RSVPeeeee
Impolite but tempting way to respond to an unwanted wedding invitation: "Sorry, but I plan to be in a coma on the 27th."
Delayed Olympics Coverage, NBC? He'll Show You
IBD blogger Andrew Malcolm emailed me, "This guy is pissed off that NBC is giving us delayed Olympic sports. So he's Tweeting ancient sports news as if it's breaking on NBC. I can't stop laughing."
@NBCDelayed
BREAKING: Mark Spitz wins gold in 100m freestyle. #Olympics
Apparently, he's branched out. I particularly liked this one:
@NBCDelayed
Sources: "The British are coming, the British are coming" re: Colonists declaring independence.
Another good one:
@NBCDelayed
BREAKING: Roman Emperor Theodosius bans Olympic Games, NBC delay to catch up shortly. #394AD
When they aren't behind, they're ahead:
@bengreenman
How come NBC ran a promo for tomorrow's Today show story about Missy Franklin's gold medal just before they showed the race?
You Break It, You Pay For It (Oh - Except If You're The Government)
Without the permission of the semi truck owner, the DEA conducted a botched drug sting in which the driver was shot to death as they looked on.
The DEA has so far stuck the owner of the truck with the cost of the repairs after his insurance company denied his claim because the truck was used in a law-enforcement (is that what they're calling it?) operation.
From Chron.com, Dane Schiller writes:
The phone rang before sunrise. It woke Craig Patty, owner of a tiny North Texas trucking company, to vexing news about Truck 793 - a big red semi supposedly getting repairs in Houston."Your driver was shot in your truck," said the caller, a business colleague. "Your truck was loaded with marijuana. He was shot eight times while sitting in the cab. Do you know anything about your driver hauling marijuana?"
"What did you say?" Patty recalled asking. "Could you please repeat that?"
The truck, it turned out, had been everywhere but in the repair shop.
Commandeered by one of his drivers, who was secretly working with federal agents, the truck had been hauling marijuana from the border as part of an undercover operation. And without Patty's knowledge, the Drug Enforcement Administration was paying his driver, Lawrence Chapa, to use the truck to bust traffickers.
At least 17 hours before that early morning phone call, Chapa was shot dead in front of more than a dozen law enforcement officers - all of them taken by surprise by hijackers trying to steal the red Kenworth T600 truck and its load of pot.
In the confusion of the attack in northwest Harris County, compounded by officers in the operation not all knowing each other, a Houston policeman shot and wounded a Harris County sheriff's deputy.
Dumbshits.
Patty is demanding $133K for repairs and lost wages over the bullet-sprayed trucks and he's trying for $1.3 million more for himself and his family over fears of retaliation by the drug cartel -- according to the article.
In what universe is this sort of thing okay -- the government commandeering a man's property without his knowledge and then refusing to pay damages? I can't assess from the article whether he's actually in danger from some cartel, but there should be payment for what he lost having the truck out of commission and for the bullet holes and other damage.
via @walterolson
How To Get Your Kids To Do Their Chores
Via Fark.com, here.
Approve?
Disapprove?
Your methods?
The Fetus And Individual Rights
Wendy McElroy writes at dailyanarchist.com about how abortion rights are "logically required by libertarianism," and about why a fetus does not have individual rights:
The jurisdiction of each peaceful person over his or her body is what constitutes individual rights.To express this in less theoretical terms: everything beneath my skin is me. It is mine in the most basic and existential sense possible. If my body is not mine, then nothing else on earth can belong to me. If I cannot claim the blood coursing through my arteries, then I can have no property rights in a chair I fashion or a tomato I grow with my own labor. Why would I? Why would the extended products of my labor belong to me when the breath in my own lungs does not?
As a self-owner, I am the only one with jurisdiction over my own body. If a fetus is sustained by the food I eat and the pulsing of my blood, then I have a right to deny it sustenance and shelter. I have a right to abort that fetus. To give the fetus a 'right' to consume another person's bodily functions is to establish two rights claims over one body. The word that describes a system in which one man has property rights in another is slavery, and it is the antithesis of libertarianism.
...The assumption of a fetus with individual rights also takes for granted exactly what is in contention: does the fetus have such rights. This devolves to the question, "is the fetus an individual" because only by being an individual can the fetus claim human rights. It is undeniable that the fetus is in some sense alive and that it is a potential human being. A potential is not an actual, however; it is a hypothetical possibility. An essential characteristic of being an individual is being a discrete entity. Until the point of birth, however, the fetus is not a separate entity. As long as the fetus is physically within the woman's body and dependent upon her circulatory and respiratory system, it cannot claim individual rights because it is not an individual. At birth, the fetus is biologically autonomous and becomes a self-owner with full individual rights. Although it cannot survive without assistance, this does not affect those rights. The baby simply experiences the dependence of any helpless human being.
...There is one sense that responsibility is of consequence: moral responsibility. To the extent you value human life, you must also value the potential for human life. As a pregnancy progresses and the potential moves toward the actual, then the moral value of preserving the fetus increases. I share this moral stance and would argue vigorously with anyone who sought to end a late-term pregnancy. But I would not use force or the law to prevent any woman from controlling her body through abortion.
...The anti-abortion position is weak, riddled with internal contradictions, and dangerously wrong. It uses the word "rights" in a self-contradictory manner that denies the framework from which the concept derives meaning. Self-ownership begins with your skin. If you cannot clearly state, "Everything beneath my skin is me; this is the line past that no one crosses without my permission," then there is no foundation for individual rights or for libertarianism.
Milton Friedman: The Two Greatest Threats To Free Enterprise
Great stuff, posted for what would have been Milton Friedman's 100th birthday. Friedman talks about Freedom for me, not for thee-think, and who the purveyors of that are:
Stephen Moore writes at the WSJ:
In the 1960s, Friedman famously explained that "there's no such thing as a free lunch." If the government spends a dollar, that dollar has to come from producers and workers in the private economy. There is no magical "multiplier effect" by taking from productive Peter and giving to unproductive Paul. As obvious as that insight seems, it keeps being put to the test. Obamanomics may be the most expensive failed experiment in free-lunch economics in American history.Equally illogical is the superstition that government can create prosperity by having Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke print more dollars. In the very short term, Friedman proved, excess money fools people with an illusion of prosperity. But the market quickly catches on, and there is no boost in output, just higher prices.
...Friedman stood unfailingly and heroically with the little guy against the state. He used to marvel that the intellectual left, which claims to espouse "power to the people," so often cheers as states suppress individual rights.
While he questioned almost every statist orthodoxy, he fearlessly gored sacred cows of both political parties. He was the first scholar to sound the alarm on the rotten deal of Social Security for young workers--forced to pay into a system that will never give back as much as they could have accumulated on their own. He questioned the need for occupational licenses--which he lambasted as barriers to entry--for everything from driving a cab to passing the bar to be an attorney, or getting an M.D. to practice medicine.
...The issue he devoted most of his later years to was school choice for all parents, and his Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice is dedicated to that cause. He used to lament that "we allow the market, consumer choice and competition to work in nearly every industry except for the one that may matter most: education."
...I remember asking Milton, a year or so before his death, during one of our semiannual dinners in downtown San Francisco: What can we do to make America more prosperous? "Three things," he replied instantly. "Promote free trade, school choice for all children, and cut government spending."
How much should we cut? "As much as possible."
Top Deals On Things With Batteries Or Plugs
Also, 96% off Serif software downloads. Today's Deals In Electronics
My search window on Amy's Mall is broken -- just going straight to Amazon, no credit for me (thanks, Amazon!) -- but should be fixed eventually (have an email into Amazon about my previous email into Amazon).
So, here's a link to a working search window
Nightlight
Venice, California.
Why Do People Think Forcing Other People To Pay Licensing Fees To The Government Will Improve Their Behavior?
NYT letter to the editor from Grace Brophy:
If only there were a law requiring cyclists to be licensed!I'd buy one of those cameras referred to in the article so I could have evidence of the two to three times a day that I'm assaulted by cyclists on New York City streets.
Her letter was in response to this article, about cyclists' wearable cameras.
There are already traffic laws, and if cyclists disobey them, they can be stopped by a cop. Why grown adults think government involvement is some magical power that will make everything hunky-dory, I just don't understand.
Advice Goddess Radio, Get The Podcast: Dr. George A. Bonanno - An Uplifting, Science-Based Show On Grief
Very interesting show Sunday night -- clinical psychologist Dr. George A. Bonanno with a myth-busting, science-based and uplifting view of grief and bereavement.
(There's no evidence for the "Stages of Grief," for example, and "working through" grief may cause you to become depressed.)
Listen here or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Americans Stick Head Up Ass, Pull Out Letters, Name Babies
American baby names are getting worse, blogs Drew Magary at DeadSpin. For example:
BOYS• Adler
• Attyson
• Bastian
• Blayde
The extra Y in there makes it 10 percent sharper. And don't fuck with Blayde's brother, Nyfe.• Diesel
• Izander
"I'd like my son to sound like a shirt. Can you do that?"• Jaydien
That's right. JaydIen. Don't forget that I. That I is what sets young Jaydien apart from the mere Jaydens of the world. Now don't you people who named your kid Jayden feel behind the times? You bought the beta version of that name. It's like buying an iPad too early. Six years from now, the name will have morphed into Jayydizzosoian, and then you'll really feel like a sucker.• Sincere
• Sketch
If you name your child Sketch, you should be arrested. At that point, you're just basically looking around the delivery room, coming up with nouns as names. "Oh, fuck it. Call him Monitor."GIRLS
• Annyston
Joined by brother Schwymmir• Brook'Lynn The abuse of apostrophes in names has to end. A reasonable person should be able to know, by looking at a name, when one syllable ends and another begins. But no, dumbfucks all over the country have to be like "I'll name him Raw'Bert." You stop that. Give me some credit for being able to read even if you can't.
• Fallyn "I'd like my daughter to sound like a dystopian young adult novel, please."
• Harvest
You know what people will Harvest from your daughter? Her V-card.• Julissa
Classic hybrid name. It joins the likes of Emichelle, Eliza'Betty, and Jessikate.• Luxx
Why not add that third x and fulfill her destiny? That's what you want, right? You want little Luxx to grow up, move to the Valley and earn $60 a week getting jet spraykakke'd for a series of Brazzers short films, yes? There's no other reason to name your child Luxx.• Mahayla
• Midnight
• Sharpay
This is a character from High School Musical. It's also a breed of dog. Why stop there? Name your child Dobyrman.
Worst names you've encountered?
Obam-ney
Let's be honest: Tweets with the phrase "our next president" with Obama or Romney as the choice probably reflect party-centric mindlessness.
Actual sense in terms of who candidates are and what they stand for would have Gary Johnson as president.
(Sadly, Johnson should be put on the list for a charisma transplant.)
Why Did The Chicken Sandwich Cross The Road?
Why, why, why?
Advice Goddess Radio: A Little Earlier Tonight, 6-7pm PT, 9-10pm ET -- Dr. George A. Bonanno, For An Uplifting Show On Grief
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
My guest tonight on Advice Goddess Radio will be psychologist and grief expert Dr. George A. Bonanno -- for an actually uplifting show on which he'll smash all the widely held myths about grieving and bereavement.
For example, there's the myth -- unsupported by evidence -- that there are specific "stages of grief" that each person must go through. Another myth is the notion that one must do "grief work," or the grief will come back to bite them. Nope. Not supported by the evidence. In fact, most people seem to be resilient. It's the few who can't manage their grief who end up at grief counselors, in part, shaping the mythology of what it is to grieve.
Dr. Bonanno is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Chair of the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College. His fascinating, well-written, and compelling book is The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss
Here's the link to listen live or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/30/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's very popular show with psychologist Dr. Irene S. Levine on friendships and ending a friendship -- why to do it, when to do it, and the right way and the wrong way to do it; also, how to survive a breakup with your best friend or a close friend.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Her book is Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend
Related blog item here, "Ever Broken Up With A Close Friend? (Or had one break up with you?)"
Listen to all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
Obamacare Likely To Lead To Greater Doctor Shortage -- Except Where Free Market Still Prevails
The New York Times' Annie Lowrey and Robert Pear report serious doctor shortages now and to come -- not surprising since becoming a doctor in an increasingly socialized system seems like not a very good way to make a living (or pay back massive loans for med school).
But, surprise, surprise, there's no shortage of the doctors whose pay depends upon the free market -- plastic surgeons and dermatologists:
"We have a shortage of every kind of doctor, except for plastic surgeons and dermatologists," said Dr. G. Richard Olds, the dean of the new medical school at the University of California, Riverside, founded in part to address the region's doctor shortage. "We'll have a 5,000-physician shortage in 10 years, no matter what anybody does."Experts describe a doctor shortage as an "invisible problem." Patients still get care, but the process is often slow and difficult. In Riverside, it has left residents driving long distances to doctors, languishing on waiting lists, overusing emergency rooms and even forgoing care.
"It results in delayed care and higher levels of acuity," said Dustin Corcoran, the chief executive of the California Medical Association, which represents 35,000 physicians. People "access the health care system through the emergency department, rather than establishing a relationship with a primary care physician who might keep them from getting sicker."
A Manhattan friend of mine who's part of an elite liver transplant team at one of the country's top hospitals sometimes has to wake up at 3 a.m. when the liver arrives in the cooler and then work many hours. When it's a Medicaid patient, he makes $30 an hour. He told me this five or more years ago -- maybe the rate has gone up to $32 or $35 since then...or down to $25.
The point is...would you spend years and years slogging away in med school and in residency to make $30 an hour while paying Manhattan rent? It's really not what he signed on for. (And he's a great and kind guy, who isn't just hot for a dollar.)
The Prospect Of The Student Loan Piper Going Unpaid
Letter in the WSJ from Roger Spence, B.S., M.B.A. An excerpt:
Seventeen years after graduation, I made the final payment on my student loans. So it should come as no surprise that I was outraged at the administration's latest plan to attract young voters ("You Don't Owe That," Review & Outlook, July 24). No, not by building a robust economy to create jobs. Rather, by creating new ways for student borrowers to avoid repayment of their education loans.After the administration nationalized the student-loan program, an election-year effort to support repayment avoidance is hardly surprising. Despite a lingering bad economy and poor employment prospects, the administration must hope that a few young voters would be appreciative and vote accordingly.
Those of us who played by the rules care greatly about the costs involved, but also about the message the government is sending to our younger generations. We chose responsible majors, minimized expenses, endured some hardships, borrowed carefully and repaid our debts. We did so with no expectation that anyone, especially not our government, would step in to assume our personal obligations.
From the link above (in the letter excerpt) from an editorial in the WSJ:
The new report says that Congress should consider letting borrowers discharge their private student loans through bankruptcy. This would reverse a hard lesson learned during the 1970s. After a surge in former students declaring bankruptcy to avoid repaying their loans, Congress acted to protect lenders beginning in 1977. First it limited the ability of borrowers with government loans to use bankruptcy as a bailout ramp, and later the ban was applied to all student loans (with some exceptions for hardship cases).This reform also protected future borrowers. Credit miraculously becomes more available when lenders believe they might be repaid.
Yet as with so many other policies, the Obama Administration displays little interest in learning from the mistakes of the 1970s. If there's not a great outcry over letting borrowers stiff private lenders, eventually you can expect the roll-out of a similar policy for government loans. Most people with difficulty paying back private loans are also struggling with government loans.
While we don't doubt Mr. Obama's sincere impulse to redistribute money, the timing of this effort suggests it is one more election-year pander to the young voters who showed up for Mr. Obama in 2008 but may be less enthusiastic this time. Unemployment among Americans age 20-24 hit 13.7% in June, up from 13.3% in January. So first the President made a big deal over cutting student loan interest-rates to save a few bucks, and now he's telling young voters he's making it easier for them to avoid repaying at all.
Young voters may appreciate Mr. Obama's latest efforts to help them weather the Obama economy. But wouldn't it be easier merely to encourage job creation rather than try to anticipate and make taxpayers pay for every consequence of joblessness?
Book For Women Going Through Chemo
I haven't seen the photos within, just the cover, but this book -- Turning Heads: Portraits of Grace, Inspiration, and Possibilities
Here's the writeup from Amazon:
Hats and head scarves are nowhere to be seen in these portraits of women who have lost their hair during treatment for cancer. Each picture, taken by a well-known photographer, captures bald women too intent on work or play to be bashful about their looks among others, Melissa Etheridge belts out a Janis Joplin tune at the 2005 Grammys, a rodeo cowgirl poses with the cowboys, a surfer climbs a wave in Hawaii, and a nun scrutinizes her poker hand.A foreword and afterword by the author describe the genesis of the book, her own experience with cancer and hair loss, and the brave women who posed for pictures. Photo credits and profiles are provided for the photographers, who include Eddie Adams, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Reuben Cox, Rob Gauthier, Lauren Greenfield, David Hume Kennerly, Antonin Kratchovil, Harry Langdon, Gerd Ludwig, Jay Maisel, Catherine Opie, Harvey Stein, Nick Vedros, and Annie Wells.
Jools
Just for a couple more days, through July 31, savings on jewelry at Amazon: Shop Amazon Jewelry - Summer Clearance - Up to 80 off Jewelry
My search window on Amy's Mall is broken -- just going straight to Amazon, no credit for me (thanks, Amazon!) -- but should be fixed eventually (have an email into Amazon about my previous email into Amazon).
So, here's a link to a working search window
The "Secret Garden" Game Show
Door #583 for $1,000?
Kid Goes All Wild West (Side Of Detroit), Gets Wrongfully Arrested
Michigan being an "open-carry" state, and one that doesn't require ID when stopped by the police, it should have been no problem for Sean Combs to walk down the streets of Birmingham carrying the vintage rifle he got for his birthday.
The cops arrested him for refusing to produce ID to show he was 18, the legal age to carry a firearm. He was 18, and he apparently actually did produce his ID eventually.
The Observer & Eccentric's Jay M. Grossman reports:
In his testimony, Combs said he decided to walk around with the rifle to exercise his civil rights."I was just exercising my rights," he testified. "Freedom of expression, freedom of speech."
From CBS/am1270 Detroit:
So, what's next for Sean Combs, 18, who was acquitted of criminal charges for carrying a rifle through downtown Birmingham?His attorney Jim Makowski is considering a civil suit against the city of Birmingham, telling Charlie Langton Friday morning on Talk Radio 1270 "we're still looking at our options at this point."
"We tried to get the city to see reason on over a half-dozen occasions, we asked them to dismiss the case, we said 'We'll absorb out attorney fees, just dismiss the case.' The city chose to go forward anyway," Makowski said.
"I can tell you one thing, we offered to dismiss this case without any cost to the city of Birmingham on over six occasions, they chose not to. If there is a civil suit, I think people need to ask 'Why wasn't this case dismissed before trial?'"
Makowski said Combs had to pay attorney fees and had this case "hanging over his head" since April.
@mpetrie98
Now I Just Need A Reason To Fly To Malaysia
Hugo Martin writes for the LA Times:
AirAsia X, a long-haul carrier based in Malaysia, plans to become the second airline in the world to ban children from certain sections of the plane.Starting in February, Air Asia X will create a "quiet zone" in the first eight rows of the economy section of its fleet of A330 planes. The zone will have special ambient lighting, will ask passengers to keep noise to a minimum and will ban children under 12 years old.
...No U.S.-based airline has a child-free section, but a recent survey conducted by the website SeatGuru.com found that 40% of U.S. travelers said they would pay extra to sit in a designated "quiet" section of the plane.
"It will be interesting to see how effective the 'quiet zone' will be in living up to its name since it doesn't appear to be separated from the rest of the economy cabin," said Jami Counter, a senior director at SeatGuru.com. "A screaming baby could easily be seated right behind a business traveler in the last row of the 'quiet zone' section."
Attention Deficit Dis...Have You Seen My Dog's Cute Collar Thingie?
Working on a column about ADHD and relationships. Today, my own ADHD is leading to a poor relationship with my stove, which I've left on twice.
This morning, my house filled with this pretty filtered light and I realized that it was because something was about to catch fire.
(I'm sure my friend AK, who also has ADHD, can relate -- providing she isn't busy doing something like looking for her wallet in her freezer.)
How Colleges Fight Free Speech
Campus civil liberties defender TheFIRE.org's Greg Lukianoff on college "free speech zones" and other attempts to squash civil liberties on campus:
Pre-order Greg's upcoming book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
Fire's anti-free speech jerks of the month are the administrators at Indiana University, Southeast, for their speech code:
Persons wishing to express their opinions, distribute materials or assemble on campus in accordance with the state and federal constitution in relation to their right to free speech, must submit an Application to Schedule Facilities form. ... This Application should be submitted at least five (5) days prior to the event. Approval must be granted before an event can take place.
Samantha Harris writes at FIRE:
According to the plain language of this policy, students may only "express opinions" within the free speech zone. IUS almost certainly doesn't mean this--technically, if you want to tell your friend that you think it's hot outside, you have to go to the zone to do it--but it's an indicator of just how poorly written and unconstitutional this policy is. (FIRE is assuming here that IUS does not actually intend its classes to be a thought-and opinion-free zone.)But that's not all--not by a long shot. First, the notice-and-permit scheme is constitutionally impermissible. As the U.S. Supreme Court has stated, "It is offensive--not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society--that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so." Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of NY, Inc. v. Village of Stratton, 536 U.S. 150, 165-66 (2002).
While the policy does provide that the 5-day notice can be waived if "burdensome," the waiver is wholly "at the Director of Campus Life's discretion," with no criteria provided for approval. This kind of unfettered discretion is an invitation to arbitrary application or, worse yet, to viewpoint-based double standards. Moreover, even if the notice is waived, prior approval is still required for any "persons wishing to express their opinions" on IUS' campus.
...IUS' policy is strikingly similar to the University of Cincinnati's former free speech zone policy, which was just enjoined last month by a federal judge in Ohio. Like IUS, the University of Cincinnati limited all expressive activities to just one area of campus, and required a substantial amount of prior notice (anywhere from 5 to 15 days, depending on which policy you were reading) for speech even within that area. That policy was challenged in court this year by a student group wishing to collect signatures outside of the designated area for an Ohio ballot initiative. Although the university administration had vigorously defended the policy against FIRE's criticisms in 2008, the federal judge hearing the case found that the university's policy "violates the First Amendment and cannot stand."
...IUS' free speech zone policy is a serious infringement on the First Amendment rights that the university is legally and morally obligated to uphold. For this reason, it is our July 2012 Speech Code of the Month.
Hmmm, Could TSA Be Causing Air Travel Avoidance -- And A Leap In Traffic Deaths?
There's a report that US traffic deaths in the first three months of 2012 jumped 13.5 percent -- the highest number since 2008.
David Shepardson writes in the Detroit News:
The estimated increase is the second largest quarterly jump in traffic deaths since NHTSA began tracking deaths on a quarterly basis in 1975 -- and the biggest since 1979.NHTSA said the rate of traffic deaths per 100 million miles of vehicle travel increased substantially. For the first three months of 2012, the rate increased significantly to 1.10 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled, up from 0.98 fatalities per 100 million miles in the same period last year.
...The increase would end a steady decline in U.S. road deaths over the last seven years.
The reporter speculated that this was caused by the "very warm winter across the country," causing people to drive more.
But, hmm...could it have something to do with the fact that Americans don't want to have their Constitutional rights violated? Their sex parts fingered at the airport? And that maybe they don't want to stand in line two hours in advance of their plane for a pointless show of "security" that has yet, in its $60 billion-plus history, to catch much more than the likes of a veteran's rusty pocketknife, cupcakes in a jar, and a bunch of hidden weed?
via Lisa Simeone
Advice Goddess Free Swim
You post the links (one per post, please, so your comment won't go to spam), and speak your mind.
Will post stuff later Friday morning.
Walkie Talkie
Note to pedestrians on cell phones: If you are having a loud conversation on your cell phone and you stop and lean against somebody's fence -- a fence six feet from that person's little wooden cottage -- chances are, your conversation will become the soundtrack to their life.
Unless you are the next coming of Christopher Hitchens, and I'm guessing you aren't, this will probably be unwelcome.
Hint: It's a mobile phone.
Houses are...less mobile...except in outrageously strong winds.
I've Always Wanted A Pony
I had hoped Popehat might give me one. But, Gregg has come through. He reports about my pony, "You can ride Sandy for a penny at Meijer Thrifty Acres in Allen Park, Michigan."
How Tragic That Even Fedex Is Run Stupidly Now
As Fedex goes, so goes the nation? More on that at the bottom.
I got this message when I woke up and 5:10 am, and would have figured it to be spam but for reading the source code, which said it actually came from Fedex. Also arguing for it being real was use of my actual name and the actual last four digits of my account number. I wanted to make coffee, but I was worried somebody was using my Fedex number since the idiotic email didn't specify what the problem was.
Hello Amy AlkonYour FedEx shipping privileges for account number ending in XXXX have been suspended. Please login to FedEx Billing Online at http://www.fedex.com/us/account/fbo to schedule a payment today or update your credit card profile. Once you have successfully updated your account, your shipping privileges will be restored.
If you have already taken action, please disregard this notice.
Thank you,
Revenue Services
FedEx
I of course didn't click any links -- just worriedly opened a browser window, typed in Fedex.com and logged in...before even making coffee...and found that my account was indeed suspended, but that I didn't owe anything.
Ah, perhaps a credit card issue. My number changed recently, due to a charge for jewelry in Beijing when I was home on deadline. But, they'd never even had my credit card because I'd had the account for so long and simply paid bills when they came, on time, no problem.
I looked on the website for a place to insert my credit card number. And looked, and looked. Unclear. I've been on the Internet since the early 90s and I find things as a hobby (stolen cars, hit-and-run drivers, rude people trying to get away with it). I can usually make my way through even the worst laid-out website. But, Fedex.com being hard to figure out? Just sad.
I called 1800GOFEDEX and ended up talking to TWO people on the phone -- one in Calcutta or someplace and one in the USA, in billing. Neither one had a clue as to where to insert a credit card number on the site. The second offered to transfer me to tech support (each gave me a separate info-sucking). Not wanting to talk with a THIRD person before I had coffee, I did what I don't like to do and gave her my credit card over the phone, lamenting to her that even Fedex, which used to be a great company, is run stupidly now.
This seems to be a real pattern in American business. This country is going down the tubes so fast in so many ways -- in terms of how businesses are run, in terms of government overreach and overlegislation, and in terms of its citizens growing fat and lazy, and not just metaphorically.
NerdJoy: The Most Entertaining Grammar Podcast You'll Get Your Ears Around
The man who copyedits my column every week, David Yontz, has THE most entertaining podcast -- on grammar, believe it or not.
To tell you how fantastic and meticulous he is at correcting errors and calling out things that are unclear or don't quite make sense, I think of him as "SuperDave," because he seems to have X-ray vision for errors almost anybody else would miss. (I picture him tortured as he reads any document or newspaper, with the errors leaping out and pecking at him, because he sees the stuff almost nobody does.)
He also has a take on grammar and word use that is truly interesting -- he's interested in the why of everything, and lays it out in his podcast.
P.S. Regarding a pet peeve of Dave's that he lays out in the first podcast, I know when to use "if" versus "whether," but I break the rule on this with some frequency if it reads better -- especially if it's in dialogue. Dave's great about not being all fundy about my wanting to break the rules, usually weekly. I just love to know what's right before I decide to do the other thing, and he always tells me.
Here's the first of his podcasts.
And you can find all of them here, at alphabroadcast.com, with a new one every Thursday.
Believe me, I don't want any competition for earballs for my own radio show/podcast (be sure you listen to last week's on friendship with Dr. Irene S. Levine), but I had to recommend Dave's podcast because it's just so great.
Men In Texas To Be A Little Less Screwed
That's how it sounds, anyway. From KiiiTV3.com, Courtney Francisco writes (with very little clarity -- but there wasn't another story when I checked):
Men who have been paying child support for a child they believe is not theirs have 43 days to take their case to an attorney and get a court ordered paternity test.Texas lawmakers recently passed a bill helping men who have dealt with mistaken paternity.
It gives men who have known they may not be the father of a child for more than a year a window of time starting in May 2011 to end payments when he has been wrongly named the father.
That window of opportunity closes September first, and a new law will go into effect.
Attorneys say getting out of paying child support was once difficult for men after the court determined a man was the father of a child. Even with DNA evidence, attorneys say father could rarely win the argument.
However, since the new law, more than 100 cases have been heard in Jefferson County. 80 percent of those men were found not to be the child's father and no longer pay child support.
... With the May 2011 to September 2012 window, men who have known they may not be the father for more than a year can have the opportunity to do a court ordered paternity test. If they aren't the father, they can stop paying child support.
...When September comes, men will then have to go to court within one year of becoming aware of mistaken paternity.
...Oxford says the catch is, even if you aren't the father you can still end up paying for a child that's not yours if you aren't up to date on your child support.
"The theory is you were the father at the time the child support was accrued," said Oxford.
And how do they prove when a man started "believing" the child wasn't theirs?
I'll look for other stories on this in the morning. No help from the state of Texas. But, even if this story turns out to be bogus or somewhat bogus, I've posted it because it reflects the sort of thing that happens to men across the country.
via ifeminists
What's With The Big-City Mayors Who Haven't Heard Of The First Amendment?
If you put out anti-gay messages, and you're a business owner, you and my dollars will not meet. That said, I support fully your First Amendment right to speak your mind, and to not have a shred of rights denied you because of it.
Unfortunately, I'm just the unelected Advice Goddess. Chicago and Boston's elected top dudes -- Rahm Emanuel (in support of Alderman Joe Moreno) and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino -- want to block Chick-a-Fil from their cities over the owner's anti-gay attitudes.
Menino in the Boston Globe, in a story by Greg Turner, went all elected thug:
"If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult -- unless they open up their policies," he warned.
First Amendment scholar and UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote on Volokh.com:
Denying a private business permits because of such speech by its owner is a blatant First Amendment violation. Even when it comes to government contracting -- where the government is choosing how to spend government money -- the government generally may not discriminate based on the contractor's speech, see Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr (1996). It is even clearer that the government may not make decisions about how people will be allowed to use their own property based on the speaker's past speech.And this is so even if there is no statutory right to a particular kind of building permit (and I don't know what the rule is under Illinois law). Even if the government may deny permits to people based on various reasons, it may not deny permits to people based on their exercise of his First Amendment rights. It doesn't matter if the applicant expresses speech that doesn't share the government officials' values, or even the values of the majority of local citizens. It doesn't matter if the applicant's speech is seen as "disrespect[ful]" of certain groups. The First Amendment generally protects people's rights to express such views without worrying that the government will deny them business permits as a result. That's basic First Amendment law -- but Alderman Moreno, Mayor Menino, and, apparently, Mayor Emanuel (if his statement is quoted in context), seem to either not know or not care about the law.
As I wrote previously about Menino:
It is his right to organize pickets outside that restaurant. It is not his right to keep that restaurant out of his city.
TSA: Is The Real Mission Catching Terrorists Or Jailing You For That Doobie In Your Backpack?
Do people blow up trains with unsmoked joints? I was under the impression that it took some sort of explosive. Well, I must be wrong, because the TSA are, more and more, being sighted at locations outside the airport -- like at a Houston bus station, a Chicago train station, and now a train station in Oceanside, CA. Surely, this is only about keeping us, ahem, "safe":
via @mpetrie98
Why Did The Chicken Cross The Rhodesian?
And do you think these chicken crossing jokes are a human universal?
Ice-T On The Second Amendment
Somebody sent me a link to this video yesterday (sorry to not remember who and credit you -- deadline day is a whirlwind):
A New York Sun editorial gets into the nuances:
Ice-T ... on a television broadcast ... declared, "I'll give up my gun when everybody else does" and explained that owning guns is legal in America. "It's part of our Constitution," Ice-T said. "The right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police."No doubt what Ice-T was referring to is the debate in the 1st United States Congress, when the Bill of Rights was up for a vote. The most famous expression of what the Congress was thinking is in the statement of Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. Under discussion was a version of the Second Amendment that said: "A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state; the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no person, religiously scrupulous, shall be compelled to bear arms." Gerry said he took it that the amendment was "intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of government."
Gerry then expressed the apprehension that the clause "would give an opportunity to the people in power to destroy the constitution itself. They can declare who are those religiously scrupulous, and prevent them from bearing arms." In other words, what Gerry was worried about was the danger of the government denying people the right to bear arms. "What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty." Eventually the business about religious scruples was dropped from the Second Amendment, and the people were left free to keep and bear arms by a Congress that viewed the most likely threat to liberty as coming from government and the state.
Now, the "police" that Ice-T speaks of today are not the standing army that the Founders feared. And we wouldn't want to make the danger of the state the focus of the gun control debate today. We wouldn't want to make light of it. But we wouldn't want to make it the main focus. It is the genius of the Supreme Court's recent decisions on gun control that the motives of the First Congress in enacting the Second Amendment -- and the people in ratifying it -- did not dilute the grammar and plain meaning of the main clause of the amendment, which is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The Art Of Too Much Government
One of the pieces in late New York art dealer Ileana Sonnabend's collection was the Rauschenberg with the stuffed bald eagle. John Steele Gordon writes at CommentaryMagazine.com:
Under the terms of the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the 1918 Migratory Bird Act, it is a felony to "possess, sell, purchase, barter, transport, import or export any bald eagle -- alive or dead." The estate, advised by three experts, including one from Christie's, therefore, valued the work at zero. The IRS decided it was worth $65 million, and is demanding $29.2 million in taxes and $11 million in penalties because the heirs "inaccurately" stated its value.The trouble, of course, is that the heirs didn't inaccurately state its value. Anything that cannot, for whatever reason, be sold, is worth zero by economic definition. The value of anything is only what someone else is willing to pay for it. And to pay a dime for this particular artwork would be to commit a federal felony. To sell it for a dime would be to commit a federal felony.
via Overlawyered
Free Phone Frenzy -- Federal Lifeline Program Wildly Abused
The telephone Lifeline program is being abused like crazy. (That's the smell of your tax dollars burning -- from that little "Universal Service" charge at the bottom of your phone bill.)
Check out the girl with the purse jammed with BlackBerrys. You bought 'em for her:
The craziest was the bit in the video above about how 231,000 people in Maryland are thought to have these free cell phones. Well, free to them. Not free to the rest of us.
Congressman Tim Griffin posts on his site about his bill to yank Lifeline back to its original land-line provision:
My bill returns the Lifeline program back to its original structure by ending federal subsidies for free cell phone services. This growing government cell phone program is costing American consumers and taxpayers, and my bill puts an end to it.
Here's another video about the 1.25 BILLION-DOLLAR program: If you're like me, you're wondering which politicians' sweethearts these phone companies are.
The TSA And The First Amendment: They Don't Think Much Of That One, Either
The airport Constitution crumplers have their thuggish ways laid bare in a moving and important blog item by Philip Weber at TSANewsBlog, starting with Judge Rees' decision that John Brennan, who dropped his drawers and the rest of his clothes, was protected by the First Amendment right to free speech:
Brennan was doing one of the most decent things imaginable: he was protesting what he saw as an overreach by his government. He was having a "pen(is) is mightier than the sword" moment. He was enjoying that most quintessentially American of rights: the right to free expression.And that's what really torqued the TSA. Standing in line for their nudie scanner, Brennan mocked them. When they began to order him around, he pulled down his pants in protest. He could have flipped them the bird or called them jackbooted thugs. He could have impugned the purity of the screener's mother. But instead, John Brennan chose to stand quietly showing he had nothing to hide.
You can almost hear the screams of TSAnguish as Brennan gathered up his modesty, tossed it in a trash bin, and set it on fire rather than let them take it from him.
Let's set aside for a moment the question of whether the TSA violates your Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted search and seizure when it looks at you with its magic electro-depantsing machine. Instead consider that the TSA is no fan of the First Amendment either.
The TSA has been accused in the past of cautioning bloggers against writing negative stories about the agency, and they have admitted to keeping one of their harshest critics, Bruce Schneier, from testifying before Congress. They handcuffed and detained college student Aaron Tobey for passing through a checkpoint with the Fourth Amendment written on his chest (Tobey sued; his 4th Amendment claim was thrown out, but the judge allowed his claims on 1st Amendment and unlawful detention grounds to go forward).
At most, TSA agents should have said to John Brennan, "Okay, we get it, you think that current security procedures are overly invasive. We hear that a lot. Here's the phone number for your Congressman's office."
But they didn't.
They had him arrested.
Because they were angry.
Because John Brennan mocked them.
That's why it's too early to celebrate Brennan's acquittal. He was cleared of indecency charges in Multnomah County Circuit Court, but what has not been widely reported is that the TSA is still conducting its own federal investigation to determine if Brennan interfered with the screening process.
And can you guess who's conducting that investigation? Not an independent prosecutor. Not a court. Not a mediator. Not an impartial third party. The TSA will determine, in its sole discretion, if John Brennan wronged them.
A very important point at the end of the piece:
The Supreme Court has long held that Americans are free to travel anywhere they like, at least inside the country (places like Cuba are another matter). It is a right so fundamental, like eating and breathing, that it's not even included in the Constitution (though it was specifically enumerated in the Articles of Confederation). As recently as 2006, the 9th Circuit, which includes Brennan's home city of Portland, reiterated that right. What the 9th Circuit didn't say is that Americans have a right to fly, although 49 USC Section 40103 guarantees citizens the "public right of transit through navigable airspace."Did John Brennan win a Pyrrhic victory in court last week? Will the TSA try to deny him his fundamental right to travel -- and thereby his livelihood -- because he challenged them?
In some good news for rights-lovers, via Gateway Pundit, the Supreme Court told the EPA that it's not above the law in a case I blogged about here.
The Assumption That A Kid's Lemonade Stand Proceeds Should Go To Charity
I loved working for my dad as a kid, typing names and addresses on letters and typing an address on an envelope to go with each and making 10 cents per.
To some, this involves, not learning what I did -- how work leads to money and the value of a dime (or a dollar) -- but a disgusting example of kids sopping up filthy lucre.
Helaine Olen writes at Marketplace about some of those people and their attitude toward her son Jake's lemonade stand:
He earns anywhere between $20 and $35 for a few hours of work, and he puts the money toward everything from Chinese take-out to saving up for concert tickets.I'm proud of my budding entrepreneur. But some of Jake's patrons are dissatisfied -- and not with the quality of his lemonade. They want him to donate his sales proceeds to charity. Many ask what cause their money is going to as they pay their tab, and are shocked when they hear it's his own bank account.
"They argue with me," Jake says. "They keep asking me to give the money to charity."
Philanthropic lemonade stands are admirable, but they should not be the default for our kids' summer fun. Lemonade stands teach our children valuable lessons on how to run a small business, an activity as classically American as, well, the lemonade stand. To expect more than that seems as joyless and humorless as much else in modern parenting, where everything, it seems, needs to be for some greater goal.
Sally Taken For A Ride By Her Government -- As All Gay Citizens Are
From Libertarians Concerned:
First American woman in space, Sally Ride, has died from pancreatic cancer. She has been survived by her female partner of 27-years, Tam O'Shaughnessy, a childhood friend. It is sad times like this that the inability to marry for same-sex couples becomes apparent. Ms. O'Shaughnessy will find their estate will be taxed at rates well in excess to those which would exist for similarly situated straight couple. She is also not allowed to collect any of Ride's pension. Thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act the federal government is not allowed to recognize her as Ms. Ride's widow. According to federal law they were nothing but roommates. And Republicans are fighting to defend this.
In a related piece, Tara Siegel Bernard writes for The New York Times:
Michelle Muzingo was in the delivery room when her wife, Katrina, gave birth to each of their three children, who are now 7, 4 and 1. She cut their umbilical cords and was the first to hold the children, who call her "mommy."Yet because they live in Ohio, a state that does not allow gay couples to adopt, she is unable to make that title official.
"We are always scanning the circle around us to see what we need to put in place to protect ourselves," said Katrina, 37.
A report released earlier this week illustrates just how vulnerable these couples and their children are, both legally and financially. After all, 30 states do not have laws that allow same-sex parents to both adopt, while six states restrict them or impose outright bans.
...The Muzingos, who live in Brunswick Hills, Ohio, but married in Canada in 2005, know their children would be unable to collect Social Security death or disability benefits on Michelle's work record.
...They have to deal with smaller inconveniences, too. When the couple went to sign up their son Carter for kindergarten, they had to get a notarized letter stating that he lived in the family's home in the school district because the home was in Michelle's name only (Michelle, 42, said she was unable to easily add Katrina to the title at closing because their marriage wasn't recognized and Katrina wasn't on the mortgage).
Be sure you read both pages of the NYT piece. Bernard goes on to explain that children of gay parents can't always get health insurance through their breadwinning parent if that parent isn't their biological parent -- and that they deal with a host of other discriminatory practices.
Disgusting that we deny such basic rights and protections to gay citizens. Until they have full rights -- those allowed to heterosexuals -- they should pay only partial taxes. We lack something fundamental and fair as a country by not granting gays and lesbians equal rights and equal protections.
Paint By Numbers
Walter Williams writes at Lew Rockwell on the ridiculous notion that America is racist if, for example, the racial makeup of lawyers doesn't match the rational make up of the population:
For example, if blacks are 13 percent of the population, they should be 13 percent of college students and professors, corporate managers and government employees. Law professors, courts and social scientists have long held that gross statistical disparities are evidence of a pattern and practice of discrimination. Behind this vision is the stupid notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we'd be distributed proportionately by race across incomes, education, occupations and other outcomes. There's no evidence from anywhere on earth or any time in human history that shows that but for discrimination, there would be proportional representation and an absence of gross statistical disparities, by race, sex, height or any other human characteristic. Nonetheless, much of our thinking, legislation and public policy is based upon proportionality being the norm. Let's run a few gross disparities by you, and you decide whether they represent what the courts call a pattern and practice of discrimination and, if so, what corrective action you would propose.Jews are not even 1 percent of the world's population and only 3 percent of the U.S. population, but they are 20 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners and 39 percent of U.S. Nobel laureates. That's a gross statistical disparity, but are the Nobel committees discriminating against the rest of us? By the way, in the Weimar Republic, Jews were only 1 percent of the German population, but they were 10 percent of the country's doctors and dentists, 17 percent of its lawyers and a large percentage of its scientific community. Jews won 27 percent of Nobel Prizes won by Germans.
Nearly 80 percent of the players in the National Basketball Association in 2011 were black, and 17 percent were white, but if that disparity is disconcerting, Asians were only 1 percent. Compounding the racial disparity, the highest-paid NBA players are black.
...How does one explain these gross sports disparities? Might it be that the owners of these multibillion-dollar professional basketball, football and baseball teams are pro-black and that those of the NHL and major industries are racists?
Turning The Strangerhood Into The Neighborhood
I wrote that we need to treat strangers like neighbors in I See Rude People, but I'm going to put in a few ways people can actually do that in my next book (entertainingly, of course).
I'm looking for innovative ideas and personal experiences in creating community. Two ideas I really liked were a tool exchange and a neighborhood lending library (which we actually have in my neighborhood -- somebody has a bookshelf in front of their house. Take a book, leave a book, bring the book back after you're done).
Other examples include delivering little bags of Christmas cookies to the neighbors, having a block party, starting a neighborhood association. Got any more innovative ideas for me or have any great experiences to recount?
Holmes' Mother: ABC Mischaracterized Her Statement
Dylan Byers blogs at Politico:
Arlene Holmes, the mother of Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes, has suggested that ABC News mischaracterized her when it reported that her initial statement to the reporter, "you have the right person," was a reference to her son."This statement is to clarify a statement made by ABC media. I was awakened by a call from a reporter by ABC on July 20 about 5:45 in the morning. I did not know anything about a shooting in Aurora at that time," Holmes said in a statement this afternoon, read to the national press by attorney Lisa Damiani. "He asked if I was Arlene Holmes and if my son was James Holmes who lives in Aurora, Colorado. I answered yes, you have the right person. I was referring to myself."
"I asked him to tell me why he was calling and he told me about a shooting in Aurora," she continues. "He asked for a comment. I told him I could not comment because I did not know if the person he was talking about was my son, and I would need to find out."
In the first paragraph of its initial report on Friday, ABC News reported that it had identified the correct James Holmes because his mother "told ABC News her son was likely the alleged culprit, saying, 'You have the right person.'"
If Arlene Holmes' latest statement is true, it means that she did not tell ABC News her son was likely the alleged culprit, calling into question the reporting of a network that has already been marred by one inaccuracy.
ABC News is standing by its reporting. More about that at the above link. Even more here.
Nonthink Partisanship On Romney's Car Elevator
I'm not a Romney fan (nor an Obama fan), but I see tweets and blog items like this and wonder who disconnected people's thinking.
@DCdebbie Mitt Romney spent $55,000 for a car elevator but vetoed $40,000 towards an elevator for the disabled in Mass http://bit.ly/HcKqcl @4More
The guy's rich. He can light his money on fire if he wants and it's really nobody's business. Let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that politicians are like the rest of us. The Obamas had a private chef while living in Chicago. Any of you have a private chef? I know of one family that does -- a family that also has a private jet.
Also, I'm on deadline, so I was only able to do a cursory lookup (and couldn't find stories of this Woburn nursing home that was denied the funding), but, a question: Isn't just about every elevator (save for the itsy-bitsy ones you find in French apartment buildings) an elevator for the disabled?
Is There Anyone Who Believes This Wasn't TSA Power-tripping?
Lisa Simeone has a blog item on TSANewsBlog about a disabled elderly man who missed his flight after TSA thuggos detained him and wouldn't let his stepdaughter plug in his pacemaker. Quoting her (via a WHOtv piece by Aaron Brilbeck):
"When I tried to walk towards him they surrounded me and told me I couldn't touch him and I said I need . . . I told them like five times I needed to plug him in so that he didn't lose his battery life," Tonya Gahagan said, "and they adamantly said I could not."
Lisa writes:
And why couldn't she? Because those electrical outlets are special. They can be used only for screening purposes, not for, oh, say, saving a man's life.Just think of the possibilities: a whole cadre of elderly disabled people from Florida, like Meza, could be armed to the teeth and descend on a checkpoint en masse, all claiming that the batteries to their oxygen machines have run out. Why, if the TSA let them all plug their weaponized machines into the outlets, everything could go kaboom!
We can't allow that. Not in the Land of the Free.
Canadian Health Care: Cool City! Everybody Else Pays For My Baby!
Somebody sent me this piece on the supposed joys of the Canadian health care system and this bit, way down in the piece, made my blood boil. "Melissa @PermissionToLive" writes at rhrealitycheck.org
I also discovered that the Canadian government looked out for it's families in other ways. The country mandates one year of paid maternity leave, meaning a woman having a baby gets an entire year after the birth of her baby to recover and parent her new baby full-time, while still receiving 55% of her salary and their job back at the end of that year. Either parent can use the leave, so some split it, with one parent staying at home for 6 months and the other staying at home for 6 months. I could hardly believe my ears when I first heard it. In America, women routinely had to return to work after 6 weeks leave, many times unpaid.
Why should it be any business owner's obligation to pay for your decision to have a baby?
Then there's this:
Also every child in Canada gets a monthly cash tax benefit. The wealthier families can put theirs into a savings account to pay for college someday (which also costs far less money in Canada by the way), the not so wealthy can use theirs to buy that car seat or even groceries. In the province we lived in, we also received a monthly day care supplement check for every child under school age. I made more money being a stay at home mom in Canada than I do in the States working a close to a minimum wage job.
Newsflash: The money for that didn't grow on a money tree. You're stealing it, with the government's aid and blessing, from other citizens.
If a woman gets pregnant unexpectedly in America, she has to worry about how she will get her own prenatal care, medical care for her child, whether or not she will be able to keep her job and how she will pay for daycare for her child so she can continue to support her family.
Love "unexpectedly." There's a solution for this, for those who can't afford to support a child and don't have a partner to create a family to bring it up in: I.U.D.
How Trial Lawyers Killed The Red Plastic Gas Can
From the WSJ:
Blitz USA has controlled some 75% of the U.S. market for plastic gas cans, employing 117 people in that business, and had revenues of $60 million in 2011. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has never deemed Blitz's products unsafe.Then the trial attorneys hit on an idea with trial-lawyer logic: They could sue Blitz when someone poured gas on a fire (for instance, to rekindle the flame) and the can exploded, alleging that the explosion is the result of defects in the can's design as opposed to simple misuse of the product. Plaintiffs were burned, and in some cases people died.
Blitz's insurance company would estimate the cost of years of legal battles and more often than not settle the case, sometimes for millions of dollars. But the lawsuits started flooding in last year after a few big payouts. Blitz paid around $30 million to defend itself, a substantial sum for a small company. Of course, Blitz's product liability insurance costs spiked.
In June, Blitz filed for bankruptcy. All 117 employees will lose their jobs and the company--one of the town's biggest employers--will shutter its doors. Small business owners have been peppering the local chamber of commerce with questions about the secondary impact on their livelihoods.
...The Atlantic hurricane season started June 1, and Blitz estimates that demand for plastic gas cans rises 30% about then. If consumers can't find the familiar red plastic can, fuel will have to be carried around in heavy metal containers or ad-hoc in dangerous alternatives, such as coolers.
Why Did The Chicken Moss The Toad?
Bad feather day?
Planet Of The Bubbie
I was trolling Facebook on Saturday afternoon and spotted this shot. For a second there, I thought my late bubbie (grandma) had dyed her hair black and thrown on a picnic tablecloth. Actually, it turns out Carolyn Graham just went to a garage sale.
Photo by Carolyn Graham
Advice Goddess Radio: A Little Earlier Tonight, 6-7pm PT, 9-10pm ET -- Dr. Irene S. Levine On Friendships And Ending Friendships
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
My guest tonight on Advice Goddess Radio will be psychologist Dr. Irene S. Levine on friendships and ending a friendship -- why to do it, when to do it, and the right way and the wrong way to do it; also, how to survive a breakup with your best friend or a close friend.
Here's the link to listen live or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/23/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Her book is Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend
Related blog item here, "Ever Broken Up With A Close Friend? (Or had one break up with you?)"
And don't miss last week's very popular show with Dr. Donna Hicks on dignity -- how understanding dignity can improve your life, others lives, and your relationships:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Donna Hicks, Ph.D., is a psychologist and conflict resolution specialist from Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Her book, which I snapped up at the book sale table at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference in Albuquerque recently, is Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict
Listen to all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
Holmes' Gun Club Membership Rejected
Were there signs Aurora mass murderer James Holmes was a whack-job? Well, Nicholas Riccardi and Gillian Flaccus report for the AP that Glenn Rotkovich, a gun club owner, refused to let him join merely because he heard Holmes' answering message:
Rotkovich ... says "it was bizarre - guttural, freakish at best."Rotkovich left two other messages but eventually told his staff to watch for Holmes at the July 1 orientation and not to accept him into the club.
Surely, others saw signs. Surely.
Another Silly Bloombergism + Holmes' Mental Health: Somebody Had To Know
Politico's Kevin Robillard writes about New York Mayor and dietary nanny Bloomberg on the movie theater mass murder:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation's highest-profile supporters of gun control, said Friday that "soothing words are nice " but demanded that the presidential candidates "stand up and tell us what they're going to do about" preventing mass shootings.
I know! They could suggest going back in time and handing the mothers of these killers a diaphragm before they have sex and conceive their killer kids.
Of course, he's looking for words on gun control, but the obvious truth is, gun control will stop only the law-abiding from arming themselves. Mexico, with strong gun laws, is a case in point.
The people who likely had the best chance of stopping Holmes were those close to him. From a Daily Beast piece by Jamie Reno:
Holmes's mother told ABC News her son was likely the shooter. "You have the right person," she said. "I need to call the police ... I need to fly out to Colorado."
From ABC:
The woman, contacted at her home in San Diego, spoke briefly with ABC News and immediately expressed concern her son may be involved in the shooting death of at least 12 people overnight."You have the right person," she said, apparently speaking on gut instinct. "I need to call the police... I need to fly out to Colorado."
Now, it's possible there was not an inkling that this could happen in the minds of those who know them. It's also possible that the mother had heard from police beforehand and was responding in the way she did because of that. We'll surely learn more in the coming weeks and months. But, it seems unlikely to me that a person who could do something so completely horrific to other human beings would have shown no signs whatsoever of this.
Related: Cracks in Loughner's mental health were apparent.
TSA Too Busy Feeling Up Your Junk To Look At The Junk In Cargo
There's no power trip in examining cargo, so why bother?
Philip Weber blogs at TSANewsBlog:
In 2010 (nearly a decade after 9/11) a mandate to screen all cargo on passenger planes finally went into effect. The TSA had until the end of 2011 to get the job done. They missed that deadline. But a year and a half ago they promised that screening would be 100% by 2012. This month, in a report titled "Aviation Security: Actions Needed to Address Challenges and Potential Vulnerabilities Related to Securing Inbound Air Cargo" (Report No. GAO-12-632), the GAO said that the TSA is still failing to meet the mandate. Now TSA head John Pistole says he's pretty sure it can be done by 2013.So while the TSA is making a production of checking the coffee you bought inside the "sterile area" of the terminal, they really don't know if someone has loaded explosives into the cargo hold. Never mind the needles that were found in six sandwiches aboard U.S.-bound Delta planes, which the FBI is now investigating. Why go to all the trouble of building and hiding bombs, when other, simpler means of terrorizing people exist?
And get this:
For example, this week we learned from Government Security News that because of "significant holes in [TSA's] security and immigration checks," illegal aliens are taking flight training in Boston. You remember Boston, the place where most of the 9/11 hijackers boarded their planes?So while the TSA is looking for explosives in your pants, they're still pretty much letting anyone take flying lessons, including those on the "no fly" list.
Never mind that. We've got to take away that aging veteran's commemorative pocketknife. Not that he could bring down a plane with it. But, rules are rules are rules!
More on the security questions that aren't being asked here.
Gary Taubes: How The Government Makes You Fat
Reason.tv's Zach Weissmueller talks to investigative science journalist Gary Taubes:
Taubes' books: Good Calories, Bad Calories (all the references) and Why We Get Fat (an easier read).
See one of my readers who's read Taubes' work here.
A longer version of Taubes talking at OSU's University Wexner Med Center:
Cameras On Wheels: Cyclists Go Video To Arm Selves Against Drivers
From the NYT:
I've blogged the Berkeley one before.
Sensitivity Toward Ratings
My tweet from yesterday evening:
Unbelievable: CNN reporter asks a woman who lived through the movie theater shooting whether she has survivor's guilt.
Where Was God In All This, Idiot Texas Congressman Wonders
Imaginary, same as he is when a 4-year-old is raped and murdered.
There's no evidence there's a god, but since god is imaginary, it's no problem for Republican Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert to make like god was on vacation from the theater because we don't allow prayer in schools.
(Maybe god was insulted and snubbed the theater? Which would be in keeping with the kind of "Worship me or I'll smite you!" vindictive 13-year-old god's portrayed as in the Bible.)
Jennifer Bendery has Gohmert's remarks at the HuffPo:
"People say ... where was God in all of this?" Gohmert said. "We've threatened high school graduation participations, if they use God's name, they're going to be jailed ... I mean that kind of stuff. Where was God? What have we done with God? We don't want him around. I kind of like his protective hand being present."
What, per Gohmert, are we to conclude when a kid is raped and murdered? That god was off smoking pot with some friends? That god thought the kid deserved to suffer and die? That is what you have to conclude if you are among those who thinks god "protected" you if you live through something horrible.
She Brings Home The Bacon. He's Wearing The Apron.
There's a change in who's the earner in an increasing number of families, writes Susan Gregory Thomas in the WSJ:
I'm one of the 40% of American women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who are the breadwinners for their families--that is, we earn more than our husbands. Like millions of my sisters, this puts me smack in the middle of a distinctively modern dilemma: how to handle the tensions of a marriage between an alpha woman and a beta man.My husband, an antiques restorer whose field has all but evaporated as a result of the recession, does his best to help with chores and child care, while earning enough to pay utilities and car-insurance bills. I'm the one who works an octopus-armed 12- to 14-hour day, often seven days a week. When I finally come to bed, I'm depleted and vibrating with anxiety.
...Perhaps because men of this generation were raised in the wake of the women's movement, a culture that introduced values of equality, many of them don't seem to have a problem with their wives earning more than they do.
There's one caveat, though: The men want their own salaries alone to be enough, in theory, to float the family. When they can't meet this standard, they can feel enraged, shamed, explosive. And their wives often feel resentful and pressured.
"I don't think so much about gender roles, but I do feel angry and helpless because I can't financially support the family unit," says Greg McFadden, 39, an actor and stay-at-home dad, whose wife, Shannon Hummel, 38, serves as breadwinner (they have one child, age 6). She works as a teacher and as artistic director of a Brooklyn dance company. "I'm sick of reading these articles and daddy blogs, about how 'empowered' men are to be caretakers. Ask them how they feel about not earning a paycheck."
Does this describe your life? Does it work for you? For your partner? Would it work for you?
Brian Doherty On The Movies Shooter: "Tragedy Shouldn't Make Policy"
Brian Doherty writes at reason of the temptation to leap from tragedy into new legislation:
As CNN's Piers Morgan is leading the way (with Salman Rushdie following), there will be attempts to use the nightmarish event to plump for stricter laws, of some sort (often unspecified), to restrict people's ability to possess or carry weapons, since it was someone carrying a weapon that committed the crime.But turning the (still) very rare criminal and evil uses of guns to indiscriminately harm innocents into a reason for policy change doesn't work that well in America any more, and it shouldn't, and it likely won't now.
Doherty wrote previously, after the last American mass shooting -- by Jared Loughner of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords and those around her:
There is no consistent association between gun crimes and easy access to guns or the right to carry. Crimes such as Loughner's are so bizarre and rare that there is no sense in trying to craft laws aimed at preventing them. Despite constantly expanding gun ownership--the number of new firearms entering American possession averages around 4 million a year--and expanded rights to legally carry weapons, the last two decades have seen a 41 percent decline in violent crime rates. Since the 2004 expiration of the "assault weapon" ban, murder rates are down 15 percent. Many pundits have tried to explain Loughner's crimes by citing Arizona's "loose" gun laws, including the lack of permit requirement for concealed or open carry. It's true that Loughner exercised his right to carry without a permit, but he would doubtless have carried the gun even if he was violating the law doing so...
Sporty Stuff Cheaper
Sports & Outdoors Deals
My search window on Amy's Mall is broken -- just going straight to Amazon, no credit for me (thanks, Amazon!) -- but should be fixed eventually (have an email into Amazon about my previous email into Amazon).
So, here's a link to a working search window
Hey, Headline Writers: The Colorado Mass Murder Is Not A Cartoon
I wish news outlets would stop calling this the "Batman" shooting. Way to make a mass murder sound, at first blush, like a cartoon.
When I said that, somebody said, "When the suspect is dressed up like the joker, it's pretty hard to avoid the connection."
Believe me, I spend my writing day practicing self-restraint, and I'm not writing about mass murders. If I were writing this news story, I'd do what I could to not help him glorify what he did in any way.
The TSA Not Only Ignores The Constitution But Court Orders
Ari Ofsevit blogs at TSANewsBlog.com about the TSA ignoring the court order requiring public input on scanners (per the Administrative Procedures Act). The input is supposed to come before implementation, but never mind that:
The court (DC circuit appeals court) basically told the TSA, "We're fine with the use of these scanners, as long as you go through the proper channels to justify their use (which you should have done before you installed them, but since not using them would be disruptive, we'll allow their use)." This decision was handed down on July 15. 2011. The TSA was asked to act promptly a year ago. And it's done nothing.EPIC has filed several motions to compel the TSA to fulfill its duties under the APA. The first two motions, filed last year, were dismissed. But the most recent writ of mandamus (an order issued by a superior court to compel a lower court or a government officer to perform mandatory or purely ministerial duties correctly) goes to lengths to point out that the TSA has not been prompt in addressing this concern. The Lawfare Blog post points out that if the TSA just bit the bullet and held the appropriate forum for public input, it would probably be successful. The definition of "prompt" is not defined, but a court recently ruled that a 20-month delay is certainly not prompt; and we're now creeping up on that.
We'll have to wait and see what happens with this case. Public hearings on this technology would certainly be interesting. Perhaps there's a reason that the TSA doesn't want the details of the program coming to light. I doubt it's a question of cost; I can't imagine that holding a public comment period and publishing the results costs much more than a single naked scanning machine (each of which goes for a cool $170,000). Maybe the TSA is just lazy--a word more likely to describe the agency than "prompt."
Jim Harper at the Cato Institute started a petition at Whitehouse.gov demanding that the TSA begin the process the court ordered it to start. So far, the petition has garnered more than 13,000 signatures; a level of 25,000 is supposed to trigger a response from the White House. While neither of these avenues is likely to result in a wholesale removal of the scanners, they at least might get the TSA to explain why it needs them (at some airports and not others). It's been three-plus years since the TSA should have opened this to public comment, and more than a year since it was ordered to do so by a court. That's longer than any security line.
Please sign the petition and pass it along to others and ask them to sign.
You Can Boycott The Restaurant; You Don't Get To Ban Them From Boston
I'm an atheist and although I'm straight, I joke that I'm so pro gay rights, I should have a girlfriend. I'm also pro constitutional rights, and it is the right of the mayor of Boston to not patronize any restaurant with an owner whose anti-gay politics he disagrees with. It is his right to organize pickets outside that restaurant. It is not his right to keep that restaurant out of his city. As @WalterOlson tweeted:
No, Mayor Menino, in a free country you can't keep out a restaurant because you dislike its owner's politics
Greg Turner writes in the Boston Herald:
Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston -- possibly to a popular tourist spot just steps from the Freedom Trail -- after the family-owned firm's president suggested gay marriage is "inviting God's judgment on our nation.""Chick-fil-A doesn't belong in Boston. You can't have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We're an open city, we're a city that's at the forefront of inclusion," Menino told the Herald yesterday.
"That's the Freedom Trail. That's where it all started right here. And we're not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail."
Amazingly, the mayor of a major American city doesn't understand freedom. Freedom doesn't mean that you have the "freedom" to shut down whatever you disagree with; quite the contrary. It means you have the freedom to speak up against it.
How To Open A Lemonade Stand In New York City
Answer: Just kill yourself.
Stossel found out what it took and wrote about it at RealClearPolitics:
-- Register as sole proprietor with the County Clerk's Office (must be done in person)-- Apply to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number.
-- Complete 15-hr Food Protection Course!
-- After the course, register for an exam that takes 1 hour. You must score 70 percent to pass. (Sample question: "What toxins are associated with the puffer fish?") If you pass, allow three to five weeks for delivery of Food Protection Certificate.
-- Register for sales tax Certificate of Authority
-- Apply for a Temporary Food Service Establishment Permit. Must bring copies of the previous documents and completed forms to the Consumer Affairs Licensing Center.
Then, at least 21 days before opening your establishment, you must
arrange for an inspection with the Health Department's Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. It takes about three weeks to get your appointment. If you pass, you can set up a business once you:-- Buy a portable fire extinguisher from a company certified by the New York Fire Department and set up a contract for waste disposal.
-- We couldn't finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.
I sold lemonade anyway. I looked dumb hawking it with my giant fire extinguisher on the table.
...Politicians say, "We support entrepreneurs," but the bureaucrats make it hard. The Feds alone add 80,000 pages of new rules every year. Local governments add more. There are so many incomprehensible rules that even the bureaucrats can't tell you what's legal. In the name of public safety, politicians strangle opportunity.
Balko On Bain
A tweet:
"Haven't followed Bain closely, but if Romney did help send jobs overseas to people living in abject poverty, I dislike him a little less." --Radley Balko
Road Chicken It Why The Cross Did The?
Scrambled, thanks.
Gregg: "Gotta go, Love. My Ride's Here."
Just another Gregg Sutter day in So-Cal:
He Skypes me amusing photos all the time. I love them.
It's Bare-Ass Naked Protected Speech, You TSA Thugs
Can't really expect people who earn a living violating our Fourth Amendment rights to respect our First Amendment ones (let alone know what the First Amendment is -- or the Constitution is, in some cases)...
John Brennan, the patriotic man who stripped naked at the airport to protest the TSA's thuggery and rights violations was acquitted. As he should have been. From Yahoo/AP, Nigel Duara writes:
On April 17, Brennan arrived at the airport intending to take a business trip to San Jose, Calif. He works with groups in Silicon Valley and flies out of Portland International Airport about once a month.When he reached the gate, he declined to go through the airport's body scanners, instead choosing the alternative metal detector and body pat-down. After the pat-down, Transportation Security Administration officer Steven Van Gordon detected nitrates on the gloves he used to check Brennan.
"For me, time slowed down," Brennan said. "I thought about nitrates and I thought about the Oklahoma City bombing."
Brennan said before his trial that after months of angst every time he went through security, the nitrate detection was the final straw for him, a wordless accusation that he was a terrorist.
So he took off all his clothes.
A TSA agent stacked plastic crates high onto several carts and positioned them around Brennan. Port of Portland police arrested Brennan and took him to the Multnomah County Jail.
Brennan, 50, demanded a jury trial in early May, but was turned down.
Brennan insists he didn't come to the airport intending to protest. He had called the Port of Portland -- which operates the airport -- a year earlier to ask whether Oregon's rules involving nudity applied at the airport. Brennan said he was told that they did. Brennan said in court that he asked because he had considered nudity as an act of protest, but hadn't found cause to strip down.
The law says that naked people are only breaking the law if they're having sex in public or got undressed "with the intent of arousing the sexual desire" of another person.
Packin' 71-Year-Old Florida Man Shoots Would-Be Internet Cafe Robbers
Kat sent me this link. I can't embed the video but check it out here. The story from FoxNews:
Authorities in central Florida say two men were trying to rob an Internet cafe when a 71-year-old patron began shooting his own gun, wounding the suspects.Surveillance video shows two masked men entering the Palms Internet Cafe around 10 p.m. Friday. The Ocala Star-Banner reports one pointed a gun at customers while the other swung a baseball bat.
The video shows patron Samuel Williams pulling a handgun and shooting. He continues firing while the suspects fall over each other as they run out the door.
Nineteen-year-olds Duwayne Henderson and Davis Dawkins were later arrested and face attempted armed robbery with a firearm and criminal mischief charges. They were transported to Shands at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Dawkins had a superficial wound in his left arm, but Henderson was shot in two places: his left buttock and his right hip.
Your thoughts comparing/contrasting this to George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin?
Republicans Who Love Corporate Welfare
It's just silly to talk about Republicans as the party of small government.
As I've said, the Republican party is just the party of somewhat less ginormous government than the Democrats -- especially when they can direct government subsidies to the hands held out in their districts.
From the WSJ, here are some Republicans trying to yank funding toward their neighborhood Solyndras:
Some Republicans are teaming up with Democrats to save the subsidies for wind, solar, nuclear and advanced coal projects that are in their own backyards.Republicans Joe Barton and Michael Burgess of Texas and Phil Gingrey of Georgia have defended this politicized venture capital operation.
...The program began in the late, not-so-great days of the Bush Administration. Since March 2009, DOE has received $47 billion in loan guarantee authority, and three of the first five companies receiving guarantees have already gone belly up, including Abound Solar, Beacon Power and Solyndra.
Bloomberg reports that half the solar companies that have received loan guarantees have gone bankrupt. Renewable energy deserves every chance to compete in the open marketplace backed by private investors. But DOE's taxpayer bet on alternative energy is looking steadily worse over time, as abundant natural gas for electricity generation is making renewable energy less competitive even with subsidies.
Oh, and for those of you who want to believe in the notion of Democrats as "progressives," Obama has kept the drug war going and has been terrible for civil liberties and Bill Clinton signed the odious Defense Of Marriage Act -- or as I called it today, the Defense Of Discrimination Act.
The one thing both Democrats and Republicans have very much in common: Both sell out HARD.
The High Cost Of Discrimination
Via iFeminists, an ailing 83-year-old lesbian, Edith Schlain Windsor, wants the Supreme Court to review the ban on gay marriage (DOMA -- the "Defense Of Marriage Act," which should be called the Defense of Unequal Rights Act). Terry Baynes writes at Reuters:
The American Civil Liberties Union originally filed the suit in New York on behalf of Windsor, a former computer programmer who married Thea Clara Spyer in Toronto, Canada, in 2007. The two were engaged in 1967.Spyer died in 2009 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis, leaving her property to Windsor. Because the marriage was not recognized under federal law, Windsor had to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes, according to the suit.
Six states have legalized same-sex marriage since DOMA went into effect, including New York in 2011. But federal law and programs do not recognize those marriages because of DOMA.
Windsor's attorneys argue that the federal law violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits states from denying people equal protection under the laws.
If your church has something against marrying gays and lesbians, they can exclude them (creepy and awful, but that is their right). But, as long as we give government recognition to straight people who marry, our country has no business excluding gays and lesbians from marrying the consenting adult of their choice -- and certainly not because some people's religious beliefs demand that.
Why Did The Chicken Kiev Cross The Road?
And when's the last time anybody served Chicken Kiev? And was it somebody's bar mitzvah?
Today's Romantically Based Marriage Is Like Yesterday's Affair
Marriage, until very recently, was largely a business arrangement, not a love match. Maggie McNeill blogs at The Honest Courtesan:
Most people are confused about why modern marriages fail because they misunderstand what marriage really is in the first place. Once this is understood, it becomes obvious that the institution is alive and well; it has merely changed into a form most people fail to recognize. Contrary to what most modern people like to believe, marriage is and always has been primarily a socioeconomic arrangement; the most basic motivation for any woman is the acquisition and retention of security for herself and her children, and only after that basic need is met can she pursue any higher motivations. In the past, a woman married in order that she and her children would be provided for and protected, and love or sexual passion had little or nothing to do with these considerations. Historically, marriage was almost never for love; it was a social arrangement designed to ensure that women and children were protected and provided for. Men who could support and protect a larger number of women and children married more women and fathered more children, and the arrangement worked; the woman was guaranteed security for herself and her children, and the man was guaranteed as much sexual variety as he could afford. Women (or their parents) sought out whichever man they felt could best provide for them: They "married up" whenever possible. Men who were less able to provide got the less desirable women, and women who either could not or did not wish to marry still could gain male support via some form of whoring; only those with no prospects whatsoever and a psychological aversion to any form of harlotry attempted to subsist on the meager wages available to women through "honest" work.It must not be imagined, however, that love as we know it is a modern invention; it merely had nothing to do with marriage. A look at the love stories of ancient and medieval times (and even many modern ones), in which the female character was often married (or in modern "romantic comedies", at least claimed) and the male almost never was, supports this. In other words, once a woman's basic needs were met by marriage, she was then psychologically free to pursue her higher needs for love and intimacy, whether inside or outside of her marriage. In some societies this situation was more or less acknowledged or else actively ignored by the men; in others the woman had to go to considerable lengths to disguise the affair, with dire consequences if she was discovered. Even in societies like that of the Arabs, where the men in power took great pains to ensure the fidelity of their wives, the poor-but-interesting men were more than happy to assist those wives who wished to engage in extramarital liaisons, and because of the need for secrecy the husbands saved face. Even in situations like this everyone could profit: The husband got the social prominence deriving from a large family and access to as many women as he could afford; the wife got security from her husband and intimacy from either him or her lovers, as she desired; the children got security and an illustrious name, and the lover got the sexual favors of a woman to whom he would otherwise have been denied access.
...Like those extramarital relationships of the past, however, these "affairs" the "wives" of institutions have with human men are often short-lived and replaceable; lovers come and go, but the marriage endures. In other words, modern "marriages" are not the true successors to marriages of the past; they are instead the successors of what used to be called affairs, born of passion and the need for intimacy and usually transitory for that reason.
As I wrote in a column:
Romeo and Juliet were overprivileged freaks. Until 200 years ago, according to historian Stephanie Coontz, "the theme song for most weddings could have been 'What's Love Got to Do with It?'" Sure, sometimes love did follow, but for thousands of years, writes Coontz in Marriage, a History, people married for sensible reasons, like keeping peace between France and Spain. For commoners, matches were not typically made in heaven, but in three inches of manure: "My daddy's pigs and your daddy's cows forever!"Back in the 1550s, when it took two to do a lot more than tango, divorce was about as common as cell phones. In those days, putting food on the table meant chasing it, killing it, skinning it, then turning it on a spit over a fire, and there was a bit more to housework than despotting the water glasses and wiping down the microwave. Since the laboring class usually married in their late 20s, according to Lawrence Stone and other historians, and "growing old together" could mean making it to 40, a marriage might have lasted 10-15 years, at best. These days, with some gerontologists predicting that living to 120 will soon be the norm, if you pledge "til death do us part" at 25, you could be promising to spend 100 years together. (You might serve a similar amount of time if you murder several of your neighbors.)
Love isn't the answer, it's the problem. As Coontz observes, once people started marrying for love, they started getting divorced for lack of it. Nobody wants to ask whether it makes sense to tell another person you'll love them until you drop. Yes, it can happen. Everybody's got a story of that one couple, still madly in love at 89, and chasing each other around the canasta table. Guess what: They lucked out. You can't make yourself love somebody, or continue loving somebody after the love is gone; you can only make an effort to act lovingly toward them (and hope they don't find you too patronizing). Love is a feeling. It might come, it might go, it might stick around for a lifetime. It's possible to set the stage for it, but impossible to control -- which is why people in the market for durability should stop looking for love and start shopping for steel-belted radials.
Evil HR Lady: "Why My Child Will Be Your Child's Boss"
Switzerland-dwelling Evil HR Lady Suzanne Lucas has a piece of commentary up at CBSNews.com:
Saws. The kind you buy at the hardware store to cut wood. That's what the play-group teacher dumped on the ground for 3- and 4-year-old kids to play with. Knowing that doing this, in the U.S., would result in the teacher being, at minimum, fired and most likely charged with child endangerment, I had visions of emergency room trips and severed limbs dancing through my mind.But this happened not in the U.S. but in Switzerland, where they believe children are capable of handling saws at age 3 and where kindergarten teachers counsel parents to let their 4- and 5-year-olds walk to school alone. "Children have pride when they can walk by themselves," the head of the Münchenstein, Switzerland, Kindergartens said last week at a parents meeting, reminding those in attendance that after the first few weeks of school children should be walking with friends, not mom.
...The leadership at many American companies were raised in a similar way to the Swiss children in my neighborhood. Boys had pocket knives. Everyone rode bikes to school. Kids started babysitting other children at 11- or 12-years-old. Now? We coddle and protect and argue with teachers when our little darlings receive anything worse than an A on a paper.
The result? Well, the preliminary results from this method of parenting are hitting the workforce now. They are poor communicators who insist on using text-speak. Their mothers are calling employers. They believe they should be given rewards and promotions for the act of showing up to work on time.
If this trend in the U.S. continues, American children will become more crippled in their ability to make their own decisions (mom is always around), manage risk (at what age do you become magically able to use a saw?) or overcome a setback (you learn nothing when mom and dad sue the school district to get your grade changed).
By contrast, my son learns about risk management every week. He'll be in a school system that has no qualms about holding a child back if he doesn't understand the material. And "helicopter" parenting? Not tolerated by the schools or the other mothers at the playground.
So, while he's 4 and generally covered in dirt, I suspect he'll be more prepared for leadership when we move back to the U.S. than will children who have no freedom and responsibility and face no consequences.
Cutting The Bullshit On Circumcision
I was a little late to the dance on this one -- the prohibition on circumcision in Germany, a modern and ethical (and absolutely correct) decision. Iaian Brassington has a smart piece on this at the Journal of Medical Ethics, correctly criticizing, among other things, Frank Furedi's absolutely and disappointingly lame arguments on Spiked.com:
Take Angela Merkel for starters, who has come out against the ruling, citing the importance of the freedom to practise one's religion. Writing in Spiked, Frank Furedi made a similar claim. Such claims are, it seems to me, bogus. Allowing that there's a right to practise one's religion doesn't commit us to the idea that that's the only right. There're others. Appeals to a right to bodily integrity also seem fairly easy to make. At first glance, this means that we have to decide which of these rights is the more important if and when they are found to be incompatible. (Furedi spends a lot of time talking about parents' rights to bring up their child as they see fit, but the only time he mentions appeals to the rights of the child is to dismiss them as a mere cover for a more insidious attack on the parents: "they claim to be speaking up for the rights of the child and protecting infants from their parents. In reality, this is an attempt to neutralise the rights of parents by subjecting their behaviour to the exigencies of a child's consent..." That's the lot.)But this brings us up against a much thornier question, which is whether a there really is a right to practise those aspects of one's religion or culture (or things that are not central to, but are strongly associated with one's religion or culture) that infringe others' rights. Sometimes there might be: for example, we might think that churches have the right to ring bells for a few minutes every week, even though some people living nearby may prefer otherwise, just so long as it isn't for more than a few minutes. But there might not be such a right in other cases. People living within earshot of church bells presumably chose to live where they do (I'm assuming that the bells were there first; it's not so clear that there's a right to install new bells); and the violation of their rights is easily ended when the bells stop. People circumcised as small children don't get the choice, and if there's a violation of their rights, it's harder to end. It's unlikely that forbidding a person from circumcising his child makes it impossible to practise the other aspects of his religion or culture (any more than forbidding a peal of the bells prevents the service happening); neither does it prevent the child who would have been circumcised adopting fully that religion or culture at a later point. So it might be that forbidding circumcision forces a change in the way that a religion or culture is observed - but religions and cultures do change over time, and maybe this would be one of those times. (Jews and Christians are beginning to accept the idea of female clergy; it's a slow process, but it's a nice demonstration of how long-held and deeply-held traditions can alter. Not so long ago, the idea of a female bishop would have been unthinkable; now it isn't. Is it possible that, even if the idea of adult circumcision is widely unthinkable among certain groups now, it might not be forever?)
As it happens, I struggle to see how anyone could make a claim that he has a right to cut someone else. Insisting that it's an established tradition, mandated by a cultural or religious law and custom, won't cut the mustard either, simply because it's that law and custom that's under scrutiny. The question comes down to one of balancing a parent's desire to cut, with the son's right not to be cut, and - as far as the courts are concerned - a moral and jurisprudential question about whether we want to live in the kind of society that allows parents the right to cut their children, or that allows their children the right not to be cut without their desire. (Note that it's not even a matter of consent, since that still implies a situation in which the opening gambit of any conversation is "I would like to cut you: may I?")
Brian David Earp blogs at Practical Ethics:
I want to interject that a practice's having been performed for a long time is (obviously) no argument for its moral permissibility, especially when the discussion concerns the subjection of defenseless minors to irreversible genital surgery. I could cite some examples of other customs with a long historical pedigree but which have nevertheless been deemed barbaric by modern humans - but the point is too easy to make. In any case, as I stated before, there are whole communities of enlightened Jews who have come around to the view that the involuntary removal of sexually-sensitive tissue from non-consenting children is no part of any loving God's plan...."Culture" cannot justify the nonconsensual genital cutting of babies. Neither can religion. Even if I sincerely believed that the creator of the universe had commanded me to remove genital tissue from my son without his permission, I would have to decline on ethical grounds. "God told me to do it" is simply not an acceptable replacement for moral reasoning in the modern era. The German court ruled rightly.
BMJ via @briandavidearp
Why Did The Chicken Cross The Moat?
Why, indeed?
Ever Broken Up With A Close Friend?
Or had one break up with you?
How did you do it or how was it done to you?
About five years ago, I got dumped by a very close friend who just disappeared on me -- which is about the cruelest thing you can do.
A face-to-face conversation, on the other hand, is icky and humiliating; I think a note or email telling the person it's over, giving some explanation that doesn't make it personal (difference in politics, different approach to life, just not "clicking" anymore) is the most compassionate way to make the break.
I'm sending out a question for my column on this subject today, and I'll have a woman on my radio show this weekend who wrote a book about friendships breaking up.
There's a lot of focus on romance and romantic breakups, but not a lot of attention paid to the breakup of friendships, which can be very painful.
How Our Government Is Killing Americans' Business Prospects Abroad -- And At Home
Meet the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Ac. It's not a new tax -- it's a new reporting requirement for overseas financial accounts...backed by heavy fines. McGurn writes in the WSJ:
It requires foreign financial banks, investment houses, insurance companies, etc. to identify any Americans among their customers and turn over information about their accounts to the IRS (or to the local government, if that country has a sharing agreement with Uncle Sam).At the individual level, Americans are now required to report foreign accounts at thresholds beginning at $50,000. Failure to file, or filing incorrectly, means a heavy fine. Among the most wicked aspects of this legislation is that a taxpayer can rack up tens of thousands of dollars in fines even if he or she doesn't owe the IRS a dime in actual taxes.
...A woman emailing this reporter from Sweden says she's been shut out of a promising Information Technology partnership since the chief investor learned that having an American on board would mean opening the partnership's books to the IRS.
On this side of the Atlantic, Joe Green, chairman of Canada's Democrats Abroad, announces a website (ExpatStory.us) where Americans can post their horror stories anonymously. In testimony at IRS hearings on Fatca in April, Mr. Green cited another example of the price U.S. expats are paying: American executives with foreign companies who "are being refused a promotion because it puts the company in a vulnerable position."
Thus far, these and similar anecdotes have gained little public attention. Partly this is because the affected group--the roughly six million Americans living overseas--is much smaller than those who are directly affected by, say, the president's Affordable Care Act. For most Americans, the negative consequences of Fatca are highly abstract.
More on this at reason, by Matt Welch. He notes that FATCA is causing problems for a Swiss company creating jobs in Ohio:
Because of the populist, economically illiterate Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, Swiss citizens working in the United States at American-job-creators like Weatherford are being unceremoniously dumped by their banks back home. Imagine for a moment going to your ATM to pull out money, and seeing the message "account closed." I have talked to multiple Swiss expatriates and bankers alike who say that that's now commonplace.Why should we care about a bunch of goddamned fondue-eating Novartis executives? Switzerland was by several accounts the largest source of foreign direct investment into the United States in 2010 [PDF], and is consistently among the top foreign investors in the presumably Ohio-friendly field of manufacturing. The Swiss government estimates that Swiss companies employ a half-million Americans.
So we are now actively infuriating not only some of the roughly five million American expatriates who are seeing their bank accounts shuttered all over the globe, but also the very type of job-creating Swiss investors and executives to whom a prudent country might be a tad more welcoming. As this Congressional Research Service report [PDF] puts it, "Foreign direct investments are highly sought after by many state and local governments that are struggling to create additional jobs in their localities." Do tell.
More on this by Matt here, about the sort of person who has a Swiss bank account...or, soon, will have had one:
My wife used to work freelance for various Swiss media outlets, and we were happy to save on wire-transfer and exchange-rate costs by having the money deposited directly into a local bank. Just last week we stopped by the bank to pull out some walking-around money, and were told we would likely have to shut the account down because of FATCA. Only some sensitive negotiation stayed the execution, but who knows for how long; a Swiss banker friend told me later in the day that his company is simply pulling the plug on all U.S.-related business.
How To Steal A Car Without Going To Prison
William Grigg posts at RepublicMagazine about "asset forfeiture" -- a euphemism for "the government can find some trumped up reason to steal your stuff":
Here's how the institutionalized theft called "civil asset forfeiture" works in Washington, D.C.: If the police steal your car, you may eventually get it back - if you're willing to pay ransom for the privilege of letting a judge decide if the thieves get to keep it permanently.TheNewspaper.com reports that D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeremy Bank stopped Virginia resident Frederick Simms on May 29, 2011 for supposedly making an illegal right turn on Martin Luther King Boulevard. In keeping with the standard script, Banks [claimed] he smelled the aroma of marijuana. A search of the car revealed a handgun. Simms was arrested and his car impounded.
With the help of a public defender, the 22-year-old Simms was acquitted of all charges last December 7. However, the D.C. municipal government - which has one of the most flexible and abusive "civil asset forfeiture" statues in the American soyuz - retained possession of the 2007 Saturn Aura XE in the hope of permanently confiscating it through a forfeiture action.
Following his acquittal, Simms was told that he would have to pay a $1200 fee in order to file a court challenge against the seizure of his automobile. Spokesmen for the criminal clique that had stolen his car didn't bother to tell Simms that he could apply for a reduction or waiver of the "bond." After learning that this was possible, Simms attempted to apply for a waiver, and was told that he would have to get the application notarized and provide three years of tax returns. After doing so, Simms was informed that his waiver was denied, and the bond - essentially, a ransom demand for an amount he would lose if the thieves ratified their theft of his car - would be reduced to $800.
via @mpetrie98
Why Did The Chicken Salad Cross The Road?
The questions are endless.
Government Is Big And Dumb (Getting Around The Foie Gras Ban)
I love the eateries that are getting around California's ban on selling foie gras by "gifting" it to customers. From Chris Morran at Consumerist:
The list of clever end runs around California's recent ban on the sale of foie gras continues to grow. First it was the restaurant that claimed exemption from the law because it's in a national park. Now comes an eatery that says the ban doesn't stop a business from giving foie gras away to customers.The owner of Chez TJ in Mountain View, CA, says he hasn't bought any new foie gras since the ban went in to effect on July 1, but that he did stockpile it in advance of that date so that he could later include it as a bonus to the restaurant's $130 tasting menu.
"[T]he law says you cannot sell it," he tells CBS San Francisco. "It didn't say you could not serve it."
He says he will not buy any more foie gras to not sell to customers until after there is a clear decision on whether what he's doing is completely legal.
Regarding gavage, the force-feeding method used on the birds, the real problem is humans who anthropomorphize the ducks and geese. The truth is, they don't have a gag reflex like humans do, or chew their food -- which is why they can...gulpo!...swallow a fish whole, gills, scales, tail and all.
Think gavage is cruel -- or steak eating is evil? Don't eat foie gras or any steak not preceded by the word "tofu." But, don't legislate what others can and can't eat.
As I once told a vegan at an ev psych conference who asked me (while I had a meatball in my mouth), "Don't you care about the animals?"...
Me: "Not enough to not eat them!"
Crony Capitalism Struck Down By Cab Riders In D.C.
From the WSJ, Uber, a SF smart phone app that offers consumers easy access to private livery services on demand, had disrupted the D.C. taxi market by offering nicer rides at reasonable prices:
Washington has historically had a better taxi market than, say, New York City because it hasn't allowed a cartel of too few taxi licenses.But the taxi lobby is still powerful, and Uber's success sent the city council into a tizzy. Democratic Councilwoman Mary Cheh introduced an amendment that would have set the minimum fare for an Uber ride five times higher than that of taxis.
Then Uber fought back. On Monday CEO Travis Kalanick posted on the company's website that it was "hard for us to believe that an elected body would choose to keep prices of a transportation service artificially high," adding that Uber was "seriously concerned about punitive government intervention in a well functioning marketplace." He asked customers to sign a petition and contact city council members.
And contact they did. Within hours, inboxes were flooded with thousands of email complaints. Uber didn't post a form letter on its website, so all of the emails were personally composed by consumers. An #UberDCLove campaign erupted on Twitter. Ms. Cheh's office received hundreds of calls, according to a report from the DCist website.
So the city council did something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. It struck the Uber amendment from a larger taxi regulation bill and agreed to let the company continue to operate in Washington through December 31 without imposing new regulations.
Dispelling The Notion That Sharks Are The Cuddly Puppies Of The Sea
"Surfer dies in 5th deadly West Australia shark attack in less than a year."
Previously: "Idiot Parents Throw Their Daughter To The Sharks"
That's Not Your Phone; It's A Tracking Device That Makes Calls
Peter Maass and Megha Rajagopalan lay it out in the NYT:
Most doubts about the principal function of these devices were erased when it was recently disclosed that cellphone carriers responded 1.3 million times last year to law enforcement requests for call data. That's not even a complete count, because T-Mobile, one of the largest carriers, refused to reveal its numbers. It appears that millions of cellphone users have been swept up in government surveillance of their calls and where they made them from. Many police agencies don't obtain search warrants when requesting location data from carriers....The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ruling about the use of tracking devices by the police, noted that GPS data can reveal whether a person "is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups -- and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts." Even the most gregarious of sharers might not reveal all that on Facebook.
There is an even more fascinating and diabolical element to what can be done with location information. New research suggests that by cross-referencing your geographical data with that of your friends, it's possible to predict your future whereabouts with a much higher degree of accuracy.
This is what's known as predictive modeling, and it requires nothing more than your cellphone data.
If you want to avoid some surveillance, the best option is to use cash for prepaid cellphones that do not require identification. The phones transmit location information to the cell carrier and keep track of the numbers you call, but they are not connected to you by name. Destroy the phone or just drop it into a trash bin, and its data cannot be tied to you. These cellphones, known as burners, are the threads that connect privacy activists, Burmese dissidents and coke dealers.
...Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, has written extensively about these issues and believes we are confronted with two choices: "Don't have a cellphone or just accept that you're living in the Panopticon."
There is another option. People could call them trackers. It's a neutral term, because it covers positive activities -- monitoring appointments, bank balances, friends -- and problematic ones, like the government and advertisers watching us.
Magazines, Cheap, Through July 31
50% Off Select Magazines at Amazon
Annoyingly, they set them to auto-renew, but they give you the way to undo that from the start on the page with the magazines on sale (look to the right):
More About Auto-RenewalWith auto-renewal, we'll renew on your behalf so you'll never miss an issue. You can adjust your auto-renewal settings at any time by following these steps:
• After checkout, visit the Magazine Subscription Manager. (Link is live at Amazon.)
• Locate the magazine in your list of magazine orders.
• Click the "Turn off auto-renewal" button.
After turning off auto-renewal, you will continue to receive the magazine for the duration of the initial subscription term
My search window on Amy's Mall is broken -- just going straight to Amazon, no credit for me (thanks, Amazon!) -- but should be fixed soon (have an email into Amazon).
So, here's a link to a working search window
Hilarious: What Celebs Would Look Like If They Were Real People
Kamelia Angelova posts at Business Insider (with photos at the link):
What if the celebrities in today's tabloids never got famous and were just ordinary?What if they didn't have fancy stylists, trainers, make-up artists, hairdressers at their beck and call?
What if they just ate the way most of America eats rather than being on raw and organic-only, fat-free diets?
Planet Hiltron has brilliantly photoshopped what celebrities would like if they were just ordinary.
Third-Party Payer Is The Biggest Problem With Obamacare
Daniel J. Mitchell blogs that government-created third-party payer is the main problem with America's healthcare system -- and made that point well before Obamacare:
Simply stated, people won't be smart consumers and providers won't compete to keep costs low when the vast majority of expenses are paid for either by government programs or by insurance companies.That's why I want to see reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, not only to save money for taxpayers, but also because that's one of the steps that is needed if we want market forces to bring down the cost of healthcare.
Mitchell is also calling for a flat tax -- in part, because it gets rid of the IRS' healthcare exclusion, "ending the distortion that encourages over-insurance."
Mitchell links to this video on third-party payer from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation:
Note the bit on how market forces are at play in plastic surgery, since that's typically elective, and in Lasik, and how that keeps costs down.
Why Did The Chicken Cross The Roadkill?
Extreme fighting happens between some surprising pairs.
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Donna Hicks On Dignity
Advice Goddess Radio -- "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
My guest tonight on Advice Goddess Radio will be Dr. Donna Hicks on dignity -- how understanding dignity can improve your life, others lives, and your relationships.
Here's the link to listen live or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/16/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Donna Hicks, Ph.D., is a psychologist and conflict resolution specialist from Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Her book, which I snapped up at the book sale table at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference in Albuquerque recently, is Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict
And don't miss last week's very popular show with Dr. Barry Schwartz, on "Practical Wisdom," and how emotions, trained and modulated, are the key to being behaving wisely.
His compelling book (complete with some moving stories) is Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing
Download the podcast or listen at the link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/09/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Listen to all my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8pm Pacific, 10-11pm Eastern, with podcasts available afterward, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon.
Never Mind The Law: The NYC Cop Will Ticket You For Not Disobeying It
Vivian Yee writes at NYTimes.com of a law student, Andrew Rausa, and a few of his friends, who got ticketed for drinking in public when they didn't actually meet New York's definition of drinking in public. (They were drinking on a stoop, behind a wrought-iron gate. One of those ticketed was apparently drinking a soda in a plastic cup.)
Meanwhile, Mr. Rausa, who will enter his third year at Brooklyn Law School this fall, had pulled out his iPhone to study the New York administrative code, which defines a public place as one "to which the public or a substantial group of persons has access, including, but not limited to," a park, sidewalk or beach. Exceptions include drinking at a block party or "similar function for which a permit has been obtained" or places with liquor licenses.Holding his phone, Mr. Rausa approached the officer, who had returned to his car, and said that because he was sitting on a private stoop behind a gate, he was not breaking the law.
"I don't care what the law says, you're getting a summons," the officer said before rolling up his window, according to Mr. Rausa.
...Steven Banks, the chief lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, said that in Mr. Rausa's case the open-container law should not have extended to the stoop because it was private property. "This is representative of the kind of overpolicing that detracts from focusing on real serious problems," Mr. Banks said.
Hey, why run after a purse snatcher and break a sweat and all when you can just pass out tickets to a bunch of law-abiding people on a stoop?
Oh, and there's some dispute in the comments below the piece as to whether the stoop actually is private property, but commenter Mike from Italy has it right:
The point is not whether the stoop is private property, or not. The point is that the NYPD has so much time and money as to drive around neighborhoods looking for hyper-technical violations of petty statutes. Don't they have something else to do? Two cops and a car? What does that cost? I'm not sure it's possible to walk down the street in the US any more without breaking the law. We have gotten very far away from what this country is about. And the cops wonder why they are hated.
Intentional Sexual Frustration Or More Fun In Bed?
It's this sex fad some swear by called karezza. On ABCNews.com, some men are claiming that the best sex comes without, well, coming. Susan Donaldson James writes:
Matt Cook hasn't had an orgasm in seven months, and he hopes never to intentionally have one again.The 51-year-old publisher from Virginia isn't celibate. Happily married for 25 years, Cook said his sex life is more exciting than ever and giving up the goal-oriented climax has improved every aspect of his life.
Cook, the father of adult two sons, is a newcomer to karezza, a form of intercourse that emphasizes affection while staying far from the edge of orgasm. Climax is not the goal and ideally does not occur while making love.
"It creates a deep feeling in a relationship that is very difficult to describe -- much deeper than conventional sex," he said.
Cook is one of a growing number of men who have embraced karezza and have found it has helped heal their marriages, inject more spark into their sex lives and even shed porn addiction.
A recovering porn addict, Cook suffered from performance anxiety with girlfriends. Sex got better with his wife, but he didn't know how much until he discovered karezza.
"It kind of never ends," said Cook. "Why would I want to give that up for a 15-second orgasm?"
...A former corporate lawyer and now a devotee, Robinson argues that karezza's power is rooted in neuroscience.
"Orgasm really isn't in our genitals, but actually between our ears," she said.
In the "passion cycle of orgasm," the hormone dopamine rises in anticipation of sex, then crashes after orgasm, creating a biochemical "hangover," according to Robinson.
In men, that happens almost immediately after ejaculation; for women, it can be two weeks before the brain returns to homeostasis, according to Robinson.
"Karezza turned out to be an enjoyable way to tiptoe around biology's agenda," she said.
Overstimulation of the pleasure receptors can also desensitize the brain to pleasure or create a craving for more. When men are addicted to pornography or have frequent orgasms, "no amount of pleasure can satisfy," she said. "We are always looking for something novel."
But in karezza, lovemaking never finishes, so sexual energy continues to flow, helping to prevent boredom with a partner, say advocates.
Karezza also elicits the relaxation response and encourages the brain to release the "love" hormone ocytocin, which helps in bonding behavior.
The video:
Um...just wondering...aren't blue balls an issue?
Compute Yourself Some Savings
Savings at Amazon
My search window on Amy's Mall is broken -- just going straight to Amazon, no credit for me (thanks, Amazon!) -- but should be fixed soon (have an email into Amazon).
So, here's a link to a working search window
The Moral Case For Drone Warfare
Via Steven Pinker, Scott Shane writes in the NYT that "some moral philosophers, political scientists and weapons specialists believe armed, unmanned aircraft offer marked moral advantages over almost any other tool of warfare":
"I had ethical doubts and concerns when I started looking into this," said Bradley J. Strawser, a former Air Force officer and an assistant professor of philosophy at the Naval Postgraduate School. But after a concentrated study of remotely piloted vehicles, he said, he concluded that using them to go after terrorists not only was ethically permissible but also might be ethically obligatory, because of their advantages in identifying targets and striking with precision."You have to start by asking, as for any military action, is the cause just?" Mr. Strawser said. But for extremists who are indeed plotting violence against innocents, he said, "all the evidence we have so far suggests that drones do better at both identifying the terrorist and avoiding collateral damage than anything else we have."
Since drone operators can view a target for hours or days in advance of a strike, they can identify terrorists more accurately than ground troops or conventional pilots. They are able to time a strike when innocents are not nearby and can even divert a missile after firing if, say, a child wanders into range.
Clearly, those advantages have not always been used competently or humanely; like any other weapon, armed drones can be used recklessly or on the basis of flawed intelligence. If an operator targets the wrong house, innocents will die.
Moreover, any analysis of actual results from the Central Intelligence Agency's strikes in Pakistan, which has become the world's unwilling test ground for the new weapon, is hampered by secrecy and wildly varying casualty reports. But one rough comparison has found that even if the highest estimates of collateral deaths are accurate, the drones kill fewer civilians than other modes of warfare.
Why Did The Frog's Leg Cross The Road?
And who offed the frog?
How Scummy Insider Politics Saved California's Train To Nowhere
Allysia Finley writes in the WSJ about the California state legislature authorizing $4.7 billion in bonds last week to start construction on California's "high speed" train, godfathered by Dem Congressman Jim Costa. Costa wrote the legislation creating California's High-Speed Rail Authority, authored a $10 billion state bond initiative to fund it, and help plan the train's route.
Disgustingly, check out what amounts to a presidential earmark to Costa and another Democratic supporter of the president -- basically, crony socialism from The White House:
The rail authority promised voters that the train wouldn't require a subsidy and that the feds and private sector would pick up most of the $33 billion tab. Expecting a free ride, voters leapt on board and approved the initiative in November 2008. Not long afterward, the authority raised the price to $43 billion.Investors refused to plunk down money without a revenue guarantee--that is, a subsidy--from the state, which wasn't forthcoming. California's attorney general, whom we now call Gov. Jerry Brown, declined to investigate the bait-and-switch.
As soon as he took office, President Obama tried to help the state with $2.4 billion in stimulus money. A year and a half later--and two weeks before the 2010 midterm elections--the White House offered an additional $900 million, provided that the $3.3 billion sum be spent in the sparsely populated Central Valley. That is, in the congressional districts of Mr. Costa and fellow Blue Dog Democrat Dennis Cardoza, both of whom had provided critical votes for ObamaCare in March 2010 and were then in political peril.
The congressmen rode the subsidy train to re-election, flogging the 135,000 jobs that the construction would supposedly create in the Central Valley. To be sure, Mr. Costa denies trading his ObamaCare vote for high-speed rail money: "That's not something I do," he tells me. Besides, he says, the train "had already become unpopular by [the 2010 election]," so it couldn't have accounted for his victory.
...Next year taxpayers will have to start paying interest on the rail bonds--about $380 million annually for the next 30 years--assuming investors bite. That's nearly as much as the governor is proposing to cut from higher education if voters don't approve his millionaires' tax initiative in the fall.
This plundering of higher education should serve as a warning to voters who think that approving the millionaires' tax will somehow save them from one day becoming sacrificial lambs on the government's altar. Nothing is sacred.
WSJ commenter Richard Godfrey lays out the idiocy:
$380 million a year in interest? In virtually bankrupt California? Californians: Think of that $380 million as our police and fire departments are being decimated because there is no money; when libraries remain closed because there is no money; when public swimming pools stand dry in 100 degree heat because there is no money; when paramedics don't come to disasters because there is no money. There is a price to be paid for electing foolish politicians and Californians are paying it.
Over and over and over again, California voters are voting for fiscal state suicide. It's tragic and disgusting.
From The TSA Rumor Mill: Big Brother May Soon Be Able To Scan And Read Your Every Molecule
Got a tip Friday night about a creepy new scanner. Lisa Vaas writes at Naked Security:
Possibly as early as 2013, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be able to beam a laser at us from 164 feet (50 meters) away, analyzing the molecules of our bodies, our clothes, our luggage, whatever meal we're digesting inside our guts, whatever gun powder residue might have clung to terrorists, whatever drugs are floating around in our urine or glommed onto the soles of our shoes, and how nervous we might be according to our adrenaline levels, all without patdowns or having to touch us at all, without us even knowing it's happening.The news comes from a researcher who chooses to remain anonymous.
He's currently completing his PhD in renewable energy solutions and published the news of this impending death of privacy on Gizmodo.
...The anonymous researcher writes that DHS plans to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings across the US.
The "official, stated goal" is to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance, he writes, and will likely be used to scan absolutely anybody and everybody:
The machine is ten million times faster--and one million times more sensitive--than any currently available system. That means that it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people.
The problem is, technology is being put in place faster than we can come up with privacy safeguards to deal with it.
Commenter EchoVector on Naked Security gets it right:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.Sigh. The zombies, brainwashed and the sheeple have given away damn near everything that millions on millions of brave men and women fought and died to save and protect.
What a damned waste.
Whistleblower: TSA Deliberately Hiring Psychopaths, Criminals
Via Unix-Jedi, the TSA is expanding their thuggish reach -- going beyond checkpoints to search people entering the airport picking up passengers. (They apparently searched a woman's diaper bag -- a woman with two little children with her. Did they really think she was a terrorist with a bomb in her bag?)
A man came on Alex Jones' show and said he was with the TSA and told a little about the guys he alleges they're hiring -- that they're purposely hiring psychopaths. He remained anonymous, so there's no way to check out all of his claims.
There's a program in Rhode Island to take non-violent prisoners and put them into the system as TSA workers checking people, he claimed.
And he contends that they are made to hire the sociopaths and those with criminal records. Violent criminal records. Power-mad assholes. "We put them on the floor the first day," he contends.
Paul Joseph Watson writes at InfoWars:
Explaining how his job involved filing reports on other TSA screeners who didn't follow procedure, "Rob" expressed his alarm at the fact that criminals were being hired who exhibited the behavior of "psycopaths.""We have a program in the state of Rhode Island where we take prisoners who are out for non violent drug offenses and everything else - basically sociopaths - and we're sending them to a ten day course and getting them out in uniform out checking people," said the whistleblower.
Rob added that people who seemed professional were disregarded in favor of applicants who had criminal records and displayed a tendency for megalomania and power trip behavior.
"If they have a background and it's something like violence or abusing authority we put them right in, we put them guys on the floor first day," said Rob, adding he was also encouraged to hire Iraq war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
"It's all about the power trip, it's all about having people bug their eyes out at the public and getting the public conditioned to the fact that the police state is coming," he added, noting how TSA screeners were directed to stick their chests out and "eyeball people."
As a recent report by Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn highlighted, the fact that TSA agents are so routinely caught engaged in criminal behavior is by no means an aberration but stems "from TSA's hiring practices and insufficient use of background checks."
This includes the TSA's recruitment policy which, instead of representing an "intelligent risk-based organization," actually fails to conduct criminal and credit background checks on many of its employees while advertising "for employment at the Washington Reagan National Airport on pizza boxes and on advertisements above pumps at discount gas stations in the D.C. area."
The video:
Why Did The Chicken Leg Cross The Road?
And, while you're at it, how?
TSA Denies Deaf Man's Claims
Mike Riggs blogs at reason, "TSA Denies Deaf Man's Stolen Candy Claim; Deaf Man Disappears From Internet":
The Transporation Security Administration claims that security camera footage from the Louisville airport refutes claims made by a deaf man that he was mocked and made to give up candy in his bag while flying out of Louisville after a National Association of the Deaf conference.
From the TSA's odious Blogger Bob:
After a review of the video, TSA found no footage that matches the information in the blog post, such as Officers removing food during any bag search and eating it, or anything to indicate that they were pointing at and ridiculing a passenger.In general, candy is not a prohibited item, and would only warrant additional screening if it alarmed. TSA does not donate surrendered food and drink items for health and safety reasons.
Weigh In: Do Men And Women Decorate Their Desks And Cubicles Differently?
And if so, how?
When you work in an office where other people see your workspace, how you decorate -- and whether you decorate -- says a lot about who you are. Sometimes these are messages you're putting out intentionally; sometimes, they're subconscious.
So...those of you who aren't freelancers working at home...what do you have decorating your work space? (Let us know whether you're a man or woman and why you decorated as you did -- if you decorated.)
And especially, I'd like to know whether people have framed pictures of their significant other in their workspace, and whether those who do are men or women. (I'm wondering if there's any kind of male/female divide in whether people put out photos.)
UPDATE: Well, it seems only fair that I show you my office from when I worked at a company (Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, where I worked as an assistant producer and then a producer, right out of college). I just remembered that I had a Polaroid of it from back in the day.
As you can see, I forgot to be the kind of person who has only a single, beautiful pen and the tiny zen sandbox on her desk. Oh, and P.S. That's a young Seth Green coloring at my desk. 
Search My Car Without Probable Cause? "No, Thank You!"
I love this guy. Melody sent me the link to this video by and of Steven L. Anderson, driving on a California highway, who videotaped his multiple stops without probable cause and stood up to the uniformed thugs at every one of them:
These unwarranted searches happen, at least in some part, because of all of you who don't squeal, complain, and stand up at TSA checkpoints, who aren't absolutely outraged at being stopped and searched sans probable cause.
Know your rights -- and demand them!
More on your rights here:
One of the secrets that police officers use or a tactic they employ is to get the citizen to consent to police searches without warrants. The U.S. Supreme Court in all jurisdictions allows police officers to conduct a search if the citizen consents to the search. So this is how the scenario will play out. You will either be approached by a police officer, or as a result of a traffic stop the law enforcement officer will come up to your window and say, "you don't have a problem if I look in your car do you?" This is a question, not a statement. In most circumstances if a police officer asks you, "do you have a problem if I look in your car?" most citizens believe that you do not have a choice to say no and that you must allow the police officer to search. If you do allow the search then any contraband, any items that are illegal, or anything found against you in that search that can be used in a criminal charge will be immiscible, because you consented to that search.Most citizens do not realize that they have the option to say no. If law enforcement officers ask to search your vehicle without probable cause, exigent circumstances, or without a search warrant, you as a citizen can say no. If you say no and refuse consent to search, and they search anyway, at a criminal hearing your lawyer can file a motion suppress indicating to the court there was not a lawful basis for the search. So when law enforcement asks the question, "you don't have a problem if..." or "you don't mind if we..." remember these are questions not a statement. You as a citizen under the U.S. Constitution 4th amendment, have the ability not to consent to a search and to say no.
Another secret or tactic a law enforcement officer will use is at your home. They will come to your home in what routinely is called a knock and talk. Meaning they will come to your home or residents and they will knock on your door. They will either be in their uniform or present identification to identify themselves as law enforcement. They will say, "do you mind if we come in and talk with you?" This is a question. They are asking for your consent to come into your home and talk to you about any suspected criminal activity of you, your roommates, or people who have been in your home. You have the legal right to refuse their entry into your home, unless they have probable cause, exigent circumstances, or a search warrant. If you allow law enforcement into your home, you have consented to that search. While the officers are in your home, if they observe any contraband, such as cocaine on a table, that then allows them to conduct a search and perhaps an arrest. So secrets or tactics police use to get around not having probable cause, exigent circumstances, or a search warrant is the officer conveying to you a question. That question may seem to you as a statement, but it is a question asking your consent to search; whether it is yourself, your purse, your vehicle, or your home. You as a U.S. citizen have the ability to decline that invitation. If you do not consent to that search, they will be required to have other legal requirements in place in order to justify they immiscibility of that evidence at a criminal trial down the road.
So remember you have the ability to say no to the consent of the search. If you say no, that may prohibit law enforcement from conducting the search and may prevent your criminal arrest.
Sergeant Heather has told me in the past that people should never allow police officers into their home and that it's good to put up a sign outside your home to reinforce that -- "No trespassing, no soliciting, beware of dog." (Note that you don't need a dog or one anyone actually needs to beware of to put up the last one.)
Please share this video and the information about our rights far and wide.
The Dog-Eat-Dog Welfare State
It's lose-lose, write Yaron Brook and Don Watkins at Forbes.com, saying it's time we questioned the welfare state:
John Maynard Keynes--not exactly history's greatest opponent of government spending--is reported to have said he would be worried if government outlays ever surpassed 25 percent of GDP. Well, in recent years both American and British government expenditures have hovered around 40 percent of GDP. The bulk of that spending, perhaps as much as 70 percent in Britain, goes to feed the ravenous welfare state....We don't have capitalism anymore--not in Britain, not in the rest of Europe, not in the United States. What we have instead are massive welfare states. And if the false charge against capitalism is that it allows "the strong" to exploit "the weak," then the true nature of the welfare state is that it allows "the weak"--i.e., the unproductive--to exploit "the strong"--i.e., the productive.
And exploiting they are. The Davey family, for instance, made headlines in 2010 for receiving £42,000 in state-provided benefits while driving a Mercedes, enjoying cutting-edge electronics, and continuing to have children (at the time of the story they had seven with another on the way). Mrs. Davey had never worked, and Mr. Davey had quit his job after he figured out he could do better by living on the dole. "I don't feel bad about being subsidized by people who are working," Mrs. Davey told The Daily Mail.
This sort of story does not represent some bizarre failure of the system--it captures the system's spirit.
The truth is that the goal of the welfare state is to make the productive sacrifice for the unproductive. It establishes the principle that a person is entitled to state support simply by virtue of his need. But the state doesn't have any money. In order to provide support, it has to take money from the people who earned it. Translation? A person's need entitles him to your money. The less value he creates, the more rewards you owe him--and the more value you create, the greater your duty to serve him, and all the Daveys of the world.
Secretly Record The Police On Your Phone
Ethan I. Solomon posts at CopBlock about a new app put out by the ACLU to secretly record the police.
(Story is short on facts -- he doesn't mention the name of the app, but if you search for ACLU police tape app, I think it'll come up -- can't get my phone to connect to app store now and Gregg is sleeping.)
Excerpt from the piece:
A new phone app from the ACLU is designed to run in the background on Android cellphones and an audio only version for the iPhone. The feature allows users to record video or audio without showing on the phones screen. In case the officer asks to see your phone he or she won't be able to tell that it is in fact recording."Police often videotape civilians and civilians have a constitutionally protected right to videotape police," Alexander Shalom, ACLU NJ's policy counsel told The Star-Ledger . "When people know they're being watched, they tend to behave well."
While this particular app is technically only legal for use in New Jersey, there is a growing market for similar apps in places around the globe. It seems like it will only be a matter of time until similar applications are made available.
Why the sudden trend of videotaping police? Other than the obvious facts of the proliferation of video and picture capturing devices out there is the fact that it is a way to keep ourselves safe from corrupt police who take advantage of their position within the community. Anyone decrying their use must have something to lose, something they don't want people to see on video camera.
There is no reason why officers should be scared to be taped unless they are doing something wrong. They should be following the rules and regulations set down for them in a polite and helpful manner. That is their job, that is what they are paid to do. It should not be that in America we should be scared of our police.
"This app provides an essential tool for police accountability," ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs said in a statement. "Too often incidents of serious misconduct go unreported because citizens don't feel that they will be believed. Here, the technology empowers citizens to place a check on police power directly."
President Rerun
Obama needs to hire a new speechwriter so he won't have to say the same thing every time he sits down with a foreign leader:
TSA: Sign The Petition
Sign Cato's petition to require the TSA to follow the law. Link directly to petition is here. The text:
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Require the Transportation Security Administration to Follow the Law!In July 2011, a federal appeals court ruled that the Transportation Security Administration had to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking on its policy of using "Advanced Imaging Technology" for primary screening at airports. TSA was supposed to publish the policy in the Federal Register, take comments from the public, and justify its policy based on public input. The court told TSA to do all this "promptly." A year later, TSA has not even started that public process. Defying the court, the TSA has not satisfied public concerns about privacy, about costs and delays, security weaknesses, and the potential health effects of these machines. If the government is going to "body-scan" Americans at U.S. airports, President Obama should force the TSA to begin the public process the court ordered.
Thanks, Cridster!
Which Came First?
The chicken or the leg?
Penn State: Putting Loyalty To The Organization Before Stopping The Molestation Of Boys
That's what the Freeh report, in the wake of Sandusky's molestation of numerous boys, shows about Penn State officials -- that they failed to protect the children and facilitated the abuse. Jonathan Turley has posted the report as a PDF you can read here. An excerpt:
The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims. As the Grand Jury similarly noted in its presentment,1 there was no "attempt to investigate, to identify Victim 2, or to protect that child or any others from similar conduct except as related to preventing its re‐occurrence on University property."Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University - President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President‐Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno - failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities. They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well‐being, especially by not attempting to determine the identity of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001. Further, they exposed this child to additional harm by alerting Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child's identity, of what McQueary saw in the shower on the night of February 9, 2001.
These individuals, unchecked by the Board of Trustees that did not perform its oversight duties, empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access to the University's facilities and affiliation with the University's prominent football program. Indeed, that continued access provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims. Some coaches, administrators and football program staff members ignored the red flags of Sandusky's behaviors and no one warned the public about him.
By not promptly and fully advising the Board of Trustees about the 1998 and 2001 child sexual abuse allegations against Sandusky and the subsequent Grand Jury investigation of him, Spanier failed in his duties as President. The Board also failed in its duties to oversee the President and senior University officials in 1998 and 2001 by not inquiring about important University matters and by not creating an environment where senior University officials felt accountable.
Once the Board was made aware of the investigations of Sandusky and the fact that senior University officials had testified before the Grand Jury in the investigations, it should have recognized the potential risk to the University community and to the University's reputation. Instead, the Board, as a governing body, failed to inquire reasonably and to demand detailed information from Spanier. The Board's overconfidence in Spanier's abilities to deal with the crisis, and its complacent attitude left them unprepared to respond to the November 2011 criminal charges filed against two senior Penn State leaders and a former prominent coach. Finally, the Board's subsequent removal of Paterno as head football coach was poorly handled, as were the Board's communications with the public.
Even if you don't read the entire document, go through and read the timeline, starting on page 19. It's utterly chilling. Everyone from a janitor to university administrators puts themselves and the university before the boys who were and who were to be molested.
TSA: Protesting The Molestation Of Your Child Is Grounds For Arrest
Terrific blog item at TSANewsBlog by Lisa Simeone on Andrea Abbott's arrest a year ago for trying to protect her child.
Just over a year ago, a woman did something that, in any normal society, would be considered good: she tried to protect her child.But we aren't living in a normal society. What was once good is now bad, and what was once unthinkable is now accepted. Not only accepted, but lauded, exalted, bragged about.
One year ago, Andrea Fornella Abbott tried to protect her 14-year-old daughter from being molested by the TSA. And for that, she was arrested, handcuffed, and jailed. While dozens of people stood by and watched.
In this case, the police behaved worse (if that's possible) than the TSA.
Abbott was not flying that day, but accompanying her daughter through security at Nashville International Airport. Her daughter was "randomly" selected to go through the strip-search scanner. Abbott, more informed than many of her fellow citizens, said she didn't trust that the scanners were safe (they've never been tested) and opted for a pat-down. But she also said she didn't want her daughter to be "touched inappropriately" or "crotch-grabbed."
As you can see in this video, her daughter was crotch-grabbed anyway. Because that's what the TSA does. That's what millions of Americans now think is normal, that they and their children have their hair pawed and their genitals touched in order to get on a plane.
Life In Muslim Countries In 2012: Muslim Man Accidentally Beats The Wrong Woman
A Jordanian man thought his wife was shopping in a mall without permission.
Islam allows and even encourages wife beating -- so he ran up and slapped her.
Oops. Seems she was another man's possession -- he slapped the wrong woman.
From Emirates24/7:
The woman began screaming for help.Soon, however, there was pin-drop silence in the mall when the man realised the woman was not his wife.
She was a close look-alike though.
Don't you hate that, when you give the wrong woman a beating?
I guess it beats a beheading. Or being shot for "adultery."
How France Has Fairer Tax Policy Than We Do (Just On Expats!)
Daniel J. Mitchell writes:
Specifically, there are two ways in which France has better policy than the United States.1. France, like almost every other civilized nation, does not have worldwide taxation. So when French citizens move to Switzerland, Hong Kong, or the United States, they pay tax to those nations. But they're no longer subject to French taxes on this foreign-source income. Sadly, that is not true for overseas Americans, who are subject to tax in the nations where they live AND the IRS. Their only choice, if they want to escape this punitive and unfair form of double taxation, is to give up U.S. citizenship.
2. But when Americans like Eduardo Saverin decide to surrender their passports, they are hit by punitive exit taxes. This is the type of policy normally associated with some of the world's most odious regimes, such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. France, I am told, is not perfect in this regard, but the tax treatment of people re-domiciling in another country is not nearly so onerous (especially if they go to another EU nation).
I want good tax policy, like the flat tax, regardless of what's happening in other nations. But it says a lot (and none of it good) when one of the world's most statist nations has better policy than America.
"Zorba," a commenter at his site notes how backward this is:
The future of the world belongs to the international citizen; economic mercenaries who, in a highly mobile world, will offer their superior ideas and vitality to whichever environment lets them operate freely, contribute their great ideas and products to society, AND keep the reward of their contributions.
Mitchell discusses the issue here further in the wake of Denise Rich's tax expatriation.
Hey, Kids: Grandpa And Grandma Are Eating Your Lunch
In reason, Nick Gillespie has a piece about what's to come for the younger generation (beyond Baby Boomers), "The Real Class Warfare is Baby Boomers Vs. Younger Americans." An excerpt:
The younger you are, the less likely you are to need health care, much less insurance (there is a difference). The smart move for most generally healthy younger people is to take out a catastrophic coverage plan that would cover you in the event of a big accident. Thanks to Obamacare, you've got to get covered, either by your parents' plan or otherwise. The predictable result is that plans for younger people are getting more expensive precisely at the moment they are required by law (finally, a case where correlation meets causation!). That all plans are going to have to conform to higher-than-before benefit schedules ain't helping things either. Some colleges are dropping student plans as a result.And just wait until those price-capped government-run health-care exchanges finally get set up. By law, the exchanges can't charge their oldest beneficiaries more than three times what they charge their youngest beneficiaries. That's despite the actuarial reality that the older group costs insurers six times as much. So you're helping balance the books there, too. Welcome to community rating, kids.
Another way you're helping balance the books: It'll be your future earnings that will pay the taxes to cover the massive amount of debt that local, state, and federal governments have rung up over the past few decades. Even before the Great Recession, the feds were spending like a drunken sailor (no disrespect to drunken sailors). Nowadays, the feds are borrowing something like 40 cents of every dollar they're spending.
And he has the right idea, here -- that wealthy older people should not be subsidized by the young:
Older generations don't need to mop up all the gravy from their kids' bowls. Those of them who can afford to should pay their own way and, in a generational exchange observed for hundreds of generations, could even leave things for their heirs (this is impossible with Social Security, of course). The days when being old universally meant being poor or sick are thankfully behind us and old-age entitlements should change to reflect that reality. We can help the truly needy among us without creating a system in which young people's already small incomes and savings are reduced further to prop up the relatively plush living standards of older Americans...
Know Your Rights: Cop Attempts To Raid Garage Sale
Love that these people know their rights:
Text from LiveLeak:
Learn the law and your constitutional rights and show the police that you are not going to be pushed around.
Right on.
How To Have An Imaginary Friend Call You At Just The Right Time
Duck out of boring situations with "Fake-a-Call Free."
Quotas Limiting Male Science Enrollment May Be To Come
Disgustingly, per Charlotte Allen at Minding the Campus, the Obama administration seems to be trying to expand the scope of Title IX -- as was mentioned in 2009 by the president:
In early 2009 a newly inaugurated President Obama wrote a letter to the American Association of University Women and other advocacy groups arguing that Title IX could be used to make "similar striking advances" for women in science and engineering as it had in sports--via "necessary attention and enforcement." According to Manhattan Institute fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth, one federal agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has produced a manual, "Title IX and STEM," that recommends that every university hire a full-time "Gender Equity Specialist" with a staff that would monitor science departments and labs for bias. The manual also recommends that universities fund departments based on gender and other "diversity" representation. Expect the rules likely to be issued by the Education Department under White House prodding to be similar--with the penalty for noncompliance to be the loss of federal funds.The use of Title IX to force universities to restructure their curricula and alter the composition of their hard-science and engineering departments in order to achieve a supposed gender equity that matches neither the aptitudes nor the interests of many women isn't just heavy-handed and totalitarian. As study after study indicates, it's bad science as well.
Hans Bader writes at Open Market:
Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Education Department in 2013....Critics have long argued that the Title IX cap on men's athletic participation is in tension with the Supreme Court's warnings against proportional representation. In a ruling by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Supreme Court said that it is "completely unrealistic" to argue that women and minorities should be represented in each field or activity "in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local population." (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989)). In an earlier ruling, Justice O'Connor noted that it is "unrealistic to assume that unlawful discrimination is the sole cause of people failing to gravitate to jobs and employers in accord with the laws of chance." (See Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust Co. (1988).)
...I think that it would be a grave mistake to apply its standards, which were designed for allocating resources among all-male and all-female sports teams, to the very different context of math and science classes, which are coed. It is one thing to apply gender-based proportionality rules to single-sex teams, which are already themselves intrinsically gender-based. It is quite another to apply them to classes in science and math that are open to all students, regardless of gender, and are supposed to be gender-blind, not gender-specific or gender-based. Doing so is simply unconstitutional.
...Women are well-represented in scientific fields that involve lots of interaction with people. As The New York Times' John Tierney noted, "Despite supposed obstacles like "unconscious bias" and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors, and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.'s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences." By contrast, "They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering," which deal more with inanimate objects rather than people.
These gender-based differences are not the product of discrimination, and manifest themselves at a very early age. As a book on the biology of male-female differences notes, "Girl babies in their cribs are especially inclined to stare at images of human faces, whereas infant boys are likely to find inanimate objects every bit as attractive"; "this difference persists into adulthood: when shown images of people as well as things, men tend to remember the things, and women tend to remember the people."
Be Grateful For What Free Speech We Still Have
Here's how it works for the Brits, per Christina Odone in the Telegraph/UK:
I have lived in this country for 25 years now, yet still fail to grasp some basic rules. I was amazed, for instance, when I was threatened with a lawsuit earlier this year. On Question Time, I dismissed a protester against unpaid apprenticeship as "an ungrateful creature". A lawyer gleefully tweeted that my "insult" was potentially a criminal offence.I'd been living under two misapprehensions: first, that "creature" was an acceptable rebuke here; second, that I had a right to be rude. That right is under threat. I read with horror that a woman who told off a Muslim gentleman at a supermarket checkout was arrested. Cinnamon Heathcote-Drury, a photographer, watched as the man let his wife unload their trolley on her own, and informed him in no uncertain terms that his behaviour was un-British. She even offered to help the wife herself.
Miss Heathcote-Drury, cleared last weekend, admits that her words could have offended the couple. But it seems extraordinary that under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, "insulting words or behaviour" constitute a criminal offence. This leaves too much room for personal score-settling, not to mention paranoia: had this law been in place in the Thirties, a thin-skinned citizen of Slough could have sued John Betjeman. As it is, a teenager was arrested in 2008 for holding up a placard that called Scientology a cult.
I've always prized British rudeness. I relish the vicious attacks in the press on grandees from Bob Diamond to John Bercow; I love to watch Paxo pummelling a politician; and happily trade put-downs with friends, family and foes. Sometimes, it can slide into gratuitous humiliation - but that seems a small price to pay for the intoxicating freedom of rubbishing the powerful.
Thank goodness, an unlikely alliance of David Davis MP, Peter Tatchell and the Christian Institute are campaigning to change Section 5. Until they win, I'll steer clear of calling anyone a "creature" again.
Will The Pyramids Go Down Like The Twin Towers?
Raymond Ibrahim writes at FrontPage that, according to reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt's pyramids -- "symbols of paganism," in the words of a Saudi sheikh:
Most recently, Bahrain's "Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs" and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi, to "destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not."This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity. While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself--deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran--was destroyed under bin al-As's reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar's command.
However, while book-burning was an easy activity in the 7th century, destroying the mountain-like pyramids and their guardian Sphinx was not--even if Egypt's Medieval Mamluk rulers "de-nosed" the latter during target practice (though popular legend still attributes it to a Westerner, Napoleon).
Now, however, as Bahrain's "Sheikh of Sheikhs" observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt is "pious" enough--if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt's first Islamic conqueror.
Nor is such a course of action implausible. History is laden with examples of Muslims destroying their own pre-Islamic heritage--starting with Islam's prophet Muhammad himself, who destroyed Arabia's Ka'ba temple, transforming it into a mosque.
...Accordingly, while many Egyptians--Muslims and non-Muslims alike--see themselves as Egyptians, Islamists have no national identity, identifying only with Islam's "culture," based on the "sunna" of the prophet and Islam's language, Arabic. This sentiment was clearly reflected when the former Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Akef, declared "the hell with Egypt," indicating that the interests of his country are secondary to Islam's.
This would follow the razing of tombs in Timbuktu.
Far worse than the destruction of antiquities is the slaughter of Christians by Muslims.
This Pakistani Christian girl just had her face attacked with acid and then had it poured down her throat.
(Read about the differences between Christianity and Islam here and here -- and FYI, I'm an atheist.)
What A Surprise: Secondary Airports Losing Traffic, Floundering
Jane L. Levere writes in the NYT that airports serving smaller cities around the USA aren't doing so well:
The fate of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport may be a portent for other airports serving smaller cities around the United States.Once the main hub of Trans World Airlines, the airport offered as many as 475 departures a day. But now, there are just 256 daily departures, leaving half the concourses at the older of its two terminals vacant and the airport scrambling to find new, revenue-generating uses for the space.
Already, airports in Pittsburgh (a former hub for US Airways), Cincinnati (a much-downsized Delta Air Lines hub) and Oakland, Calif., have lost a significant amount of their business as airlines concentrate more of their flights on bigger-city airports.
As airlines continue to consolidate and cut back on their use of smaller, regional jets, more airports will be in the same difficult position -- looking for new uses for unoccupied terminals, hangars and other specialized buildings.
"This is an issue many airports are wrestling with," said Lois S. Kramer, an airport consultant based in Boulder, Colo., and principal author of a report on reuse of airport buildings commissioned last year by the Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Research Council. "Nobody wants to talk about it, but vacant space at airports is more widespread than one would think."
Now maybe this is just one of those things -- smaller getting squeezed out by bigger. But, Levere apparently failed to pose the question on my mind...could it possibly have anything to do with...travelers' aversion to getting violated by government-hired thugs in the name of security?
My comment I left at the NYT:
Flying anywhere means there's a good chance of being sexually molested by a government worker pretending to be doing so for security purposes. (Of course, the way we actually stop terrorists is not by having unskilled workers grope our genitalia at the airport but through targeted intelligence by highly trained intelligence officers -- using actual probable cause.)I have, on a number of occasions, avoided flying places I would have gone (a scientific conference, an event for a friend) because the thought of the TSA ordeal was just too much.
Oh, and before anyone says this is necessary security, it's nothing of the kind. The TSA, in its entire $60-plus billion history, has not caught a single terrorist. It's a jobs program and a funding program for Michael Chertoff and others who benefit financially from the nudiescanners and other aspects of this obscene program.
via @DebWilker
Man Arrested, Charged With Attempted Murder, Jailed For 50 Days...For Videotaping A Scuffle
People sniff when I say America is becoming a police state. But, we see crazy case after crazy case like this one -- the owner of WTF Magazine arrested, charged, jailed...simply for documenting a fight that had nothing to do with him. Here, from LiveLeak, is the video:
Details here.
People make an assumption, that because you have certain rights under the law, that those rights will be respected by the police.
Often, it's arrest first -- and you get to work it all out afterward. Paying fines, court costs, legal fees, and trying to stay alive in jail.
Talk To The Hand
Just another day outside the coffee shop in Southern California.
Just love So Cal for its constant flashes of bizarre.
Hey, TSA: Deaf People Aren't Dumb; They Just Can't Hear
(But, as your thugs are about to find out -- they sure can lip read!)
Xeni Jardin posted at BoingBoing about another truly disgusting story out of the TSA checkpoint. The headline:
Deaf man writes that TSA agent mocked him as "F*cking deafie," then stole his candy, ate it
Tea & Theatre is the man's web moniker, and he posted about what happened to him:
While I was going through the TSA, some of them started laughing in my direction. I thought it might've been someone behind me, but I found out otherwise.They went through my bag (for no reason), and found a couple bags of candy I brought. I was told I wasn't allowed to fly with that (wtf? I've flown with food before -- these were even sealed still because I brought them right in the airport). I was then asked if I would like to donate the candy "To the USO". Since I know the airport there has an Air National Guard base, and I figured it would go to the soldiers, I (annoyed) said sure, why not?
The guards, as I was getting scanned, started eating the candy they just told me was for the soldiers. In front of me, still laughing at me (very clearly now). One of them asked why they were laughing, and one of them came up to me, pointed at my shirt, laughed at me and said, "Fucking deafie". The Louisville TSA called me a "fucking deafie" and laughed at me because I was deaf, and they expected wouldn't say anything back (or wouldn't hear them). Make no bones about it -- she was facing me and I read her lips. There was no mistake. I would later find out that they had called at least 4 other individuals the same thing.
Read the rest of his post at his site -- particularly the part where the TSA witch calls them "Dump apes" with a "gesture language."
via @debwilker @xeni
TSA Thuggos Pop Up At Chicago's Union Station
Pretend security extends its reach to the train station.
1776umphreys posted under his video at YouTube:
As I entered Chicago's Union Station back on July 5th, I noticed 3 Fully Uniform(ed) TSA Agents sitting inside the office of Amtrak Police. I took out my cell phone and started to follow these TSA agents, and it appeared to me that they were setting up a Check Point for Amtrak Riders. This is just another example of how TSA (is) expanding their operations and entering Train Stations, Bus terminals, and major sporting and concert events. Will Americans allow TSA bring their intrusive Pat Downs on the road or finally take a stand and say NO!!
Entitlemommy Wants To Fly With Her Screaming Kid
Devon Corneal, described in her HuffPo mini bio as "lawyer, mother," writes at the HuffPo about parents' supposed right to take a plane with their wailing kids:
I shouldn't have to keep my kid at home because it might inconvenience someone who would prefer to travel in an adults-only environment.
Um, I also would find it hellish to sit in front of an adult screaming at the top of his or her lungs, "Mommy, mommy, mommy!"
He or she likewise has no business flying, except in case of emergency. ("Needing" to take a Hawaiian vacation doesn't count as an emergency.)
As I wrote in an op-ed in the LA Times a few years ago, until you can be reasonably sure your child (or adult partner) won't squawl and bother other passengers, you should take your trips in the minivan -- entitlemommy.
UPDATE: Bruce Schonfeld, a certified Rolfer who writes at the cafe I do, pointed out to me this morning how selfish it is of parents to take babies and toddlers on planes because, often, the kids are screaming because they are suffering such pain in their inner ears.
Is it really worth it to not only torture other passengers but your own child in order to take a Hawaiian vacation RIGHT NOW?
Army Wasted $5 Billion On Camo That Doesn't Actually Camo
But they put the troops at risk and wasted all this money for very good reason:
"We can't allow the Marine Corps to look more cool than the Army."
via @mmoyr
Romance Now Illegal In New York
Add another one to the list in the prison colony of Bloombergia. ("The City That Never Sleeps" is now "The City That Sleeps In Jail" -- and on apparently bogus charges.)
Kathianne Boniello writes in the New York Post that a couple was handcuffed and jailed for dancing on a subway platform.
(As a former New York-dweller, I appreciate whenever other patrons are doing something other than picking their nose or other parts of their body.)
From the piece:
Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, claim they were handcuffed for having happy feet on the platform of the Columbus Circle subway station -- and spent 23 hours in custody as a result."I'm a dentist, and I'm 55, and I got arrested for dancing," Stern told The Post. "It was absolutely ridiculous that this happened."
It was nearly midnight when Stern and Hess, a film-industry prop master, headed home last July from Jazz at Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night's Swing. As they waited for the train, a musician started playing steel drums on the nearly empty platform and Stern and Hess began to feel the beat.
"We were doing the Charleston," Stern said. That's when two police officers approached and pulled a "Footloose."
"They said, 'What are you doing?' and we said, 'We're dancing,' " she recalled. "And they said, 'You can't do that on the platform.'"
The cops asked for ID, but when Stern could only produce a credit card, the officers ordered the couple to go with them -- even though the credit card had the dentist's picture and signature.
Actually, it seems like this was punishment by the cops for Hess trying to tape the encounter with them. He brought out the camera and things went from ridiculous to uglier, with Hess allegedly tackled to the platform floor.
This is a bizarre and sort of funny story -- unless you're the couple, and unless you, like me, see it as yet another example of a continuing and nationwide increase in police overreach.
And just imagine those cops -- late at night, when the subway platform is nearly empty (unless there's been some massive event). They see a couple, full of life, having fun, and what is there to think but: "Gotta stop that. Tamp that down before it gets around."
Nice.
via @RadleyBalko
When Pigs Fly (The Time Is Apparently Now)
Via @jamestaranto, Elizabeth Harrington reports at CNSNews that airlines must let passengers fly with their, um, service swine:
The DOT published its "Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel: Draft Technical Assistance Manual" in the Federal Register on July 5, providing guidance that allows swine on airplanes if they are determined to be service animals....The manual states: "A passenger arrives at the gate accompanied by a pot-bellied pig. She claims that the pot-bellied pig is her service animal. What should you do?"
"Generally, you must permit a passenger with a disability to be accompanied by a service animal," reads the manual. "However, if you have a reasonable basis for questioning whether the animal is a service animal, you may ask for some verification."
The manual instructs airline carriers and their employees to begin by asking questions about the animal, such as, "What tasks or functions does your animal perform for you?" or "What has its training been?"
"If you are not satisfied with the credibility of the answers to these questions or if the service animal is an emotional support or psychiatric service animal, you may request further verification," the guidebook states. "You should also call a CRO [Complaints Resolution Official] if there is any further doubt as to whether the pot-bellied pig is the passenger's service animal."
If the answers are satisfactory, pot-bellied pigs, which can weigh as much as 300 pounds, must be accepted aboard the plane.
There are people who actually need service animals -- and there are many who simply say they do so they can take their pet on the plane while avoiding hefty fees paid by people like me (when I flew with my dog).
P.S. If I had a pig, I'd name it "Bacon" as incentive for it to behave.
Marine Tricks His Girlfriend's Rapist Into Showing Him The Video Evidence
The girlfriend was raped in 2010. The former Marine, in Texas, befriended the rapist in order to get the evidence. From the HuffPo:
The alleged victim, whose name has not been released, says that she visited the apartment of Elric Shawn Millner in August 2010, ABC reports. She told police Millner gave her large quantities of alcohol and when she woke up the next morning, she had no recollection of the previous night.The next morning, however, Millner allegedly showed her videos of himself and another man forcing her to perform sexual acts while she begged them to stop. The victim, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, can be seen vomiting and urinating on herself while Millner laughs, according to KHOU.
The teenager told no one about the incident for almost two years, KTRK reports, when she detailed the assault to her new boyfriend, who had previously served as a military police officer with the U.S. Marines. Determined to take the case to the police, the boyfriend befriended Millner in an attempt to collect the video evidence, according to the Daily Mail.
After winning Millner's trust, prosecutors say, the ex-Marine convinced Millner to show him the horrifying footage.
Whether or not the boyfriend was able to obtain a copy of the video himself is unclear. Shortly after allegedly viewing it, however, he was able to finally persuade his girlfriend to go to the police about the assault.
Miller was charged with aggravated sexual assault and is now being held on a $50K bond. Prosecutors say they will use the video as evidence.
Right on, Marine!
As I noted in I See Rude People in the story about recovering my stolen pink Rambler...in the story about tracking down and getting my hit-and-run driver prosecuted...and in the story about trying to go after the women who stole my identity and $12K from my bank account: Many people who become crime victims have illusions, probably based largely on what they see on TV and on wishful thinking, about what the police will do for them.
What few people realize: The police are unlikely to solve your crime -- even a very serious crime committed against you. They almost certainly won't solve or even do much about what would be considered a minor crime, not even if you have evidence you present them on a silver platter, with caviar and toast points. If you want it solved, you're probably going to have to put on your Nancy Drew suit and get cracking.
Tonight, Advice Goddess Radio, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Barry Schwartz On How To Develop Wisdom
Plato is the snob philosopher -- the guy who thought wisdom was to be had by only by the intellectual elites.
Aristotle's my man -- the one who, like cognitive therapy founder Dr. Albert Ellis, believed wisdom was attainable by ordinary people.
And it is. And tonight, a return guest on Advice Goddess Radio, Dr. Barry Schwartz, will explain how emotions, trained and modulated, are the key to being behaving wisely.
And, contrary to conventional "wisdom" that emotions should be kept out of business or professional decisions, Schwartz will lay out why that's not the case, and why "practical wisdom" is a key to both personal and relationship happiness.
His compelling book (complete with some moving stories) is Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing
Listen live at the link (7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET) and/or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/09/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show, with dietary researcher and low-carb expert Jeff S. Volek, Ph.D., RD, co-author, with Stephen D. Phinney, MD, Ph.D., of The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living
I got Volek and Phinney's book after Dr. Michael Eades, whom I greatly respect as a source of evidence-based dietary information, called it "The best low-carb book in print." And it is. Listen to the show -- and buy the book! -- and you'll understand why.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/02/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday at 7-8 p.m., Eastern and 10-11 p.m., Pacific, or download the podcast afterward at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
Barack Obama Is No Mr. Ordinary American
I saw this tweet from NYT managing ed Jim Roberts:
@nytjim Contrasting images of class. Obama at a diner. Romney on a powerboat. Smart piece by @dickstevenson. http://nyti.ms/NdShbt
Barack Obama may not have the wealth of Romney, but he's no ordinary wage-earning American. A while back, I took note of the bit in this piece -- not at all the point of the story -- about how they had a private chef when they lived in Chicago.
Gregg and I also know a family with a private chef. They also have their own jet.
The Obamas are not that wealthy. But, they are also not like most of us in terms of their earnings and benefits. A photo op in a diner doesn't change that.
Idiot Parents Throw Their Daughter To The Sharks
Idiot parents let their 5-year-old daughter swim with the ("rarely aggressive") sharks in the Bahamas:
Fee-Farming: A New Way To Pay For Big, Bloated Government
J.D. Tuccille writes at reason about the reincarnation of debtor's prison -- with the debt cleverly imposed by towns municipalities around the nation and the for-profit businesses that administer the systems.
From the New York Times story on this by Ethan Bronner, "The result is that growing numbers of poor people, like Ms. Ray, are ending up jailed and in debt for minor infractions."
More from Bronner:
CHILDERSBURG, Ala. -- Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed -- charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.
For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that "two can dine for $5.99," is not about innocence.
...Half a century ago in a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled that those accused of crimes had to be provided a lawyer if they could not afford one. But in misdemeanors, the right to counsel is rarely brought up, even though defendants can run the risk of jail. The probation companies promise revenue to the towns, while saying they also help offenders, and the defendants often end up lost in a legal Twilight Zone.
The stories in the Times piece are just awful. This is not the country we're supposed to be.
Little Red Riding House
I thought this was a sweet little place. (Santa Monica, in the teens, near Pico, I think.)
New York City: Cabbies, Better Not Pick Up Ladies In Short Skirts!
It isn't enough to tell adults they can't drink big sodas; in NYC, they've passed a law that will surely make it harder for any woman not dressed like she's got an appointment at the convent to get a cab.
From the WSJ, Evangeline Morphos writes:
Defining who is a prostitute may be "complicated" as Weiner suggests. But the New York City Council seems to have an answer. It has just passed a law that will fine taxi drivers up to $10,000 for picking up a prostitute. Drivers will be required to take a course that will aid them in spotting what a hooker looks like.Mayor Bloomberg, responding to a protest by women, expressed skepticism about the law. "I started to think for a second, if I were a young lady and dressed in a sporty way--or how you'd want to phrase it--and there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe it's not appropriate to go to the workplace, but at night, sometimes sure, why not?"
Other than the rather unsettling visual image--now burned in my brain- of Mayor Bloomberg dressed in a "sporty way," he's right.
Can you really identify someone by how they dress? Journalists, analysts and pundits spent hours analyzing the effect on the jurors of the Hermes bag Martha Stewart carried on the first day of her trial or the significance of the presidential cuff-links Jamie Dimon wore during the first day of his testimony.
But can we really ask taxi drivers to get involved in the semiotics of fashion signifiers?
Michelle Chen writes at InTheseTimes:
Two quintessential cliches of New York City street life are heading into more trouble with the law: yellow cabs and prostitutes. To combat the sex trade, the city is pursuing pimps via taxi. But some civil rights advocates fear the measure targets the wrong kind of traffic.The newly signed legislation aims to punish cab drivers who abet prostitution, with a focus on those who "knowingly engage in a business of transporting individuals to patrons for purposes of prostitution, procuring and/or soliciting patrons for the prostitution, and receiving proceeds from such business in collaboration with traffickers and pimps." The law imposes new criminal penalties, including fines or the loss of a license, for various forms of "promoting prostitution" while using the taxi. It also mandates trainings to inform drivers about the legal consequences of "facilitating sex trafficking" and about social services available to trafficking victims. The evidence of cabbies' involvement in the sex trade is anecdotal at best--there was recently a high-profile trafficking case in which livery cab drivers were nabbed in connection with a "brothel on wheels." But the ubiquity of taxis, popularity of paid sex services, and lack of parking space in the city has apparently led lawmakers to focus on yellow cabs as a critical link in the crusade against trafficking.
The reality of sex work in the city involves far more than dramatic stereotypes of pimps, johns and their drivers. First, advocates for sex workers point out that prostitutes are not necessarily trafficking victims, and that the language of the legislation threatens to blur the line between voluntary prostitution and trafficking, which generally involves coercion and economic exploitation.
Kate D'Adamo, an organizer with Sex Workers Outreach Project New York City (SWOP-NYC) and Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), said in a correspondence with In These Times that the legislation "inappropriately conflates all prostitution with human trafficking" by focusing on the vaguely defined "promotion of prostitution" by drivers, rather than drawing a clear distinction between coerced and non-coerced commercial sex. "Criminalization of the people around sex workers and trafficked persons alike will do nothing to support trafficked persons," she added, "and will only further marginalize those populations."
Hosts Against Low-Carb
We'll sometimes go somewhere, as we did recently, where the host gives my boyfriend stuff he's not supposed to eat -- something carb-filled that will make his blood sugar rise, like a huge piece of corn on the cob.
The guy will think he's doing him a favor, getting around the mean girlfriend's prohibitions. First of all, I'm not mean, and second, I don't want him to eat carbs because he's unusually sensitive to them and I want to keep him alive. There's not another area in his life in which I meddle like this at all.
In fact, people who know I drive a hybrid sometimes ask, "Did you make your boyfriend get one?"
Me: "MAKE my boyfriend? If I could make him do anything, he wouldn't be my boyfriend. He'd be some other woman's wimp."
He knows I love him and knows he's healthier eating this way, so he's actually very disciplined about how he eats. But, force a piece of corn on him and he'll take it.
My friend Kate made a great point: Would people do that -- force food a person isn't supposed to eat -- on someone who keeps kosher?
Cool Customers And The Actual Customers
Interesting story by Eric Markowitz in Inc. about a fashion startup that discovered that its actual market wasn't what the founders thought it would be:
"It was like, 'Holy crap, our customers aren't 22-year-olds who are rebellious and against 'The Man,'" Bi says. "Our customers are The Man."
Via @VPostrel
Zero Tolerance Bus Driver
Unfortunately, yes, it apparently is necessary to give adults this lecture these days.
Thanks, SD!
TSA: Is That A Bomb In Your Coke...?
The morons at the airport in charge of our pretend security are now dipping something into travelers' drinks -- when they're well-past security. Janelle Ericsson reports at KJCT8 News, and Lisa Simeone blogged it at TSANewsBlog that passengers could be asked to let the TSA test their drink:
Yes, dear reader, that water or coffee or soft drink in your cup, the one you bought after you passed through the checkpoint, in the so-called sterile area? That could contain a bomb! And you didn't even know it!Thank heavens the TSA is here to save the day. As they dip their little Magic Bomb-Detecting Stick into your beverage, be sure to smile and thank them. After all, they're Keeping You Safe.
It's telling that this article from KJCT in Colorado has elicited, as of this writing, over 1,800 comments, most of them assailing the TSA for the idiocy of this policy, and many of them relating readers' stories of their own about having their drinks "tested." Yet compare that to the response when a story is published of people getting assaulted by the TSA. The outrage exhibited over the latter pales in comparison to that over the former.
"Strip me, grope me, abuse me, molest my children -- just don't touch my drink!"
Ah, ain't it grand living in the Land of the Free?
Do White Guys Get Away With Beating On Women While Black Men Don't?
Interesting question in a piece by Ernest Hardy in the LA Times. Rihanna-beater Chris Brown has that dogging him still, while accused chick-beaters Glen Campbell and Charlie Sheen have been treated quite differently:
In her 1997 autobiography "Nickel Dreams", singer Tanya Tucker alleged that physical abuse was a staple of her brief early '80s affair with Campbell, when he was 42 and she was 21, with the violence often playing out in front of others.Here's what she wrote of one especially brutal episode: "[F]inally Glen reared back his arm and brought his elbow down in my face, shearing off my two front teeth right at the roots.... I reached my hand up and felt my mouth, and there was a gaping hole where my teeth should have been.... I was without front teeth for a week, and from that time on."
Although Campbell denied Tucker's claims and was never prosecuted, he had discussed their stormy relationship in his own autobiography published three years earlier, "Rhinestone Cowboy," where he wrote, "We even fought during sex once or twice."
Not before, during or after the Grammys did anyone say a word about Campbell's alleged abusive past or suggest that he should not be allowed onstage because of it. Then why Chris Brown? Because it's recent? Because, unlike Campbell, he was prosecuted? Because Brown is his own worst enemy, prolonging the controversy with his behavior and his songs?
...If you Google the words "Charlie Sheen" and "domestic violence," the Internet gently weeps. Yet Sheen's well-documented fisticuffs-on-females (restraining orders from ex-wives; allegations from girlfriends and sex workers, alike, that he battered them) have not resulted in his name being synonymous with domestic violence except in an excusatory wink-and-nudge kind of way. A snickering humor trails his persona, as demonstrated in a "Comedy Central Roast" in his honor last year, where a lot of the night's humor hinged on his out-of-control rep.
Imagine the outcry if Brown made light of his public persona the way Sheen does with his new TV series "Anger Management."
"Historically and today," says professor Tamara K. Nopper, sociology lecturer in race and ethnic relations at the University of Pennsylvania, "it is presumed that black people are by nature a violent people and thus they get dealt with quite differently than when non-blacks engage in violent acts.
"The level of intensity and the degree of vigilance that celebrities and some in the general public show towards Brown is less about a concern for a black woman experiencing violence as it is a general obsession with and policing of what people assume to be the inherently criminal nature of black people in general."
Do Kids Sometimes Need To Hate Their Parents?
That's what a panel written about in The Atlantic says.
Children need nurturing, but they also need "something to bump up against."
My column criticizing kid-coddling and the pressure to engage in it is here:
You're supposed to be your kids' mom, not their full-time birthday clown. This means meeting their needs, as opposed to falling prey to their ransom demands......Saying no to your kids will not turn them into meth-smoking, liquor store-robbing carjackers. Actually, throwing up a few boundaries might even serve to prevent this -- and less dire but extremely annoying outcomes (just what society needs, another 35-year-old snot who was denied nothing during childhood). Kids need to feel loved and secure -- and that doesn't take hours of mommy-and-me Lego. In fact, psychologist Judith Rich Harris writes that "anthropological data suggest...there may be something a little unnatural about adults playing with children." Anthropologist David F. Lancy notes that, beyond Western society, one "rarely" sees it. Regarding this apparent lack of a parental instinct for parent-child play, Harris writes, "This implies that children do not require play with an adult in order to develop normally."
I know, I know, that's not what The Cult Of The Child tells you -- when its proponents aren't too busy checking Amazon to see whether anybody's published "The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Children." The reality is, your family is better served by a stay-at-home mother than a stay-at-home martyr. Take the advice of the late British pediatrician Donald Winnicott, and avoid trying to be the perfect mother -- micromanaging your little darlings' every move ("Harvard or bust!") -- and just be a "good enough mother." Your kids can entertain themselves -- and will, if you suggest they do.
Via Lenona, this piece by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker, "Why Are American Kids So Spoiled?":
"Parents want their kids' approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents' approval," Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, both professors of psychology, have written. In many middle-class families, children have one, two, sometimes three adults at their beck and call. This is a social experiment on a grand scale, and a growing number of adults fear that it isn't working out so well: according to one poll, commissioned by Time and CNN, two-thirds of American parents think that their children are spoiled.The notion that we may be raising a generation of kids who can't, or at least won't, tie their own shoes has given rise to a new genre of parenting books. Their titles tend to be either dolorous ("The Price of Privilege") or downright hostile ("The Narcissism Epidemic," "Mean Moms Rule," "A Nation of Wimps"). The books are less how-to guides than how-not-to's: how not to give in to your toddler, how not to intervene whenever your teen-ager looks bored, how not to spend two hundred thousand dollars on tuition only to find your twenty-something graduate back at home, drinking all your beer.
Your thoughts?
Save On Healthcare: Hide Your Insured Status And Pay Cash Instead
Forget that the blogger's name and the name of the site make the information to come sound like it'll be a cross between an afternoon soap and a porno. The suggestion seems pretty wise for those who don't have an HMO like I do.
Dike Drummond, MD blogs at KevinMD:
The days of paying more when you are paying cash may be coming to an end. Doctors and hospitals are starting to do what every other business has done since the beginning of time - giving a discount when you pay cash....(There are) sometimes dramatically lower prices for cash on the barrel head.
Here are two examples:
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times reported a CT scan of the abdomen costs about $2,400 for patients insured by Blue Shield of California, while the Los Alamitos (Calif.) Medical Center cash price is only $250. That is a 89% discount by my calculation.
Another local California hospital charges insured patients $415 for blood tests that cost only $95 in cash. This time it's a mere 77% discount.
Now, there are some interesting rules to the cash discount game.
First, to get the discounted prices, patients would have to withhold insurance information from hospitals. If you tell them you have insurance, they will be bound to charge you the insurance company's negotiated rate. Those are the up to 89% higher fees documented in the previous paragraph.
However, if you don't tell them your insurance and pay cash instead, the cash payments don't apply to your annual out-of-pocket spending limits.
For a 89% discount, I am pretty sure there are times it would be worth it to keep your little secret. If you are healthy and only need an occasional visit to the doctor you now get to make the judgment call on cash discount vs. paying five times as much and applying it to your deductible.
Why Did The Kentucky Fried Chicken Cross The Road?
And was it followed by any side dishes, and if so, which ones?
Our Neighborhood Is Not Your Landfill
With a few here and there edits, this is a flyer I posted in my neighborhood, complete with the headline above and the photo and text below: 
Check out these pigs who bought a barbeque from some resident on our block.
They decided to use our street to dump out all the ashes. (In case you wonder what that dust is all over your car later this week.)
When I came out and told them "No way!" on using our street as a dump, the blonde woman in the driver's seat of their SUV said, "You don't own the street."
I love that as an excuse for bad behavior.
I told her, "Actually, all of us here are 'custodians' of this street -- caring about keeping it nice. Which takes not allowing people to use it as a landfill."
They cleaned some of the pile of ashes up -- sort of -- after I demanded they do it.
The older man -- setting a great example -- added, "Fuck you! Mind your own business!"
If keeping my neighborhood from being used as a trash dump isn't my business...what is?
We all have to speak up when people who come to this neighborhood trash it up, make noise at all hours, and otherwise make this a bad place to live -- or it WILL be a bad place to live.
Joe Klamar's Olympic Athlete Photos Could Be Worse
...If I'd taken them -- while drunk and hogtied.
One blogger, Michael Shaw, finds reason to like the sucky way the photos are shot and lit -- because, to him, they send the all-important message that America's not "all that":
Whether the picture subverts the background, the composition, the lighting or the athlete's expression (or some combination), what at least a handful of Klamar's photos "accomplish" is to slight the plasticized image of the Olympic athlete perpetuated throughout the quadrennial media and advertising orgy. More than that though (and imagine you're reading the rest of this sentence to rabid chants of USA!! USA!!), I think this subset of photos also take a silent sledgehammer to the jingoistic adulation of the American team, to the extent these athletes serve as a fantasy extension of the dying dream of American worldwide superiority.
Physicist Garret Lisi On Why The Discovery Of The Higgs Boson Is Important
Via @AndreaKuszewski:
The Annotated Declaration Of Independence
A Fourth of July treat for civil liberties nerds and anybody interested in the history of this country -- posted by Randy Barnett at Volokh. A bit of his preamble, so to speak:
When reading the Declaration, it is worth keeping in mind two very important facts. The Declaration constituted high treason against the Crown and every person who signed it would be executed as traitors should they be caught by the British. Second, the Declaration was considered to be a legal document by which the revolutionaries justified their actions, and explained why they were not truly traitors. It represented, as it were, a literal indictment of the Crown and Parliament, in the very same way that criminals are now publicly indicted for their alleged crimes by grand juries representing "the People."But to justify a revolution, it was not thought to be enough that officials of the government of England, the Parliament, or even the sovereign himself had violated the rights of the people. No government is perfect; all governments violate rights. This was well known. So the Americans had to allege more than mere violations of rights. They had to allege nothing short of a criminal conspiracy to violate their rights systematically. Hence, the famous reference to "a long train of abuses and usurpations" and the list that follows. In some cases, these specific complaints account for provisions eventually included in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Declaration of Independence used to be read aloud at public gathering every Fourth of July. Today, while all Americans have heard of it, all too few have read more than its second sentence. Yet the Declaration shows the natural rights foundation of the American Revolution, and provides important information about what makes a constitution or government legitimate. It also raises the question of how these fundamental rights are reconciled with the idea of "the consent of the governed" for which the Declaration is also famous.
Later, the Declaration also assumes increasing importance in the struggle to abolish slavery. It is a foundational document of the Nineteenth Century abolitionists and was much relied upon by Abraham Lincoln. It had to be explained away by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott. Eventually, it was repudiated by some defenders of slavery in the South because of its inconsistency with that institution.
To appreciate all that is packed into these two paragraphs, it is useful to break down the Declaration into some of its key claims.
Which he does, at the link.
If We're Going To Have Socialized Medicine
How about socialized maid service?
People in Bel Air with housekeeping staff can pay for a cleaning lady for me.
Don't we have a right to spic-and-span living quarters -- I mean, without having to stoop so low as to clean our houses ourselves?
Great Day To Listen To A Podcast: Advice Goddess Radio -- Dietary Researcher Dr. Jeff Volek
Declare your independence from the dietary carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, apple juice -- that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Listen to my show with dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek, author of "the best low-carb book in print" (per Dr. Michael Eades), on why, for example, it's practically criminal to feed kids skim or lowfat milk and why you should cut carbs even if you don't need to lose weight.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/02/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
The show is live every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, and there's always a podcast available afterward. Both are at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
To download the podcast to your MP3 player afterward, click on "play in your default player"
Keeping It Yokel: Debating The Religion Of Keeping Food Local
Emily Badger writes in The Atlantic about Pierre Desrochers, a man with a counterpoint to "local food's leading 'agri-intellectual'...Michael Pollan":
An economic geographer at the University of Toronto Mississauga, he has written a book (co-authored with his wife, Hiroko Shimizu), that attempts to eviscerate the movement's main arguments, from its economic rationale to its environmental one.
That book is: The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet
Badger continues:
(Desrochers) is particularly bemused by the notion that anyone would try to produce local food "when it makes no economic sense," when we have developed over the course of centuries an international and increasingly efficient system for feeding the world affordable bananas and blueberries and lamb year-round. Locavores - and their kind have popped up throughout history - have traditionally championed local food, he says, for no reason other than that it's local....He is essentially arguing that local food is fundamentally incompatible with urbanism. Urbanization isn't possible without imported food. And urbanization is what makes it possible to raise standards of living everywhere. Historically, we have pushed the production of food out of cities as subsistence farmers have moved in. Now, instead of each tending our own plot of rural land for a living, cities have enabled us to specialize as lawyers and bakers and engineers, while we've turned farming itself into a specialty.
In the process, Desrochers points out, we've learned to produce more food on less land, the price of it has fallen, the range of it available at your local store has increased, and the malnourished percentage of the world population has declined. The problem with locavores, as he sees it, is that they want to undo all of this progress, with terrible consequences.
The most environmentally friendly food policy, Desrochers argues, is the one where agriculture consumes the least amount of land globally, and only agri-business can deliver this efficiency. Producing food also requires more energy than transporting it, he adds. He dismisses the concept of "food miles," which he says fails to take into account the mode of transit on which our bananas travel. The 2,000 miles your produce travels from Latin America to Los Angeles by freight, he suggests, may be associated (per banana) with fewer carbon dioxide emissions than the 10 miles it travels home in your car from the supermarket.
He also argues that it's less energy-intensive to produce food where regions best specialize in it, than it is to try to coax those same products out of ill-suited soil elsewhere, even if that means shipping apples from New Zealand to the U.K.
Government Food-Safety Regulations Don't Always Make For Safer Food
Smart piece over at reason by Baylen Linnekin. Three ways food-safety regulation makes food less safe:
First, a flawed food-safety regulation can prevent people from gaining access to a healthy food. In 18th century France, the country's parliament banned consumption of the potato. Among the host of diseases the govenment mistakenly attributed to consumption of the tuber was leprosy. This was particularly problematic because at the time France's government issued the potato edict, the country was in the midst of a famine....Another way that a food-safety regaultion can make people less safe is when the rule actively promotes the spread of disease. A perfect illustration of this can be found in the USDA's 90-year meat-inspection scheme--labeled "poke and sniff" by critics and supporters alike--that the agency replaced only in the 1990s.
Poke-and sniff often entailed having an inspector "poke" a piece of meat with a rod and "sniff" the rod to determine, in the inspector's opinion, whether the meat contained pathogens. This method meant that the hands, eyes, and noses of inspectors were to be literally the front line of the USDA's food-safety regime.The problem? "[I]f a piece of meat was in fact tainted but the inspector's eyes or nose could not detect the contamination after he poked the meat, the inspector would again use his hands or the same rod to poke the next piece of meat, and the next, and so on."
This approach likely resulted in USDA inspectors transmitting filth from diseased meat to fresh meat on a daily basis. Food may actually have been safer when the USDA failed to regularly inspect some plants for a mere three decades.
Related to this latter point, the third way in which a food-safety regulation can make people less safe is when the regulation attaches a false veneer of safety to a particular food based on the public's misplaced faith in the ability of regulators to ensure food is safe.
The summer 2010 recall of hundreds of millions of eggs due to negligent USDA oversight at the laying facility--even as the agency's egg graders provided the public with the false veneer of food safety--is a perfect illustration.
While the FDA used the recall to argue for more authority to inspect egg-laying facilities, the truth is that USDA egg graders already on site simply dropped the ball when it came to ensuring the eggs they graded were safe.
Linnekin's full article, The Food Safety Fallacy: More Regulation Doesn't Necessarily Make Food Safer, can be read at the Northeastern University Law Journal website.
His mini-bio below his reason piece:
Baylen J. Linnekin, a lawyer, is executive director of Keep Food Legal, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that advocates in favor of food freedom--the right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, cook, eat, and drink the foods of our own choosing.
Hear, hear.
And people should also have the freedom to grow, sell, and use pot. (And I say that as somebody who hates pot and whose drug of choice is dry white wine.)
Got Gout? It's Probably Not Caused By What You Think It Is
Read Gout: The Missing Chapter from Good Calories, Bad Calories, from fourhourworkweek.com -- posted with permission from author Gary Taubes (and a note that it hasn't been through the editing and the fact-checking of the rest of the book -- which probably means it's only five or six times more solid than the typical science book you read, instead of more.
The evidence that meat consumption causes gout? Um, well...
Because uric acid itself is a breakdown product of protein compounds known as purines - the building blocks of amino acids - and because purines are at their highest concentration in meat, it has been assumed for the past 130-odd years that the primary dietary means of elevating uric acid levels in the blood, and so causing first hyperuricemia and then gout, is an excess of meat consumption.The actual evidence, however, has always been less-than-compelling: Just as low cholesterol diets have only a trivial effect on serum cholesterol levels, for instance, and low-salt diets have a clinically insignificant effect on blood pressure, low-purine diets have a negligible effect on uric acid levels. A nearly vegetarian diet, for instance, is likely to drop serum uric acid levels by 10 to 15% percent compared to a typical American diet, but that's rarely sufficient to return high uric acid levels to normality, and there is little evidence that such diets reliably reduce the incidence of gouty attacks in those afflicted.(4) Thus, purine-free diets are no longer prescribed for the treatment of gout, as the gout specialist Irving Fox noted in 1984, "because of their ineffectiveness" and their "minor influence" on uric acid levels.(5) Moreover, the incident of gout in vegetarians, or mostly vegetarians, has always been significant and "much higher than is generally assumed." (One mid-century estimate, for instance, put the incidence of gout in India among "largely vegetarians and teetotalers" at 7%.)(6) Finally, there's the repeated observation that eating more protein increases the excretion of uric acid from the kidney and, by doing so, decreases the level of uric acid in the blood.(7) This implies that the meat-gout hypothesis is at best debatable; the high protein content of meats should be beneficial, even if the purines are not.
The alternative hypothesis is suggested by the association between gout and the entire spectrum of diseases of civilization, and between hyperuricemia and the metabolic abnormalities of Syndrome X. In the past century, gout has manifested all of the now-familiar patterns, chronologically and geographically, of diseases of civilization, and so those diseases associated with western diets. European physicians in World War I, for instance, reported a reduced incidence of gout in countries undergoing food shortages.(8) In primitive populations eating traditional diets, gout was virtually unknown or at least went virtually unreported (with the conspicuous exception of Albert Schweitzer who says he saw it with surprising frequency.) The earliest documented cases reported in Asia and Africa were in the late 1940s.(9) And even in the 1960s, hospital records from Kenya and Uganda suggested an incidence of gout lower than one in a thousand among the native Africans. Nonetheless, by the late 1970s, uric acid levels in Africa were increasing with westernization and urbanization,(10) while the incidence of both hyperuricemia and gout among South Pacific islanders was reportedly sky-rocketing. By 1975, the New Zealand rheumatologist B.S. Rose, a colleague of Ian Prior's, was describing the native populations of the South Pacific as "one large gouty family."(11)
This post was inspired by my radio show with dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek, who touched on this as well.
The rest of Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories. The more accessible (for people who don't read a lot of science) Why We Get Fat, also by Taubes.
Chicken
Road. Etc.
Letting A Child Legally Have Three Or More Parents
I'm sure it at first sounds a little wacky, this proposed California bill to allow children to have three or more parents, but it actually makes sense -- and protects children and those who are important in their lives. Aaron Sankin writes at the HuffPo:
"We live in a world today where courts face the diverse circumstances that have reshaped California families," said Leno in a statement. "This legislation gives courts the flexibility to protect the best interests of a child who is being supported financially and emotionally by those parents. It is critical that judges have the ability to recognize the roles of all parents, especially when a family is in distress and a child's security is a concern."Leno argues that the bill is intended to give judges more flexibility when dealing with parent-child relationships and the custody, visitation and child support issues that often arise when there are more than two parental figures involved.
The measure doesn't expand the current definition of what qualities as a "parent." It simply allows for that definition to apply to three or more people--something that could easily become an issue in cases of surrogate parents or if a non-blood relative voluntarily signs a legal statement of parenthood.
...LGBT and children's advocates, on the other hand, have cheered Leno's proposal. "A child who has been raised since birth by a mother and a non-biological father may also have a parental bond and relationship with her biological father," said Ed Howard, senior counsel for the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law. "The child knows all three of these people as parents, and the law should not arbitrarily extinguish those relationships when doing so would hurt the child."
The bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee earlier this week and will soon be headed for vote for the full Assembly.
It's also important to remember that the nuclear family, as a unit for rearing children, is a rather recent invention in human history, those of you who will scream about how "unnatural" this is.
More on this here, in the Sac Bee, by Jim Sanders.
SB 1476 is not meant to expand the definition of who can qualify as a parent, only to eliminate the limit of two per child.Under current law, a parent can be a man who signs a voluntary declaration of paternity, for example. It also can be a man who was married and living with a child's mother, or who took a baby into his home and represented the infant as his own.
...Leno's bill, which has passed the Senate and is now in the Assembly, would apply equally to men or women, and to straight or gay couples.
Examples of three-parent relationships that could be affected by SB 1476 include:
• A family in which a man began dating a woman while she was pregnant, then raised that child with her for seven years. The youth also had a parental relationship with the biological father.
• A same-sex couple who asked a close male friend to help them conceive, then decided that all three would raise the child.
• A divorce in which a woman and her second husband were the legal parents of a child, but the biological father maintained close ties as well.
SB 1476 stemmed from an appellate court case last year involving a child's biological mother, her same-sex partner, and a man who had an affair with the biological mother and impregnated her while she was separated temporarily from her female lover.
Designating multiple parents in such cases could enhance the child's prospects for financial support, health insurance or Social Security benefits, thus reducing the state's potential financial responsibility, supporters say.
In bitter breakups involving two unfit or incapacitated parents, a judge might have more flexibility to keep a child out of foster care by recognizing the existence of another parent, Leno contends.
Welcome To ORomneycare
What's with these sillies who are all "Well, I'll be voting for Romney!"? Like he's going to do anything really meaningful as president, saving for looking really good in a suit.
Lew Rockwell posted an email from Ed Smith:
At a dinner party this past Friday evening, I was chatting with a physician friend, a family/primary care physician. I asked him how his practice has been faring under Romneycare and what he thought of Obamacare. He told me that since Romneycare came on board, he and his colleagues, in their office practice, can only hope to make ends meet on volume, scheduling five to ten minute routine appointments, twenty minutes for "serious cases," and annual physicals (which take fifteen minutes) booked up to six months in advance. From 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. each day, he and his staff sit down to attend to paperwork.Has Romney care led to cost reductions and better care for patients, I asked him. No way, he told me. It's only been better for the insurance companies. What about Obamacare? He rolled his eyes. "We've been sold a bill of goods." He and his family live modestly. He's certainly not getting rich from his medical practice. His wife works to make ends meet. She's a nurse. At your office? I asked him. No, at one of the public clinics where she does better than she could do at his practice, "no fooling."
When The Morning After Pill Becomes The Morning Never Pill
I'd been meaning to blog this and Patrick sent me this handy-dandy summary with the link, so I'll use his description:
Basically, a rape victim received two doctor-prescribed contraceptive pills.She took one, the other to be taken twelve hours later, as directed.
Anyhow, she got arrested for an outstanding warrant (failure to appear), and the jail confiscated her second pill. The female prison guard refused to give her the second pill, because it was against her religious beliefs!But something good came out of this: a judge ruled that the inmate who was denied her contraception has the right to sue the county.
Auto-Neurotic
If you're going to have your Rolls custom-painted, maybe avoid the color scheme "urine and swamp scum":
One More Reason To Love Walter Moore
Walter Moore ran for mayor of LA (he had my vote but lost to the lameass, junketing, big-taxing, ethically challenged incumbent, despite being the only one running with sensible ideas on spending and the rest).
He's fighting an insurance company (Safeco's) truly scummy treatment in the wake of the mold issue he and his fab wife Judy have at their house (which, if they win, will probably help a lot of other abused homeowners get justice).
He's also very funny and great to dogs, and then there's this that he just posted on Facebook:
Please unfriend me if you think Obama or Bush is like Hitler.
Who Says Being Fully Functional In A Job Should Be A Requirement Of Being Hired For It?
Airlines would apparently be unfairly discriminating against me if they failed to hire me as a flight attendant simply because I sometimes get deathly airsick and have to spend much of the flight with my head down on the tray table. (It's either that or toss my cookies.)
"Sorry, sir, I can't bring you coffee because I'm too busy throwing up on another flight attendant's shoes."
Walter Olson blogs at Overlawyered:
Pay up, EEOC tells a cafe owner, for not taking on a hearing- and speech-impaired applicant for a cashier's position [EEOC press release] (Albuquerque's Savory Fare Bakery and Cafe agrees to pay $20,000 and offer other relief).
From that EEOC press release:
The EEOC's lawsuit, EEOC v. Jaazrubin, LLC, d/b/a Savory Fare, 11-cv-00869 MV/ACT, charged that Savory Fare subjected Laura Mitchell to discrimination because of her disability, or because it regarded her as disabled, due to her hearing impairment and minor speech impediment. The EEOC claimed that Mitchell was denied job advancement and job training to a position as a cashier from a dishwasher/busser position because of her disabilities. The agency also alleged that Savory Fare retaliated against Mitchell for opposing unlawful practices and forced her to quit due to the disability discrimination and retaliation she experienced.Disability discrimination violates Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.
In addition to monetary relief for Mitchell, the consent decree resolving the lawsuit provides for other important relief, including an injunction prohibiting further disability discriminatory practices; institution of policies and procedures to address such problems; training for employees and managers on disability discrimination; posting a notice advising employees of their rights under the ADA; a provision requiring an employment offer to Mitchell into a vacant salad station or sandwich station position; a positive letter of reference; and a letter of apology for Mitchell.
"Employers with 15 or more employees must comply with the ADA," said EEOC Regional Attorney Mary Jo O'Neill. "Employers must make employment decisions based upon the abilities of their applicants and employees, not based on myths, fears or stereotypes about a person's disability. The ADA was passed so that people with disabilities get a fair chance at making a living and have equal employment opportunities."
American Self-Loathing
Yale computer science prof David Gelernter writes in the WSJ about how we've become a nation against ourselves. It starts in the schools:
Modern humanities education starts from the bizarre premise that students must be cured of the Europe-centered, misogynist, bigoted ideas of the past. Many American children have never heard a good word for the United States, the West, Judaism or Christianity their whole lives....No principle is more American than equality. Every generation has strained closer to the ideal. We have seen the near eradication of race prejudice in a mere two generations--an astounding achievement. We are a nation of equal citizens, not of races or privileged cliques. Affirmative action has always been a misfit in this country. A system that elevates individuals because of the color of their skin, their race or their sex has no place in America.
Yet a boy born yesterday is destined to atone (if he happens to be the wrong color) for prejudice against black women 50 years ago. Modern America is a world where a future Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, can say publicly in 2001, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [on the bench] than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Once a justice has intuited, by dint of sheer racial brilliance, which party to a lawsuit is more simpatico and deserving, what then? Invite him to lunch? Friend him on Facebook? This is not justice as America knows it.
...Next Independence Day let's celebrate the long-overdue end of affirmative action, and our triumphant return to the American ideal of equality.
A Chicken Walked Into A Bar...
Bumped its little chicken head on the thing and keeled right over.
Cheap Reads
100 Kindle books that are $3.99 or less at Amazon
My search window on Amy's Mall is broken -- just going straight to Amazon, no credit for me (thanks, Amazon!) -- but should be fixed soon (have an email into Amazon).
So, here's a link to a working search window
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET -- Dr. Jeff Volek On Low-Carb Science
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd your way to a better life!" with the best brains in science.
A growing number of people know that they should eat low-carb and that science apparently says so, but they're light on the details, thanks especially to shoddy "science" reporting in mainstream media.
My guest tonight will remedy that. He's Jeff S. Volek, Ph.D., RD, co-author, with Stephen D. Phinney, MD, Ph.D., of The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable
I got Volek and Phinney's book after Dr. Michael Eades, whom I greatly respect as a source of evidence-based dietary information, called it "The best low-carb book in print." Eades also blogged about it:
I can think of no better navigators (of the world of low-carb) than the authors of this book. Both of them have done a large part of the hardcore research on low-carb dieting that is in the medical literature today. Go to PubMed and enter Volek JS or Phinney SD in the search window, hit 'Search,' and you will be rewarded with more peer-reviewed scientific papers on low-carb dieting than you will have time to read. Many of the experiments described in these papers are explained in easy to understand language in their book.Disclosure: Both Dr. Volek and Dr. Phinney are friends and colleagues of mine. But they did not send me a copy of their book for review. I purchased it from Amazon and paid the full price of $29.95 (it is now $19.95). I bought it months ago and carried it with me all over Europe and on a half dozen other trips since but didn't have time to even crack it until I was on the last leg back from our holiday trek. It sounds cliché, but I couldn't put it down. I read and annotated the entire book over the course of two long flights. Virtually anything anyone could want to know about the science behind low-carbohydrate dieting can be found in this book.
So do join us tonight, as Dr. Volek lays out in-depth answers and answers all your "But, wait..." questions about low-carb eating, like "But, wait, this really can't be healthy for you." (Even Gary Taubes' wife took one look at his greasy bacon/multiple fried egg breakfasts and made him take out extra healthy insurance.)
Listen live at this link from 7-8 p.m. Pacific/10-11 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast there afterward:
(CORRECTED LINK)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/07/02/advice-goddess-radio-amy-alkon
And don't miss last week's show, brain candy for nerds with Dr. Paul Zak, the economist-turned-neuroeconomist (who, in fact, founded the field of neuroeconomics).
In his research on oxytocin, he's made some extremely exciting findings about morality, trust, and ways we can encourage moral and benevolent behavior in ourselves and others -- and not just in intimate relationships, but in politics, business, and society at large.
His recently published book is The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity
Listen at this link (or download the podcast there afterward):
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2012/06/26/advice-goddess-1
Join me and all my fascinating guests every Sunday at 7-8 p.m., Eastern and 10-11 p.m., Pacific, or download the podcast afterward at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon
Browsing Internet Humor
This made me laugh my ass off. (There must be a word for this -- "indognity"?)
Whatta A Set Of Teeth
If you need reason to avoid sugar -- that in sweet things and the carbs converted into sugar in grain -- check out the recently unearthed teeth of a guy who lived 7,000 years ago, who who didn't have access to Twinkies or even "healthy" whole-grain bread (hint: there's no such thing):
Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor, writes in a piece posted at HuffPo:
What may be the oldest fragments of the modern human genome found yet have now been revealed -- DNA from the 7,000-year-old bones of two cavemen unearthed in Spain, researchers say.These findings suggest the cavemen there were not the ancestors of the people found in the region today, investigators added.
Scientists have recently sequenced the genomes of our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. When it came to our lineage, the oldest modern human genomes recovered yet came from Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Alps in 1991.
Read cardiologist Dr. William Davis' Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health
Read the comments on Amazon about the amazing positive health effects readers of this book have experienced by cutting out wheat (as I did, along with sugar, fruit and starchy vegetables, in March of 2009, going very low-carb).
Taubes: What Really Makes Us Fat
Investigative science journalist Gary Taubes writes in The New York Times about the results of a clinical trial by Dr. David Ludwig and colleagues from Boston Children's Hospital:
What was done by Dr. Ludwig's team has never been done before. First they took obese subjects and effectively semi-starved them until they'd lost 10 to 15 percent of their weight. Such weight-reduced subjects are particularly susceptible to gaining the weight back. Their energy expenditure drops precipitously and they burn fewer calories than people who naturally weigh the same. This means they have to continually fight their hunger just to maintain their weight loss. The belief is that weight loss causes "metabolic adaptations," which make it almost inevitable that the weight will return. Dr. Ludwig's team then measured how many calories these weight-reduced subjects expended daily, and that's how many they fed them. But now the subjects were rotated through three very different diets, one month for each. They ate the same amount of calories on all three, equal to what they were expending after their weight loss, but the nutrient composition of the diets was very different.One diet was low-fat and thus high in carbohydrates. This was the diet we're all advised to eat: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean sources of protein. One diet had a low glycemic index: fewer carbohydrates in total, and those that were included were slow to be digested -- from beans, non-starchy vegetables and other minimally processed sources. The third diet was Atkins, which is very low in carbohydrates and high in fat and protein.
The results were remarkable. Put most simply, the fewer carbohydrates consumed, the more energy these weight-reduced people expended. On the very low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, there was virtually no metabolic adaptation to the weight loss. These subjects expended, on average, only 100 fewer calories a day than they did at their full weights. Eight of the 21 subjects expended more than they did at their full weights -- the opposite of the predicted metabolic compensation.
On the very low-carbohydrate diet, Dr. Ludwig's subjects expended 300 more calories a day than they did on the low-fat diet and 150 calories more than on the low-glycemic-index diet. As Dr. Ludwig explained, when the subjects were eating low-fat diets, they'd have to add an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity each day to expend as much energy as they would effortlessly on the very-low-carb diet. And this while consuming the same amount of calories. If the physical activity made them hungrier -- a likely assumption -- maintaining weight on the low-fat, high-carb diet would be even harder. Why does this speak to the very cause of obesity? One way to think about this is to consider weight-reduced subjects as "pre-obese." They're almost assuredly going to get fatter, and so they can be research stand-ins -- perhaps the best we have -- for those of us who are merely predisposed to get fat but haven't done so yet and might take a few years or decades longer to do it.
If we think of Dr. Ludwig's subjects as pre-obese, then the study tells us that the nutrient composition of the diet can trigger the predisposition to get fat, independent of the calories consumed. The fewer carbohydrates we eat, the more easily we remain lean. The more carbohydrates, the more difficult. In other words, carbohydrates are fattening, and obesity is a fat-storage defect. What matters, then, is the quantity and quality of carbohydrates we consume and their effect on insulin.
From this perspective, the trial suggests that among the bad decisions we can make to maintain our weight is exactly what the government and medical organizations like the American Heart Association have been telling us to do: eat low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets, even if those diets include whole grains and fruits and vegetables.
Gary Taubes' excellent books: Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat (the easier read).
And let's repeat from the piece, and as Taubes laid out in these books, and as I've been posting on the basis of for much of this decade:
In other words, carbohydrates are fattening, and obesity is a fat-storage defect. What matters, then, is the quantity and quality of carbohydrates we consume and their effect on insulin.
Inka Binka, Your Job Candidate Stinks
Everybody sues. Something Evil HR Lady Suzanne Lucas at CBS.com kept in mind when she answering the question of whether you should tell a job candidate about her body odor:
First of all, it's a rare person who makes it to adulthood without appropriate instructions in hygiene. It does happen, but it's indicative of other problems. Problems I don't wish to have to deal with in the office. Seriously, no high school friend pulled you aside to offer some Secret? Your mother didn't send you to the shower? Your gym teacher didn't sit by the showers with her check list to make sure you washed your armpits after the strenuous act of standing on the volleyball court and pretending to play volleyball? Something wrong is in this person's past. Don't know what it is, but something is wrong. And do you want that problem to become yours?Second, if you bring it up and don't hire the person for whatever reason, then they believe that their odor was the cause of lack of a job offer. And while it's perfectly legal to refuse to hire someone who stinks, that protection only extends as far as the problem is caused by lack of soap and not a medical condition. Employment lawyer Jon Hyman recently wrote about the Americans' with Disabilities Act (ADA). He reminds us that the following individuals are protected:
1. Those with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual;
2. Those with a record of such an impairment; and
3. Those regarded as having such an impairment.You don't know whether it is hygiene issue or a medical one. (And yes, there are medical conditions that cause foul odors.) And so once you bring it up, if the problem is medical and by not hiring the person can argue that you're discriminating against her, well, oy. And even if it's not a medical problem, she could argue that you're discriminating against her because you regard her as having a disability. (Does stinking substantially limit major life activities? My non-lawyerly answer is maybe.)
It's so much easier to just put the resume into the "thanks but no thanks" pile. In today's economy that pile is generally large anyway. It's really hard to win a failure to hire lawsuit when you didn't even make it to the interview stage. And attorney Hyman cautioned that if you decide to not move forward because of the smell that you don't discuss or document that. He said, via email to me, "the smaller the circle, the less likely this would ever get back to the candidate, and create the possibility of the ADA issues you discuss."
Thomas Sowell On "Social Justice"
Sowell writes at realclearpolitics:
Once I asked a class of black college students what they thought would happen if a black baby were born, in the middle of a ghetto, and entered the world with brain cells the same as those with which Albert Einstein was born.There were many different opinions -- but no one in that room thought that such a baby, in such a place, would grow up to become another Einstein. Some blamed discrimination but others saw the social setting as too much to overcome.
If discrimination is the main reason that such a baby has little or no chance for great intellectual achievements, then that is something caused by society -- a social injustice. But if the main reason is that the surrounding cultural environment provides little incentive to develop great intellectual potential, and many distractions from that goal, that is a cosmic injustice.
Many years ago, a study of black adults with high IQs found that they described their childhoods as "extremely unhappy" more often than other black adults did. There is little that politicians can do about that -- except stop pretending that all problems in black communities originate in other communities.
Similar principles apply around the world. Every group trails the long shadow of its cultural heritage -- and no politician or society can change the past. But they can stop leading people into the blind alley of resentments of other people. A better future often requires internal changes that pay off better than mysticism about one's own group or about "social justice."
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