Check out Jay Rosen’s eloquent piece on the power of blogs to empower formerly passive audiences: 

The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another– and who today are not in a situation like that at all.

Once they were your printing presses; now that humble device, the blog, has given the press to us. That’s why blogs have been called little First Amendment machines. They extend freedom of the press to more actors.

I really enjoyed this piece.  It reminded me that a few short years ago there weren’t many blogs and that blogs are now truly pushing the media to cover certain stories that would have previously remained beneath the corporate media radar.  It makes me wonder how bad things would have been by now without the blogs.

Check out the July 13 edition of Rolling Stone, where Al Gore concludes that the real energy issue is not whether we will “run out” of fossil fuels.  Rather, the question is whether we will burn so much of the existing supply to make the entire planet uninhabitable before rethinking our energy policy:

The fact that oil is beginning to get more expensive more quickly will contribute to the realization of how dysfunctional our current pattern is. Take the tar sands of western Canada. For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family’s home for four days. And they have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts. But you know, junkies find veins in their toes. It seems reasonable, to them, because they’ve lost sight of the rest of their lives . . .

Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That is nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.

Gore also comments on the the series of huge blunders this administration has made in Iraq:

If you had written this in a novel before it all played out, you’d get the proverbial rejection slip — nobody would believe it.

Earlier today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bush’s proposed military trials for Gitmo detainees was illegal under both U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.  I don’t think this comes as a surprise to many observers, given Bush’s flagrant and repeated disregard for both U.S. and international law.  What is ironic though, and a bit troubling, is that this decision overturns a lower court case that was decided by John Roberts — the man who is now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and who (obviously) supported the idea of Bush’s illegal trials.  That is the sort of person Republicans want on America’s highest court, but is it the sort of person who should be?

Also troubling is that the people being held in Gitmo are somehow viewed by the Bush Administration as more dangerous than people already being held in U.S. prisons.  So the detainees want to kill Americans:  yes, well, lots of other people in prison have killed Americans, but we don’t imprison them without fair trials.

Also troubling is that some of the people being held in Gitmo — and whom Bush apparently wants to imprison for life without trial — are teenagers. 

Exactly where in the Bible is the moral justification for all of this?  I can’t find it.

I’ve previously written that dollars are fungible (See “The Curse of Fungible Dollars”). In that article I pointed out that dollars are completely interchangeable.  I noted that there is actually only one kind of dollar and that dollars don’t come pre-labeled as “Christmas ornament dollars,” “pedicure dollars,” “Xbox dollars” or “charitable cause dollars.” I further suggested that we work hard to brainwash ourselves that non-fungible dollars exist and that we are free to spend any dollar we haven’t chosen to label a “charity dollar” on anything at all, conscience free.  To see the absurdity of that mindset, try to imagine a charity refusing your donation because the money you offered came out of your “vacation” fund.

Many Americans would consider my fungible dollars article to be a curse because it has the effect of moralizing every dollar we spend.  That every dollar is potentially a dollar we could (and possibly should) spend to help desperate human beings thus becomes a toxic thought that we prevent ourselves from considering.  It causes too much cognitive dissonance.  .  If you doubt the toxicity of such a thought, imagine speaking freely of the fungibility of dollars at a Las Vegas casino or at any other entertainment mecca where those “entertainment” dollars flow freely. The mere mention that all dollars are fungible will trigger the rapid and painful collapse of elaborate mental worlds constructed by everyone within hearing range. 

With the same dollars we spend to buy tickets to concerts or sports events, we could literally be saving lives. I often curse this thought too.  How could I not?  This idea invades every aspect of my life.  This thought has the capacity to obliterate all of my conscience-free spending zones.

As much as I have tried, though, I see no hole in my logic: whenever we spend a dollar on a luxury, we are choosing to not spend that dollar in a way that it is highly likely to relieve suffering or save lives.  We “solve” this problem by compartmentalizing our dollars as if they were not fungible, by erecting artificial mental fences.  In an ad hoc manner, we designate some of our dollars to be “entertainment dollars” or “vacation dollars.” We rationalize that we are allowed to hemorrhage substantial dollars on luxuries because we “deserve it.”

It gets worse, though. Just as dollars are fungible, so are hours.  Because we can use our limited time on earth to accomplish a wide variety of activities, the choice to spend an hour of time on something frivolous is necessarily and simultaneously a choice to not spend that hour on something that could be life-enhancing or even lifesaving to ourselves, to our community or to our world. 

About fifteen years ago, I finally realized just how ill-informed I was about many aspects of my world. For instance, I was (and am) poorly acquainted with much classic literature, including the works of Shakespeare.  I had (and continue to have) a shaky understanding of many scientific fields, including quantum physics and relativity.  Same problem with history, anthropology and many other fields. I concluded that I needed to become better acquainted with these fields in order to be a better writer and a better-informed citizen.  All I had to do was to make room in my schedule for such studies.  There are only 24 hours a day, however.  Therefore, I had to remove something from my schedule in order to make room.  I fretted about what to do as I sat on the couch watching a baseball game. (more…)

Bill O’Reilly hates the blogosphere. He hates many things, of course, among them Pepsi, rapper Ludacris, a wide array of conventional media outlets, and even some of his own guests. But today I focus on an entire media outlet that O’Reilly labels as biased, lacking in evidence, and in large part sensationalized: political blogs.

Of course, O’Reilly doesn’t oppose online journalism on his own. Even more mainstream news anchors (if you can call Mr. O’Reilly a news anchor) tend to scoff and roll their eyes at the notion of “the blogosphere” or the opinions expressed over the internet. O’Reilly has led the most outspoken movement against internet editorialism, though. In June of 2003, Bill had this to say about bloggers:

“Nearly everyday, there’s something written on the Internet about me that’s flat out untrue…the reason these net people get away with all kinds of stuff is that they work for no one. They put stuff up with no restraints. This, of course, is dangerous…”

By July of 2005, the “blogosphere” had become a common slang term for the mainstream news media, and became the focus of one episode of O’Reilly’s Factor program:

“Personal attacks lodged through the internet! How are so-called “Web logs” being used as ideological weapons? And who’s behind the smear campaigns? We’ll have a No Spin look at a dangerous new weapon in the culture wars!”

But as “dangerous” as these “weapons in the culture wars” may seem to some, online outlets such as Media Matters and Think Progress have called O’Reilly out on lies, poor interviewing tactics, poor taste, and misinformation nearly countless times. With the exception of Al Franken, who shook his finger at the Fox News Channel host for claiming to have earned a Pulitzer when he earned a Peabody, who in a conventional setting has held this raging ideologue to any standards?

Indeed, who holds Fox New Channel to any standards? We all know that this horrendously slanted news network carries bias under its weak claim of “We Report, You Decide”, but only by inspecting it critically ourselves. Occasionally the Channel receives an obvious attack from the likes of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, but in the mainstream news, silence.

Meanwhile, the Fox News talking heads delight in accusing their rivals in television and print of clear, corrupted liberal bias. The moderately liberal press goes about its way without a response, still maintaining its own facade of near-objectivity. Fox can openly claim pure truth while disseminating spin, so deeply does the rest of news media fear seeming overly catty or slanted. Why does moderate liberal media, like moderate liberalism in general, lack backbone?
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Another Fourth of July is upon us and my thoughts turn to patriotism. 

In the past I’ve waxed and waned in my attitude toward this so-called civic virtue.  It seems to me there are two kinds.

The first, and most legitimate, is the sentiment of attachment to place and people that developes throughout life.  It emerges naturally, like deep friendship, love of one’s spouse, and all the joys of living the kind of life one finds fulfilling.  You grow up in a community, find comfort in its places, its people.  There is a place for you, all things being equal.  This is where you live and the living creates bonds and attachments.  They coalesce into a vague yet deeply-felt satisfaction and sense of Home. 

You would defend this feeling and, by extension, this place.  You would work to make it better.  You would use it as a base upon which to build yourself and family. 

During the Civil War it became clear that not everyone shared the same definition of “country.”  Those in the South defended their country–which meant, to them, their state.  Robert E. Lee, when offered command of the entire Union Army, refused, declaring that he would remain loyal to his country–Virginia.  (He later turned down Jefferson Davis for command of the entire Confederate Army for the same reasons.)

A lot of southerners fought the Union who were not defenders of slavery.  In fact, quite a few hated slavery.  But they fought the Union to defend their country, saying that they continued to fight because “you’re down here…and you shouldn’t be.”

That sort of patriotism is an organic thing, growing out of a sense of place and familiarity.  Like generosity, it follows its own dictates and makes its own choices how best to express itself.  As one matures, presumably, what threatens such sentiment becomes more and more specific and direct–ideas won’t do it, only a foreign soldier with a gun in your face will.  A cosmopolitan view reduces patriotism to a base sentiment that allows one to draw a line–a very personal line–about what constitutes transgression.  And it is personal.  It yields to law.  It yields to reason.

The other kind is the sort that drives political rhetoric.  The kind that produces anti-desecration of the flag legislation.  The kind that seeks to define patriotism and then, definition in hand, seeks to exclude anyone who doesn’t agree.  This kind of patriotism is a perversion.  It’s forcibly wedded to nationalism, which is one of the great perversions of the 20th century.  It assumes there are people constitutionally suited to being citizens–and those who aren’t–and allows for a culling mentality that goes forth and molds.

I have no use for this kind of so-called patriotism.  It’s the kind of patriotism that comes with a lapel pin of the flag and a strident political opinion drawn like a weapon on social occasions.  It’s the kind of patriotism that confuses our country with its employees and ridicules anyone who would criticize those employees for acting stupidly or arrogantly or maliciously.  It’s the kind of patriotism that disallows any other standard of decision-making outside of Us and Them.  It’s the kind of ugly bigotry that pastes bumper stickers on vehicles claiming “America: Love It Or Leave” without bothering to realize that it’s not America that is unloved.  It’s the kind of patriotism that intrudes into every kind of social decision-making by making lists of what is acceptable and what is not.  It’s social Darwinism colored by the national flag.  It’s the kind that lobotomizes those in its grip and makes them incapable of understanding what dissent actually is.

But worse still, it’s the kind that requires a Leader.  The blind loyalty of those who would follow a leader who strikes just the right kind of jingoistic chord is the blindness of those who cannot understand that principle and concept stand outside of any given individual, even while they inform us all.  So we have people like Ollie North, who could not grasp that his duty to the Idea of America, through the Constitution, was far more important than his duty to Ronald Reagan.

The Fourth of July is upon us and it behooves us to remember that the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence and signed it and then went to war because of it were people who knew the difference between principle and princes and declared that no leader could dictate their sentiment.  Their patriotism was to an idea of community and place and to a concept of humanity free of the offensive, transgressive effort of conformity to nationalist litmus tests.  They were people who would see this all torn down before agreeing that something as ephemeral and frangible as a symbol–the flag–be given privileged protection over and above the right of anyone to use that symbol any way they chose.

Have a happy Fourth.

In a book called Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner’s Guide (2005), Robin Dunbar, Louise Barrett and John Lycett addressed this issue.  The book drew on additional research that can be found in Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, by Robin Dunbar (1997).

We don’t have limited numbers of friends and acquaintances merely because we choose to have such limited numbers.  Rather, as explained in these two works, physiological limitations constrain human social choices. We are limited in the number of acquaintances we can have because we are physiologically limited.  This is another example that those who claim to explain human animals without the benefit of careful science do so at their own risk.

Human societies are complex social environments.  Archaeologists have determined that pre-modern humans lived in small-scale hunter gatherer societies “characterized by very small, relatively unstable groups, often dispersed across a very large area.”  Only after agriculture was developed (10,000 years ago) did large permanent settlements become possible Living in groups gives members huge advantages such as reduced predation risk (we benefit from the “many eyes” advantage and large groups of individuals deter most predators).

Group living comes with costs, too.  We have conflicts over limited resources, such as food and mates.  Group living stresses immune systems too.  The menstrual cycles of female primates are disrupted.  In order to obtain necessary food, humans need to travel further each day. Associating with large groups of people also has a huge mental cost.  In order to live safely within large groups, we need to know who is who.  Who are our friends and enemies?  We need to know the individual personalities of the members of the group.  We need to keep track of favors owed.  We need to keep track of the cliques and alliances.  We need to strategize to identify and work with high-ranking members of the community.  Keeping track of other people’s relationships is very difficult work, indeed.  Not only do we need to keep track of relationships among people who are present.  We also need to keep track of relationships among absent individuals (”virtual individuals”).

It’s for these reasons that many have suggested the Machiavelli intelligence hypothesis: that “evolutionary pressure selecting for a large brain size and super intelligence in primates did seem to have something to do with the need to weld large groups together.”  (Grooming, page 60).  Also known as the “social brain hypothesis” the theory suggests that:

the demands of living in permanent social groups selected for a kind of intelligence was particularly adept at tracking the relationships that exist between oneself and all the other members of the group and, more importantly perhaps, keeping track of the relationships that the other animals in the group have with each other. (more…)

The conservatives are working hard to characterize the president as incompetent.  To do so is an attempt to hide the fact that much of the damage done by the president comes right out of the conservative playbook.  George Lakoff elaborates, in this insightful article:

The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush’s management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he or she can manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking, talking and joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw from his presidency.

Remember Tom DeLay — former Texas Republican (and self-proclaimed born-again Christian) who was the Majority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives until a corruption scandal forced him to resign from office?  Well, he now says he is a resident of Virginia, not Texas.  Why?  Because he won the Republican primary election in his district earlier this year and now, not surprisingly, wants to get his name off the ballot so a less tarnished Republican can take his place.

Perhaps the reason why Republicans are so eager to slander their political opponents with ”cut and run” rhetoric is because of what I mentioned yesterday:  they see in others what they desperately need to see in themselves.

Once more a “we need to protect the flag” amendment is up before congress.  It could not be more politically timed.  It is soon to be July, wherein the Fourth Day thereof is our national Holy of Holies, when all the good citizens can get hammered on bad beer and blow up (mostly illegal) fireworks in sham commemoration of the blood spilled in freeing us from Britan.  Of course, the “rocket’s red glare” part of that was not from the Revolution but from the War of 1812 (which is largely ignored, btw, in English schools, having been essentially a side-show for them, the bigger problem at the time being Napoleon).

I could go on at length about the political and philosophical idiocy of such a law.  There was a time in this country you could be put in jail for disrespecting the flag–by wearing it as clothing, for instance.  Mostly these were local laws or just vague “ordinances” which all got overturned in the furor over Vietnam, and rightfully so.  A national emblem ought to be versatile.  It ought to be useable by the citizens to express their appreciation or discontent as citizens any way they choose.  So if we can raise the flag and praise the history and institutions which it represents, we should also be able to lower it in disgust when we recognize our country being stupid, arrogant, or criminal.

That is, I thought, one of things that makes us…what’s the word?…FREE.

Anyway, I could go on at length, but I won’t.  I will instead point out a fact of history.  Under the Nazis, it became a felony to desecrate or destroy or misuse the symbols of Germany, which included the eagle and the swastika.  A felony.  The Party then put those symbols on everything of importance to them, so that defacing a Nazi document alone was enough to get you interred.

It seems to me that, although I suspect superlatives as a matter of course, anything Nazi Germany found expedient or “noble” to do ought not be repeated by any nation that considers itself, or wishes to consider itself, decent and moral.

(And btw, next time some frothing-at-the-mouth Fundie calls you a Nazi because you support a woman’s right to choose an abortion, you might point out that in Nazi Germany abortion was a capital offense–for the doctor and the woman.)

Earlier today, President Bush said it was “disgraceful” that the news media (i.e., the New York Times, LA Times & Wall Street Journal) disclosed his secret CIA program to illegally wiretap millions of financial records at the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (”SWIFT”) to search for terrorist suspects.  Likewise, last week, Bush said it was “disgraceful” for Democrats to call for troop withdrawals in Iraq even though Bush was, simultaneously, conducting secret discussions with the Pentagon to do exactly that.  Likewise, several months ago, Bush said it was “disgraceful” that the news media disclosed his secret NSA program to illegally wiretap tens of thousands of American phone conversations.  Likewise, two years ago, Bush said it was “disgraceful” for Cindy Sheehan and others to protest Bush’s invasion of Iraq even though Bush knew (or should have known) his invasion was completely based on fraud.

Do you see a pattern here?  Whenever Bush labels other peoples’ behavior as “disgraceful,” the facts indicate that other peoples’ behavior is entirely appropriate, and that Bush’s own behavior is disgraceful.  Bush is apparently unable to perceive his own faults on a conscious level, but he can’t stop his subconscious mind from perceiving them and resenting them; thus, he projects his faults onto other people so that he can freely criticize his faults without it reflecting badly on himself.

In “What is Conservative Culture?” (July 3, 2006 issue of The New Republic), Rick Perlstein reports that a new kind of prom has spung up in some fundamentalist communities.  It’s

not for high school seniors but for prepubescent girls. They dress up in party dresses and take their fathers as dates. After the fox trot, the daughter reads to her father from a card: “With confidence in His power to strengthen me, I make a promise this day to God, my family, myself, my future spouse, and my future children; to remain sexually pure until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my spouse.” The father responds: “I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”

I had a few reactions to this idea.  First of all, with all of the effort the conservatives exert to make birth control pills and devices unavailable, I can see why they also need to put this enormous energy into keeping their daughters “pure.” 

Now, about that language, until she gives herself to her spouse as a “wedding gift?”  That sounds to much like chattel.  Do those fathers affix seals on their daughters to to certify that they have been properly “covered” and “protected.”  If the girl becomes a gift, are these Christian husbands free to do anything they want with their “gifts.” 

By the logic of the article, the wedding marks the end of purity.  Does that mean that married Christian girls are unpure? And where is that line between being pure and not pure?  First base?  Second base?  Do these thirteen year old girls understand what the term “pure” means?  I don’t. 

I woud rephrase this prom declaration and put it in writing so that everyone understands everyone else.  I would define in writing whether French kissing destroys purity.  What about watching a steamy movie? What about (caveat: Fundamentalist parents, please skip to the next paragraph) autoeroticism?

And shouldn’t there be a few caveats communicated to these de-sexed debutantes?  For example, not all girls get married right out of high school.  Do these young women realize that they are denying themselves what many people consider to be the ultimate pleasure, potentially for decades?  If I had my say, I would insist upon the use of a special written disclaimer form:  “I understand that many people consider sex to be the ultimate pleasure.  By signing this, I am giving up the chance to experience this ultimate pleasure for a length of time that might exceed several decades.  If no one proposes to me, which is likely given that my father will constantly be ”covering” me, I acknowledge that I will die a virgin. Signed, Ashley, aged 10.”

Finally, how about a “Progressive Prom” where the girls promise to be empathetic to the plight of the poor and disenfranchized and where each of the fathers promises to trust his daughter’s judgment, whether she be 10 years of age or 15 or 25?

I’ve been watching to see what the Bush Administration will do for its “October surprise” to give Republicans a boost in the polls just before the November mid-term elections.  According to this article (http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/iraq), the Whitehouse appears to be planning sharp troop withdrawals starting in September.  After more than two years of using “cut and run” rhetoric to attack anyone who has called for troop withdrawals, isn’t it an amazing coincidence how Republicans have decided to do just that immediately before their mid-term elections?  They successfully gamed Iraq to win in ‘04, so it should suprise no one that they will be gaming it again in ‘06.

Next month, it will be 467.

How do I know?  I consulted one of the many life expectancy calculators available on the Internet.  The MSN calculator I used takes into account personal behavior, family and personal health, lifestyles (including alcohol and cigarette use), diet and exercise and driving habits. Based on my lifestyle habits, I have just determined that I’m scheduled to die at age 89, 39 years from now.

I have no grounds to complain about the small-seeming number of months I have yet to live. I’m certainly not looking for pity.  Compared to many other people, I’m doing well. People in the Stone Age (ca. 8000 BC) lived only about 20 years.    At the beginning of the 20th century, the average person lived only until my current age, 50.  In African countries hit hard by AIDS, the average person lives a total of only 30 years, significantly less than my remaining life expectancy at age 50. This is a phenomenal and disturbing statistic: at age 50, I am expected to live longer than a child born today in Zambia.

The reason I wrote this post, though, is that calculating my remaining life expectancy is much more than mathematics.  I’ll try to explain.  Perhaps this experiment won’t have the same effect on you, but it might.

First of all, why calculate my remaining time in months rather than the years?  Because as an adult, the month turns out to be the most basic unit of time.  Years move too slowly. They don’t “tick.”  Days and weeks, on the other hand, are far too fleeting; work weeks now speed by like a single long day interrupted by five naps.  Time didn’t rocket by this way when I was a child.  Back then, a summer day seemed endless. Summer vacations used to be lifetimes during which I could whittle a stick under a shade tree and daydream endlessly without an ounce of urgency or guilt.  As an adult, though, things have sped up logarithmically.  Clocks now remind me that the passage of an hour is actually the loss of an hour.  As an adult, no matter how good my health is, I’m cognizant that I am always a day closer to my own death today than I was yesterday. 

Whether my mind will still actually work throughout my life expectancy is a huge asterisk.  Ten percent of the nation’s 4.5 million Alzheimer’s patients — an estimated 450,000 people — are now younger than 65.  http://www.alz.org/ At one extreme, very few people will have the mental capacity of Ernst Mayr, who published What Evolution Is (2002) when he was 98 years old.  Another necessary asterisk is whether my particular lifespan will actually fall within my calculated life expectancy.  The life expectancy calculator calculates only an average. I might die tomorrow, for instance, if an SUV crashes into my bicycle. 

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Once regarded as a Generation-X anomaly, social scientists and news publications around the world now observe a frightening trend in young adults: a marked failure to leave home, find a career, attain what most regard as “adulthood”. The reported lack of maturity manifests itself not just in observation, but in real-world statistics: the percentage of 26-year-olds that live with their parents has nearly doubled since 1970, from 11% to 20% according to a University of Michigan study. The average college experience now takes five years, not four. This new agegroup of immature adults has a variety of names around the world- boomerang kids(Canada), nest-squatter(Germany), adultescents (a few US social scientists), and so on. Japan’s parliament even staged a debate on the disturbing reliance of today’s 20-somethings on their parents. But in some ways, this trend follows historical example.

Before the Renaissance, children did not exist. Of course, the age group did not fail to appear, but pre-Renaissance peoples thought of children as miniature adults more than their own stage in human development. Accordingly, children of the pre-Renaissance had to undertake much higher responsibilities, and enjoyed less education and emotional feedback than their modern equivalents.

Then, some time around the Renaissance, childhood came into existence. Society began to see its younger members as less than fully molded, emotionally delicate and needy. At the same time they receive more coddling, longer educational lives, and more parental patience with less physical punishment. In time it became psychologically clear that children did not posses the same mental and emotional strength as adults, just as they did not possess the same physical development.
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The Federal Communications Commission and industry lobbyists are once again trying to let huge media companies get even bigger by resurrecting the same rule changes that millions of Americans rejected in 2003.

It’s hard to believe that anyone at the FCC could actually be considering the welfare of the American people when advocating further media consolidation.  The benefits to large corporations are obvious–who wouldn’t want a monopoly?  But I can’t think of a single benefit of further media consolidation for members of the public.  We already struggle to find meaningful vigorous debate and unbiased information.  Choking off perspectives is not a valid way to “resolve” factual issues; only more and better information and more diverse perspectives can lead us to that thing we call “truth.”

[The above chart is from Media Reform Information Center ]

According to the book New Media Monopoly, only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the media industry in the U.S.

Despite this obviously bad trend, on Wednesday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin began the process that would further relax ownership rules.

This warning from FreePress: 

If [Martin] prevails, we will see the further demise of local news, independent voices and critical journalism.   Martin is angling to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast “cross-ownership” ban that prevents a single conglomerate from owning the major daily newspaper as well as radio and TV stations in a single market. And he wants to lift local ownership caps on how many TV stations one company can own in your town.

When the FCC last tried to change these rules under then-Chairman Michael Powell, some 3 million people contacted the FCC and Congress to oppose the action. The rule changes were later overturned by the courts, sending the FCC back to the drawing board.

If these rule changes were approved, one company could own the major paper, eight radio stations and three television stations in the same city. A handful of huge companies already control nearly all of the media in America. Such concentration destroys local news, sidelines dissenting views, and stifles competition. When we allow one company to own everything, we lose the diversity of views that is the lifeblood of our democracy.

The StopBigMedia.com Coalition is an alliance of consumer, public interest, media reform, organized labor and other groups that have joined together to fight runaway media consolidation and urge the FCC to put the public interest before the self-interest of large media corporations. 

To take action, click here. Your comments are needed to turn back the current attempt to put a bigger corporate muzzle on the information we critically need to run our lives, country and world.

According to the Indianapolis Star, the reporting from Guantanamo will be less diverse:

Now, the Pentagon has shut down access entirely — at least temporarily — expelling reporters this week and triggering an outcry from human rights groups, attorneys and media organizations even as the prison comes under renewed criticism for the suicides of three detainees last weekend.

As reported by Thinkprogress, the Pentagon

shut down access entirely to the Guantanamo Bay prison after the suicide deaths of three detainees. Journalists covering the suicides had their clearances revoked and were immediately flown back to the United States, and regular visits between detainees and their lawyers were cancelled.

Well, with one exception.  FOX still has access.  As Thinkprogress reports, Fox News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano continues to have access and has continued to offer his “fair and balanced” review of prison conditions.  Napolitano recently reported on the “now gentle, almost child-like the way they treat the detainees.”

Yeah, I guess that after torturing those guys for years, depriving them of any contact with loved ones and refusing to even tell them what they are charged with, they’ve become ”child-like,” especially when we put them in chains and hoods and work extra hard to keep more of them from killing themselves.  Now that not even the semi-credible wing of the mainstream media is here to report on your mistreatment, do any of you guys have any complaints about the facility?

Once again, keeping out the journalists solves a big problem for W.  Where the sun doesn’t shine, everything is fine.

Over the course of my life, I’ve met many heterosexuals.  To my knowledge, not one of them has ever spontaneously become homosexual.  Likewise, I’ve met many homosexuals and, to my knowledge, not one of them as ever spontaneously become heterosexual.  Likewise, I’ve never (to my knowledge) met a pedophile, but I know that states throughout America have passed laws requiring long-term monitoring of pedophiles and requiring them to stay away from places where children congregate, because of the belief that pedophiles do not spontaneously stop being pedophiles.

So, here’s my question:  if virtually no one ever spontaneously changes his or her sexual preference (whatever that preference might be), then what basis is there — other than bigotry — for singling out homosexuals as the only people whose sexual preference “is merely a lifestyle choice?” 

Analog: any variable signal continuous in both time and amplitude. It differs from a digital signal in that small fluctuations in the signal are meaningful.

Binary: compounded or consisting of or marked by two things or parts.

You know that feeling of resentment that wells up inside when someone enters your space and dumps chores on you?  It breeds a lot of resentment.  That’s how neo-conservatives feel about progressives. Neo-cons hiss and spit when they speak of progressives because progressives try to dump lots of extra work on neo-cons. 

What kind of work, you ask?  The work of actually having to get to know people before judging them.  It’s a lot of work.  No wonder conservatives express such animosity toward progressives!

For the next minute, step inside the collective mind of the neocon . . .

We had to retaliate against Iraqis when people from Saudi Arabia attacked us.  Sometimes you need to show those people who’s in charge.

I check in with conservative talk radio quite often.  In the privacy of my SUV, my radio reminds me that all unmarried mothers are failures.  All welfare recipients are trash, of course.  All drug addicts should be thrown in prison for a lonngg time.  Well, except for Rush.  All immigrants should be kept out of the U.S.A.  Who the hell do they think they are, trying to get what we have. 

Homosexuals?  They are clearly immoral.  Criminals, actually. . . guilty of something.  Do I actually know any gay people?  No, not really.  Don’t need to.  Why bother?

And then there are those people who get behind the president no matter what he says or does (unless he’s Clinton, that is)? I’m tired of hearing them jaw-jacking while we fight their wars.  The French?  Forget them all.  Hugo Chavez?  An obviously bad guy—he said that the U.S. is militarily aggressive and that we waste oil.  Anyone who talks like that should be punished.  Tony Blair?  He’s a good guy.  Why?  Because he stands behind his—I mean “our”—president. 

Environmentalists?  They’re tolerable as long as we re-write their scientific reports for them.  That way, the conclusions don’t upset people so much.  I don’t like people who upset other people, especially with numbers. And what are we going to do about that global warming stuff anyway?  Are you telling me I’ve got to put a frickin windmill on the roof and be the laughing stock of my buddies?

Government employees?  If they are loyal to their president (“heck of a job, Brownie), they’re OK.  That’s why we didn’t need a 9/11 commission: because our people did what they had to do and they stood behind the president.  Department of Education?  Fire them all.  Useless organization.  They are all wasting our tax-dollars. (more…)

On June 16, 2006, the sixteen scientists who contributed essays to Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement, wrote a letter to Congress, sending a copy of the book along with the letter.

The scientists asked members of congress to consider the message of the book, which focuses on Intelligent Design (ID).  The authors wrote that “ID is a movement that threatens American science education and with it American economic predominance and credibility.”
 
The final paragraph of the letter succinctly sets forth the stakes for failing to choose science over ignorance:

As the world grows more complex, and we face scientific challenges such as addressing global warming, developing sustainable energy sources, and preventing the spread of pandemics, it is critical that America remain in the forefront of science.  And the key to our preeminence is education. The study of evolution has practical benefits:  it is the basis for breeding food crops, choosing animal models that can be used to treat human disorders, conserving species and their habitats, predicting which vaccines should be made to prepare for epidemics like avian flu, and manufacturing those vaccines.  Science education that incorporates unscientific issues like ID is a sure path to America’s failure against competing countries. Conversely, given its importance for biology and for science in general, evolution deserves to be properly taught in American classrooms.

The letter, which can be read in its entirety here, was signed by

• Scott Atran, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan
• John Brockman, Publisher and Editor, Edge
• Jerry Coyne, Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago
• Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Museum
• Daniel Dennett, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University
• Marc D. Hauser, Departments of Psychology and Organismal and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
• Nicholas Humphrey, London School of Economics, London, UK
• Stuart Kauffman, The Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics, The University of Calgary, The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Seth Lloyd, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Techology
• Steven Pinker, Department of Psychology, Harvard University
• Lisa Randall, Department of Physics, Harvard University
• Scott Sampson, Utah Museum of Natural History and Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah
• Neil Shubin, Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, The University of Chicago, The Field Museum, Chicago
• Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
• Frank Sulloway, Institute for Personality and Social Research, The University of California, Berkeley
• Leonard Susskind, Department of Physics, Stanford University, and
• Tim White, Department of Integrative Biology and Human Evolution Research Center, The University of California at Berkeley

The “One Percent Doctrine” is the title of a new book by Ron Suskind about the so-called “strategic thinking” of our current presidential administration. In case you are still wondering why we attacked Iraq, and you don’t buy any of the president’s ever-changing explanations, you might want to check out Mr. Suskind’s book.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me state that I haven’t read the book yet, but Mr. Suskind’s previous books have been excellent, and this one got positive reviews in The New York Times and The Washington Post. My interest in this post is just to examine the phrase itself. More disclosure: I’m a PhD statistician and sometimes amuse myself by picking statistical-sounding phrases out of the news media.

As cited in Ruskin, and quoted in the NYT, shortly after 9/11 Dick Cheney said: “if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction—and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time—the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.” What I would like to know is:

1. Can I see the calculations that produced the “1 percent” estimate?
2. What is the confidence interval of this estimate?
3. What are the effect sizes for improving port security versus torturing innocent people of Middle Eastern heritage?
4. How often do you recalculate this estimate? What was it in the week before 9/11?
5. Since there’s a “small probability” of almost anything happening, including President Bush taking up the study of Mathematical Statistics, exactly how low does that probability need to be to prevent the United States from attacking sovereign nations?

It’s time to dispel the notion that theists all believe “in the same God.” Based on my experience, they don’t all believe in the same God.  Yes, they use the same label, “God,” but that label hides the numerous striking and intense disagreements believers have with each other.

From now on, when anyone claims that all believers believe in the same God, I’m going to ask that person to answer this handy list of twenty questions with regard to their God:

1. Is your God a man or a woman (or something like an XXY or XYY?
2. Does your God have a son named Jesus?
3. Is your God a sentient caring being or just a first cause?
4. Did your God inspire the writings of the Bible?
5. Does your God deem the Catholic Church the only legitimate church?
6. Does your God hold that non-believers are unfit for public office?
7. Did your God provide for an afterlife, a heaven and a hell?
8. Does your God speak English?
9. Does your God send gay people to hell
10. Does your God prefer the Red Sox or the Yankees (or some other team)?
11. Did your God rig nature to evolve new species without further intervention by Him?
12. Was your God offended when He saw Janet Jackson’s nipple on TV?
13. Does your God literally require that any person doing any work on the Sabbath “shall be put to death”? [See Exodus 35:2]
14. Did your God want Terri Schiavo kept on life support?
15. Does your God consider an un-implanted blastocyst to be a human baby that should have the same rights as a three-year old child?
16. Does your God approve of you buying expensive tickets to professional sports events when that same money could be used to save the lives of dozens of children living in abject poverty?
17. Does your God think only men should serve as clergy?
18. On whose side was your God, the Hutus or the Tutsis?
19. Does your God approve of the way the U.S. treats suspected terrorists?
20. Does your God require believers to belong to an organized religion to get to heaven?

If I can get a lot of believers to fill out this form, they will inevitably do so in a wide variety of ways.  And they can’t all be right, of course. (more…)

I didn’t believe it, either, but here’s the article:

What’s next, listing left-handedness as a mental disorder? 

This happened some time ago, but it’s taken me a while to “process” it and come up with a cogent observation.  Sometimes, certain things are just too unbelievable to take.  But this is by no means the first, nor shall it be the last, time someone from the frothing-at-the-mouth christian right has said something which leaves most reasonable (and reasoning) people flatfooted.

Partly, this is about not knowing history, which is something all of us could do with a little more intimate acquaintance. 

The right Reverand Pat Robertson, who spews forth on the 700 Club–a televised ministry previously notable for bad hair, excessive eye makeup, and monetary and sexual hypocrisy that ran off the scales–let the public know what he thought was behind Ariel Sharon’s massive cerebral hemhorrage. Seems God did it.

If there is a more ideologically corrupt pundit currently mouthing off, I am unaware of him or her. Mona Charen might qualify, except her observations are so fecklessly ill-formed that she poses no serious challenge to reason, and Ann Coulter seems to have turned purely to a Limbaugh-esque “don’t confuse me with the facts, my numbers are more important than truth” kind of screeding moronity.

According to Robertson, God struck Sharon down because he was about to give God’s land to the Palestinians. He said:

“God considers this land to be his…You read the Bible and he says, ‘This is my land,’ and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, ‘No, this is mine.”

He quoted the prophet Joel.

He declared that Sharon could not do what he was going to do to appease the EU, NATO, the United Nations, or the United States–which made it a political statement. So much for separation of church and state on Mr. Robertson’s show.

There’s a little something called common decency which seems to be lacking in all this, not to mention common sense. But without doubt, many people will agree with Mr. Robertson, and, given our current religio-political climate, will send a message to congress to try to affect policy in accordance with this latest reading of what Yahweh wants.

Joel…

Joel was one of the so-called minor prophets. It’s not even certain when the Book of Joel was written, but most evidence points to some time in the Fifth or Fourth Century B.C. He wrote mainly about Judah, which at that time was a small slice of what had once been what we know as Israel. To give some perspective, the Empire of David and Solomon–which was the greatest extent of ancient Israel— included a number of what might be considered States: Edom in the south, Moab, Ammon, Bashan, Gilead in the east, Judah and Israel in the center and west, Zobah and Hamath in the north, in what is present-day Syria. Jerusalem sat on the border between Judah and Israel at the time. (more…)

A woman was recently elected as the first Episcopal presiding bishop and it’s causing quite a ruckus.  As reported by MSNBC,

The situation has been complicated by Sunday’s election of Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as the first Episcopal presiding bishop — the first woman ever to lead an Anglican province. Only two other Anglican provinces — New Zealand and Canada — have female bishops and many Anglicans believe women should not be ordained.

Outside of religions, of course, this sort of explanation–that obtaining a job would be improper because the applicant is a girl–doesn’t fly.  In fact, it’s beyond laughable.  It’s grotesque.

I have two young daughters.  If either of my daughters grows up to be competent at doing X, she should be allowed an opportunity to have a job doing X, right?  Whether it’s working as a coal miner, a corporate officer, a computer programmer or a rock musician.  I’m not trying to be idealistic.  Rather, I’m trying to be empathetic.  What kind of crazy world would this be if I were prohibited from doing a job for which I was otherwise qualified simply because of my male gender?  What kind of crazy world, indeed!

Outside of religions, opportunities for women have opened up dramatically over the past few decades and it all seems to be a good thing to me.  I have to wonder, then, how intelligent people can stand up, unashamed, and announce that a person can’t hold a religious post because–well–to be blunt, that person has a vagina.  I can think of very few jobs that would legitimately require a particular type of sex organ.  Such a bizarre screening requirement seems especially strange for a religious organization that preaches love and compassion. 

Also, to be blunt, I just don’t recall any scripture that specifically provides that God Himself had a real penis. Yes, He is referred to as a He, but it is also widely held that God didn’t have a bodily existence at all (hence the necessity of Jesus, as I understand the logic).  No Divine body, therefore no Divine penis.  So it doesn’t seem that doing the job of God requires a real-life male body. 

Ergo, in my simplistic way of seeing this, it wouldn’t seem that serving a God who is only metaphorically male would require any particular physical sexual equipment.

But somehow, I fear, that I’m missing the point.