Has A Prestigious Job
Much of what this one said in her HuffPo piece was wrong, wrong, wrong. This woman apparently wouldn't recognize science if it walked in the door on a leash held by Albert Einstein and bit her on the ass.
This particular dietary nitwit, Kristin Kirkpatrick, is described under her name as "M.S., R.D., L.D., dietitian and wellness manager, The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute and the Cleveland Clinic Lifestyle 180 program."
Kirkpatrick opens her piece, "5 Things Never To Feed Your Child," by blaming fast food for her own weight problem. Of course, if anything's to blame, it's the bad dietary science the government put out (like the food pyramid created by an aide to George McGovern with no science appearance, per Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories).
The "science" put out back then by the government is much like the bad dietary science Kristin puts out now in her post. But, first, the finger pointing at Ronald McDonald and friends by Kristin:
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was seven and, after school one day, my mom agreed to take me to my favorite fast food joint for a burger, fries and a cola because I did well on a test. As we pulled into the parking lot, my mouth started to water. I literally imagined putting the food in my mouth and the sweet taste of every chew. I was a picky eater and ordered my burger "plain." Since it was 1983, we were given a small yellow tent to put on top of our car because we had to wait for the "specially made" sandwich to come out. Those minutes seemed like hours. Obviously, this wasn't my first time eating fast food at my favorite place; the emotions I felt were conjured up from past memories that my stomach, brain and digestive hormones weren't soon to forget. Throughout the years, I appreciated my fast food treat more often than I should have and, by the time I was a teenager, I had a weight problem and needed to change my habits for my health.
My dad used to take us for a burger and fries when we'd sometimes go hang out with him at his office on a Saturday. Of course, fries were healthier back then, per what Dr. Mary Dan Eades said on my radio show, because they used to be cooked in lard or beef tallow (can't recall which, but it was one of them). The vegetable oils they cook them in now are terrible for you -- which you'd know if you follow science-based dietary medicine people like the Eades instead of "science"-based ones like this one.
Oh, and we didn't get fast food very often. My mom did that, you know, parenting thing, where you don't let your kids have stuff simply because they want it.
And finally, the things Kristin says never to feed your child (and, by implication, that you probably don't want to eat either):
•"Anything With Extremely Unnatural Coloring." Hmm, I could dye buttered, mashed cauliflower red with beets. Deeeebunked!
•"Cola" (agree with Kristin there, but it has less sugar than some juice...so if you're going to have orange juice...well, you might be better off, sugarwise, having a Coke. But, I'd make it one of those Cokes from Mexico with real sugar in it instead of HFCS).
•"Full Strength Juice." She talks about "if your child still requests juice," giving them watered-down juice. Um, juice is very unhealthy. Who's the mother here? Act like it and say no. (And no skim milk, either, which has very little food value. We need fat to be healthy. Good fat -- like the kind in milk.)
•"Quick Processed Meals." Yes, many are bad...but all? Don't think so. And not for the reason she says. She goes after salt. Not bad for healthy people -- just thought to be by people who don't know science. In fact, not having enough salt can be a problem. Oh, and the nit wit pulls a meta-analysis of 19 independent cohort samples -- cohort studies being the shit data arena of science (these are observational studies that find associations that could very well be neck-deep bullshit).
•"Hot Dogs And Lunch Meat." See my comment below.
My comment on the site (bets on whether it will be approved?):
This comment is pending approval and won't be displayed until it is approved.You had a weight problem because you ate the fries, cola and bun. Per Gary Taubes' "Why We Get Fat," it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. Your notion that juice is okay to drink is wrong. Sodium is not unhealthy (see Taubes' award-winning piece on salt in science, along with more recent pieces by people who are solid on science -- unlike you). Finally, here's junkfoodscience demolishing your notion about nitrates/nitrites. There are more in lettuce than a hotdog.
For those who like to base their diet on evidence rather than the "science" put out by this woman, turn to the work of Gary Taubes ("Why We Get Fat") and that of Doctors Michael and Mary Dan Eades. Michael Eades' blog is particularly helpful: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/
Here's how that worked for a woman who actually understands science.
REPOST: THIS WEEK'S ADVICE GODDESS RADIO MOVED TO MONDAY NIGHT, JAN 30: Dr. Gad Saad On Fast Cars, Engagement Rings, And Sex
Unfortunately, Gad Saad couldn't make it Sunday tonight, as planned. As I wrote to a good friend, "He has the flu and was throwing up all last night -- it's not like he decided to enjoy Montreal's fine January weather to go surfing on the St. Lawrence Seaway or something."
Monday night, January 30, Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, evolutionary psychologist Dr. Gad Saad, Professor of Marketing at Concordia University, on our "consuming instincts" -- which is also the title of his terrific and most recent book: The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature
Saad looks at consumer behavior -- which actually has a lot to tell us about how to approach love, dating, sex, and relationships.
Some questions we'll answer:
•How come you have to buy her an engagement ring and she doesn't have to buy you engagement golf clubs or an engagement boat?•Why do men's testosterone levels rise when they drive a Porsche?
•What happens when you give women that "sensitive and gentle" man they say they want?
•Why it isn't girl-on-girl porn that really turns men on, and which porn is most arousing to men. (And no, the answer isn't "any"!).
We'll also discuss what the research says about what seems to cause eating disorders, and separate what the evidence says from the ideology and myths.
Link to my show with Gad Saad:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And, in case you missed my very popular recent show with low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, here's a link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And I got a lot of great feedback on last week's show with evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon, who cut through the political correctness on sex, porn, and "gender."
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Hair Of The Dog
Sometimes, a girl has just had too many to make it all of the way into bed.
UPDATE - THIS WEEK'S ADVICE GODDESS RADIO MOVED TO MONDAY NIGHT, JAN 30: Dr. Gad Saad On Fast Cars, Engagement Rings, And Sex
Unfortunately, Gad Sad can't make it tonight. As I wrote to a good friend, "He has the flu and was throwing up all last night -- it's not like he decided to enjoy Montreal's fine January weather to go surfing on the St. Lawrence Seaway or something."
Monday night, January 30, Tonight, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Dr. Gad Saad on our "consuming instincts" -- which is also the title of his terrific and most recent book: The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature
Some questions we'll answer:
•How come you have to buy her an engagement ring and she doesn't have to buy you engagement golf clubs or an engagement boat?•Why do men's testosterone levels rise when they drive a Porsche?
•What happens when you give women that "sensitive and gentle" man they say they want?
•Why it isn't girl-on-girl porn that really turns men on, and which porn is most arousing to men. (And no, the answer isn't "any"!).
We'll also discuss what the research says about what seems to cause eating disorders, and perhaps suggest ways to present them -- and separate what the evidence says from the ideology and myths.
Link to my show with Gad Saad:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And, in case you missed my very popular recent show with low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, here's a link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And I got a lot of great feedback on last week's show with evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon, who cut through the political correctness on sex, porn, and "gender."
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Sex Criminal At Age 6
This country has gone totally crackers. A family was battling sexual-assault charges against their 6-year-old who apparently brushed his best friend's leg or groin while playing tag. From CBS/SF, quoting the child's parent, who asked to be identified only as "Oswin":
Oswin said his child was kept in the principal's office for two hours until he confessed. He was suspended, and a sexual battery charge was placed on his permanent school record....Legally, there's no such thing as sexual assault for a six year-old in California.
It wasn't until Oswin and his wife got a lawyer that the school backed off. District officials declined to discuss specifics. They did confirm that an investigation was conducted, and that the child could not be charged with sexual battery. The claim was removed from the boy's record.
Oswin's son is attending another school now. He said he only hopes no one else will have to go through what his family did.
But they will. I typically blog several of these cases a month these days -- sexual assault charges or "weapons" charges for some kid whose granny put a paring knife in her lunch bag to cut her apple.
@freerangekids
The Price Of Government Meddling
You probably won't have any idea how much government meddling is going into your plane ticket, thanks to a new DOT rule that kicked in on January 26. It requires airlines to add in all taxes and government fees that get stuck onto the ticket and reveal the total ticket price in advertising and marketing.
Come on...does anyone not realize that taxes and fees will be tacked on to the price of the $6 from Houston to Paris!!! fare? Do we really need the government to remind us of that? Thom Lambert blogs at Truth on the Market about a problem with the new rule:
How consumer-friendly is this rule? Won't it be easier to raise taxes and fees when they aren't presented as a line item, when consumers aren't "startled" to see the exorbitant amount they're paying for government services?...Consumer advocates ... lauding the new Department of Transportation rule ... don't seem to realize that higher taxes are bad for consumers and that taxes are more likely to rise when the government can hide them. They also seem to care little about consumer sovereignty. Don't consumers have a right to know how much they're paying to have scads of Homeland Security officers bark orders at them and gawk at their privates?
via @overlawyered
"Amy Alkon On Homo Barbarus"
There's a wonderful review of my book I See Rude People by Karen De Coster posted on her site and cross-posted on LewRockwell.com. An excerpt:
Occasionally, a book comes along that so extraordinary that it deserves a quickie book review even when I don't have time to do a book review. I just finished ready Amy Alkon's I See Rude People: one woman's battle to beat some manners into an impolite society. For those who are not familiar with her, Amy is a columnist, journalist, author, and blogger who is known around the Internet as the Advice Goddess. This book, from 2009, is an absolute joy to read - her razor wit and knack for insulting Homo Barbarus is reminiscent of a 21st century H.L. Mencken. She is the anti-Boobus.Amy is Revengerella, and she defines the "new rudeness" as "people wildly indifferent to other people." She writes,"There's a meanness, a hostile self-centeredness, that's overtaken our society since around the turn of the millennium, and nobody's safe from all the pushing, shoving, and shouting." One of of my favorite Alkon moments is when the plucky author pummels "all the asshats yukking it up on their cells" and refers to cell phone rudeness as "the most prevalent form of modern mannerlessness." Another cornerstone topic of the book is one of my favorite incivilities to pick apart - the underparented child. One of her greatest hits from the book is this sublime quote:
In case this isn't apparent, this chapter isn't about bad children, it's about bad parents. The children, like cell phones in the hands of loud narcissists, are merely a medium through which self-involved so-called adults inflict themselves on the rest of us. Unfortunately, while you need a license to cut hair, you only need working ovaries to have a child.She continues on about the age of adolescent parents:
A few decades later, the adult-child line is no longer blurred; it's snarled. We've got eight-year-old girls dressing like hookers while their mothers dress like eight-year-old girls. Last week, I stood in line behind a big white vinyl Hello Kitty purse - on the arm of a 40-something mother of two. Forty-something dads bicker with their kids over whose turn it is on the Nintendo, and sociologist Frank Furedi, who wrote on Spiked.com about trying to wean his two-year-old son off "Teletubbies," and realizing the futility of it after spotting a bunch of undergraduates glued to an episode of the show in a bar.
Karen De Coster is pretty cool. A bit about her:
I am a Certified Public Accountant and freelance writer who is devoted to the causes of liberty, individualism, and the free market. I embrace the right to keep and bear arms; recognize the superiority of the Articles of Confederation; subscribe to a motley assortment of minor conspiracy theories; and believe that government is evil, immoral, corrupt, and unnecessary in a free society. I am also an ardent lover and student of Austrian economics, the pro-market, anti-statist school of economics. Additionally, I proudly wear the title "Queen of Political Incorrectness", given to me by my friend Tom DiLorenzo.I'm a theoretical Rothbardian because it was Murray Rothbard who wanted to systematically smash statism and fulfill the dream of liberty and prosperity for all of mankind. Other influential thinkers are Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian praxeologist; Lysander Spooner, the 19th-century market anarchist; Albert Jay Nock, the anti-State libertarian; Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, the acclaimed conservative historian; Frederic Bastiat, the 19th-century economist; C.S. Lewis, the Christian philosopher; and the great figures of the "Old Right", including H.L. Mencken, Garet Garrett, Frank Chodorov, John T. Flynn, and Robert A. Taft. Also, I am drawn to the cultural conservatism of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk.
To me, the most glorious prose master to ever pen a word is H.L. Mencken, the most prolific, brilliant, and politically incorrect commentator this world has ever known. I discovered Mencken during junior high school and I knew I was on to something big, even then. But it was many years before I came across folks with whom I could share my Mencken discovery. Mencken helped to set the stage for me in regards to my thirst for knowledge. As Mencken's creed states: "I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant."
And she lives in Michigan and rides a Harley Sportster 1200XL. Hope to have child-free drinks with her when I'm in Michigan. And by that, I mean, drinks without children stirred in -- or present.
Ron Paul Lie-Detects Obama's Speech
Lew Rockwell has Paul's response posted. An excerpt:
Instead of offering solutions to the problems our country faces, the President was intent on delivering a campaign speech, further dealing in the typical Washington political gamesmanship that has gotten us exactly nowhere close to improving the lives of the American people."In a speech where much of the rhetoric was devoted to job creation, it was strange that President Obama would brag about his job-destroying national health care plan, Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank bill, which, contrary to the President's claims, guarantees future taxpayer bailouts of large institutions. Unfortunately, President Obama's 'job creation' policies amount to little more than continuing to allow government bureaucrats to pick winners and losers, which is a recipe for continued economic stagnation.
"President Obama claims to want an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. Yet he remains committed to the same old system of debt, deficits, bailouts, and cronyism that created our economic problems. The President speaks of giving us energy independence from unstable nations, yet he refuses to allow the type of development needed to achieve this goal, while at the same time his administration hands out favors to the politically connected - those given to the likes of Solyndra, who fail to produce jobs or energy but succeed in ripping off the taxpayers.
Sorry -- forgot to post this a few days ago!
Big TV, Little Price
HDTVs for $500 or less
Venice, California: Muscle You Beach
Great T-shirt they sell at Groundwork, where I went to buy filters for my Chemex
TSA, Don't Strip Our Rights
I got in touch with Kelly Voluntaryist, who did the bra-and-panties protest of the TSA and she sent me this video they put together:
Interesting that the guy tells them they can't hand out pamphlets at the airport. Oh, that crazy little thing called the First Amendment.
And then there's the notion that they can't openly record a public official:
Another man was charged with wiretapping in New Hampshire for recording a traffic stop. As Mike Masnick posted on Techdirt:
Recording a police officer as he has stopped you is not and should never be considered a crime. The police in Weare New Hampshire should be ashamed of themselves for flagrantly abusing the law to intimidate people from exercising their own rights. All the more reason for laws like the one proposed in Connecticut that would punish police for preventing people from recording their interactions with the police in public.
Via Techdirt, as Radley Balko points out:
A right doesn't mean much if there are no consequences for government officials who ignore it. Witness this case in Florida, where an officer erroneously tries to say federal law prohibits citizen recordings of cops. Even in states where courts have thrown out criminal charges, a cop who doesn't want to be recorded can still harass, threaten, and even arrest you. You may not be charged. But he won't be punished, either.
The law? Gary Rayno writes in the Union Leader:
CONCORD -- Police in several communities in New Hampshire have arrested people videotaping police officers, but according to a ruling from the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, the arrests violate their First Amendment rights.The ruling in the case of Simon Glik, a Boston attorney arrested for filming Boston police officers arresting a man on Boston Common, states: "Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting 'the free discussion of governmental affairs.'"
And the court ruled "a citizen's right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public place is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment."
In New Hampshire, citizens have been arrested for recording police officers performing their duties -- including several publicized cases in Weare, Nashua, Manchester, Portsmouth and Keene.
For the past three legislative sessions, bills have been introduced to make it clear citizens have a right to record police officers performing their duties in public places, but to date none have become law.
Rep. Al Baldasaro, R-Londonderry, is the prime sponsor of House Bill 145, which is still in the Senate Judicial Committee after it passed the House this session. The Senate will act on the bill in January.
The Senate isn't acting well -- whomever is in this guy's district should see he isn't elected again. Again, from the Union Leader, from the editorial page on January 9, 2012:
In the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Sen. Fenton Groen, R-Rochester, introduced an amendment that mucks up this simple bill. It requires the recording to be in plain view and that the person doing the recording be on their own property, property they have permission to be on, or public property.Those requirements are entirely unnecessary. They also present problems. What if a person hears a commotion, runs to the scene, and witnesses an interaction between a citizen and a police officer? In the heat of the moment, that person would have to make sure he is on public property or his own property, or any recording would be illegal.
This amendment should go. The House version was simpler and better.
Post on Fenton Groen's Facebook page re-election page. I did. This comment:
How utterly scummy that you introduced an amendment to HB 145 (showing yourself to be ignorant of - and an enemy of -- The First Amendment). As the Union Leader editorial page noted, your amendment "mucks up" this bill, calling for a person videotaping the police to be on their own property, property they have permission to be on, or public property. The Union Leader link is here.I hope your constituents vote you out of office for being an enemy of the Constitution. -Amy Alkon
Penn & Teller: Circumcision Is BULLSH*T
The foreskinny on the barbaric practice of unnecessary foreskin removal on babies, and how it's based on primitive biblical stuff (the supposed god supposedly wanting to make a covenant with the Hebrews):
It was also thought that this mutilation of boys would stop them from touching themselves down there.
Get Yourself A Movie Or TV Deal
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Advice Goddess Radio: Get The Podcast -- Evolutionary Sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon
Did you miss the show? It was a fascinating and fun one, with evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon cutting through the political correctness on sex, porn, and "gender."
Play the show at the link or download the podcast (click "play in your default player"):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
This coming Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Dr. Gad Saad on our "consuming instincts" -- which is also the title of his terrific and most recent book: The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature
Some questions we'll answer:
•How come you have to buy her an engagement ring and she doesn't have to buy you engagement golf clubs or an engagement boat?•Why do men's testosterone levels rise when they drive a Porsche?
•What happens when you give women that "sensitive and gentle" man they say they want?
We'll also discuss what the research says about what seems to cause eating disorders, and perhaps suggest ways to present them -- and separate what the evidence says from the ideology and myths.
Link to my show with Gad Saad:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And, in case you missed my very popular recent show with low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, here's a link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
School Choice In The Days Before School Choice
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon writes in The Atlantic about her mother's creative exercise of "school choice":
She felt we'd already started with a few strikes against us: she was a single mother with a charmingly deadbeat ex-husband and no college degree. She worked at the telephone company during the day and sold Tupperware at night to balance our household ledger. The least she felt she could do as a mother was to provide the best public schooling she could find, since private school was out of the question financially. And besides, she wanted me to learn that in life, "you won't always be around people just like you."My mother was very happy with Magnolia Elementary School and its Talented and Gifted Program, as was I, and she employed great administrative resourcefulness to keep me there. At the start, we used the babysitter's addresses (in that, we were not the only ones). Later, for a year or two, my father actually lived in the right district, allowing me to attend school with no obfuscation necessary. After he moved out, we continued using his address, and I stayed after school at a friend's house nearby. This made it somewhat easier to intercept the mailwoman each quarter when she delivered my report card to my father's old house.
I write this so many years later because right now, the school choice debate is leaving out people like my mother: parents who embrace choice because they believe they have no other choice. It is a conversation that happens largely among highly educated people in fancy conference rooms and on lofty campaign platforms, in highbrow publications and among rarefied circles. (I once interviewed with a hedge fund that had candidates debate school choice as part of the application process.) It happens over the heads of poor parents, as if they are too simple to have an opinion on the dilemma they themselves are living.
That means all that is left is the politics, which each side deploys to its own advantage. Meanwhile, parents like my mother get on with as many jobs as they have and do the best they can for their kids in a country that is, increasingly, far less upwardly mobile than its promise and its past suggest.
I wonder now what my mother would have made of today's school choice discussion and the passions it stirs on all sides. (She passed away not long after I finished elementary school.) I think she would have been surprised to see so many of her fellow self-identifying liberals, usually so sympathetic to cash-strapped parents, fighting to keep her from exercising the choice she felt was her right as a taxpayer and her duty as a mother.
"Are We 'Born That Way'? Do We Choose To Be Gay? Who Cares?"
That's the headline on the E.J. Graff piece in The American Prospect on Sex in the City star Cynthia Nixon's saying that for her, being gay is a choice. (Nixon had a man in her life previously -- now she's with a woman.) As Nixon said to Alex Witchel in The New York Times:
I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line 'I've been straight and I've been gay, and gay is better.' And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not." Her face was red and her arms were waving. "As you can tell," she said, "I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can't it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we're just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don't think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn't realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I've been out with.
Graff wrote:
Of course, the preferred LGBT movement line is that we were all "born this way"--and so her comments sent the Maoist portions of the LGBT thought police into an angry buzzing fury.
I think that does have to do with answering the bigots. And let me say that I am really heterosexual. I would have liked to be attracted to women, but I just never was. But, some women have more fluid sexuality, and lucky them -- larger mating pool. At least, I think that's how you see it if you don't have issues with gays and gay sex.
Commenter deckbose writes under Graff's piece:
I agree with everything that Ms. Nixon is stating here, except for one essential element. I would suggest that she is not gay, but, rather, bisexual, and right now chooses to be with a same-sex partner. Which has no effect whatsoever on the question of rights -- that is a bedrock principle of a free society, that your personal sexual preferences have no effect on your rights as a citizen.
Here's what I think matters: Are you in love? Are you happy? Are you in a good relationship? That's what we should care about. Not whether you're gay, bisexual, straight -- or Lutheran -- or anything else.
Is It The Time Of Blue Liquid?
Tampon commercial takes on the stupidity of tampon commercials:
D.C.'s Rat Relocation Act
At first, I was all hopeful. It sounded like a program to get all the sleazy politicians (which is most of them) out of Washington. But, no, they're literally talking about relocating rats. The kind with long, ropey tails. As opposed to slaughtering the dirty little disease-spreading fuckers.
Christopher Goins writes on CNS News about a new law in D.C. that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is a bit tweaked about:
Cuccinelli said D.C.'s new rat law--the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 (Wildlife Protection Act of 2010.pdf) --is "crazier than fiction" because it requires that rats and other vermin not be killed but captured, preferably in families; no glue or snap traps can be utilized; the rodents must be relocated from where they are captured; and some of these animals may need to be transferred to a "wildlife rehabilitator" as part of their relocation process.The law does not allow pest control professionals "to kill the dang rats," Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com. "They have to capture them--then capture them in families. [Not sure] how you're going to figure that out with rats. And then you have to relocate them. That brings us to Virginia. Now, if you don't relocate them about 25 miles away, according to experts, rodents will find their way back. Well, an easy way to solve that problem is to cross a river, and what's on the other side of the river? Virginia."
...While the law exempts "commensal rodents"--varieties of which most people know (or have seen) as common rats or house mice--the rice rat and deer mouse, which are found in the District, are not defined as commensal and apparently are not exempt from the law. In addition, the new law expands the definition of wildlife and sets the rules for handling it to include raccoons, squirrels, skunks, and other animals that can carry disease, such as rabies. The law applies to trained animal control officers, not to homeowners.
They're supposed to relocate them "if feasible." (There's some wide ground for misinterpretation!) Feasible, as in, if money is no obect? And then, I love this. The law says people are supposed to "Minimize stress to the animal and its exposure to the elements by covering the trap or vehicle with appropriate material;"
What, crushed velvet?
But, not to worry: Maryland's prepared! From ABC2's C.J. Alderson, from January 20:
ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Delegate Pat McDonough will be introducing legislation known as "The Rat Trafficking Act" that will stop any government entity from allowing rats and other rodents into Maryland ...
I have to admit that I first took a peaceful approach when I had a rodent infestation in my house (mice, apparently, but any rats were probably relatives of these ladies little friends). The infestation was a mystery to me, since I rarely had any food in my house at the time. Apparently, they just like to get in where it's warm and they eat everything. Ugh.
At the time, I was thinking, "Why kill things unnecessarily? (What an idiot.)
I bought a little green eco trap on Amazon -- of the "let my rodents go" variety -- baited it with peanut butter and such, and learned that, in fact, somebody had built a WORSE mouse trap. Because it didn't catch any mice. And didn't, and didn't. And then...when Gregg and I came back from San Francisco, one (that must have been the biggest dumbass of a mouse ever) was stuck in the trap. Dead. Ick.
Next step: Hellooo, exterminators! Here's my address. KILL THE FUCKERS.
Thanks, SD
Snark And Awe
It seems exercising one's First Amendment rights at LAX is expressly permitted. (Hey, thanks, Jews for Jesus!)
On Cracked.com -- which isn't cracked at all, but a great site with really smart stuff -- Eddie Rodriguez writes in "5 Awesomely Sarcastic Supreme Court Decisions":
#2. "The Issue ... Is Whether a Resolution Banning All 'First Amendment Activities' at LAX Violates the First Amendment."Have you ever been annoyed by those people coming up to you at the airport and trying to hand you religious material? The folks over at Los Angeles International Airport are right there with you, man. Hell, in 1983, the Board of Airport Commissioners at LAX even tried to pass a law banning the pamphlet people from hanging around anywhere near their airport.
They ran into one teensy problem, though. Let's see ... what was it? Oh, yeah! The First Amendment to the United States Constitution. That's the one that protects people's rights to say what they want, worship any way they want and express themselves however they want. It pretty much guarantees that religious groups don't get the crap harassed out of them when they peacefully try to save the souls of everyone waiting for the 5:15 to Houston.
But those ingenious bastards at LAX thought they had found a way around that pesky Constitution. In the resolution they passed, they expressly banned all First Amendment activities. Problem. Freaking. Solved.
And they didn't write it in vague legalese that they could somehow claim was misinterpreted. They expressly wrote that all First Amendment activities were forbidden in the terminal and could result in litigation. That cross around your neck that signals you're a Christian? Banned! Your Che Guevara T-shirt? Banned! Your "Free Mustache Rides" hat? You'd better believe that's banned!
Jews for Jesus was the first religious group to get kicked out under the new rule, and they filed a lawsuit. When the case got before the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor must have paused and wondered whether someone was punking her when she had to write the complaint brought before the court:
"The issue presented in this case is whether a resolution banning all 'First Amendment activities' at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) violates the First Amendment."
Wink-wink...so, LAX, on a Saturday (in hopes that momof4 and a few others from out of town can join us), very soon...as soon as I can do the rest of the research on this. (Dress Code: Underwire.)
P.S. Seems we'll need a filming/taping permit -- see #11:
11. Commercial/Non-Commercial Photography and Student Filming. The LAX Film Office under the Airport Response Coordination Center (ARCC) is charged with the responsibility of administering the filming program as mandated by the Board of Airport Commissioners. All entities, including tenants, must contact the LAX Film Office at (424) 646-6843, and be issued a film permit for any film, video, or photographic projects at LAX.
.45 Miles To The Gallon
Photo by Phil Miller (used with permission, of course):
The State Of Policing
From an episode of an old TV show called "The Lawyers": "Police work is supposed to be hard. It is easy only in a police state."
Irate Against The State (Except He Apparently Wasn't Acting That Way)
Via Red Seewun, a security video disputes the police claim that Rand Paul was "irate" when he stood up to the TSA for their ridiculous "security measures. Video and more here at The Tennessean, in a story reported by Brian Haas.
And what if Paul had been "irate"? Irateness seems called for when your civil liberties are violated. At the very least.
I'm irate -- and seriously disgusted -- that it's now no big deal to keep US citizens, including a US senator, in a glass cage when there's no reasonable reason to believe they are terrorists. There's just some hoop they failed to jump through or bell they rung -- meaning nothing -- at the airport, and a need to make them kowtow to meaningless "security" measures.
Again, what's really being accomplished is obedience training for the American public. Give up your rights and do it politely and quietly -- or else.
The World Will End Soon. Again.
Matt Richtel writes in The New York Times about tweens and tech:
A study from Stanford University, published Wednesday, wrestles with a new question: How is technology affecting their happiness and emotional development?The answer, in the peer-reviewed study of the online habits of girls ages 8 to 12, is that those who say they spend considerable amounts of time using multimedia describe themselves in ways that suggest they are less happy and less socially comfortable than peers who say they spend less time on screens.
I was miserable from 8 to 12. I had no friends and buried myself in books. Surely, this wasn't the best way to learn social skills.
I like what Rebecca Greenfield wrote on The Atlantic Wire:
We lived on the Internet when we were that age and look what it got us: Employed! (On the Internet...)
I'm reminded of the woman who called in the other day when I was on Patt Morrison's radio show on KPCC. She snarled (as so many do) about how people texting on their phones are "so anti-social," and about what a tragedy it was that they weren't paying attention to their environment.
I remarked that "maybe they're 'multi-social'" -- a word I came up with at that moment. I added that maybe a woman is texting to her boyfriend who's far away, and that's more important to her than paying attention to her present environment.
Kind of amazing that people feel so free to decide what should be important to other people.
Squealing About Heels
The message we keep being given in this world of ours -- a world of greater safety and ease than at any time in human history: "LIFE IS DANGEROUS!"
This is continued in a piece in The New York Times -- "A Scientific Look at the Dangers of High Heels," blogged by Gretchen Reynolds on the science-challenged Tara Parker-Pope's health blog:
It was obvious, as the scientists had suspected watching the woman during their coffee break, that the women habituated to high heels walked differently from those who usually wore flats, even when the heel wearers went barefoot. But the nature and extent of the differences were surprising. In results published last week in The Journal of Applied Physiology, the scientists found that heel wearers moved with shorter, more forceful strides than the control group, their feet perpetually in a flexed, toes-pointed position. This movement pattern continued even when the women kicked off their heels and walked barefoot. As a result, the fibers in their calf muscles had shortened and they put much greater mechanical strain on their calf muscles than the control group did.In that control group, the women who rarely wore heels, walking primarily involved stretching and stressing their tendons, especially the Achilles tendon. But in the heel wearers, the walking mostly engaged their muscles.
That biomechanical distinction is important, says Dr. Cronin, who is now a researcher at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland. "Several studies have shown that optimal muscle-tendon efficiency" while walking "occurs when the muscle stays approximately the same length while the tendon lengthens. When the tendon lengthens, it stores elastic energy and later returns it when the foot pushes off the ground. Tendons are more effective springs than muscles," he continues. So by stretching and straining their already shortened calf muscles, the heel wearers walk less efficiently with or without heels, he says, requiring more energy to cover the same amount of ground as people in flats and probably causing muscle fatigue.
The obvious question raised by the findings, though, is so what? Does it fundamentally matter if a woman's calf muscle fibers shorten and she neglects her tendons while walking, especially if she loves the looks of her Louboutins?
That question is difficult for a biomechanist to answer, Dr. Cronin admits. Aesthetics are outside the realm of his branch of science. But the risk of injury is not. "We think that the large muscle strains that occur when walking in heels may ultimately increase the likelihood of strain injuries," he says. (This risk is separate from the chances that a woman, if unfamiliar with heels, may topple sideways and twist an ankle or bruise her self-image, which is an acute injury and happened to me only the one time.)
Commenter Doc writes:
Scoliosis made sure that I have not worn heels since I was in my early 20's. From the blog and comments, it sounds like women have only two choices - heels or athletic wear or birkenstocks. Not true. There are good-looking flats to be found all over, and they are appropriate for business wear.I am with the commenters who note that women do not have to wear heels to look sexy to men. I never had a problem attracting dates because of my footwear, and I am convinced that my sensible sartorial choices meant that I met and married a reasonably sensible mate!
You can't really blame the guys for this - really retailers have sold women a bill of goods to make them think they have to wear painful clothing (not just shoes) in order to be attractive. It's ridiculous. Grow up and quit being such slaves to fashion. Dress comfortably and look confident - like catnip to confident men, btw.
Before I quit heels, I too was an '80's commuter in my sneaks, changing into "cuter" heels at the office, when I had an epiphany - guess what? Wear cute flats all the time and save the sneaks for the gym/weekends!
Duh. Saved money and my back.
My comment in response:
It's very PC to blame retailers and say they sold women a bill of goods. (So, so tired of politically correct lies -- and lies women tell themselves and others so they can feel better about their own choices.)The truth? High heels affect the way a woman walks and make her appear sexier. As Dr. Nancy Etcoff writes in "Survival of the Prettiest," wearing heels "forces women to throw back their shoulders and arch their backs, making their breasts look bigger, their stomachs flatter, and their buttocks more rounded and thrust out." They make the leg look more toned and elongated.
It's possible to wear heels comfortably -- I wear high-heeled boots (a half size too large so I can wear big cushy socks). I used to wear them when I lived in NYC and got around on my bike. Here in LA, where I walk four blocks from my house to the coffee place or drive, what's the big deal?
By the way, are we all a little sick of people insisting that all you have to do is look confident and men will be all over you? "Like catnip to men"? Yeah. Especially if you look like a confident Angelina Jolie, a confident Megan Fox, etc.
Enough with the lying to women about beauty. It's really not helpful.
How To Avoid Pickpockets While Traveling
Good article on HuffPo by Lena Katz, interviewing Bob Arno, a criminologist. An excerpt:
Among women who carry a purse or handbag, which ones are safest? How do you position the strap? What's the worst mistake you see in how they hold and look after the bag?Bob Arno: The worst, and the most common mistake, is to hang your handbag on back of the chair, or to tuck the bag behind you on the seat. You think you have physical contact with the bag, but fifteen minutes into the meal you forget! I've seen surveillance videos in which a gang of three thieves in a well-established luxury hotel restaurant position themselves strategically around a targeted breakfast table, talking to each other on their cell phones. They wait for the perfect moment when the owner of the bag -- the victim -- leans forward. At that moment, the controller of the gang gives a small hand signal to the other two to execute their independent moves so that everything is coordinated. One accomplice creates a small diversion in front of the table, and the other observes the restaurant staff, to be sure nobody pays attention to the incident. The thief unrolls a soft jacket from his fanny-pack and drapes it over his arm, allowing the fabric to come down over the victim's handbag. He scoops up the bag under the cover of the nylon jacket. They then immediately leave the restaurant. Coffee shops (such as Starbucks and their competitors) are extremely popular venues for thieves who practice bag stealing.
Conclusion: You must have your purse in front of you and keep physical contact when traveling. If it is a purse with long strap, wear it in front of your body when you are in a vulnerable location or environment.
What's the safest place for a man to carry his wallet?
Men should carry their wallets in their tightest pocket. Still, that's not always safe enough. For added security, men might try one of four kinds of under-clothes pouches which are comfortable and functional for easy access, but which make it almost impossible for thieves to steal from.
1. A pouch that hangs from a string around your neck and is worn under your shirt.
2. A pouch that hangs from your belt by a loop and is worn inside your pants.
3. Ankle-holsters in various designs and levels of sophistication.
4. Underclothing with built-in pockets for valuables. One new product is called Stashitware. Another line is made by Clever Travel Companion.
When I'm traveling someplace like Paris, where there are pickpockets on the Métro and some other places (places I try to avoid going, like the hideous 20th arrondissement), I carry a zipped change purse with only one credit card, my ATM card, and my health insurance card, then I put it in a crinkly plastic bag. This way, should somebody get into my purse, it feels like something I bought at the drugstore, not a wallet.
Blame Photoshop, Not Diabetes, For His Missing Leg
Patrick McGeehan writes in The New York Times (accompanied by photo):
New York City's health watchdogs warn that drinking too much sugary soda could cost you a leg. But you also might lose a limb if you appear in one of their ads.A blunt new poster from the Bloomberg administration shows an overweight man on a stool, his right leg missing below the knee. A pair of crutches leans against a wall beside him. The advertisement, being placed throughout the subway system, warns that ever-growing portions of fast food and sodas could cause diabetes, which could lead to amputations.
But it turns out that the person shown in the advertisement did not need crutches because his legs were intact. The health department confirmed on Tuesday that its advertising agency had removed the lower half of the man's leg from the picture to make its point: the headline over the image reads "Portions have grown. So has Type 2 diabetes, which can lead to amputations."
via @NYDNHammond
Protesting The TSA: Boobs Free Or Die
Lisa Simeone blogs at the TSA News blog about Kelly Voluntaryist, from the "Live Free or Die" state of New Hampshire, who's bra and underwear-protesting the TSA.
(Not sure that Voluntaryist is her real name, but I love the girl, who clearly loves our Constitution and doesn't just sit by blinking as it's crumpled up at the airport doors.)
Lisa writes that Voluntaryist:
...showed up at the Manchester airport on a frigid winter day and started handing out flyers. With a perky smile and cheerful demeanor, she informed people of their rights and disputed the TSA's contention that it should be able to violate them.You can see the reactions she got in the video. And as the slide early on in the video indicates, "This is obviously a longterm effort. Waking people up who've been asleep for decades doesn't happen overnight."
I have only word for Kelly:
BRAVA!
And the same goes for anyone who does this at their airport. If you do this at your airport, you have my permission to print up and hand out my op-ed on the TSA and our eroding civil liberties. Please, please -- do this. People need to be woken up. (I recommend markering an anti-TSA message on your body if you protest in this way so you can clearly be seen to be walking, underdressed speech in the name of our constitutional rights.)
UPDATE:
@voretaq7 responds to my tweet about this blog item:
@amyalkon Why just women?
I tweet back:
@voretaq7 Men, too, especially if they wear a pink bra and panties. That'll get some attention.
Charming Facebook Exchange
I like to expose the little nasty conversations people think they're getting away with, both because they're such fun to read and in hopes of showing other clandestinely nasty people that private poo flings can easily go public.
I was still working on my column at 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday when I got this instant message on Facebook.
I actually have no idea who this guy Eric Schuler (Shuey Louis) is, beyond that he's one of the many people who've "friended" me on Facebook. A lot of people do that because they've read I See Rude People or my column. I basically only post links to stuff I'm blogging here -- nothing personal -- so I'll usually accept "friend" requests both from my actual friends and from strangers who ask.
Unfortunately, Eric apparently has difficulty understanding the difference between "friend" and friend, and what is owed to one's "friends." (My real friends are considerate of my writing time, and the fact that I often have an email backlog that sometimes starts looking like the State Department's.)
But, hey...charming man. You do have to admire the emotional versatility he shows:
P.S. Particularly horrifying is the apparent ability to "phone" people through Facebook. (Look closely above at "You missed a call from Eric.")
Sucking On The Federal Hog
Tad DeHaven writes at Cato about how dependent state governments have become on federal subsidies:
They allow them to spend money taken from taxpayers across the country instead of having to ask their voters to pony up the funds. As the following charts shows, total state spending continued to increase during the economic downturn because the federal government picked up the slack. Note that the federal share of total state spending went from 25.7 percent in 2001 to 34.1 percent in 2011.
But, oopsy...those porkulus funds are running out, and it seems states may be notified of a crash subsidy diet they'll need to go on when the president's fiscal 2013 budget proposal is released on February 13th
Courts Without Justice: Dads On The Custody Battlefront
Jim's wife served him with divorce papers -- and a temporary protection order based on allegations of domestic violence. It took him 15 months to be allowed to see his son, even though his wife never claimed that Jim had ever hit or threatened her or their son. Nina Shapiro writes for the Seattle Weekly:
Had he been charged with domestic violence in criminal court, where guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and the standards of due process are high, this might not have happened. But Jim's fate was decided in a very different venue: family court.It's a court like no other--a hugely busy and rancorous place where the most personal aspects of people's lives are not only on display, but judged and reshaped in proceedings that often last no longer than 20 minutes. Appointed commissioners, rather than elected judges, make many of the most crucial decisions. And the standard of evidence (known as "preponderance of the evidence") is the lowest allowed by law.
For years, dads'-rights groups have claimed that family court overwhelmingly favors women, particularly when it comes to custody. In former times, when dads generally did far less hands-on child-rearing than moms, those claims tended to be viewed as the ranting of bitter misogynists.
But parenting roles have changed. And the "judicial system," says veteran family-law attorney Deborah Bianco, "is way behind the culture." Bianco is one of a number of mainstream family-law attorneys--representing both women and men, and often female themselves--who now say they too see a bias against men.
Rhea Rolfe, an attorney who once taught a "women and the law" class at the University of Washington, recalls sitting with a male client in a commissioner's courtroom one day. There were maybe seven or eight cases heard. "She ruled against every single man," Rolfe recalls, "and two of them were unopposed."
"In any other arena, the evidence gets you the ruling," observes attorney Maya Trujillo Ringe. "But in this particular arena, the dad has a much bigger uphill battle." So much so, she says, that she and other attorneys often joke that "if you put a skirt on the dad, same facts," he'd win primary custody. "You can overcome the bias," Ringe adds, "but it takes a lot of work and a lot of resources."
Check out the evaluation of one of these guys:
Given their extremely rushed proceedings, family-law commissioners often punt to such "expert" evaluations to make recommendations that can be heard in later hearings. Smith did that in Richard's case, ordering a "risk assessment" from a counselor who specializes in domestic violence.Richard says he welcomed the assessment. "OK, great," he says he thought. "Now I'm going to go to somebody whose job it is to ferret out the truth." He says he didn't even mind paying the $1,000-plus fee.
But when counselor Doug Bartholomew came out with his report a month later, Richard was even further in the hole. The counselor did say that he couldn't determine whether Richard had assaulted his wife. Yet Bartholomew still recommended that Richard attend a domestic-violence treatment program, as well as a class called "DV Dads."
Why? For one thing, he held out the possibility that Richard was dangerous. He attached extreme importance to the engineer's attempt to have the counselor look at a mental-health self-evaluation his wife had done. "Since submitting someone's private records against their will is so inherently antisocial, it raises the question of whether or not he's capable of similar 'stop at nothing' behavior," Bartholomew wrote.
Richard's personality and background were also suspect, according to Bartholomew. For one thing, he was successful. "The downside of success, and he's been very successful, is that we tend not to learn compassion, empathy, or insight." Richard, he wrote, "has never experienced tragedy."
Imagine being evaluated this way -- and having your ability to see your kid depend on that evaluation.
Maybe The States Will Be The Check On The TSA
From tenthamendmentcenter.org:
The TSA won't stop itself, so the states will stop itSen. Rand Paul's run-in with TSA agents at a security checkpoint in Nashville Monday once again focused national attention on the overreaching nature of federal airport security screenings. Paul's prominent position illuminated the heavy handed methods used by the TSA, but his experience isn't unique. Every day, thousands of Americans endure embarrassing, degrading and constitutionally dubious pat-downs at airports across the United States.
Recognizing that the TSA will never rein itself in, several state lawmakers have taken up James Madison's call to interpose on behalf of their citizens.
Legislators in Alaska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania have already introduced bills that would serve to check overreaching TSA searches. And the Tenth Amendment Center expects at least seven other states to follow suit during the 2012 legislative session.
Rep. Sharon Cissna (D-Anchorage) had her own experience with TSA agents. Last year, the breast cancer survivor opted to drive from Seattle to Juneau rather than undergo a pat-down when a scanner flagged her surgical scars as an "irregularity."
"For nearly fifty years I've fought for the rights of assault victims, population in which my wonderful Alaska sadly ranks number one, both for men and women who have been abused. The very last thing an assault victim or molested person can deal with is yet more trauma and the groping of strangers, the hands of government 'safety' policy. For these people, as well as myself, I refused to submit," she wrote, chronicling her experience on her blog.
On Jan. 17, Cissna introduced HB 262 in the Alaska House. If passed, the act would make it a class A misdemeanor for any agent to require a person seeking access to a public building or transportation facility to submit to touching of a sexual nature, or screening that reveals any body part not normally visible to the public.
Earlier this month, the New Hampshire House passed a bill requiring state and local law enforcement officials to document complaints from citizens who feel TSA searches cross the line and then place the report in a public data base.
Tenth Amendment Center executive director Michael Boldin says states must step in to protect their citizens.
"The TSA is never going to stop itself. And Congress will never stop its own creation either. It's up to us - We the People - in our own respective states, to put an end to the TSA's constant violation of our rights," he said.
Here's a link to my piece on the TSA molesting our civil liberties. Please share it widely. The more people see this kind of thinking, the more pressure there will be to yank back on the TSA.
How Do You Not Turn Off Your Phone When This Man Is Playing?
When a phone started ringing during Lukas Kmit's viola solo, he started playing the ringtone:
Some suggest the video is a publicity stunt for Nokia.
Newt Gingrich's Penis
Sorry for the image, but it's a wandering little fella, and seemed to deserve remarking upon (gets out more often than my dog, who only once crawled through a low hole that rotted through the fence when she was a puppy).
Roland Martin remarked on CNN on how the Family Values Party has suddenly become the Plug Your Ears party:
When someone asks when the Republican Party abandoned its longstanding position as the party of family values, we will all be able to say it was shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 19, 2012, in Charleston, South Carolina.When the invited audience of 2,300 Republicans stood up and applauded Newt Gingrich's angry and defiant response to the opening question from CNN's John King about allegations leveled by the ex-wife of the former speaker of the House, it was clear that the GOP, always judgmental about marital fidelity with Democrats, threw that out of the window.
via ifeminists
Coming Soon To An Airport Near You: Prison-style Strip Searches?
Ted Balaker and Nick Gillespie wrote and produced this for reason.tv:
About the video:
You've heard about the passenger who opted out of a full-body scan (a.k.a. "a virtual strip search") and was subjected to an intrusive and humiliating pat down. "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested," passenger John Tyner told Transportation Security Administration workers in San Diego.Well, rest easy, John--and other passengers offended by both full-body scans and hands-on searches.
TSA won't touch your junk--or your breasts or buttocks. If they begin to strip search passengers as if they're prison inmates, they'll do just what correctional officers do: They'll make you do all the nasty work.
What follows is an excerpt from a training video for prison guards on how to make sure that inmates aren't hiding contraband.
The video makes for extremely uncomfortable watching and viewer discretion--and outrage--is advised. After all, this may well be the next step in how the TSA, one of the least effective and efficient government agencies of all time, goes about its daily business.
Don't think this'll happen? Well, how many of you could have imagined that there'd be some lady who got her job off a pizza box groping your breasts at the airport so you could board your plane to go home?
How Green Is Obama's Chinese Valley?
Obama talked big talk on all the green jobs he created -- and it seems he lied. Hans Bader writes at Examiner.com:
There are only 140,000 jobs in the whole renewable-energy sector, but in a new ad, Obama is taking credit for a "clean energy industry" that has "2.7 million jobs." Obama inflated the number of "clean-energy" jobs by adding people who have nothing to do with clean-energy, like "trash collectors" and bureaucrats. By inflating the total, Obama was able to paper over his complete failure to live up to his utterly unrealistic campaign promise "to create 5 million new green jobs." Most of America's existing green jobs predate the Obama Administration, which did not create them: "from 2003-2010, the rate of growth for clean jobs was 3.4 percent."Indeed, the Obama Administration used federal green-jobs money to outsource American jobs to countries like China: "Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop" at American University. "79 percent" of all green-jobs funding "went to companies based overseas," with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company. "Most of the jobs are going overseas," said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop.
Obama's mythical green-jobs are like other imaginary jobs he claimed to have created with the $800 billion stimulus package. The Obama Administration took credit for jobs created in 440 non-existent Congressional districts, such as Arizona's 15th and 86th districts (Arizona only had 8 Congressional districts, as ABC News noted with amusement). The Washington Examiner noted that at least "75,000 jobs" Obama has claimed credit for are "clearly imaginary" or "highly doubtful." Readers can view its interactive map of "Inflated Jobs by State."
Anybody "hoping for change" about now?
"Zero Tolerance," TSA-Style
Christopher Elliott blogs at the HuffPo about all the TSA workers stealing stuff from passengers and their luggage. Back in 2008, when he started reporting on the TSA's little crime epidemic, the agency proclaimed that it had "zero tolerance" for the thieves' actions. As Elliott puts it:
I think actions speak louder than words.Just a few days ago, a screener at LaGuardia Airport was arrested for allegedly swiping a pricey laptop from a college student at a screening area. TSA employee Edwin Rosario, 27, was charged with grand larceny and possession of stolen property for taking a $1,300 computer a passenger had left behind.
A few weeks before, the TSA was accused of taking money out of a Florida couple's luggage. No arrests have been made yet, and the agency refuses to release security camera footage that could implicate the thief because of "security" concerns. The agency also told the passengers that its screeners "never steal."
...Last month, another TSA worker in Memphis was arrested and charged with theft. Police say Ricky German, 48, tried to swipe a laptop that had been left at his screening station. Surveillance video showed German carrying away the laptop and throwing away papers with the owner's name on it. After police arrived and said they would view the surveillance video, German then claimed he "found" the laptop.
A few weeks earlier, a TSA agent lost his job and is faced grand theft charges for allegedly pocketing a $450 pen owned by Rick Case, a prominent South Florida car dealership owner. Investigators say Toussain Puddie, 30, admitted to taking Case's pen after it was left behind during a checkpoint screening at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
"Finders keepers doesn't apply when you are a public servant and have the public's trust," a Sheriff Department spokesman said.
It's easy to see how agents like Puddie might think otherwise. After all, Congress allows the TSA to keep the pocket change air travelers leave behind -- why not their pens or laptop computers?
...Why do the very people who are supposed to be protecting us also steal from us with such frequency? They do it because they can. They do it because, despite what their mouthpieces tell us on the evening news, they know they'll probably get away with it.
We hear "zero tolerance." But the TSA workforce hears "zero accountability."
The TSA: It's Not About Catching Terrorists
Yet another piece of evidence about that in the detention of Republican Senator Rand Paul at the airport in Nashville. On Reuters, Thomas Ferraro reports:
Press secretary Moira Bagley wrote in a Twitter message that the senator told her at 10 a.m. EST, that he was being "detained by TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in Nashville."Ron Paul, a congressman and Republican presidential hopeful, tweeted that his son was being detained for refusing a full-body pat-down "after anomaly in body scanner."
Is there the remotest reason in the world to believe that Rand Paul could be a terrorist bent on blowing plastic explosives out his rectum to take down a plane? (The only slightly scary thing about him is his hair.)
As I wrote in my op-ed about the TSA molesting our civil liberties -- their mission obviously isn't protecting our safety, but something quite nefarious:
If the TSA's actual mission were its stated one - "protect(ing) the Nation's transportation systems" - checkpoints wouldn't be staffed by low-wage, unskilled workers, and they wouldn't be searching everyone. They certainly wouldn't be waiting until terrorists get to the airport to root them out. Meaningful measures to thwart terrorist acts require highly trained law enforcement officers using targeted intelligence to identify suspects long before they launch their plots.The TSA's main accomplishment seems to be obedience training for the American public - priming us to be docile (and even polite) about giving up our civil liberties.
Having An Opinion Is Now "Bullying"
As I've said before, if I were any more gay-friendly, I'd have a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend, but what I am not friendly to in the slightest are incursions against free speech. Hans Bader writes at OpenMarket.org about a dangerous precedent...the "ever-expanding concept of 'bullying'" is casting "an ominous shadow over free speech":
A school superintendant has labeled a column in a school newspaper that criticized homosexuality as "bullying." (The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that was labeled as "bullying" answered the question "no." The school district also publicly apologized for the column, and said that it is "taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future.")...Schools and anti-bullying activists have adopted incredibly overbroad definitions of bullying. The anti-bullying website NoBully.com, and schools like Fox Hill and Alvarado Elementary, define even "eye rolling" and other expressions of displeasure or hostility as bullying, even though doing so raises First Amendment problems.
The Obama administration claims bullying is an "epidemic" and a "pandemic." But in reality, bullying and violence have steadily gone down in the nation's schools, as studies funded by the Justice Department have shown. The Obama administration's StopBullying.gov website defines a vast array of speech and conduct as bullying: it classifies "teasing" as a form of "bullying," and "rude" or "hurtful" "text messages" as "cyberbullying." Since "creating web sites" that "make fun of others" also is deemed "cyberbullying," conservative websites that poke fun at the president are presumably guilty of cyberbullying under this strange definition.
Look, I was bullied. Girls followed me through the halls in junior high and taunted me with anti-Semitic epithets. When it started to get serious (when they started throwing chairs in my path), I told my dad, and he went to the principal and it stopped.
The point is, there are measures that can be taken before we start crumpling up the Constitution. And sorry, but you don't have a right to not be offended, not even if you're in high school. What you should learn to do is think and write and debate well so you can see that your point of view wins the day. And if somebody throws a chair at you, and there's nobody to go to the principal's office for you...maybe that's the real problem we should be dealing with, but...
No...not legislatively, but by stigmatizing divorce and single-parent homes (that aren't created by the untimely death of one of the partners).
P.S. Children of gay parents fare no worse on mental health and other life-success measures than kids of straight parents...that is, when they're in intact families. In other words, intact families are what seems to matter.
Explaining Citizens United
The court ruling doesn't say, as has been claimed, that corporations are people, nor does it say corporations deserve all the constitutional rights of humans (for example, corporations aren't extended the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination). In the WaPo, law prof Kent Greenfield explains:
In fact, saying corporations are not persons is as irrelevant to constitutional analysis as saying that Tom Brady does not putt well in handicapping the NFL playoffs. The Constitution protects the rights of various groups and institutions -- whether Planned Parenthood, Bob Jones University or the AFL-CIO -- though they are not "natural persons." Humans gather themselves in groups, for public and private ends, and sometimes it makes constitutional sense to protect the group as distinct from its constituent humans.The question in any given case is whether protecting the association, group or, yes, corporation serves to protect the rights of actual people. Read fairly, Citizens United merely says that banning certain kinds of corporate expenditures infringes the constitutional interests of human beings. The court may have gotten the answer wrong, but it asked the right question.
Another reason to protect corporate rights is to guard against the arbitrary and deleterious exercise of government power. If, for example, the Fifth Amendment's ban on government "takings" did not extend to corporations, the nationalization of entire industries would be constitutionally possible. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the FBI from barging into the offices of Google without a warrant and seizing the Internet history of its users. A freedom of the press that protected only "natural persons" would allow the Pentagon to, say, order the New York Times and CNN to cease reporting civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
There are ways to address inordinate corporate power in politics that avoid razing the house to rid it of termites. Many ramifications of Citizens United can be addressed with more aggressive disclosure rules, limits on political involvement of companies receiving government contracts, or mandates that shareholders approve political expenditures.
From the left, in the WaPo, Katrina vanden Heuvel also weighs in on Citizens United. "Conservatives and their corporate allies..."
Sigh. Tiresome, whichever side a person's coming from. The left and right are both exceptionally well-funded by big-bucks interests. The name Soros ring a bell for anyone? Somehow, his name is never mentioned when the spittle-flecked invocations of the Koch brothers are made.
via @WalterOlson
Read And Don't Weep
Magazine sale, $5, $7 and up
Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. Catherine Salmon, Cutting Through Political Correctness On Men, Women, And Sex
She cuts through political correctness like it's butter! Melted garlic butter! And backs it all up with really solid science.
Tonight on Advice Goddess Radio, I'm thrilled to have on evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon to strip people of their misconceptions about the differences between men and women on the sexual frontier and others. I've quoted her work in my column and I always love hearing her give talks because she's so able to make such quick and entertaining work of dumb notions of political correctness that hamstring people in their lives, at work, and in relationships...and especially on the frontier of men and women and sex.
Her most recent book is The Secret Power of Middle Children: How Middleborns Can Harness Their Unexpected and RemarkableAbilities
And she's also a hell of a lot of fun.
Listen to the show live (and call in!) from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Sunday, January 22, at this link (or download the podcast afterward):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Listen to last week's show with evidence-based dietary medicine experts Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
A Driver's License Has Little To Do With Driving
Eric Peters writes at the American Daily Herald -- "The Case Against Driver's Licenses":
That little plastic laminated card you've got in your wallet or purse - you know, the state's permission slip for operating a motor vehicle? Ever stop to reflect how peripheral the driving part of a driver's license is?Because, of course, a driver's license is in fact our national ID card.
It's extremely hard to function in modern society without this national ID card - even if you never get behind the wheel. You can't open a bank account, cash a check, visit the doctor, vote, board an airplane or even get a job without one.
Or at least, it is very difficult to do these things without one.
And none of these things, as such, have anything to do with the operation of a motor vehicle.
...Rather, the object of the exercise is ascertaining our identity - in order that we may be kept track of via the interlocking system of data acquisition, indexing, recording and cross-referencing that is the Matrix of modern society.
It is about information - and control.
If it were not, "driver's licenses" would not be linked to one's Social Security number - the government-issued ear tag every calf (oops, citizen) is issued at birth. The SS number, in turn, is the number the government uses to make sure you pay your taxes, to keep track of where you work (and how much you earn), where you live, whom you marry, whether you have children (each of them to be issued their own ear tag in turn) and so on - all of which, again, have nothing to do with your competence as a driver.
...Even a person merely walking down the street, having committed no crime, can be compelled to produce his ID. And if that person lacks an ID, that person will very likely be arrested on the spot and held until his identity is ascertained.
This is the reality of America.
You must have permission to move. You do not move freely.
Even if you are walking.
He's wrong about being compelled to produce ID without committing a crime (in almost all states, except when police go too far -- which happens, of course). From Wikipedia, the exceptions:
•In five states (Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island), failure to identify oneself is one factor to be considered in a decision to arrest. In all but Rhode Island, the consideration arises in the context of loitering or prowling.•Six states (Arizona, Florida, Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio, and Vermont) explicitly impose a criminal penalty for noncompliance with the obligation to identify oneself.
If, however, in other states, the police suspect you of a crime -- or say they have suspicion -- you may be arrested if you can't produce ID. Stop and identify laws delineated here.
via @karendecoster
The State Of Marriage, By Stephanie Coontz
Coontz, a marriage historian I know from conferences for the Council of Contemporary Families, and whose work I've referenced in my column, lays out the results of the data in the LAT:
Today, the average age of first marriage is almost 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 20 and 22 in 1960.This does not mean marriage is an endangered institution. True, there are more divorced people in the population than in 1960, but divorce rates have been falling for 30 years. It also appears that more individuals than in the past will remain unmarried all their lives -- perhaps 15%, compared with the historical norm of 10%. But with more people marrying for the first time as late as their 60s, we can't even be sure of that. As gays and lesbians gain marriage rights, the proportion of married young adults may rise.
Still, the last half-century has seen a momentous change in the role that marriage plays in organizing lives. Marriage used to be almost mandatory, one of the first things people did when they left home. It was not a decision that required much deliberation or even deep knowledge of one's prospective partner. In the 1950s, the average bride and groom had known each other for only six months.
Interviewing men and women who married in the 1950s and 1960s, I was struck by the similarities in how they explained their decision to marry: "It was time to settle down"; "I was 23 and people were starting to wonder"; "You just did it, that's all." Alternatively, many "had" to marry: almost half of teenage brides were pregnant at the time of their wedding.
Fifty years ago, getting married was a step young people took on the road to becoming economically secure, emotionally responsible and socially respectable. Today, it is more often the reward couples give themselves when they have achieved those goals. The vast majority of new marriages are between couples who have already cohabited. But many cohabiting couples refuse to marry until they are convinced that each partner has demonstrated his or her economic and emotional reliability.
There are many positive aspects to people's more deliberative approach to marriage. Every year that a woman postpones marriage, up until her early 30s lowers her chance of divorce. Largely because individuals no longer feel forced to enter or stay in a bad marriage, domestic violence rates within marriage have fallen by more than 30% over the last three decades.
I've seen with friends of mine that the most successful marriages often seem to be people who had that "starter" marriage, got divorced, got mature, and then married a person they really seem to be making it work with. The other group is college-educated people who got married in their 20s, had kids, and are still together.
30 Days: 30 Surfaces
I've been reading Roy Baumeister and John Tierney's book Willpower, reading about how Baumeister's research showed that people who set a daily goal and worked to meet it had better overall self-control. That daily goal could even be something minor like trying to have better posture -- remembering that you're supposed to do that daily and sitting up straighter when you think about it.
Well, I've lived in the little house I rent for quite some time, and when you do, you begin to accumulate clutter and have messy spaces that you don't really look at. This is especially true of those of us with Tornado Brain (aka ADHD). So, I've put myself on a program. I've printed out blank calendar pages for January and February, pasted them onto a single page, and written on the sheet, "30 Days: 30 Surfaces."
I neatened up the first yesterday night...the bottom shelf of the green thingie in my bathroom. Today, I plan to hit the shelf with an antique teacup full of keys. (Hmmm...looks like it hasn't been dusted since 1940. In my defense, it's a little dimly lit in that area.) In 30 days, my house will be neater, without it feeling like a lot of work, and I will have bolstered my self-discipline.
Cool, huh?
Buy the book here: Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
Pugasaurus (For Pirate Jo)
From an @AndreaKuszewski tweet:
A pug wearing a Triceratops hat. That is all.
My Lucy as a bee.
Health Care Costs: Where Do We Draw The Line?
Question from The Atlantic's McArdle:
Is spending $50,000 to give a pancreatic cancer patient an extra 5-9 months of life a wasted expenditure, or a medical advance? On the one hand, 5-9 months isn't very long. On the other hand, for a typical pancreatic cancer patient, you've doubled their lifespan, which seems like a very long time indeed.
Oh, and what if the "Yes, of course, spend the $50K!" results in each of us paying $100 more every month on our health insurance. Still for it? $200? $300 more? Where do you draw the line?
Why The Worst Get On Top, By F.A. Hayek
Republished by the Center for Economic Liberty. An excerpt:
The totalitarian leader must collect around him a group which is prepared voluntarily to submit to that discipline which they are to impose by force upon the rest of the people. That socialism can be put info practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove is, of course, a lesson learned by many social reformers in the past....To weld together a closely coherent body of supporters, the leader must appeal to a common human weakness. It seems to be easier for people to agree on a negative program -- on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off - than on any positive task. The contrast between the "we" and the "they" is consequently always employed by those who seek the allegiance of huge masses. The enemy may be internal, like the "Jew" in Germany or the "kulak" in Russia, or he may be external. In any case, this technique has the great advantage of leaving the leader greater freedom of action than would almost any positive program.
...Collectivism means the end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by complete control of all sources of information.
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.
The worst sufferer in this respect is the word "liberty." It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it has been destroyed, this has been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have planners who promise us a "collective freedom," which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians. "Collective freedom" is not the freedom of the members of society but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society that which he pleases. This is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme. It is not difficult to deprive the seat majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced. Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken support of the regime. As Sidney and Beatrice Webb report of the position in every Russian enterprise: "Whilst the work is in progress, any public expression of doubt that the plan will be successful is an act of disloyalty and even of treachery because of its possible effect on the will and efforts of the rest of the staff."
...The worst oppression is condoned if it is committed in the name of socialism. Intolerance of opposing ideas is openly extolled; The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason. There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem in Britain and America are precisely those on which Anglo-Saxons justly prided themselves and in which they were generally recognized to excel. These virtues were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one's neighbor and tolerance of the different, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority. Almost all the traditions and institutions which have molded the national character and the whole moral climate of England and America are those which the progress of collectivism and its centralistic tendencies are progressively destroying.
via @AClassicLiberal
The War On Kids
Worthwhile clip from a documentary on ridiculous "zero tolerance" policies -- like the one that got a little girl trouble for bringing a Tweetybird keychain to school. (It's worth waiting through the odd opening then the musical interlude.)
About the film:
In 95 minutes, THE WAR ON KIDS exposes the many ways the public school system has failed children and our future by robbing students of all freedoms due largely to irrational fears. Children are subjected to endure prison-like security, arbitrary punishments, and pharmacological abuse through the forced prescription of dangerous drugs. Even with these measures, schools not only fail to educate students, but the drive to teach has become secondary to the need to control children. Not only do school fall short of their mission to educate, but they erode the country's democratic foundation and often resemble prisons.
via Karen De Coster
So 1992
This man put this down on his table at a cafe and I had to say something, and then say hello, and then ask to take a picture.
Interestingly, his cellphone was also old ("from the 1800s," he joked, but it was more like 2001), and he said he liked having these old things because they seem to fit with his life. He told me he earns a living from old things...collecting on old unpaid doctor bills...like 18 years old. It's all just too perfect.
Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. Michael Eades/Dr. Mary Dan Eades
Advice Goddess Radio: Low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades debunk dietary "science" (no such thing as "healthy whole grains") and tell you how to drop pounds like they're stones falling off a truck. Listen or download the podcast here (click "play in your default player" to download):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
I learned a lot from what they said -- including something new about exercise: They talked about evidence-based exercise (you can be healthy by doing only 15 minutes of slow-burn exercise once every five days or so...and I mean heart-healthy, and all the rest, without the time and potential for injury from running, etc.).
Their books: The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution: The Slow Motion Exercise That Will Change Your Body in 30 Minutes a Week
This coming Sunday, I'm thrilled to have on evolutionary sexpert Dr. Catherine Salmon to strip people of their misconceptions about the differences between men and women on the sexual frontier. I've quoted her work in my column and I always love hearing her give talks.
Her most recent book is The Secret Power of Middle Children: How Middleborns Can Harness Their Unexpected and RemarkableAbilities
And she's also a hell of a lot of fun.
Listen to the show live (and call in!) from 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, Sunday, January 22, at this link (or download the podcast afterward):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Feminism's Franken-man
Rebecca Webber writes about him at the start of her recent articles in Psychology Today. Heterosexual women might think they want the feminist ideal of a man (a sort of apron-wearing, assertiveness-free co-mommy), but here's what happened to the marriage of one man who left his testosterone at a bus stop somewhere:
Elliott Katz was stunned to find himself in the middle of a divorce after two kids and 10 years of marriage. The Torontonian, a policy analyst for the Ottawa government, blamed his wife. "She just didn't appreciate all I was doing to make her happy." He fed the babies, and he changed their diapers. He gave them their baths, he read them stories, and put them to bed. Before he left for work in the morning, he made them breakfast. He bought a bigger house and took on the financial burden, working evenings to bring in enough money so his wife could stay home full-time.He thought the solution to the discontent was for her to change. But once on his own, missing the daily interaction with his daughters, he couldn't avoid some reflection. "I didn't want to go through this again. I asked whether there was something I could have done differently. After all, you can wait years for someone else to change."
What he decided was, indeed, there were some things he could have done differently--like not tried as hard to be so noncontrolling that his wife felt he had abandoned decision-making entirely.
Juice: It Does A Body Diabetic
Great chart. Might as well drink a Coke.
via @alanocu
Keeping Poor People Poor
It's important to keep poor people as far away as possible from nasty green money. That motivation is the only logical conclusion to how a lot of people and government entities act.
John Goodman writes on his Health Policy Blog:
The cheapest form of housing is small, prefabricated homes for zero-lot developments. However, zoning regulations in most cities outlaw them -- an act that effectively doubles the price of the cheapest housing. There are also other expensive restrictions on new housing, such as forcing builders to build on bigger lots and mandating specific types of materials and construction methods. Regulations vary widely across the United States. In Houston, a less restrictive city, regulatory costs add about $13,200 to the price of an average home. In San Diego, a multitude of regulations add $240,000. These cost-increasing regulations have essentially priced many low-income residents out of the market for a private home, forcing them to turn to public housing instead.Then there is transportation. Did you know that people in the bottom fifth of income distribution take more taxicab rides than middle-income families? The reason: a lot of poor people don't own automobiles. Taxi fares are far higher than they need to be, however, because local governments tightly control entry into the taxi market. (Evidence: in New York City, a taxi medallion sold for a million dollars the other day.) There is no reason in principle why someone with a van couldn't pick up workers in a low-income neighborhood and transport them to a jobsite, charging each passenger a few bucks. The problem: Most cities make this activity against the law.
...In some parts of the country, walk-in clinics in shopping malls allow nurses to give flu shots, take temperatures, prescribe antibiotics and deliver other timely, inexpensive care. But even these innovative services are often saddled with burdensome regulations. For example, in Massachusetts, regulations for clinics have such cost-increasing requirements as a separate entrance for patients, minimum size requirements for exam rooms, and a separate reception desk. When low-income families find they cannot afford private care, what's the alternative? Community health centers and the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals. Yet these care sites often involve crowding and waiting, which limits access to care.
Child care is another basic service needed by many low-income families. In fact, low-income families spend about a third of their income on child care, as much as a typical middle-income family might spend on a home. In recent years, state and local governments have been making child care ever more costly, however. All manner of regulations are emerging, including the licensing of day care workers. Did you know that in most places, it's illegal for a neighbor down the street to oversee children from the neighborhood for pay? Again, what's the alternative? Low-income mothers must seriously consider abandoning the labor market altogether and rely solely on the welfare state.
Here's a task force report he links to, freeing entrepreneurs to provide essential services to the poor.
Used Yoga Mat For Sale -- Cheap
Hilarious Seattle Craigslist ad.
Confessions Of A Hollywood Professional: Why I Can't Support the Stop Online Piracy Act
Very smart post over in Kos-land by "msblucow," who works in the film industry but feels she can't refer her identity. A tiny excerpt:
THE DIVIDE OVER SOPA/PIPA ISN'T POLITICAL - IT'S BETWEEN THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THE INTERNET AND THOSE WHO DON'TWhat do Darrell Issa, Nancy Pelosi, the ACLU, Daily Kos, RedState.com, Markos Moulitsas and Ron Paul have in common? They all oppose SOPA/PIPA.
Personally, I've never agreed with Darrel Issa on any issue ever, but I agree with him on this.
...Which brings me back to my union, IATSE.
I believe my union leadership is acting in good faith to look after the best interests of its membership. But I don't think my union leadership understands how the Internet works. By backing the industry's position on SOPA/PIPA, I believe they're tying themselves to a business model that simply can't be sustained and won't be rescued by badly crafted legislation.
Look, you can't un-ring this bell. Internet file sharing, streaming video, and movies-on-demand aren't going away. Fans of American television shows and movies use the internet toform international online communities, upload their favorite clips via YouTube and share them on Twitter and Facebook.As an industry, we should encourage them. Because today's "pirates" are tomorrow's customers.
It's a brave new world out there.
We've been down this road before with the music industry. Ten years ago, while all the major record labels responded to file sharing by locking up content and suing Napster into the ground, Steve Jobs quietly developed iTunes. By tapping into a market that was already habituated to file sharing and offering quality content conveniently and legally at a price point people were willing to pay, Apple dominated the music industry while the record labels tanked.
We either follow the path of the record labels or we follow the path Apple took.
I'd rather follow Apple.
Govt. Making Entrepreneurs Do Useless Things For No Reason
Great little Institute for Justice video about a case they've taken -- how Minnesota says a funeral home operator must spend $30K for an embalming room he will never use:
More about the case:
Verlin Stoll is a 27-year-old entrepreneurial dynamo who owns Crescent Tide funeral home in Saint Paul, Minn. Verlin has built a successful business because he offers low-cost funerals while providing high-quality service. His business is also one of the only funeral homes that benefits low-income families who cannot afford the high prices of the big funeral-home companies.Verlin wants to expand his business, hire new employees and continue to offer the lowest prices in the Twin Cities, but Minnesota refuses to let Verlin build a second funeral home unless he builds a $30,000 embalming room that he will never use.
Minnesota's law is irrational. Embalming is never required just because someone passes away and the state does not even require funeral homes to do their own embalming. In fact, it is perfectly legal to outsource embalming to a third-party embalmer. Minnesota's largest funeral chain has 17 locations with 17 embalming rooms, but actually uses only one of those rooms.
Why is Minnesota forcing Verlin to waste $30,000 on a useless embalming room as a condition of expanding his thriving business?
So that the big, full-amenity funeral-home businesses can benefit from a law that drives up prices for consumers and operating expenses for competitors such as Verlin. Verlin's basic services fee is only $250, which is about 90 percent lower than the $2,500 that the average Twin Cities' funeral home charges. Verlin's business model is built on minimizing fixed costs, which is why he does not have a hearse or chapel, and this law--to the advantage of his competitors--stands in the way of him expanding his low-cost, high-quality approach.
The government should not force Minnesotans to do useless things. That is why on January 19, 2012, Verlin and the Institute for Justice challenged the law in state court.
This is crony capitalism.
D.C.: Only Criminals Have An Easy Time Getting A Gun
Emily Miller writes in the Washington Times about the process of buying a gun in D.C.:
My quest started in October at the D.C. Gun Registry at the police department. I met with Officer Brown, who put piles of paper on the desk between us. "Here's everything you need to know," she said, pointing to a stack about a quarter-inch thick.I asked where I could buy the gun. "You can go to any licensed dealer in another state - or on the Internet," she said. "Then give this form to Charles Sykes downstairs, and he'll go pick it up for you and transfer it." I glanced through the registration packet and saw no reference to Mr. Sykes or transferring a gun. So I figured while I was there, I should track down this man, who seemed to play a key role.
By luck, Mr. Sykes was in the office, where he works about four hours a day, by appointment, as Washington's only legal gun broker. While gun sales have been skyrocketing in the rest of the country, D.C. residents have been buying at a rate of about 250 a year, so Mr. Sykes isn't getting rich. He charges $125 to pick up the gun and do the transfer.
I told Mr. Sykes that I'd recently asked D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown whether he supported the Second Amendment. "I don't support having more guns in the District of Columbia," Mr. Brown had replied, "I don't think we need more guns in our streets."
Mr. Sykes shook his head when he heard this. "In all other cities, you can have guns. Why do they say, 'We don't want guns in the nation's capital?' They are here. And you can go a lot of different places and get them just like that," he said, snapping his fingers.
That day, I went home and started poring through the 22-page registration packet. Overwhelmed by the confusing forms and instructions, I started with the eligibility form. After answering the nine questions and feeling that I'd accomplished something, I noticed that it required a signature by a notary public. At this rate, I would be an owner of a legal handgun about the same time I'd be eligible for Social Security.
...All the instructors teach out of their own homes or, more specifically, as one said, "in my basement." The police do a criminal-background check on each of them, but I still didn't feel safe going alone to an armed stranger's basement.
It seemed to me the D.C. politicians who came up with this requirement never considered the impact this would have on a woman trying to register a gun. Forcing us to go to a strange man's house in another state to take a gun-safety class is not something the police should do.
Women Infantilizing Women Entrepreneurs
Rachel Sklar tweets (with Women Entrepreneurs Festival hashtag):
@rachelsklar "Women more than men are asked to do things for free. Be careful of that." #WeFestival
I tweet back:
Anybody can ask anything. Word to learn: NO
The Golden Fleece
Those of you who are of the "government is good!" school and "the bigger, the better," you need to think hard on that the next time you get a parking ticket that, in price, is edging rather close to that of a car payment.
Bureaucrats have to pay for their big government somehow, and one of the best ways to do that is to stick it to all of us in the form of exorbitant fees for things. But, hey, no new taxes!
A Texis pol, John Carona, a State Senator from Dallas, said that those red light cams need to stay up -- for the money, not the safety. On The Truth About Cars blog, another Texas lawmaker, State Senator John Whitmire, explains:
State Senator John Whitmire (D-Houston), who was first elected to the legislature in 1973, appeared on KTRH radio's morning news program to discuss how public opposition to red light cameras persuaded legislators to devote some of the camera profit to trauma centers."People went to Austin protesting it, and so John Carona -- a senator from Dallas -- didn't want to eliminate them," Whitmire explained. "He said, you know, it's obviously a revenue source. Local communities try to sell it as public safety, cutting down on red light running. He and I and I think most people would realize it's really a revenue source. John Carona in Austin said, I'm not going to eliminate but let the state have half of that revenue dedicated to trauma care which is badly underfunded."
Though the money was promised to trauma care centers, over $4.1 million of this money has remained in the state's general fund and not been distributed to the trauma centers.
...Houston's cameras were ultimately shut down, but only after a heated legal and political battle. A federal judge even intervened to overturn the results of a public vote on the matter.
"It is a bad deal and the people acted on it and repealed it," Whitmire said. "The issue of red light cameras, I was always suspect about it. I never thought it was about public safety. The greatest number of red light citations are issued to people who don't come to a complete stop on turning right or similar violations. It's a civil ticket, that shows you how insincere they are about it."
via @JonHenke
Charlie LeDuff: "Black Like Me"
Powerful piece by Charlie LeDuff about Detroit and finding out his origins. From Fox/Detroit, an excerpt:
DETROIT -- My grandparents touched one another for the first time some evening in 1951, drinking and dancing and romancing.The exact date of their rendezvous is lost in time but it is quite certain they did not meet on a Monday night. Monday night was "colored" night at the Vanity Ballroom; the only night blacks were allowed in the joint.
And Roy LeDuff, my grandfather, was not black. Not anymore.
I had always been told that LeDuff was a Cajun name, with its roots in the swamps of Louisiana. But the truth is that LeDuff is a Creole name -- a culture of people with mixed blood, black and white. In the racial arithmetic of the America, that means black.
Imagine my surprise when, peeling through old government documents, I found the 1920 U.S. Census, in which my grandfather, Roy, is listed as an 8-year-old "M" -- mulatto.
I could hardly believe it. Here I was, a 44-year-old man wandering about in a city where just about every major narrative since the Civil War had been played out in black and white, only to find out what I'd been told about my grandfather's past was false.
I was told there may have been some mixing of the races in a distant wing of my family, and every LeDuff I had ever met was the color of caramel. But the fact that Grandpa himself was born black and died a white man blew me away. Not only did my blood track to the woodlands of the Great Lakes and the Celtic shores of France, but the Gold Coast of Africa, too. The African Diaspora could be traced through my own family, and it was written on paper.
I sat in my basement smoking cigarettes and looking at an old patina photograph of my great-grandmother I'd been given by a distant relative, wondering how the story of Detroit had come to this point, with General Motors bankrupt and my brother pulling out his sore tooth with a pair of pliers in a rental attic near I-275.
Beating-tainment
Sick. Seven kids lured a 17-year-old boy to an alley, beat him up, stole his belongings and cash, recorded what they did and posted it on YouTube:
More of the story in the Sun-Times. The YouTube video is here, but may be taken down.
Black Bar/Man Sleeping
Gregg's had a crazy week and I forgot to ask him to remove the black bar over my masthead before he went to sleep. It'll be removed on Thursday!
Fight Back Against Those Who Attack Free Speech
There's a black bar over my red Advice Goddess header today and I will not be posting blog items beyond this entry because the U.S. Congress and Senate are considering legislation that endangers the free and open Internet, this website's existence (and that of many others) and free speech in general.
The Protect IP Act (PIPA) is the bill in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the one in the House.
Use this super-easy link and take 30 seconds and call your Senator to voice your objection to PIPA.
Call your Congressperson by submitting your zip code here to get their number.
The latter link (to the Electronic Frontier Foundation) has detailed information about the bills and why they are so dangerous.
(If you don't see a black bar over my logo on top, clear your cache and you will.)
UPDATE: From the Harvard Business review James Allworth and Maxwell Wessel write that the real SOPA battle is innovators against Goliath:
SOPA is a legislative attempt by big companies with vested interests to protect their downside. And unfortunately, these companies have conscripted Congress to help them. What's worse is that even though limiting start-up innovation might help big content in the short run, it's not going to do them in favors in the long run. Nor is going to do America any favors. In the midst of one of the worst recessions in living memory, passage of legislation like this is just going to result in innovators moving to geographies where the regulatory environment is more favorable. Start-ups will be less competitive in the United States and we'll have effectively disabled one of the few remaining growth engines of the economy.
(I think they meant "backside," not "downside," or meant "reduce their downsides.")
E.D. Kain of Forbes interviews Rep. Jared Polis: "Why We Need To Stop SOPA":
Why do you oppose SOPA?I oppose piracy and want to see intellectual property protected because that is what fosters and rewards innovation. But SOPA won't accomplish a meaningful reduction in piracy and causes massive collateral damage to the Internet ecosystem. It offers a set of barriers that the tech-savvy can work around rather easily while not effectively stopping overseas piracy. If it were to become law it would be ripe for abuse as companies could use a private right of action to block a competitor out of existence. That will snuff out the spark of innovation and job creation our economy needs right now.
Supporters of SOPA says it targets only foreign "rogue" websites. If this is the case, what's so bad about the bill?
No one disagrees on the target; we just want a bill that hits what it's aiming at. It's not clear that this bill will only apply to foreign sites because of the bill's vague definitions and immunity clauses in section 105. There's also a high probability that it will lead to censorship. We should shut down rogue sites but SOPA's approach just won't work. Instead we need a follow-the-money approach like the OPEN Act offers. Many rogue sites exist to make a profit and others are enormously expensive to maintain. If they don't have the resources to continue stealing intellectual property they'll wither away.
He supports the OPEN Act, which I have not read. From Kain's interview with him:
You have stated that you are working on alternatives to SOPA. What are these? Can we balance free speech and the need to crack down on piracy?That alternative is the OPEN Act, which you can read more about at http://www.keepthewebopen.com/. Instead of exposing the Internet to cybersecurity risks as SOPA does, OPEN would use a targeted follow-the-money approach to take down rogue websites. We know this method works. When the money dries up, the sites die off. That's the way to go after piracy.
More on this here, by Mike Masnick at Techdirt:
While the MPAA has been pretending that there are no alternatives beyond the insanity that is PIPA and SOPA, some in Congress have actually been hard at work on trying to think through the specific issues. And one key point has become clear: this isn't a law and order issue, but an international trade issue. Nearly all of the complaints are about the problem of "foreign" sites sending goods across the border into the US. So it makes absolutely no sense that this issue isn't under the purview of the Finance Committee, whose job it is to oversee international trade. Thus, a bill is being worked on that tackles the issues as an international trade issue.
Download the two-page draft framework for discussion, authored by: U.S. Senators Cantwell, Moran, Warner and Wyden and U.S. Representatives Chaffetz, Campbell, Doggett, Eshoo, Issa and Lofgren: draft_discussion_draft.pdf. An excerpt:
While the Internet has been revolutionary when it comes to uniting communities, promoting ideas and creating boundless opportunities for innovation and commerce, the Internet has also created new avenues for foreign counterfeiters and others operating outside the United States to sell unauthorized goods on the American market. This is harmful to the legitimate rights holders operating and employing Americans here at home.Downloading a movie from a foreign-registered site, for example, is much like importing a good from a foreign company; however U.S. trade laws - put in place to oversee the flow of goods and services into the United States - have failed to keep up with the digital economy. A 21st Century trade policy will combat the import of infringing digital goods and counterfeit merchandise while ensuring the continued free flow of legitimate commerce and speech online.
We found that using trade laws to address the flow of infringing digital goods into the United States makes it possible to avoid many of the pitfalls that would arise from other legislative proposals currently being advanced to combat online infringement. Namely by putting the regulatory power in the hands of the International Trade Commission - versus a diversity of magistrate judges not versed in Internet and trade policy - will ensure a transparent process in which import policy is fairly and consistently applied and all interests are taken into account. When infringement is addressed only from a narrow judicial perspective, important issues pertaining to cybersecurity and the promotion of online innovation, commerce and speech get neglected. By approaching digital good infringement as a matter of regulating international commerce, we are able to take all of these factors into account.
UPDATE, 8:58 am PT: Great -- some PIPA/SOPA supporters are copyright violators themselves.
I Could Be Neater, But There Are Lines To Be Drawn
Okay, so my house has a tendency to look like it's styled à la "recently ransacked," but I'd have a maid in a different economy. I'm not too big to clean and tidy up the house, but life is short -- too short to spend folding your sheets like Nurse Ratched is standing over you waiting to beat you with a broom.
Sergeant Heather, an incredible mom I write about in I See Rude People, who has, with her husband, created an incredible family culture to care for her autistic son (with the expected bedlam and usual child disarray), sent me this photo and link. She noted, "How much is this not our lives? I thought the extreme anal retentiveness was beyond us..."
Think of all the things you are not doing in your life while you are organizing your linen closet to look like this, while you are folding your sheets so perfectly. From Martha Stewart (not really) Living: 
It's Racist To Help People
So say a host of pundits on NBC about Mitt Romney handing $50 to a lady who said she was struggling.
A few questions:
If a white woman walked up to Mitt and said exactly the same thing, do we really think he would have stiffed her?
Somebody (a generous commenter here) just sent me $50 via Paypal. Do we think this is because:
1) I am white.
2) I am black.
When I buy a homeless person a sandwich at Starbucks am I racist? Or is that only if the homeless person is black?
Be Very Worried About Your Privacy
Jay J. Hector sent me the link about the latest incursion. G.W. Schulz writes for KGO/ABC:
Capitalizing on one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement, a private California-based company has compiled a database bulging with more than 550 million license-plate records on both innocent and criminal drivers that can be searched by police.The technology has raised alarms among civil libertarians, who say it threatens the privacy of drivers. It's also evidence that 21st-century technology may be evolving too quickly for the courts and public opinion to keep up. The U.S. Supreme Court is only now addressing whether investigators can secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to cars without a warrant.
A ruling in that case has yet to be handed down, but a telling exchange occurred during oral arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts asked lawyers for the government if even he and other members of the court could feasibly be tracked by GPS without a warrant. Yes, came the answer.
Meanwhile, police around the country have been affixing high-tech scanners to the exterior of their patrol cars, snapping a picture of every passing license plate and automatically comparing them to databases of outstanding warrants, stolen cars and wanted bank robbers.
The units work by sounding an in-car alert if the scanner comes across a license plate of interest to police, whereas before, patrol officers generally needed some reason to take an interest in the vehicle, like a traffic violation.But when a license plate is scanned, the driver's geographic location is also recorded and saved, along with the date and time, each of which amounts to a record or data point. Such data collection occurs regardless of whether the driver is a wanted criminal, and the vast majority are not.
While privacy rules restrict what police can do with their own databases, Vigilant Video, headquartered in Livermore, Calif., offers a loophole. It's a private business not required to operate by those same rules.
Data is being stockpiled on people, and that's a problem. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on the ability to track and locate people:
EFF believes that perfect tracking is inimical to a free society. A society in which everyone's actions are tracked is not, in principle, free. It may be a livable society, but would not be our society.EFF believes that perfect surveillance, even without any deliberate abuse, would have an extraordinary chilling effect on artistic and scientific inventiveness and on political expression. This concern underlies constitutional protection for anonymity, both as an aspect of First Amendment freedoms of speech and association, and as an aspect of Fourth Amendment privacy.
More from the EFF on warrantless tracking by GPS:
"This gives police unbridled discretion to collect location data on everyone, even if there are no reasonable grounds for suspicion," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "Investigators could track Americans on a whim -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week."At the same time, the cost of GPS tracking is dropping dramatically, while the accuracy keeps improving. This would allow law enforcement to create a massive database of Americans' movements without any judicial oversight whatsoever.
"GPS tracking enables the police to know when you visit your doctor, your lawyer, your church or your lover," said Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the ACLU-NCA. "And if many people are tracked, GPS data will show when and where they cross paths. Judicial supervision of this powerful technology is essential if we are to preserve individual liberty."
The Internet Woke Up
Beautiful post by Mike Masnick at Techdirt. He explains that activism by ordinary people on the Internet is what shelved SOPA, but that we still have more work to do:
Make no mistake: when the Senate introduced PIPA in May, it was widely assumed that this bill, and any companion bill would sail through Congress easily. Sure, some "tech-friendly" officials may express some concerns, but, as one lobbyist told me directly, "no one takes you people seriously anyway." It was this kind of hubris that we saw throughout the year with these bills. We were told repeatedly to shut up and take it, because the bills were going to pass, Obama would sign them, and piracy would magically disappear.Instead, a funny thing happened on the way to the death of the internet: the internet woke up. While folks online may be political, it's not often that they truly get activated over internet-related issues. But in an era of bottom-up movements facilitated online, the timing was absolutely right for the massive groundswell of support from all corners of the internet to suddenly speak out in near unison to say of these bills: DO NOT WANT.
Still more to do:
At this point, it's impossible to deny that we, as a group, have had an impact. Contrary to the claims of some of the bill's supporters, we showed that this isn't just a "Google" issue. This is an internet issue. And we care about the internet and we care about innovation, and we're not going to take it lightly when elected officials, who admit they don't understand the technology, come along to say they're going to mess with it, just because their biggest campaign donors don't want to adapt to these wonderful new innovations.
But, not everyone in Congress has an understanding of what's happening online. Even with Reps. and Senators backing away from the bills, and asking leadership to slow things down... and even with Rep. Smith and Senator Leahy trying to "delay" the DNS implementation in order to get the bills passed... some in Congress still think that the outcry is minor or limited or that it's all Google.
That's why Harry Reid intends to move forward with the bill, pretending that the complaints only come from Google and Facebook... and that they're minor and easily fixed with a couple of amendments. I believe he's misjudged the internet, just as many others in Congress have misjudged the internet over the last few months. The people speaking out are not just "Google and Facebook," and they're not just speaking out for the hell of it. They're seriously pissed off at Congress for even thinking of going down this path in the first place, and simply killing the bills is unlikely to get the people online back on their side.
But there's a bigger point in the "more to do" section of this post. This isn't about one bill. This isn't about one issue. This is about an entire process. This is about the public -- not the big corporations -- finally saying "enough is enough" and making Congress recognize that crony capitalism, where subsidies and protectionism are doled out willy nilly to favorite campaign contributors, is not acceptable to the people they're supposed to represent.
This is about recognizing that the internet and the massive amount new innovation and services -- and the worldwide ability to communicate with others -- is a game changing innovation for everyone. And we're going to work damn hard to make sure that it remains open and free.
SOPA/PIPA supporters' bullshit shoveled here.
Take action against SOPA and PIPA here, at AmericanCensorship.org. (Scroll down to email Congress, etc.)
Letter About The TSA Scanners We're Told Are Safe
Contributed by Michael Grabell of Propublica; written by John Sedat, PhD, Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics, UCSF. An excerpt:
One of the most important issues is that a "Worst Case Failure" mode has not been evaluated. Because these machines are scanning mechanical/software integrated devices, with very intense pencil-like beams of X-rays, if they were to stop in the middle of a scan, there is the significant probability of a radiation burn. What are the consequences, if there were a software glitch or power, even momentary, problems? This important issue, on a machine working 24 hours a day, year in and year out, has not been studied independently and merits major efforts and extensive analysis, not just tested for failure once or twice, given the extreme consequences of a failure.The casual nature for maintenance of these devices is alarming to us. These machines are built with components from clinical X-ray machines and are capable of delivering large X-ray doses. The actual doses are undefined by any objective tests disclosed to us or to the public. Large doses also pertain if there are errors or maintenance problems. Hospitals usually check for problems on X-ray machines daily, but we understand that TSA will only check once a year, at best, in spite of the fact that these machines are being used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The manufacturers are required to notify the FDA immediately upon discovery of an accidental radiation exposure. What is the trigger for discovery? What actions will the TSA personnel operating the system take in the event of a suspected malfunction? Will they notify the individual of exposure to a radiation level of 0.25 mSv, or a level considerably higher if the fail-safe mechanisms also malfunctioned? Who will be directly responsible for the medical care of passengers who are overexposed? How probable are these events? Have exhaustive tests of mean time between failures for these systems been done in realistic operational settings? How often will the machines be calibrated? The damage from an accidental overdose may not be quantifiable for many years after the exposure. It will be difficult to determine delayed medical consequences of overexposure.
In Summary, A Change is Needed
To summarize, the above points strongly indicate that independent test(s) have not been adequately performed for X-ray scanners leaving us in a situation where a major untested technology is being used on a large segment of our population, and where any damage may not be apparent immediately, or recognized to be caused by the extra radiation exposure - an unprecedented state of affairs.We urge that independent testing and analysis of the entire technology be initiated immediately. Until then, given the potential health complications and the fact that a large segment of our population is being subjected to these machines as a primary screen, we strongly suggest that there be a moratorium on their primary use.
Your Crime Costs You Less If You're A TSA Worker!
From the WSJ, two JFK TSA workers who stole $40K out of luggage are getting off light:
The Queens district attorney's office says 44-year-old Coumar Persad and 31-year-old Davon Webb were sentenced Tuesday to six months in jail and five years' probation. Both had pleaded guilty to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct....Authorities say they swiped the cash after spotting it in a piece of luggage while it was being X-rayed in January 2011. The cash was recovered from their homes.
Persad's attorney has said his client understands he made a mistake and wishes to move on with his life.
And how lucky for him that he worked for the TSA, because he's getting quite the slap on the wrist, vis a vis the crime.
More from the Daily Mail:
Prosecutors said Persad X-rayed a piece of baggage on January 30 last year and noticed money inside. He then phoned Webb, who was in a baggage belt area, to tell him about the discovery.Authorities said Webb showed up and marked the bag with tape. Persad then intercepted it in another handling area, and removed cash from the bag.
The pair later met in the bathroom to divide the money and hide it in their clothing.
Police say $39,980 was recovered from the suspects' homes in connection with the investigation.
Law prof Jonathan Turley on the sentence:
What I found quite remarkable was the sentence that they received; six months in jail and five years probation. That is a remarkably light sentence for federal employees involved in a major theft while using public authority and resources....In New York, grand larceny applies for crimes with any theft over $1,000. This would be 40 times that amount. Under NY Penal Law § 155.42m grand larceny in the first degree is a Class B felony that receives up to 25 years in prison. NY Penal Law § 155.40 and grand larceny in the second degree weighs in at 15 years in prison. Even the lowest, grand larceny in the fourth degree under NY Penal Law § 155.30 brings up to 4 years in prison.
The disconnect in the case with other cases is quite remarkable, even discounting the different legal systems. For example, a rapper who stole a purse with $6000 was given a seven year sentence. I would put two TSA officers stealing $40,000 as a bit more serious than a ramped up purse snatching. Even singing rabbi got one to three years for stealing $36,000 from a woman.
I fail to understand why, even with a plea, these men were given such a light sentence. They did not come forward on their own and used public trust to commit this crime.
SOPA Is On The Shelf!
Steven Benen writes at Washington Monthly that SOPA has been shelved (but not killed):
Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there's a lot less to worry about.At issue are two related bills: the Senate's Protect IP Act and the even more offensive Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, both of which are generated intense opposition from tech giants and First Amendment advocates. The first sign that the bills' prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.
The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. Though the administration's chief technology officials officials acknowledged the problem of online privacy, the White House statement presented a fairly detailed critique of the measures and concluded, "We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet." It added that any proposed legislation "must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet."
I'm on deadline, so for anyone who doesn't know what SOPA is, check out this Wikipedia link.
And this is the main point, from a Reuters story by Sarah McBride:
"Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking U.S. companies to censor the Internet," a Google spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday.In addition to concerns about the technical ramifications of DNS blocking and the practical issues associated with disabling services to individual websites, many in the Internet business fear the bills create far too much leeway to shut down websites without sufficient due process.
Note that PIPA still lives. Cory Doctorow blogs on BoingBoing:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has killed SOPA, stopping all action on it. He didn't say why he killed it, but the overwhelming, widespread unpopularity of the bill and the threat of a presidential veto probably had something to do with it.Before you get too excited, remember that the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), the extremely similar Senate version of SOPA, is still steaming forward, and has to be stopped.
The Jaunty Mr. Purple Carnation
Love this old guy I sometimes see and say hello to at Starbucks. Today, he came in wearing a pocket protector in his pocket with, I think, a purple carnation in it. When he sat down, he put it in this cup of water. Like a pet.
Snot Good Manners
The number one place not to take a big honking blow of your nose? The "community" table at Starbucks while people are eating breakfast.
(If this is news to you, you should be living in a basement and having your food --and Kleenex -- lowered in a bucket.)
Public manners transgressions that bug you?
P.S. I'm writing my next manners book now, which my new agent will sell at the end of March, so your comment here may find its way in.
If you haven't bought I See Rude People, I hope you'll buy it now. If you have, maybe buy six more copies for friends?!
By the way, the copies at Amazon's discount price -- about $12.75 -- go against my advance and help me, as do Kindle copies. The "bargain" copies do not. (I think they're from stock bought from the bankrupt Borders and resold.)
Investigative Journalism At Its Finest
Ha.
via @TedFrank, via @BenDomenech
Life Is Risky
A kid could die because she left her shoelaces untied, tripped, and fell on her forehead. Tim Gill at RethinkingChildhood blogs about moving on from the zero-risk childhood:
The first step on the path to enlightenment about risk is to accept that there is simply no such thing as a risk-free environment. Did you know that in the USA between 1990 and 2007, around 300 children have died as a result of falling furniture (typically, television sets in their own home)?Every game you play, every craft activity you run, every play area you use, every table and chair in your room is a potential source of harm. You are already in the game of balancing risks against benefits, even if you don't see it that way. So every time you talk about an activity or venue being 'safe' what you really mean is 'safe enough'; safe enough for there to be every likelihood that children will enjoy the experiences on offer without coming to serious harm.
That phrase 'serious harm' is crucial. Getting hurt - physically or emotionally - and then recovering is part and parcel of childhood. Children need the chance to make mistakes and learn from them, as long as they can pick themselves up, dust themselves down and move on - with a caring grown-up to wipe way the tears, if needs be.
via Lenore Skenazy
All That's Green Now Is Our Money They Burned Through
Enough with "good cause" welfare from the government. There are plenty of good causes and they should be raising money by hitting up private people and businesses to fund them -- not being fed taxpayer dollars.
As for why I despise both the Democrats and the Republicans, it's because the Republicans only pretend to be fiscally responsible. They're not the party of small government but the party of pretending to be for small government. The difference in this case is in name only. Truly.
From the WSJ, the Range Fuels fiasco...the next in line after Solyndra:
In 2007 the Bush Energy Department gave Range a $76 million grant--of which Range received $46 million. In 2009 the Obama Administration signed off on a further $80 million loan guarantee--of which $42 million was doled out. The state of Georgia kicked in a $6 million grant, and county officials coughed up tax abatements. That's aside from the more than $160 million Range drummed up from private investors.Range bet those dollars on technology and products that were unproven and incapable of competing in a marketplace without government mandates and support. These are the common characteristics behind all of President Obama's green energy fiascoes--from the bankruptcies of solar company Solyndra and storage firm Beacon Power, to the growing struggles of electric battery makers A123 Systems and Ener1. The question is increasingly not which will fail next, but whether any will succeed.
Steven Malanga writes in another WSJ piece about how government porkulus has caused damage in Buffalo:
In the 1970s, the federal government decided to invest $530 million to build a 6.2-mile light-rail system through downtown Buffalo. It was supposed to further spur redevelopment, of course.Opened in 1985 and anchored by a transit mall that banned cars, the rail line fell well below ridership projections--and downtown businesses suffered mightily from the lack of traffic. As Buffalo landlord Stephen P. Fitzmaurice wrote in 2009: "Walk down Main Street on the transit mall; aside from a few necessities like drug and cell phone stores, blight dominates." Last month the city received a $15 million federal grant to restore traffic to Main Street.
These massive investment subsidies failed partly because officials were ill-suited to select the right projects and often instead gave money to favored insiders. Even former Mayor Anthony Masiello described the federal government's redevelopment funds as "a politically motivated system trying to please everybody."
The stupidest thing is that the Occupy Wall Streeters think government corruption (I think they prefer to call it "government" or "regulation") is the answer.
Extra-Special Advice Goddess Radio Tonight: Dr. Michael Eades And Dr. Mary Dan Eades On Evidence-Based Eating
7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with a downloadable podcast available afterward (or listen at the link):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades are my guests this week. They are two of the all-too-few out there who are behind evidence-based ways to eat -- dietary science as opposed to the "science" on which so many base their diets. See the photographic evidence of the incredible results here.
These two have changed the lives and improved the health of more of my readers -- in absolutely incredible ways. People who read their books, like "Protein Power," typically end up losing weight...and with ease...like the pounds are stones falling off a truck.
On the show, we'll talk about how to maintain a way of eating, and debunk a lot of widely held myths about diet -- myths many doctors still cling to.
It's Advice Goddess Radio -- bringing you the best people from science...fascinating, fun professor and therapist guests who will nerd you out of your love, dating sex, and relationship problems.
Ridiculous: All DC Students Would Have To Apply To College
Dumb. Fewer students should be applying. Smart Joanne Jacobs blog post. She links to a WaPo story by Tim Craig quoting the dim and pandering D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown who "sponsoring a bill that requires all students to take a standardized college admission test and then apply to attend at least one college or post-secondary institution."
Craig quotes Brown later in the piece:
"I'm not saying everyone should go to college, but my goodness, we have to get more young folks prepared to go to college if they want to go to college," Brown said in an interview. "A lot of them don't even know how to prepare and apply to college."
I didn't know how. If you're having a problem, that's what high school guidance counselors are for. I got an application to the University of Michigan and another to Michigan State, filled them out, and mailed them both in. My mother gave me a check for the application fees, but if you can't afford the fee, you can apply for a fee waiver.
I see that kids at the school where I speak (though I haven't this year due to some reorganization there) are going to college, and these are kids from the inner city.
Not all of the kids I talk to will go. Ms. F's English class -- they're all going. They're reading at a normal level for their age.
Mr. L's 11th grade homeroom -- reading at the first, second, and third grade level -- well, wouldn't it be ridiculous for these kids to be told that they have to pay to take college entrance exams (or apply for fee waivers) when they probably can't read half the questions on the exam, let alone the fee waiver application?
Let's get real here.
Linking to Jonathan Robe, Jacobs notes that "it's a win for the college-industrial complex."
"Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Swipe"
That's the name of Andrew A. Schwartz' Utah Law Review critique of the nanny state Act -- which he terms the "Infancy Rule in the Federal Credit Card Act." It prohibits 18-year-olds, who can be drafted to fight wars for their country, from contracting for a credit card. Ted Frank blogs at Point of Law:
The CARD Act does not just insult the dignity of 20-year-olds by infantilizing them, but hurts the rest of us by limiting the ability of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds from fully participating in society.
Schwatz' abstract from Jeff Sovern, blogging at Public Citizen:
In the 1960s and 1970s, American society came to the considered conclusion that if eighteen-year-olds can be drafted to fight and possibly die for their country, they should be treated as adults under the law. Thus, in 1971, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age to eighteen from twenty one, was proposed and ratified in just three months, making it the fastest amendment in American history. The minimum age for federal and state jury service was also lowered to eighteen from twenty one. And, with regard to contract law, every state passed legislation reducing the age of contractual capacity to eighteen. These changes overrode the centuries-old common law rule that one becomes an adult, in the eyes of the law, at age twenty-one, this being premised on the then-relevant custom that Englishmen became eligible for knighthood at that age. Despite the fact that all of these reforms remain in place, the federal "Credit CARD Act of 2009" established twenty-one as the minimum age to contract for a credit card.This Article criticizes this "infancy rule" of the CARD Act, found in section 301, in two ways. First, in the late twentieth century, we decided that eighteen-year-olds really are adults that deserve to be treated with dignity by the law, and this view has not changed. This basic principle was the driving force behind the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which in 1971 lowered the minimum age to vote to eighteen, as well as state and federal statutes that lowered the age to serve on a jury to eighteen, not to mention the state statutes lowering the age of contractual capacity to eighteen. In declaring all those under twenty one to be infants, section 301 runs badly afoul of this broad societal consensus, rolls back the clock to medieval times, and undermines the dignity of eighteen-year-olds.
Second, separate and apart from the harm section 301 directly inflicts on young people, the CARD Act's infancy rule hurts society at large. This is because the state statutory reforms of the 1970s that endowed eighteen-year-olds with the capacity to enter into binding contracts ushered in the new and hugely beneficial phenomenon of youthful entrepreneurship. Young people, aged eighteen to twenty, were now able to obtain credit and found start-up companies, such as Bill Gates, who founded Microsoft at age nineteen, and Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook at the same age. These and other youthful start-ups employ hundreds of thousands of people, and their products and services improve our lives. Under section 301 of the CARD Act, however, they likely never would have been launched. In short, by hampering youthful entrepreneurship, section 301 harms not only the youths themselves, but society as a whole.
via @WalterOlson
Homeland "Security" Creep
"Society will pay a huge price in cancer because of this" ("this" is TSA scans of cars at borders, and don't think it'll stop there). Declan McCullagh writes at CNET of the next place you may be ordered to go through radiation emitting scanners in the name of "security":
Internal Homeland Security documents describing specifications for border-crossing scanners, which emit gamma or X-ray radiation to probe vehicles and their occupants, are raising new health and privacy concerns, CNET has learned.Even though a public outcry has prompted Homeland Security to move away from adding X-ray machines to airports--it purchased 300 body scanners last year that used alternative technology instead--it appears to be embracing them at U.S.-Mexico land border crossings as an efficient way to detect drugs, currency, and explosives.
The Z Portal scanner in use at the San Ysidro, Calif., border crossing uses high energy X-ray radiation to probe the interior of vehicles. Homeland Security says it's safe for humans, but some biophysicists disagree.A 63-page set of specifications (PDF), heavily redacted, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center through the Freedom of Information Act, says the scanners must "be based on X-Ray or gamma technology," which use potentially dangerous ionizing radiation at high energies, and "shall be capable of scanning cars, SUVs, motorcycles and busses."
"Society will pay a huge price in cancer because of this," John Sedat, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California at San Francisco, told CNET. Sedat has raised concerns about the health risks of X-ray scanners, and the European Commission in November prohibited their use in European airports.
The specifications do not say how Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, will notify people crossing the border about the radiation emitted by the devices, how frequently the devices will be tested to ensure they're operating properly, or whether travelers will be presented with a choice of declining the scan, which is an option at airport body scanners that use X-rays.
Wall Street: Government "Socialized The Risk But Privatized The Benefit"
A quote from a Lawrence Lessig lecture, "Hacking at the Roots of Evil":
via @wa7iut (Robert Davidson)
"It's All Fun And Games Until A Fake Penis Gets You Fired"
Staci Zaretsky blogs at Above The Law that a woman contemplating a sex change was wearing a fake schlong and got fired when a man contemplating a sex change (who apparently had other fake parts) got to keep his.
The Philly Daily News story is here.
As an employer, I'd be kind of irritated when the workplace becomes about people's prosthetic sex parts rather than the work, whatever kind of sex parts they have or strap on.
Staci helpfully posts the lesson learned:
Fake chicks with real dicks: good. Real chicks with fake dicks: bad.
via Instapundit
The War On Citizens Getting The Medication They Need To Remain Alive And Breathing
Commenter MonicaP sent me this letter about a really disturbing recent experience she and her husband endured -- and luckily he did endure, but no thanks to the government:
I thought you might find my husband's recent experience trying to get Primatene Mist interesting. Primatene Mist was taken off the shelves as of Dec. 30, supposedly because it contains CFCs. The fact that the inhalers and pills were moved behind the counter several years ago because of meth fears has something to do with it, I suspect.My husband was watching a football game with a friend when he began to have an asthma attack. His friend was watching his three small children that night, so my husband drove to CVS to get some Primatene Mist, not knowing at the time that it was no longer for sale. The pharmacy had it in stock, behind the counter, but couldn't sell it to him, and they didn't have any pills in stock. They suggested he go to another CVS and see whether they had the pills in stock. So a guy who was having clear problems taking in enough oxygen was forced to drive to another store (Walgreens, ultimately) to get the pills. Then they had him show ID and sign a form promising he wouldn't alter the drug before they would sell it to him.
My husband was lucky his asthma attack was relatively minor and that the pills he eventually got worked almost as quickly as the inhaler. Had the asthma attack gotten more serious while he drove around town, he would have been in trouble. Or he might have been forced to go to the ER when he could have easily treated himself at home. And now countless people are going to have to pay out of pocket or have their insurance charged for doctors visits for something that used to be as easy to get as aspirin and condoms.
We'e so afraid of people getting high that we're willing to let people die to prevent it. The CFC issue seems like a cop-out. I understand outlawing trivial uses, like in hairspray, but I'd think we could make an exception for something that saves people's lives.
MonicaP
If we decide to believe the government's story, it seems we'd rather protect the ozone from what has to be the minimal incursion of CFC's from asthma inhalers than let people keep breathing. From the FDA:
Why No More Primatene Mist? Primatene Mist inhalers use CFCs, which decrease the earth's ozone layer. This layer of the atmosphere protects us from some of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, which can increase the risk of skin cancers and cataracts. The United States and many other countries have signed an international agreement to phase out CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances.
Ahron Sherman writes at The Daily Miner:
According to the Food and Drug Administration, discussion to phase-out CFC-based epinephrine inhalers started in 2006, and the FDA decided that Primatene Mist did not serve an essential health need.
Really? Tell that to MonicaP and her husband.
Sherman continues:
Manufacturers have been changing their inhalers to replace CFCs with an ozone-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane, according to the FDA. The problem is that these types of inhalers are not available without a prescription, cost more and work differently.Doctor Sam Ahn of the Asthma Allergy Clinic of Phoenix said the transition from CFC inhalers to HFA inhalers has been relatively smooth, despite the inconvenience felt by some.
The HFA inhalers are more expensive, he said.
Whereas Primatene Mist inhalers run for about $20 a pop, HFA inhalers containing albuterol can cost as much as $60 each.
The HFA inhalers have a lighter velocity spray than the CFC-based ones, Ahn explained. This causes many of his patients to think they are not getting enough of the medication. Despite the weaker spray, both types of inhalers administer the same dosage of medication, Ahn said.
Another consequence of the soft spray is that the HFA inhalers need to be cleaned every one or two weeks, Ahn said. This wasn't the case with CFC inhalers because the spray was forceful enough to basically clean the apparatus itself. People who have made the transition between inhalers tend to forget to clean them, which does alter the dosage, Ahn said.
"Overall, it hasn't been a bad transition," Ahn said.
Again, tell that to MonicaP and her husband.
War's Gone YouTube
Who here is shocked that soldiers peed on enemy corpses? Who here thinks it hasn't happened many times before?
Smart blog item by Robert Wright in The Atlantic on the corpse-urinating soldiers:
If you had asked me a few days ago, before news broke that American soldiers have urinated on Taliban corpses, whether American soldiers have ever urinated on Taliban corpses, I would have said: Probably.You send hordes of young people into combat, people whose job is to kill the enemy and who watch as their friends are killed and maimed by the enemy, and the chances are that signs of disrespect for the enemy will surface--and that every once in a while those signs will assume grotesque form.
He adds that hatred is now a more dangerous thing -- and Islamic hatred is especially lethal:
The growing lethality of hatred, like the growing transparency of war, is a product of technology. New information technologies make it easier for people who share a hatred to organize around it. Witness the global recruiting reach of even ragtag terrorist groups. And once hateful groups are organized, they stand a better chance than a few decades ago of getting their hands on massively lethal technologies--not just a nuclear weapon but, increasingly, biological weapons.In other words, though radical Islam is the current example of how dangerous grassroots hatred can now be, the danger itself has grown for more generic reasons. So the change is fundamental: In the old days national security could be had by making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now national security requires (among other things) that as few people as possible hate you.
Sorry, Rickie Santorum: Religion And Moral Behavior Don't Quite Go Hand-In-Hand
Santorum says America is going to hell (and not just metaphorically) because of all of us secular types. Um...actually...Steve Chapman writes at reason:
It turns out that religiosity does not translate into good behavior, and disregard for religion does not go hand-in-hand with vice. Quite the contrary.Consider homicide, which is not only socially harmful but a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Mississippi has the highest rate of church attendance in America, according to a Gallup survey, with 63 percent of people saying they go to church "weekly or almost weekly." But Mississippians are far more likely to be murdered than other Americans.
On the other hand, we have Vermont, where people are the most likely to skip church. Its murder rate is only about one-fourth as high as the rest of the country. New Hampshire, the second-least religious state, has the lowest murder rate.
These are no flukes. Of the 10 states with the most worshippers, all but one have higher than average homicide rates. Of the 11 states with the lowest church attendance, by contrast, 10 have low homicide rates.
Teen pregnancy also tends to follow a course precisely the opposite of what Santorum preaches. Almost every one of the most religious states suffers from more teen pregnancy than the norm--while the least religious ones enjoy less.
What impact does gay marriage have on how kids handle sex? Massachusetts, the first state to legalize it, has less teen pregnancy than the country as a whole. Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Vermont, which have also sanctioned same-sex unions, are also far better than average.
Hate Smoking But Hate Idiocy More
The UC campuses are banning smoking altogether -- anywhere on campus -- starting in 2014. LAist's Jessica Pauline Ogilvie blogs:
The ban would apply to everyone who sets foot on campus -- not just students and teachers but visitors, people attending conferences and all university employees.Not surprisingly, this new rule isn't sitting well with nicotine consumers -- UCLA's Daily Bruin reports that students who smoke are already feeling put out.
"I understand why (the university) would want to have a ban on smoking," fourth-year student Trenton Szewczyk told the Bruin. "But I don't like it. It's a huge inconvenience."
The SF Gate story by Erin Allday says it's about banning secondhand smoke (in addition to stopping people from picking up the habit, which...excuse me...isn't the university's job). But get this from the piece -- you can't even smoke in your "private residence" or, apparently, your own car:
Students and staff alike will be prohibited from smoking anywhere on a UC campus - including outdoor spaces, parking lots and private residences. There won't be any designated smoking areas.
I hate smoke, but usually, at the cafe I go to, if somebody's at one of the little tables outside in front and the smoke's blowing in, you just say, "Hey, you probably didn't know this, but your smoke's blowing right in," and they say "Sorry!" and move downwind. (No, you don't need to ask them to stop smoking...you just tell them that people inside are sucking down their smoke and they almost always respond politely.)
Regarding the dumb ban, people are addicted to cigarettes and many try and try to quit and fail, with fear of lung cancer as a motivator. But, a campus smoking ban will be all it takes to make everybody quit? Right. Back here in reality, students and faculty members who smoke will have to leave campus to have a cigarette? There's some genius for you.
The Big Tent Is More Like The Big Top
A. Barton Hinkle writes at reason:
Remember when pundits accused the GOP of abandoning its big tent--the one big enough to include a broad diversity of views? You can kiss that meme goodbye. This year's presidential candidates span the political spectrum. They are both pro-abortion and anti-abortion. They have both embraced and opposed bans on assault weapons. They have both accepted and rejected the idea of human-induced climate change, both promoted and derided a government takeover of health care, supported both amnesty for illegal aliens and building a giant wall on the border.And that's just Mitt Romney. We haven't even touched on the rest of the field yet.
Of course, the candidate a reasonable person would vote for -- Gary Johnson -- is outside the tent altogether and is desperately in need of a charisma transplant. (Do they helicopter that from hospital to hospital in a little cooler?)
Two Nerds: Same Page, Wrong Book
Boyfriend: "I wish we had two sons."
Non-mom-me: Look of horror.
Boyfriend: "No, two SUNS."
Civility Is For Other People
"The Tea Party has objected to me calling them terrorists," says the newspaper op-ed writer who heads The Civility Project (of newspaper op-ed writers), and is dismayed by all the name-calling in the media. Save for her own. Hilarious Daily Show takedown by John Oliver:
via @JamesTaranto
TSA Agents: That Dumb Or They Know They're Providing "Security"?
At Consumerist, on Mary Beth Quirk blog item about the ridiculous cupcake confiscation by TSA workers (remember...they're not officers), commenter Dr. Shrinker gets it right:
There were a lot of comments on that TSA blog pointing out something that I never thought about, but that shows what a charade this whole thing is. They confiscate our shampoo, toothpaste, KY jelly, cupcakes, etc. because they might be deadly explosives, right? So what do they do with them? They dump them in an open trash can right next to where they're standing. If any of these workers thought for even a second that the products posed any actual threat, would they stand there next to that trash can? We know it's bulls--t, THEY know it's bulls--t, and yet, the biggest change so far is allowing us to bring on 3.4 oz of liquids instead of 3 oz.
Loved this Consumerist commenter Crackpot's security diagram: "How much icing is dangerous to the well-being of the American people?"
How Pot Smokers Get The Death Penalty
The title of this post was a tweet by reason drug policy reporter @JacobSullum of a piece by Tony Newman at the HuffPo. (Newman is director of Media Relations for the Drug Policy Alliance):
No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. But getting busted with a small amount of marijuana has led to countless tragic deaths.This week, Shelley Hilliard, a 19-year-old woman from Detroit, was killed after working as a police informant. On October 20, Hilliard was arrested for a small amount of marijuana. The police offered her a way out: She could set up a drug deal. She called a drug dealer and said she had someone who wanted to buy $335 of cocaine and marijuana. When the dealer showed up he was arrested. The dealer was released, and three days later Hilliard was found dead in the streets. The dealer has been charged with murder.
Hilliard tragic death brings back memories of Rachel Hoffman, the 23-year-old, Florida State graduate from Tallahassee who also worked as an informant after she was busted with a small amount of marijuana and Ecstasy. Hoffman was sent alone on a "buy and bust" and was given $13,000 to buy Ecstasy, cocaine and a gun. The men shot Hoffman five times, stole her car and credit card, and dumped her body into a ditch. This week Tallahassee approved a $2.6 million settlement with Rachel's parents.
These two women should still be with us on this earth, but were instead pawns in an unwinnable drug war that led to their violent deaths.
It would certainly be better if people caught with drugs be ordered to go for treatment or drug detox program options instead.
I Have Arrived (In The Kitchen)
Who cares that I brag that "I don't cook; I heat." I'm now giving cooking tips in The Atlantic. Okay, tiny, and just a mention, in my dear friend Ari Levaux's column. (He liked the way I said that in an email.)
The Next Best Thing To Burning Our Tax Dollars
From the AP, Crook -- oh, sorry, Cook -- County (borrowed that from a commenter from today), Illinois is using a federal grant for an advertising campaign to inform people...big surprise to all...that water or milk is healthier than sugary drinks.
On a positive note, I'm sure there are a handful of people in Cook County who are unaware of this SCREECHINGLY OBVIOUS FACT -- because they remain in a coma or vegetative state.
Advice Goddess Radio: Anthropologist John Marshall Townsend On What Men Want/What Women Want
High praise from a male listener for this show: "(This) radio show was right on. It was like the Professor had been taking notes at our seduction forum. He actually gets it."
Download the podcast/listen at the link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/09/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
My guest was Syracuse anthropology professor Dr. John Marshall Townsend, author of the terrific book, What Women Want--What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently
We dug into the research (like the hilarious study Townsend did showing pictures of men and women in Burger King uniforms or fancy dress. Of course, men didn't care where the girl worked; just whether she was hot. Of course, the women went for the homely guy in the blazer and the Rolex over the hot guy in the BK uniform). And we discussed what the research -- including Townsend's latest study on casual sex -- says about how we should approach love, dating, sex and relationships.
It's Advice Goddess Radio -- bringing you the best people from science...fascinating, fun professor and therapist guests who will nerd you out of your love, dating sex, and relationship problems.
Listen live every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon ...or download the podcast at the link ("play in your default player"). Call-in during the show: 347-326-9761 (NYC area code).
This coming Sunday, January 15, a not-to-be-missed show: My guests will be low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades. They are two of the all-too-few out there who are behind evidence-based ways to eat -- dietary science as opposed to the "science" on which so many base their diet.
See the incredible results for one of my blog commenters here.
These two have changed the lives and improved the health of more of my readers -- in absolutely incredible ways. People who read their books, like "Protein Power," typically end up losing weight...and with ease...like the pounds are stones falling off a truck.
On the show, we'll talk about how to maintain a way of eating, and debunk a lot of widely held myths about diet -- myths many doctors still cling to.
If you have questions you'd like me to ask the Eades during the show, please post them below and I'll try to get to them or as many of them as I can.
The FCC Has Yet To Hear Of Hulu
The best case for Big Government is that it provides lifetime employment for herds of idiots who would otherwise likely be on public assistance or barely feeding their children.
Jacob Sullum underscores this with a piece in reason on "The FCC's Incomprehensible Ban on Broadcast Indecency":
My daughters, who range in age from 5 to 18, watch TV programs and movies on DVDs, on smart phones, streaming from Netflix through our Wii, on video websites, on our DVR, and on demand from AT&T U-verse. They do not know or care what "broadcast television" is, and they certainly do not perceive a categorical distinction between "over-the-air" channels and the rest.But the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does, imposing a form of censorship on broadcast TV that would be clearly unconstitutional in any other context--for the children, of course. A case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday gives it an opportunity to renounce this obsolete doctrine once and for all.
...Fox and the other TV networks challenging the ban are urging the Supreme Court not only to uphold the 2nd Circuit's decision but to reconsider the 1978 ruling that approved content-based regulation of broadcasting on the grounds that the medium was "uniquely pervasive" and "uniquely accessible to children." Now that nine out of 10 households are served by cable, satellite, or fiber-optic TV and children commonly watch video from nonbroadcast sources, it is hard to make that argument with a straight face.
...During Tuesday's oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito worried that repealing the indecency ban would trigger an explosion of televised nudity and profanity, even while conceding that the rule applies to an ever-shrinking part of the video market. In fact, there are more child-friendly entertainment options than ever before, no thanks to the government's ham-handed interference. From a consumer's perspective, the FCC's weirdly selective censorship is not just unnecessary but increasingly incomprehensible.
It Was Supposed To Make Citizens Safer, Not $45 Million Poorer
From a Sun-Times story by Carol Marin and Don Moseley about a Cook County, Illinois Homeland Security boondoggle:
Project Shield was supposed to make citizens safer. But in the end, the $45-million Homeland Security program more resembled a disaster, wasting taxpayers' dollars and failing to make a single citizen more secure.The failed Cook County initiative was replete with equipment that failed to work, missing records and untrained first responders according to a report by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The report, to be released Monday but obtained by The Sun-Times and NBC5 News, found "millions of tax dollars may have been wasted."
Under Project Shield, two police squad cars in all 128 Cook County suburbs were to be fitted with cameras capable of feeding live video to a central command. In addition, fixed mounted cameras were to be installed to feed pictures in case of a terrorist attack or emergency in Cook County.
A six-month investigation by the IG found "equipment was not working, was removed, or could not be properly operated."
Mercedes and Che: It Doesn't Get Much Hurlingly Tackier
It seems like a story from The Onion, but no, it's news -- CBS News, complete with a gigundo picture of mass murdering evil scumbag Che Guevara doctored to include a Mercedes logo on his beret. Daniel Terdiman writes:
"Some colleagues still think that car-sharing borders on communism," Mercedes-Benz Chairman of the Board of Management Dieter Zetsche said onstage at CES today, speaking about Mercedes' new CarTogether initiative. "But if that's the case, viva la revolucion!"To be sure, a luxury-car maker like Mercedes is not actually promoting communism. But during his CES talk, Zetsche pushed hard on a vision that the company has for a greener future that allows drivers to reduce emissions by using connected and social technology to easily find compatible passengers to share rides with.
Still, it's odd--and no doubt intended to stir up conversation--to hear a company so inexorably tied to money and lavish lifestyles invoking philosophies like communism. Especially with a picture of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara towering over Zetsche as he talked. Of course, Che's signature beret sported a Mercedes logo.
In remembrance of Che, will they be lining up people the chairman doesn't like against a Mercedes and gunning them down?
UPDATE: Loved this tweet by @Popehat:
Eh. The Mercedes thing is interesting, but I'm holding out for a Pol Pot Porsche.
via @DavidBurge
Whoopsy
"It often took days and sometimes weeks before authorities realized they had the wrong person behind bars," writes Christopher N. Osher in the Denver Post:
More than 500 people were wrongly imprisoned in Denver's jails over seven years, with some spending weeks incarcerated or pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit before authorities realized they nabbed the wrong person, a federal court filing shows.Civil-rights lawyers suing the city and county of Denver assert the documented mistaken-identity arrests "are the tip of the iceberg" and are an undercount of the true magnitude of the problem.
In one case a black man spent nine days in jail after he was arrested on a warrant for a white man wanted on a sex-crimes arrest warrant.
In another, authorities arrested an 18- year-old when they were searching for a man 30 years older.
A white man was hauled in even when the suspect actually was an American Indian who was nearly a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier. He wasn't released until almost a month had passed and not until the victim of the crime alerted authorities at a court hearing that they had the wrong suspect.
Unbelievably, officials often failed to check whether the arrested person's race or gender matched that of the person they were supposed to be arresting, reports Osher.
Read the whole disgusting story at the Denver Post link and look at the pictures of the people they arrested, split-screened with those who they were actually after. This look and sound like America to you? The one you want to be living in?
via @WalterOlson, @RadleyBalko
Icky, Icky, Jews Saved Their Lives
Reuven Weiss writes at ynetnews.com that Israelis saved drowning Iranians, who responded by hugging and kissing them in thanks...until...
"When we told them we're Israelis they just got up and fled," Nimrod noted.
That's the final paragraph in a story about the Israelis who saved the Iranians' lives. In Judaism, the highest value is for saving a life -- any life -- which is why Arabs get priority in Israeli hospitals if they are sicker than Jews who come in...even Jews injured while serving in the Israeli Army.
Former Jew-hater Bridget Gabriel, a Lebanese woman, changed her mind about the Jews after she saw an example of this in the care for her mother by Israelis in an Israeli hospital. Gabriel talked about this at Duke University:
My mother was wounded by a Muslim shell and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room, I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Muslims, Palestinians, Lebanese Christians, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation; they saw people in need and they helped.For the first time in my life, I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital; those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized that I was sold a fabricated lie by my government about the Jews and Israel, which was so far from reality. I knew for a fact that if I were a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown to the ground as shouts of joy of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) echoed through the hospital and the surrounding streets.
"Hello," He Lied: An Online Dating Story
A woman wants to know why, early on in the online dating process (on the phone or in the first week of dating) men announce that they are not seeing or even interested in anyone else -- when that isn't true. This particular woman seems emotionally healthy and expects that they would be seeing other people. But, she's dismayed that they lie to her.
Why do guys do this?
P.S. Credit for the line, "Hello," he lied -- screenwriter/novelist Don Carpenter, about a Hollywood agent. Linda Obst later used it as a book title.
Nut Gingrich And Other "Personhood" Candidates On Abortion
Got an IUD? If Gingrich or others of his ilk are elected in great enough numbers, you could potentially be charged with murder. Paul Hsieh writes at PJMedia:
Gingrich recently signed [1] the "Personhood Republican Presidential Candidate Pledge" [2] which affirms that "unborn children" should be regarded as persons with full legal rights "from the moment of conception ... without exception and without compromise." Gingrich signed the pledge after taking heat for an earlier statement stating that human life began after embryo implantation [3] in the womb (which occurs a few days after fertilization). His campaign has since clarified [4]: "Newt believes that human life begins at conception, that is, at the moment of fertilization." If enacted into law, this seemingly small distinction could have serious implications for the legality of many forms of birth control.The "personhood" movement represents the most ideologically consistent endpoint of the anti-abortion movement. In their view, once a human sperm fertilizes an egg, the zygote deserves full protection as a legal "person" comparable to a born child. Under this standard, abortion would become illegal even in cases of rape and incest -- one of the goals of "personhood" advocates. However, recognizing fertilized eggs as legal persons would also have serious implications for issues other than abortion. As Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh describe in their 2010 paper [5], this includes potentially limiting women's ability to receive in vitro fertilization and physicians' ability to treat women with life-threatening ectopic pregnancies. But one of the biggest political issues would be the legality of many forms of birth control.
According to Personhood USA [6], "birth control that causes the death of a living human being would be affected." Hence, IUDs [7] would also become illegal because they are "designed to kill the tiniest children by preventing implantation." Medications such as "Plan B" or the "morning after pill" (which can block implantation of a fertilized egg) would also be outlawed.
...If Gingrich wins the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, it would be the first time that a "personhood" supporter would be on the national ballot. In 2008, John McCain declined to endorse the "personhood" movement. Rather, American Right to Life, which describes itself as "the personhood wing of the pro-life movement," attacked John McCain in 2008 as "pro-abortion [15]" for supporting legal abortion in cases of rape. In 2012, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachman have also signed the Personhood Pledge. In contrast, Mitt Romney is anti-abortion, but has not signed the Personhood Pledge and supports legal abortion in case of rape or incest.
If Gingrich (or any other "personhood" supporter) wins the 2012 GOP nomination, the future legality of birth control pills and IUDs would immediately become a national political issue, to the detriment of the Republicans. Just as the "personhood" issue tipped the swing state of Colorado in favor of the Democrats in 2010, it could also tip a few critical swing states in favor of Obama in 2012.
A Pencil Can Be A Weapon, You Morons
The people most in need of education on school property are the idiots running the schools with their zero sense politices. From 11alive.com in Georgia, Jerry Carnes writes of a kid who accidentally brought a knife to school, reported it to his teacher, and was rewarded for his honesty (and adherence to a totally dipshitted policy) with a suspension from school:
Thirteen-year-old Jack Persyn was at chess club before the start of classes at Lanier Middle School in Gwinnett County when he discovered an inch-and-a-half long knife in a bag he brought to school. The military style bag was given to him as a Christmas gift from his aunt, who bought it at a yard sale.The disciplinary report written by administrators at Lanier Middle states that the 8th grader "accidentally" brought the knife to school and that he "immediately self-reported" the weapon to his teacher.
Still, Jack was punished with four days of in-school suspension.
"There was never a safety issue," said the teen's father Bill Persyn. "No harm was done. It was a genuine honest mistake, yet he got pulled out of class for four days. I can see a one hour detention if they had to do something, but this is nonsensical."
One hour detention? Why? I used to have a paring knife in my lunch all the time to cut my apple, probably from fifth grade on, and I went all those years in school and never stabbed a classmate.
via ifeminists
Cholesterol Does Not Cause Heart Disease
Taking statins to reduce cholesterol to prevent heart disease is like not wearing wool to prevent automobile accidents.
And tragically, there's a study out (which I have not read...MSNBC report) showing a link between women who take statins -- with zero benefit for them, though that's not what their scientific charlatan doctors tell them -- and developing diabetes. From the Dr. Michael Eades link above on statins:
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.
Chris Kresser blogs:
You are all no doubt acquainted with the popular hypothesis on cholesterol and heart disease. It has two parts: first, that eating cholesterol in the diet raises cholesterol levels in the blood; and two, that high cholesterol levels in the blood cause heart disease.You might be surprised to learn that neither of these statements is true. The first one is relatively easy to dispatch. In the Framingham Heart Study, which is the longest-running and perhaps most significant study on heart disease done to date, it was demonstrated that intake of cholesterol in the diet had absolutely no correlation with heart disease. If you look at the graph (on Kresser's site at the link), you'll see that both men and women with above average intake of cholesterol had nearly identical rates of heart disease as men and women with below average intake of cholesterol.
In fact, the "diet-heart hypothesis", which is the scientific name for the idea that eating cholesterol causes heart disease, has even been discounted by the researchers who were responsible for its genesis. Ancel Keys, who in many ways can be considered the "father" of the cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis, had this to say in 1997:
"There's no connection whatsoever between the cholesterol in food and cholesterol in the blood. And we've known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn't matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit."
...The second tenet of the cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis, the notion that high cholesterol levels in the blood cause heart disease, is referred to as the "lipid hypothesis" in the scientific community. Though it still accepted as gospel truth by the general public and many medical professionals, most researchers now believe the primary causes of heart disease are inflammation and oxidative stress. Unfortunately, the rest of us haven't gotten the memo, so to speak, that cholesterol isn't the cause of heart disease.
...Another consistent thorn in the side of supporters of the "lipid hypothesis" is that women suffer 300% less heart disease than men, in spite of having higher average cholesterol levels. At the recent Conference on Low Blood Cholesterol, which reviewed 11 major studies including 125,000 women, it was determined that there was absolutely no relationship between total cholesterol levels and mortality from cardiovascular or any other causes.
Nor is cholesterol a risk factor in all populations around the world. In fact, some of the populations with the highest levels of blood cholesterol have among the lowest rates of heart disease, and vice versa.
Low cholesterol, however, can be dangerous to your health. Don't count on your internist practicing evidence-based medicine. My last one didn't. I just ignored everything she said and used her for tests and access to other doctors at my HMO.
More at The Cholesterol Myths from Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, MD/Ph.D.
Marilyn Monroe: Slim And Unpretentious
Simon Doonan writes at Slate about how surprised he was at how slim she was when he designed the auction installation for Christies:
Right away, I discovered that Marilyn was shockingly and unimaginably slender. She was sort of like Kate Moss but fleshier on top. Didn't see that coming, did you?When it came to finding mannequins to fit her dresses, I simply couldn't. M.M.'s drag was too small for the average window dummy. Smaller "petite" mannequins existed, but I could not bring myself to place Marilyn's iconic garments on these perky fiberglass dollies.
...When you look at Marilyn on-screen and--armed with the information I have just provided--you realize that the busty, ample gal brimming over Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot is literally one-third your size, you have every right to become suicidal. If she looks like that--zaftig, almost chubby--what on earth would you look like under similar circumstances?
Conventional wisdom says that the camera adds five pounds. After my Marilyn experience, I would say it's more like 500 pounds.
...And for my second Marilyn bet-you-didn't-see-that-coming revelation ...
Marilyn Monroe was a huge movie star, but she owned diddly-squat. She was not materialistic!
Marilyn's estate was a bunch of poignant schlock. The auction raised more than $13 million, but not because of any intrinsic value in the numbered lots. There were no Renoirs or Picassos. Her knickknacks were pedestrian. Her cookware was greasy. Her spatulas were bent. Even her Golden Globe was broken.
The majority of her clothing showed surprising wear and tear. She had worn it all repeatedly and there just wasn't that much of it.
Her jewelry? With the exception of her DiMaggio wedding ring it was a bunch of paste danglers and costume crap.
Shoes? Yes, there were several pairs of black suede Ferragamo stilettos with worn heels. But Marilyn--brace yourself for another shocker--was more into books than shoes. Her poignant desire to cultivate her mind and give herself an education resulted in an extensive library of first editions. Take that, Carrie Bradshaw!
Spam Problem Is Being Fixed Is Fixed
If there are problems, please let me know and I'll fix them.
MORE (12:29 pm Pacific Time) : **If your comments are still going to spam despite filling in the right answer in the comment challenge (as of about 12:15 Pacific Time today), please let me know. We may have to fixed the "trusted commenter" module that has never worked. Gregg has pretty much climbed up on the cross today for hours and hours, so I'm hoping to let him be so he can do his own work.
FROM EARLIER: Gregg is installing Spam Comment Challenge now (where there will be a simple question to answer in order for a comment to post like "Is water wet or blue?"), but thinks the site needs to rebuild for a few hours before it will be working. Please bear with us, and keep commenting, and just email me (at adviceamy at aol dot com) if a comment goes to spam and I will cheerfully retrieve. Please just give me the name you comment under when you do.
Gregg is right now upgrading software. We're rescuing spam comments in between. Please hang tough; don't be discouraged from commenting; and we'll rescue your comments as they go to spam. (We may not be able to rescue your comment until we do a site rebuild, which may take an hour or so, but we will.)
Midnight In Willful Dimwit-land: Accepting Responsibility Versus Placing Blame
It's so much easier to blame the person you're with, or that you were with, for their failings in your relationship than to be accountable for choosing to be with them. Now, it's one thing if the person develops some loose spring in their brain and transforms from dear and loving to psychopathic...but actually, that doesn't really happen.
People generally are who they are, and you have to be willing to look and be honest about who they are. Here's a woman who knew a man was a poor father and poor choice of partner but ignored it and got together with him anyway -- which is unforgivable when kids are involved, and there was a whole litter of them.
The woman is Mia Farrow and the man she got involved with was Woody Allen -- who, shock upon shock, turned out to be exactly the sort of man he showed her he was early on. In The New York Post, Maureen Callahan writes:
Mia Farrow met Woody Allen in the fall of 1979; she was 34, a mother to seven children, and twice divorced (married to Frank Sinatra at 19, then to Andre Previn, himself married when they met). Allen was 43, also twice divorced, an Academy Award-winning writer-director, professional humorist and neurotic who told Farrow he had "zero interest in kids" on one of their first dates.In her 1997 memoir, "What Falls Away," Farrow recounts Allen's multiple failings as a partner and a father: Allen would have his secretary call her to make dates. He would rarely call her by her name. Upon the adoption of their first child, he tells her, "Look, I don't care about the baby. What I care about is my work."
Farrow starred in 13 Woody Allen movies -- from 1982's "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" to 1992's "Husbands and Wives" -- and he reportedly only ever paid her $200,000 a film.
Her friend Leonard Gershe told Vanity Fair that Woody often disparaged Farrow's talent, saying "she was only good in his pictures, not anybody else's. Nobody would ever hire her again."
He and Farrow never lived together -- she and the children stayed in her massive Upper West Side apartment, Allen on the Upper East Side -- and though Allen saw the children every day, Farrow has said he mostly ignored them.
"One of my greatest regrets," she has said, "is that I permitted this to continue through 12 irreplaceable years of their childhoods."
No one's quite sure when Allen's affair with Soon-Yi, whom Farrow had adopted with ex-husband Previn in 1978, began. As a girl, Soon-Yi reportedly told her mother that Allen was "nasty and ugly," but by the summer of 1991, he was taking her to Knick games and encouraging her to pursue an a career as an actress.
Confiscating Contraband: The TSA's Big Accomplishment
Travel writer Christopher Elliott blogs at Elliot.org about how dumb the TSA was to crow about their 2011 accomplishments:
TSA came out with a lighthearted list of the Top 10 Good Catches of 2011 (sample: "Snakes, turtles, and birds were found at Miami (MIA) and Los Angeles (LAX). I'm just happy there weren't any lions, tigers, and bears...") The release looked like the perfect Huffington Post slideshow, which, alas, it eventually became.What's the problem with that?
Well, with no other official statement from the agency about its 2011 achievements, we're left to conclude that these "top 10 good catches" represent the agency's biggest accomplishments of the year.
That's right. Confiscating illegal pets, inert explosives, martial arts weapons, flare guns and various firearms -- that's what this $8.1 billion agency did for you in 2011.
I'm sure they'll throw in the corny jokes for free.
Commenters from the TSA link above talked sense. Here:
But Bob, seriously, what do ANY of these things have to do with terrorism? Did TSA manage to disrupt a single terrorist plot last year? Sure, you found some criminals, and some criminally dumb people, but nothing on your list says you had any sort of success in preventing terrorism. And that, good sir, is your purpose, no?
And another commenter here:
Simply amazing. THIS is the best they can report as their top Ten? These are all THINGS, not criminals or terrorists or others intending to do harm. I assume if they had stopped even ONE person subsequently arrested, charged, or convicted, that that would deserve a mention. But no, not one!!! It's all theatre (of the absurd); the French would love it. I can only assume that there were just as many guns, etc. going on board before TSA, as after it. And yet can anyone remember any UNINTENDED gunfire incidents onboard commercial aircraft? Stopping things rather than people is worse than pointless. Clearly the purpose of the TSA is to hassle and disrupt air travel, not protect it.
The comment I posted there that may or may not be approved -- we'll see:
The TSA has accomplished something -- getting us to politely and docilely hand over our civil liberties. I wrote about this, and how Americans need to stand up for our civil liberties, in an op-ed that Pravda ended up publishing when all the large mainstream American outlets I sent it to rejected it (the erosion of civil liberties in America seems of little interest to many):http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/21-12-2011/120035-civil_liberties-0/
I'm cross-posting this comment on my blog, along with the notion that it may not be approved here. Free speech is not something the TSA condones. In fact, as I mention in the piece, the TSA puts a chill on free speech with, for example, a sign, in Denver International Airport, offers the vague warning that "verbal abuse" of agents will "not be tolerated." Not surprisingly, few seem willing to speak out and risk arrest.
Tonight, Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. John Marshall Townsend On What Men Want, What Women Want
It's Advice Goddess Radio -- bringing you the best people from science...fascinating, fun professor and therapist guests who will nerd you out of your love, dating sex, and relationship problems.
Tonight's show is back at the regular time, 7-8 pm Pacific, 10-11 pm Eastern, with a podcast avail afterward at same link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/09/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Very interesting guest this week -- Syracuse anthropology professor Dr. John Marshall Townsend, author of the terrific book I've referenced in my column, What Women Want--What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently
We'll dig into the research (like the hilarious study Townsend did showing pictures of men and women in Burger King uniforms or fancy dress. Of course, men didn't care where the girl worked -- just whether she was hot. Of course, the women went for the homely guy in the blazer and the Rolex over the hot guy in the BK uniform). And we'll see what the research -- including Townsend's latest study on casual sex -- says about how we should approach love, dating, sex and relationships.
(Call-in number during the show: 347-326-9761 -- NYC area code. Please call in with comments or to ask advice. Always more interesting with listener participation!)
Subscribe on iTunes by searching "Amy Alkon"
Listen to podcasts of my last two shows, with the fantastic Dr. Helen on men's rights here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/01/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And with happiness researcher Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of the terrific book, The How of Happiness, here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2011/12/26/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And listen to all the shows or download podcasts here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
You can leave questions in the comments section below for Dr. Townsend and me to discuss on the show. They should just be related to men and women and love, dating, sex, and relationships. But, please do consider calling in. Don't be meek! We won't bite! (Much.)
Only In Santa Monica: A Cowboy Petted By A Pirate
The dog's name is Cowboy, and the pirate looks like the real-life incarnation of Johnny Depp's character. He even has a few missing teeth, although he rode up on a bike instead of in a schooner.
Johnny Depp, watch your back!
Why You Should Eat Like An Inuit
From Discover Magazine, by Patricia Gadsby, "The Inuit Paradox: How can people who gorge on fat and rarely see a vegetable be healthier than we are?"
via @AnnChildersMD
Running For Suckup-In-Chief
Running for president is an all good news all the time game, writes Kinsley in the LA Times, with loads of coddling of the voters by candidates:
Is there any other democracy where the voters are as spoiled as they are in the United States? Especially, of course, in certain states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, where the old joke is literally true about the citizens who say they haven't yet formed an opinion about a candidate because they've only met the fellow a few times. But even voters in the rest of the country -- if their votes have any relevance at all after the residents of Iowa and New Hampshire have their say -- are coddled in many ways.Consider just a couple. The conventions of political rhetoric in other nations don't ordinarily require candidates to assure their audiences that they are the greatest people on Earth, or possibly the greatest people in all of history, as every politician seeking national office in the U.S. must.
...More generally, modern American politicians almost never use their campaign rhetoric to deliver bad news or to challenge the citizenry. Every problem we have -- to the extent that such a wonderful nation as ours can have any problems -- could be solved by a tax cut for you or a tax increase for someone else.
America's problems today are not all that different from those of Europe. But the rhetoric is completely different. Chancellor Angela Merkel told Germans on New Year's Eve that Europeans faced the "harshest test in decades." And 2012, she said, "will no doubt be more difficult than 2011."
..."Austerity" is what every European politician says is necessary. Have any of this year's Republican presidential candidates (save Ron Paul) used this word, except dismissively or with a sneer? Has President Obama? This is partly because of a legitimate debate in the U.S. about how much austerity is needed, if any. But if and when a dose is needed, the American politician will have a hard time administering it -- and the American voter will be completely unprepared for the sting.
Kaminer: Paul's The Civil Liberties Candidate
Well, there's Gary Johnson, but there's also Johnson's charisma problem, as in, it's missing. Kaminer writes in The Atlantic that if voters cared about liberty, Paul would be the front-runner:
A most imperfect advocate for individual liberty, Paul favors state laws against flag desecration (core political speech) and federal laws against abortion, and he opposes separation of church and state, which is essential to the religious liberty of minorities. Like many religious conservatives, Paul asserts, illogically and counter-factually, that religious majorities are endangered. Religion is under siege in our extremely religious country, he claims hysterically, and children are not allowed to pray in schools. (In fact, the law is clear: children are free to pray in school, individually or in groups; school officials are prohibited from forcing them to pray.)But for all his faults, Paul remains the only major candidate, Democrat or Republican, who has taken a stand against our endless wars (including the war on drugs) and the authoritarian national-security state -- the most urgent, dire threat to individual liberty today. It should be but isn't a shock to realize that he is the only major candidate to oppose presidential power to summarily assassinate American citizens.
So it's not surprising that Ron Paul has attracted younger voters than his Republican opponents and the support of the occasional left-wing civil libertarian (notably Glenn Greenwald.) But liberal support for Paul is quite weak, and telling: it reflects the dangerous, anti-libertarian drift of today's liberals and progressives. With some exceptions, liberals tend to focus on Paul's alleged bigotry, his newsletters, and his opposition to anti-discrimination laws, while ignoring his lonely support for fundamental liberties.
You don't have to overlook or make excuses for Paul's weaknesses on civil rights or his apparent courting of virulent right-wing extremists to appreciate and applaud his support for liberty, where it arguably matters most. After all, Paul poses no threat to racial and religious tolerance, civil rights, or entitlements; he has virtually no chance of becoming president and his own alleged intolerance is, to say the least, unpopular. (It demonstrates the declining respectability of overt bigotry.) But he has an opportunity to organize and perhaps empower voters who oppose the Bush/Obama security state. If only that were a priority, for Democrats and Republicans alike.
Her Brain Tumor Causes Shoplifting But Doesn't Affect Her Work
It's so hard for most people to understand how sleazy so many of the politicians are who supposedly represent their interests, it's a relief when a legislator does what Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) did -- shoplift $2,500 in clothes from an SF Neiman-Marcus and get caught -- and then make the outrageous claim that a brain tumor may have made her do it. Nicholas Riccardi writes in the LA Times:
Hayashi's attorney, Douglas Rappaport, told reporters that the lawmaker is taking medication for a benign brain tumor and that the ailment may have been responsible for her behavior.Hayashi was arrested Oct. 25 as she left the store with a blouse, skirt and leather pants in a shopping bag. At the time, her representatives said she had meant to pay for the items but became distracted.
On Friday, spokesman Ross Warren said, "Early on she admitted she made a mistake, and today she accepted the consequences of that mistake." He added that her brain tumor has not affected her work.
Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez issued a statement supporting Hayashi. "She has owned up to her actions and taken responsibility for them," he said. "I am confident that with the close of these proceedings, she will continue to ably serve her constituents with the same talent and passion she has displayed throughout her time in office."
Sleazebag supporting a fellow sleazebag.
She left with the items in a shopping bag. How did they get in there...develop the power of motion and hop in? Do you put clothes you haven't paid for in a shopping bag before you leave the store? I mean, if you aren't a thieving scumbag?
We Have Legislitis -- Only Problem Is, Laws Don't Stop Bad Behavior
Something happened in this country, where we collectively came down with a serious case of legislitis -- the notion that we will be more secure if we just pass laws banning everything, making everything illegal.
Now, Chris Morran blogs at Consumerist, you need ID to buy drain cleaner in Illinois -- because two women were attacked with it:
(The law) requires buyers to show a government-issued photo ID. The cashier must also record the buyer's name address, the date and time of purchase, type, brand and net weight of the product being bought.If stores don't comply, there are potentially substantial fines involved, ranging from $150 for the first offense to $500 for the second violation and up to $1,500 for any following offenses.
One Chicago-area hardware store owner tells WBBM Radio that customers are not thrilled about the new regulation: "One of the customers actually threatened the (cashier) and threatened to throw the acid on her."
You could attack somebody with a frying pan -- and people have. Are we going to require ID before we let you cook up some eggs?
Ugliness From Some Ron Paul Supporters...Or Is It A Fake Posted By Huntsman Supporters? (See Update)
An ad by them targeted Huntsman's adopted daughters, writes Ros Krasny for Reuters:
An online ad authored by "NHLiberty4Paul" shows footage of Huntsman with daughters Gracie, who was adopted from China, and Asha, adopted from India, when they were infants."American values. Or Chinese," the ad asks to a soundtrack of Chinese music. It calls Huntsman "the Manchurian Candidate" and ends with an image of Huntsman dressed as China's former communist leader Mao Zedong, and the words "Vote Ron Paul."
Paul, a Texas congressman, disavowed the ad during an interview on Friday on CNN, but said he could not control the actions of all his supporters.
"I couldn't even hear it, haven't looked at it, but people do that, and they do it in all campaigns," Paul said.
I think it's terrific when people who can't have kids adopt instead of using a surrogate. Taking unwanted children in...and there are plenty in China and India...this is something somehow un-American? Quite the contrary, I'd say, considering how we're a nation of immigrants.
I don't think this ad helps Ron Paul.
UPDATE: Anti-War Blog posts an accusation that the ad was posted by a Huntsman supporter.
Guys, Is It A Dealbreaker If A Woman Doesn't Cook?
And ladies, feel free to weigh in, too.
Murderers Can Fundraise, Too!
Mona Charen writes for NRO:
If you were running the Illinois Humanities Council and a famous terrorist offered to help in your fundraising drive, what would you do? If you said "slam down the phone," or something to that effect, it just shows how remote you are from the sensibilities of the Obama age. Because, in fact, when Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers offered to auction "dinner for six" at their house, the IHC cheerfully accepted.Ayers and Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground in the 1960s and early '70s. They set off bombs at the New York police headquarters, the U.S. Capitol building, and the Pentagon. In 1970, the group blew up the Park police station in San Francisco, killing Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell, a 45-year-old father of two, and wounding eight others. The San Francisco Police Association has claimed, as recently as 2009, that "there are irrefutable and compelling reasons to believe that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn are largely responsible for the bombing of Park Police Station."
In a New York Times interview, published (ironically) on Sept. 11, 2001, Bill Ayers was asked whether he had repented. He said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Even now, he continued, he finds a "certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance."
...Neither Dohrn nor Ayers served a day in prison for their crimes, though Dohrn was featured on the FBI's Most Wanted List for three years. That's the way it often goes in the American justice system. Evidence is thrown out. Statutes of limitations toll (though, even in California, there is no statute of limitations for murder). They got away with it.
That Sergeant McDonnell and his fellow victims never got justice is bad enough. But more inexplicable is the smooth segue of two unrepentant criminals into members in good standing of the liberal intelligentsia. Bill Ayers became a professor at the University of Illinois and Dohrn taught at Northwestern Law School. The pair were very friendly with fellow left-wing academic Barack Obama -- but it was considered very bad taste to mention that during the 2008 campaign. They and Rev. Jeremiah Wright could have burned the Constitution on the Capitol steps in 2008 and gotten scarcely a mention.
via @WalterOlson
Free Speech Or Free Battery?
I am all for free speech -- and then some. Free speech is different from free hitting. Obviously, hitting somebody is a form of violence. Saying "You suck, and your views suck," or some maybe more intelligent form of that -- that is free speech. But, not in a California judge's eyes. Absurd, awful ruling that calls violence against Jewish students protected speech. Peter Grady writes for the Greeley Gazette:
A judge has stated that Muslim students who allegedly harassed Jewish students and even assaulted a woman with a cart was engaging in protected political speech.Jessica Felber claimed in a lawsuit against the University of Berkeley that a leader of a pro-Palestinian group rammed her with a shopping cart as she staged a counter-protest to the anti-Israel "Apartheid Week" conducted by the Muslim Student Association and Students for Justice in Palestine in 2010.
Felber and another Jewish student claimed the University did not do enough to prevent the harassment which included the Muslim group conducting checkpoints around the campus. Students were asked if they were Jewish while passing the checkpoints.
On Thursday U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said the harassment, even if true, constituted protected political speech and dismissed the case against the university.
..."The incident in which Felber was assaulted with a shopping cart, for example, did not occur in the context of her educational pursuit," Seeborg wrote. "Rather, that event occurred when she, as one person attempting to exercise free speech rights in a public forum, was allegedly attacked by another person who likewise was participating in a public protest in a public forum."
Now, should school funds be spent for extra policing for protesters? Um, not loving that idea. And I am all for any sort of nasty stuff either side wants to say to each other. But, hitting as protected speech? Even if it's a response to another's speech? Really? Really?
(Nothing yet on this from Volokh.)
UPDATE: Ted Frank calls inaccuracy on this:
The Blaze headline for a Tiffany Gabbay article is "CA JUDGE DEEMS RAMMING JEWISH WOMAN WITH SHOPPING CART 'FREE SPEECH'", but that's simply inaccurate.Jessica Felber sued UC-Berkeley for "discrimination" for an incident where, when she was counter-protesting an anti-Israel demonstration, Muslim students jeered her with anti-Semitic slurs and one hit her with a shopping cart. But Berkeley had the assaulter arrested; the judge simply ruled that Berkeley was not liable for the violence and that free speech protected the two sets of demonstrators.
Ted, I didn't have time to read the ruling. But, this was the part that concerned me:
"The incident in which Felber was assaulted with a shopping cart, for example, did not occur in the context of her educational pursuit," Seeborg wrote. "Rather, that event occurred when she, as one person attempting to exercise free speech rights in a public forum, was allegedly attacked by another person who likewise was participating in a public protest in a public forum."
Tough On...Lyrical Accidents Or Parodies?
There's a new way of saying MORON EARNING TAXPAYER DOLLARS and it's a state senator's bill in Indiana that could make it illegal to sing the national anthem wrong. From the Indy Star:
Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, has introduced a bill that would set specific "performance standards" for singing and playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at any event sponsored by public schools and state universities.The law also would cover private schools receiving state or local scholarship funds, including vouchers.
Performers would have to sign a contract agreeing to follow the guidelines. Musicians -- whether amateur or professional -- would be fined $25 if it were deemed they failed to meet the appropriate standards.
But just what is appropriate? Would Jimi Hendrix's electric version make the grade? Are Christina Aguilera's vocal gymnastics a fineable offense?
That's unclear. What is and what is not "acceptable," according to Becker's bill, would be determined by the State Department of Education, with input from the Commission for Higher Education.
No anthem left behind?
How Sci-Fi Fans Saved A Professor's Job
A video from campus free speech defenders theFIRE.org -- the terrific Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- about how fans of the TV show "Firefly" helped push a college to do the right thing vis a vis free speech:
FIRE's defense of Professor James Miller is here.
I love, from a college official trying to justify their actions, "This is not an act of censorship; this is an act of sensitivity."
Right.
Which takes me back to my earlier blog post on this. As I wrote then, "Working as an administrator at a university constitutes an implied threat of intelligence, but clearly, one should never assume."
New Hampshire Demands Openness About Abusive TSA Agents
Let's have more of this. This is from a press release that came from the New Hampshire Republican Liberty Caucus:
CONCORD, N.H.--The people of New Hampshire have hope that abusive Transportation Security Administration agents may soon be held accountable for their actions thanks to an amended bill that passed the New Hampshire House today, according to the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, which endorsed HB 628.HB 628, relative to searches conducted for purposes of transportation-related security, will require law enforcement officers employed by the state, a county or a local community to log complaints by citizens in New Hampshire who believe they were abused by a TSA official at the airport, at a bus or train station or on a roadway. The public log will be held by state police and will allow the press, the public and the legislature to track patterns of abuse by TSA officials. The bill also requires law enforcement officials to support citizens who choose to audio or video tape their encounter with a TSA agent.
"I would like to thank the members of the House who supported this bill for understanding the need to protect passengers and transportation vehicles while also respecting basic civil rights and decency," said Carolyn McKinney, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. "With the database created by this bill, the State of New Hampshire will be shining the light of public scrutiny on TSA officials, which will hopefully lead to their more respectful behavior toward citizens in New Hampshire--perhaps even across the country."
TSA officials have been in the news for conducting strip searches against Americans randomly, without any reasonable suspicion, which has led to the complete erosion of civil liberties in the name of security, leaving many passengers literally in tears. Some of the things TSA officials have done to women, men, the elderly and children would be called sexual assault if it was in any other venue. Yet, TSA officials have largely gotten away with their abusive searches, with TSA officials claiming they were just "following procedures."
"HB 628 would put TSA agents on notice that New Hampshire will be watching what they do, and it will also hold state and local law enforcement officers accountable to their duty to protect the rights of citizens," McKinney said. "This is a bill that will give citizens a place to turn within the state when they feel they've been abused that is not the same agency as the one allegedly doing the abusing."
Um, You Really Needed To Study This?
All you really have to do is go to Starbucks and ask all the barristas, "Hope you don't mind me asking...but what was your major?"
That's what you do to come out with the results they got in a new study, reported in the WaPo by Peter Whoriskey. The headline:
New study shows architecture, arts degrees yield highest unemployment
Yeah, I know: Shocking.
Michelle Obama -- From Behind
In the WaPo blogs, Mary C. Curtis calls racism on Sensenbrenner for the comment about Michelle Obama's backside:
...He was recently overheard at Washington's Reagan National Airport loudly criticizing Michelle Obama's healthy eating initiative: "She lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself."His insults quickly disappeared from the headlines after he pledged to send the first lady an apology. Even then, though, he couldn't resist -- through a spokesperson -- taking another shot at Michelle Obama's efforts to get Americans to add more fruits and veggies to their diets and to get moving.
The aide's note said: "Mr. Sensenbrenner was referring to the First Lady's healthy food initiative. He doesn't think the government should be telling Americans what to eat. While he may not agree with all of her initiatives, he plans to contact the First Lady's office to apologize for his comments."
But Sensenbrenner wasn't talking about her "initiatives." He was insulting her body.
...Not only is this disrespect crude, it also proves yet again that you can't go wrong disrespecting a black woman in the United States of America, even if she lives in the White House - and in some constituencies, especially if she lives in the White House. Sensenbrenner's nasty rant made me sick and sad because it brings to the surface the ugly history of how black women are viewed in America, stereotyped and dehumanized, our bodies everyone's business except our own.
What in the world is Sensenbrenner doing staring at the First Lady -- not as a person but as a specimen, each part an item on an anatomical checklist? He doesn't approve of what he's seeing but he can't keep his eyes off of her. It's creepy but unfortunately familiar, the way he devalues black beauty while being mesmerized by it.
I think Michelle Obama is very pretty and very stylish, but the diet she recommends is not healthy (grains -- including whole grains -- are what lead to diabetes and obesity).
Per investigative science journalist Gary Taubes' massive amount of research into what is dietary science and what is "science," it is carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. See also Dr. Eades. Furthermore, fat -- from meat and dairy -- is good for you, and you'll be hungry if you don't eat enough of it. Skim milk? Might as well drink white water. When I go shopping, I check the labels of food -- not to find the lowest fat possible, but the highest. I want the Italian sausage with eight grams of fat instead of five, for example. Best of all, the fattier stuff will taste better.
The assumption that this is about Michelle Obama being black is a leap. I know there is racism in this country, but it's quite possible that Sensenbrenner was just partaking in the low-blow politics that actually have been part of this country since its origins. I write books about rudeness and manners -- I'm completing my second book on the subject now, and if you think our Founding Fathers and the first leaders of this country were polite and civil -- well, you have another thing coming and a lot of reading to do.
Interestingly, the particular WaPo blog Curtis writes for called "She The People: The World As Women See It." On the contributing writer page, it's deemed "a forum for women writing on politics, culture, and news." What are we to conclude from the existence of this special People With Vaginas blog but that Curtis -- and women in general -- are seen as not good enough to make it into the WaPo without a special affirmative action section?
Come on: If there were a section just by, for, and/or about men in politics, wouldn't there be shrieks of sexism?
Where are the shrieks about this?
Is It Discrimination To Require That An Employee Have A Pulse?
The latest absolutely whacko thing out of the government is an EEOC letter to employers warning them that requiring that a job applicant have a high school diploma might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Dave Boyer writes at The Washington Times:
Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma "'screens out' an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA's definition of 'disability,'" the EEOC explained.The commission's advice, which does not carry the force of law, is raising alarms among employment-law professionals, who say it could carry far-reaching implications for businesses.
Maria Greco Danaher, a lawyer with the labor and employment law firm Ogletree Deakins, said the EEOC letter means that employers must determine whether job applicants whose learning disabilities kept them from obtaining diplomas can perform the essential job functions, with or without reasonable accommodation.
If I were hiring a janitor, I'd need that janitor to be able to read the back of bottles of chemicals. What jobs don't? And will the government argue that businesses hiring janitors will be forced to hire "interpreters" for them -- i.e., additional employees to be their reading buddies?
Generation Y The Hell Did You Vote For Obama?
Ron Meyer and Nathan Harden write in The Washington Times that Big Government policies -- Obama's policies -- are putting younger people in a bad position:
Young people are battling one of the worst job markets in the last century, and hundreds of billions in federal "stimulus" money has failed to revive the labor market.Government intervention in the economy - escalated by the Obama administration - has helped make this recession particularly bad for young Americans. The government-sponsored, highly unionized industries and programs funded by the bailouts or stimulus hire few young people; unions protect seniority and push up prices for labor, both of which hurt a young person's chance at landing a job.
Plus, these government expenditures take money (through taxes or monetary policy) out of the private sector, which historically hires significantly more young people. Less available capital for the private sector means greater uncertainty and fewer jobs for young people.
National Debt
Government expenditures also contribute to another YMI indicator: national debt per capita. Each young person inherits a massive share of government debt, and the interest alone is enough to cripple our economic future. This year, the interest payments are more than $3,000 per taxpayer, and this number will at least double by the end of the decade. As this cost increases, the government will probably choose to either raise taxes or take out more loans to pay the interest - both of which remove capital out of the private sector - further compounding the problem.
Young people will be stuck paying for government debt they had no part in creating. They'll have to do it with less discretionary income than ever before as they struggle with record high levels of student loan debt.
Commenter Revoltingallday adds at the WashEx site:
Finally, the other reason is that your grandparents won't give up medicare. Medicare is costing you your future, because it's socialized medicine and you are paying for it. Except it's about to be un-socialized, because not only are you paying for it, you will not get it. The current effort in the House is to end your entitlement to the medicare granny gets, so that granny can keep hers. You will spend the majority of your working life paying an entitlement for someone else, to which you will no longer be entitled. Instead, you will get a subsidy to get an insurance policy. Neither the subsidy nor the policy will be worth anything, but granny does not care. She got hers (and yours), and by the time you go before the Aetna Death Panel she will be long gone, to that Sun City in the sky.
Saving On The Amazon
Top Deals In Electronics This Week
Thank you so much, all of you who shopped through my links at Christmas, and who buy stuff at Amy's Mall. It helps support this site and keep my lights on in these crazy times!
To buy something at Amazon I don't list, and give me the kickback from that, just go to Amy's Mall and click on the "powered by Amazon.com" logo and it will take you to a search window at Amazon that will credit me for what you buy.
Fraud? An Email I Got About The Iowa Caucuses
I got this email this morning...
Dear Amy Alkon:Get out now because votes do not matter at all
In Iowa, in my district, where Paul won by show of hands by 40% at least in the room I was in, both fox news and msnbc are showing Santorum winning this district with Romney second. I live in Iowa and work all over the state. There are almost no Santorum or Romney supporters. It's all Paul and Gingrich. So far they're saying Paul has 14% in my county, though it's clear he won. In my county there were 16 Santorum supporters who had to switch because of the way the caucuses work, and only two or three more Romney supporters. There were over 300 Paul supporters and over 150 Gingrich supporters. Combined 70% were Paul and gingrich supporters at least, but they're listed as 3rd and 4th or 5th.
If you live in the United States, don't bother voting anymore. Just leave. The Iowa caucuses are a giant lie.
Update: January 04, 2012.
Theyre saying Story County was "inaccurately tallied." If you don't know how the caucuses work, please understand this is literally impossible. Candidates don't get vote tallies. You consolidate groups until there is a winner. There is no "secret" vote. The winner basically takes all. The lie they have "under reported" or "under counted" in some counties is again, literally impossible with our caucus format. Don't bother voting anymore. Just get a weapon or leave. This is not America anymore.
From @shitmydadsays:
"These candidates are dog shit. All we're doing is picking out the dick that's going to fuck us."
What's With People Telling Other People What They Can't Do To Their Bodies?
I don't take drugs, other than the prescription kind, but I don't understand why you can't smoke pot or take a hallucinogenic drug if you so desire. What business is it of the government's if you don't endanger anybody else by "operating heavy machinery" or endanger anybody else's tax dollars by making us pay for rehab?
There are still many who want to control what the rest of us do with our bodies. The latest is Alexander Edmonds, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, who either is a sincere controlling jerk or is just looking to gin up some publicity for her book. In the LA Times, in the wake of the breast implant scandal in France, she suggests banning plastic surgery:
Some patients may overlook the risks of aesthetic surgery because it is performed by doctors. The ritual elements of medicine -- the white coats, the bedside manner -- powerfully symbolize health. The fact that a surgeon is putting in implants sends a subtle message that they are safe. What healer would do something to harm us?One response to the PIP scandal would be a ban on doctors performing cosmetic breast augmentation altogether. It's well known that breast implants of many types can cause burning pain, loss of sensation, hardening of breast tissue and serious infection. One woman who suffered complications from implants has filed a petition with the Scottish government urging adoption of such a ban. An argument could even be made that aesthetic surgery violates the Hippocratic oath because it carries a potential for harm without curing or preventing disease.
But banning cosmetic surgeries would be difficult to enforce internationally. More than half a million U.S. residents went abroad last year for medical care, and elective treatments such as cosmetic surgery are the most popular treatments. Though the PIP implants were not authorized for use in the United States, they were sold to American medical tourists in countries such as Brazil.
More important, aesthetic surgeries and procedures have become an established part of medical practice. They are no longer just the domain of plastic surgeons and dermatologists but are increasingly performed by GPs, OB-GYNs, endocrinologists and other medical specialists, a trend known as "practice drift." And the sheer availability of a procedure can make it appear necessary. Cosmetic dentistry is so common it is not always thought of as "cosmetic" -- and woe to the American parent who begrudges it to a child.
Some plastic surgeries similarly lie in a gray zone between necessity and medical enhancement. For example, breast reduction is seen by many in the United States as medically justifiable. But in Brazil the operation often has mainly a cosmetic aim (small breasts are an erotic ideal, while larger breasts are seen as matronly). Reconstructive surgeries such as breast implants following a mastectomy also concern aesthetics. As with cosmetic augmentation, the goal is not to improve function but appearance. Of course, breast cancer patients are usually seen as medically entitled to implants, which, not surprisingly, are often available for free.
Still, classifying breast implants as reconstructive does not mean they are less risky. At least a fifth of the French women with PIP implants received them after mastectomies. Calculating risks with any form of plastic surgery is difficult because it depends on weighing potential harm to the body against improvements to intangible qualities such as sexual and psychological well-being.
I wouldn't get breast implants even if I had small breasts -- I've written about the downsides -- but I'm with the commenter below the LAT piece:
genuinefor89
How about we stop freedom inhibiting legislation and let grown people make their own decisions?
Mike Elk Doesn't Think The TSA Has Enough Power
Ken White blogs at Popehat:
What does Mike Elk (Mr.) want, anyway? Well, he seems to want to give TSA agents more power. Specifically, he wants the United States to confer upon TSA agents the power to arrest Americans:TSA cannot legally arrest or detain power under powers granted to it by the federal government; in order to make arrests, TSA workers must call local police situated in the airport.TSA workers' inability to detain or arrest people also hinders their ability to protect airlines in general. "My job is to stand in the exit doors that passengers from arriving flights are leaving. I am supposed to stop people from entering the airport through those doors, but if somebody tries to run through those doors, all I can do is yell at them to stop and call the police," said one TSA employee who wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job.
If they only had that power, TSA agents could feel swell again. They could arrest people themselves for "assault" and "disorderly conduct" and for having sequential checks or carrying too much cash or for generally failing to respect their authority, rather than waiting for police officers trained (sort of, occasionally) in crime detection and law enforcement.
What else does Mike Elk want? Well, he wants Americans to adjust their priorities. Just as the TSA wants Americans to return to the days of unquestioning compliance, Mike Elk wants Americans to focus not so much on the fact that TSA agents are making money by subjecting them to demeaning and largely pointless searches, but on the fact that it's an unpleasant job, and agents need a better contract:
While there has been a very high degree of concern among progressives about the search policies of TSA, the often brutal working conditions of 44,000 people charged with protecting our airports have largely gone unnoticed. If those conditions had received as much media attention as the search procedures they are charged with implementing, it's possible America's newly unionized airport screeners might have had a first contract by now.Damn those selfish Americans! Damn them for thinking that TSA agents are making money by subjecting Americans to unwarranted abuse in the name of insipid security theater! Damn them for thinking that TSA agents across America are drunk with power, largely incompetent to conduct their mostly symbolic job, and subject to very little scrutiny from a mostly canine news media! Oh, won't somebody think of the gropers?
My comment over at Popehat:
"TSA agents are telling the truth about being assaulted,"Since citizens are threatened with arrest for merely videotaping (even though it's permitted by TSA rules), don't you think they'd be arrested for actually assaulting those who sexually assault us?
It's amazing to me that we are expected to stand there quietly and compliantly as our government gropes our breasts, vaginas, buttocks and testicles. Take the way-back machine for a second. It's 1999. If a government employee did this to you, would you 1. Deck him or her or, 2. stand there quietly and wait for it to be over?
Now, I'm not violent; merely hostile, but I can't fathom how people just stand there quietly, saying nothing, as this happens for no other reason than to provide a source of income for low-wage-earning Americans and to train the rest of us to be compliant in the face of having our civil liberties yanked from us.
"Oh, won't somebody think of the gropers?"
Jeff Holzman Gets The TSA Shuffle
I just learned of a disgusting incident that happened in 2009 to an old friend of mine -- a guy I've known since my teens who I consider to have sterling integrity.
Here's the Fox story of how the TSA accused Jeff Holzman of stealing his own watch -- a $1,000 Tag-Heuer that the TSA workers made him take off.
And here's the video proving he didn't do it (the video the TSA supe lied about -- saying it showed Jeff pocketing the watch):
Dr. Helen Smith: A Voice For Fairness To And For Men
Sunday, I hosted a fascinating hour on men's rights and men's issues on Advice Goddess Radio with the insightful (and inspiring) Dr. Helen Smith from Sunday's Advice Goddess Radio. Podcast here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/01/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Next week's guest?
Tune in this coming Sunday, January 8, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, or get the podcast afterward, of Syracuse anthropology professor Dr. John Marshall Townsend on what women want/what men want.
That's also the title of a terrific book he wrote -- What Women Want--What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently
"Don't Trivialize Me Because I'm Beautiful"
...She says, licking her perfectly lip-glossed lips.
Former chick lit writer and current Brit MP Louise Mensch complains that female MPs are judged on looks. (Newsflash, Louise: Yes...as are all females of the species, while men are judged on status and earning power, thanks to our evolutionary adaptations. Each sex gets all pissy about being expected to be hot/have a big paycheck, as the case may be. Message from your genes: Deal with it.)
Victoria Ward writes at the Telegraph/UK:
(Mensch) told GQ magazine that it was sexist to "trivialise a woman politician based on her appearance", noting the frequent references made to Home Secretary Theresa May's distinctive shoes...."Every time there is a raft of PPS promotions and my name is not on them, I have to sit down and think, 'What am I doing wrong?'"
...The MP for Corby said she hoped one day to "have a crack at International Development". But she admitted that given the choice between being made a Cabinet minister and having one of her books, written under her maiden name, Louise Bagshawe, turned into a Hollywood movie, she would choose the latter.
In the accompanying photograph, Mrs Mensch, a mother-of-three, poses in a leather-fronted £485 Dolce & Gabbana skirt and £271 silk blouse by L'Agence.
Should People Be Allowed To Watch Porn In The Library?
The LA Times can't be bothered to cover the Adderall shortage (if you ignore the news, maybe it will go away!) but the editorial board is all over the issue of porn in the library. Karin Klein writes:
Editorial writers and editors were as bothered as anyone else by the thought that an institution we revere as much as the public library -- remember that most journalists grew up with their noses in books -- was being used to view lurid photos. It was pointed out that, although librarians hotly defend against censorship of any kind, nonetheless they make value judgments all the time about what sort of materials should be available in libraries, by purchasing news and home magazines rather than nudie publications. On the Internet, though, porn is, like most things, free. Keeping it away from patrons involves an active step, just as it takes an active -- and costly -- step of purchasing pornography in print to make it available."Lady Chatterley's Lover" was once considered pornography, not just unsuitable for a library but illegal to sell in some countries a little more than half a century ago. Banning materials from the library because the majority of people find them distasteful is a dicey step. What might the majority find unsuitable next? Something that you want to read, perhaps? Yet all patrons to the library should be able to search for books and videos without patently offensive material shining across the room at them.
Whose rights matter more?
Thoughts from two LAT commenters:
Dan Kleinman, Library Watchdog at SafeLibraries
Bingo. And, as if to back up common sense, the US Supreme Court said public libraries are *not* open public fora where anything goes, and even noted privacy screens do not work. Read US v. ALA. http://laws.findlaw.com/us/539/194.html
James Bradford, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The problem here, which most people just can't seem to comprehend, is that if you ban one thing that's offensive you have to ban everything everyone thinks is offensive. Yes, we can all agree with common sense that it's gross and inappropriate to watch pornography in a public place, especially when there are children around. I would posture that it is also gross and inappropriate to watch graphically violent film clips in such a location, whether simulated or real like those "Faces of Death" movies. I would personally be far more horrified to walk by a computer and see an image of that than that of pornography. I would wager that a great number of people agree with me. So...should we ban that too?How about pages about the history of Satanism? Websites about homosexuality? A site that tells you in great detail how to make a home-made bomb? And so on, and so on...
It is simply not as easy as "Yes this is obvious and a no-brainer, ban it!" Once you put the foot down on one thing, it opens doors to other things, and THAT is why censorship is inherently bad.
Forget The Smart Phone; Bring A Smart Stenographer
If you're in Illinois, and you're recording the police (to monitor possible misconduct), don't be using your smart phone. No, you'd better hire a stenographer to follow you around at all times...on the off-chance that you encounter some police action that you feel like recording. That's because of Illinois' really disgusting "eavesdropping" law. Ryan Haggerty and Jason Meisner write for The Chicago Tribune:
Illinois is one of a handful of states in which it is illegal to record audio of public conversations without the permission of everyone involved and has one of the strictest eavesdropping laws in the country.In August ... Tiawanda Moore, 21, was acquitted of illegally recording two Chicago police internal affairs investigators whom she believed were trying to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment complaint against a patrol officer. One juror later told the Tribune that he and his fellow panelists considered the case "a waste of time."
The next month, a Crawford County judge ruled the law unconstitutional and dismissed eavesdropping charges against a man accused of recording police and court officials without their consent.
Yet, others -- like an artist selling his wares on the street -- are facing trial on the same felony charge: eavesdropping on a public official, which could garner him up to 15 years in prison. (The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule on the ACLU-filed fed suit challenging the law from 2010.)
More from the story:
Illinois' eavesdropping ban was extended in 1994 to include open and obvious audio recording, even if it takes place on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists and in a volume audible to the "unassisted human ear."Kutnick said the law makes no sense today, when so many people carry smartphones capable of shooting video and thousands of public and private surveillance cameras are stationed throughout the city.
"There's no place for it in today's sophisticated, technological society," he said. "Now the first thing anybody does (is) pull out the phone, pull out the recorder. Laws should track what's happening in the world, and this is a perfect example of where it is not keeping up."
Officials with the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago have said the union supports the law because it prevents people from making baseless accusations against officers by recording them and then releasing snippets that don't reveal the full context of the incident.
But Kutnick counters that people should have the right to record public police activity and that officers who perform their duties properly shouldn't mind the scrutiny.
It is absolutely vital that we have checks on public officials -- whether they're politicians or cops, and recording their on-the-job behavior is an absolutely vital one.
One Form Of Theft From Taxpayers Expiring
That's the ethanol subsidy -- expiring this year. From The Economist, from their Democracy In America blog, some really, really good news:
Three years ago, corn-ethanol subsidies appeared to be one of those common things in politics, an indefensible policy that was completely sacrosanct. It had, as many such policies do, a fiercely committed natural consistency, corn farmers, who enjoy a somewhat privileged political position due to their all-Americanness and the importance of the Iowa presidential caucuses. Corn ethanol is environmentally damaging; it puts more carbon emissions into the atmosphere over the course of its production and consumption cycle than it takes out, and it uses up cropland that would otherwise be producing food for human or animal consumption. But this point was generally too complicated for environmentalists to make to the general public. And while conservatives are usually theoretically opposed to subsidies, in practice they've either actively backed them for carbon fuel industries, or never done anything to stop them. It just seemed as though corn-ethanol subsidies were the kind of policy that wonks all agree is terrible but that continues forever because of political realities.Sometime in the past three years this all changed. The rise of the tea-party movement forced conservative politicians to take principled opposition to subsidies far more seriously. The budget-cutting frenzy in Washington made the subsidies a target. And the strange high-beta situation of Midwestern farmers, who are enjoying high corn prices and rising land prices while the rest of the country is seeing stagnant income and declining real-estate values, has muted their fervour for subsidies too. The speed with which this has happened puts me in mind of the country's startling attitude shift on gay marriage. I have absolutely no idea how things like this come to pass, and I don't think anyone could hope to predict them. But I think it serves as a somewhat hopeful close to a mostly horrible year to observe that in politics, solutions to problems often seem to be completely impossible, until all of a sudden they're not.
Don't miss this bit: "Corn ethanol is environmentally damaging; it puts more carbon emissions into the atmosphere over the course of its production and consumption cycle than it takes out..."
Subsidized by our tax dollars! Yes, that's right: We've been paying to pollute the environment. Lovely, huh?
That's politics.
And that needs to change. Think there's any chance of that?
Last Act Of 2011: Obama Signs Away More Civil Liberties
Obama signed the NDAA, allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens, blogs Jonathan Turley:
It was a symbolic moment to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country . . . and citizens partied only blissfully into the New Year.Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely.
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the President would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not "support our troops" by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the President. The "American way of life" is defined by our Constitution and specifically the Bill of Rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.
The almost complete failure of the mainstream media to cover this issue is shocking. Many reporters have bought into the spin of the Obama Administration as they did the spin over torture by the Bush Administration.
Republicans...Democrats...Democrats...Republicans. Six of one, half a dozen of the other; government is corrupt and we keep voting in people who continue the corruption.
The only way to stop that is to vote in people who are for small government and civil liberties -- instead of those with the best hair, or who bring in the best pork to their district.
(Sure, pork is out now...but check out all the lawmakers who were for pork long, long, long before they were against it [read: before it went out of style with more of the voters]).
More on Obama's awful record on civil liberties and attempts to excuse him for it at the link above.
Nobody's Fault But Everybody Else's
Personal responsibility is for other people!
And could there be any more passing the buck (to garner more some bucks in return) than this South Carolina woman suing a bar for her car accident that left her paralyzed?
Christina Ng writes for ABCNews that Chelsea Hess, 22, is not only suing the bar that served her alcohol as a minor (at age 20) but the SC Dept. of Transportation and an SC town and an SC county for not maintaining the shoulder of the road:
Hess was 20 years old on Aug. 8, 2009 when she went to Jock's Sports Grill in Beaumont, S.C. for a game of billiards, according to her lawsuit.She alleged that she ordered an alcoholic drink at the bar and was served without being asked for her identification. The legal drinking age in South Carolina is 21.
Hess accused the bar of several forms of negligence, including failure to "request and examine proof of identification," serving alcohol to minors, and "failing to ascertain whether Plaintiff was impaired by the consumption of alcoholic beverages at the time Plaintiff purchased the alcoholic beverage."
At about 1:05 a.m., Hess left the bar driving her own car and had a serious accident.
"The wheels of the motor vehicle Plaintiff was operating suddenly dropped off into a large unmaintained area on the shoulder of Alljoy Road, which caused Plaintiff to loose [sic] control of her vehicle and causing her to roll the vehicle over off the side of the road," the lawsuit said.
As a result, Hess "suffered serious, permanently debilitating injuries causing the plaintiff to be paraplegic." She blames the accident on the bar.
...Hess alleges that the Department of Transportation was negligent "in having actual knowledge of the defect in the subject road shoulder and in failing to remedy the defect which was a dangerous situation for the Plaintiff and other similarly situated persons."
On the bright side, she didn't run anybody else down -- though she could have added them to her suit for failing to leap out of her way, or something like that.
thanks, K.A.!
Got Adderall?
I am so, so lucky. I just got my generic Adderall prescription filled at probably one of the last three outlets in California to have any (just guessing on that, but probably not too far off base).
I got mine Sunday night in Baldwin Park, California -- but nearly died on the freeway on the way (almost picked off by a truck near the 710).
Freeway driving terrifies me and this was a harrowing trip in my tiny 2004 Honda Insight hybrid.
Worry about running out had me bolting awake at night and ate a good bit of my writing time (being upset, calling pharmacies, emailing my doctor, calling pharmacies, emailing my doctor, trying to get to the bottom of this with a little reporting...though less than I wanted, since my priority had to be getting my prescription filled and making up for lost writing time).
I had called Canada and had also looked into going on one of the buses of old ladies that goes to Mexico to get prescriptions. Generous friends and blog commenters called pharmacies for me -- and thank you for that.
(And no, you can't ship Schedule 2 narcotic prescriptions over state lines -- or the Canadian border, and yes, I did figure out that it would be more convenient to fax a prescription to the Kaiser in Sacramento, but the DEA doesn't allow that with Schedule 2 narcotics. You have to show your little ass up there with the prescription in triplicate).
On Sunday afternoon, immediately post radio show (with the AMAZING Dr. Helen), I made an annotatable PDF of all the Kaiser 24-hour pharmacies within a six-hour drive, and got on the phone and began calling those in the areas I perceived to be "untrendiest."
On the bright side, it would have taken me two or more harrowing hours each way to get to and from Baldwin Park on the average weekday afternoon at the time I left. Thanks to the holiday, it took me only that (harrowing) hour or so each way.
I suggest that anybody else who needs Adderall or the generic call pharmacies in the least "cool" areas, and maybe you'll get some, too. Hope so.
Oh, and from news reports, what I've pieced together from drug policy people, and reporters I've spoken to, this shortage occurred because the government -- scuse me, the NANNY STATE's Drug Enforcement Administration -- held off delivering amphetamine until December to the companies making the drug, and it takes them three months from the time they get it to produce it.
Yes, better that we should stop a college student who uses it without a prescription to get an A instead of a B (terrible, huh?!) than to allow people like me, with legit prescriptions to ameliorate the apparent dopamine issues cause by ADHD, to have the drug they need to turn their work from torture into sometimes hard work that they love.
P.S. I like Big, Meddling Government even less than I did last week and all the weeks that preceded it. That didn't seem possible.
Today, Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. Helen Smith On Men And Men's Issues, 1:30-2:30pm Pacific Time, 4:30-5:30 Eastern
Sunday's show is at a special time - correct time, 1:30-2:30 pm Pacific; 4:30-5:30 Eastern - with a podcast avail afterward at same link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/01/01/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
My guest this week is the insightful Dr. Helen Smith, a forensic psychologist who blogs at Dr. Helen. She has always greatly impressed me in the way she looks out for men's rights and routs out ridiculous political correctness that is actually quite damaging -- often to the very people it professes to protect. (She also has the most charming and sexy southern accent, so she's not only very smart and thoughtful, it sounds really great all the while.)
Here are more details, from her Wikipedia bio:
Helen Smith is a forensic psychologist in Knoxville, Tennessee who specializes in violent children and adults. She holds a PhD from the University of Tennessee and masters degrees from The New School for Social Research and the City University of New York. She has written The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill (Callisto Publishing, 2000; ISBN 0615112234) and was writer and executive producer of Six,[1] a documentary about the murder of a family in Tennessee by teens from Kentucky. The film highlights the inadequacies of the school, mental health and criminal justice systems in preventive treatment of troubled teens.Dr. Smith hosts a regular program on the website Pajamas Television where she discusses social issues and psychology, with a particular emphasis on the problems and experiences of men. She has written widely on issues relating to violence, mental health, and the criminal justice system.[2] Among her articles is "Violence on Campus: Practical Recommendations for Legal Educators," published in the Oklahoma City Law Review.[3] After the Jonesboro, Arkansas school shootings, she testified to the Arkansas State Legislature regarding responses to school violence.[4]
Since September 2005, she has been writing on her own blog, Dr. Helen.
(Call-in number during the show: 347-326-9761 -- NYC area code. Please call in with comments or to ask advice. Always more interesting with listener participation!)
Subscribe on iTunes by searching "Amy Alkon"
Listen to my last show, with happiness researcher Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of the terrific book, The How of Happiness, here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2011/12/26/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
You can leave questions in the comments section below for Dr. Helen and me to discuss on the show. They should just be related to men and love, dating, sex, and relationships.
Karma Goes Kafka
On Simple Justice, Scott H. Greenfield posts about a 16-year-old who had her car keyed, posted a comment on Facebook naming nobody in particular, "Oh, so you keyed my car. Your karma is going to be a whole lot worse than that," and got charged by the Pinellas County, Florida sheriff with stalking.
As @RadleyBalko put it on twitter:
Zero tolerance + anti-bullying backlash + Internet = Criminal charges for an innocuous Facebook post.
Scott writes:
The unholy consortium of knee-jerk liberal protectionism (no child's knee should ever be skinned) and staunch law and order conservatism (no paper cut should ever go unprosecuted) has resulted in a grocery clerk's wet dream. Radley's equation is painfully accurate, with the removal of all reason from our absolutist treatment of children.Do we absolve Allie because of free speech? Do we absolve her because there was no harm done? Do we absolve her because there is simply nothing criminal, not even wrong, about writing to another that karma will fix her wagon?
To call the arrest of Allie Scott crazy is to state the obvious. That both a school district and a sheriff's office would nonetheless indulge in such insanity is the piece that would make a good subject for Kafka. Our treatment of our children has to involve some greater degree of independent thought than reflected here, and yet neither schools nor law enforcement seem capable, or willing, to risk censure for failing to adhere to formulaic reactions.
It's quite possible that Allie's Facebook posting hurt another girl's feelings, though even that isn't necessarily clear or justifiable. These days, it seems any comment shy of "you're awesome" hurts someone's feelings. The teacups will no doubt inform me that I don't appreciate how horrible it is to feel badly about oneself, the latest craze in wallowing in victimization. If uttering the word "karma" is enough to set someone off, imagine the damage to self-esteem the old "sticks and stones" saw would do.
What's lost in the insanity of rule by rote is that there is real harm done, just not to the purported victims. Perhaps Allie Scott is the nastiest girl in Osceola High School. Perhaps she's up for valedictorian and a shoo-in for the Ivies. Who knows? Regardless, there is no justification for tainting a 16-year-old girl, for shutting one's eyes, putting on that smug administrative smile, and checking off the box that will impact the rest of her life.
For a society that uses 'for the children" as its rationalization of so many dubious initiatives, isn't it worth the five, maybe ten, minutes of thought necessary to recognize that the equation doesn't apply. Would it kill a school administrator to take the chance of some mother's reproach by saying, "no, she didn't do anything wrong"?
These are children. We care about them, all of them. If real harm is done, we need to deal with it, but we also need to be able to distinguish between actual harm and the mindless application of rules by grocery clerks. Spend the five minutes. Think about whether the conduct involved demands the application of the equation. Don't be the instrument of harm.
Here is the Florida law on stalking. Forgetting free speech for the moment (so many do these days), does this even seem to apply in the tiniest of ways?
FLORIDASection 784.048. STALKING; DEFINITIONS; PENALTIES. 1997.
(1) As used in this section, the term:
(a) "Harass" means to engage in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial emotional distress in such person and serves no legitimate purpose.
(b) "Course of conduct" means a pattern a conduct composed of series of acts over a period of time, however short, evidencing a continuity of purpose. Constitutionally protected activity is not included within the meaning of "course of conduct." Such constitutionally protected activity includes picketing or other organized protests.
(c) "Credible threat" means a threat made with the intent to cause the person who is the target of the threat to reasonably fear for his or her safety. The threat must be against the life of, or a threat to cause bodily injury to, a person.
(2) Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person commits the offense of stalking, a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.
(3) Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person, and makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear of death or bodily injury, commits the offense of aggravated stalking, a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(4) Any person who, after an injunction for protection against repeat violence pursuant to s. 784.046, or an injunction for protection against domestic violence pursuant to s. 741.30, or after any other court-imposed prohibition of conduct toward the subject person that person's property, knowingly, willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person commits the offense of aggravated stalking, a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(5) Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses a minor under 16 years of age commits the offense of aggravated stalking, a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, so. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(6) Any law enforcement officer may arrest, without a warrant, any person he or she has probable cause to believe has violated the provisions of this section.
Pew Research: Young People Today More Likely To Favor Socialism
Alexander Eichler writes for HuffPo:
The poll, published Wednesday, found that while Americans overall tend to oppose socialism by a strong margin -- 60 percent say they have a negative view of it, versus just 31 percent who say they have a positive view -- socialism has more fans than opponents among the 18-29 crowd. Forty-nine percent of people in that age bracket say they have a positive view of socialism; only 43 percent say they have a negative view.And while those numbers aren't very far apart, it's noteworthy that they were reversed just 20 months ago, when Pew conducted a similar poll. In that survey, published May 2010, 43 percent of people age 18-29 said they had a positive view of socialism, and 49 percent said their opinion was negative.
It's not clear why young people have evidently begun to change their thinking on socialism. In the past several years, the poor economy has had any number of effects on young adults -- keeping them at home with their parents, making it difficult for them to get jobs, and likely depressing their earning potential for years to come -- that might have dampened enthusiasm for the free market among this crowd.
Indeed, the Pew poll also found that just 46 percent of people age 18-29 have positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent have negative views -- making this the only age group where support for socialism outweighs support for capitalism.
Reason's Nick Gillespie interviews Kevin Williamson, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism
Why Ron Paul Matters
An excerpt of a few of the meaningful ways Paul breaks away from the pack, by Cato's Edward H. Crane in the WSJ:
Ron Paul's libertarian campaign has traction because so many Americans respond to his messages:• Tax and spending. If ever there were sound and fury signifying nothing, it has to be the recent "debate" over the budget. Covered by the media as though it was negotiations on the Treaty of Versailles, the wrestling match between Republicans and Democrats centered on the nearly trivial question of whether the $12 trillion increase in the national debt over the next decade should be reduced by 3% or 2%.
Mr. Paul would cut the federal budget by $1 trillion immediately. He can't do it, of course, but voters sense he really wants to. As Milton Friedman once explained, the true tax on the American people is the level of spending--the resources taken from the private sector and employed in the public sector. Whether financed from direct taxation, inflation or borrowing, spending is the burden.
...• Civil liberties. Libertarians often differ with conservatives over issues related to civil liberties. Mr. Paul's huge support among young people is due in large part to his fierce commitment to protecting the individual liberties guaranteed us in the Constitution. He would work to repeal significant parts of the so-called Patriot Act. Its many civil liberties transgressions include the issuance by the executive branch of National Security Letters (a form of administrative subpoena) without a court order, and the forbiddance of American citizens from mentioning that they have received one of these letters at the risk of jail.
The Bush and Obama administrations have claimed the right to incarcerate an American citizen on American soil, without charge, without access to an attorney, for an indefinite period.
President Obama even claims the right to kill American citizens on foreign soil, without due process of law, for suspected terrorist activities. Meanwhile, the Stop Online Piracy Act moving through the House is a clear effort by the federal government to censor the Internet. Mr. Paul stands up against all this, which should and does engender support from limited government advocates in the GOP.
No Dreary Old Ladies
Old New York broads with style:
And here's more on one of the ladies -- 90-year-old interior designer Iris Apfel. The redhead is Alice Carey, whose company restores historic buildings and structures. More on her here, from Ari Seth Cohen's blog. (He's one of the filmmakers this is a clip from -- the film "Advanced Style." Love the idea, love the ladies' spirit, and hope to be in a film like it when I'm a really old broad.)
More from 90-year-old Ilona Smithkin here. Her great quip about her age: "I can't buy green bananas anymore."
You go, girl!
via the very stylish Sergeant Heather
Spam Issues: We're Working On It
You all have been immensely patient about the number of righteous comments that have been going to spam, and pretty cheerful about emailing me to let me know when I have to rescue one (or 10), and I really appreciate that.
Today and yesterday, we have been working on new software ("we," as in, "my wonderful boyfriend, Gregg") to combat the spam problem, and hope to have this corrected soon.
FYI, for anyone who thinks it's personal, or about the contents of your comment, this is a free speech/asshole-friendly site. Assholes' comments give the rest of us something more to talk about, so unless you turn every comment into a referendum on your rectum as one guy did, it's really hard to get banned here.
If your comment gets eaten, it's because some clicking chunk of numbers thought "Ron Paul" was another way to say "Viagra," or something like that. Please just write me, put "spam comment" or something like that in your email header, and tell me the name you comment in so I can find it without raking through 16K spam comments.
