This documentary by Penn and Teller characterizes the “War on Drugs” as “The new prohibition.”   The documentary is a no-holds-barred presentation that includes some coarse language.   Here is Part II and here is Part III.

The statistics are compelling.  Alcohol causes 50,000 deaths per year.  Tobacco causes 440,000 deaths per year.  Marijuana has yet to cause a single death.  It is simply not toxic.  Yet marijuana is the one drug of these three that the government condemns, while the others, both dangerous and highy taxed, are freely available.   Why?   Not clear, not consistent and not sensible, according to this documentary.

In the meantime, the government acknowledges that people should be free to consider whether or not they will use alcohol and tobacco, based upon an assumption that each individual can weigh information regarding the substantial risks of such drugs. When it comes to street drugs, though, the government thinks that people can’t be trusted to decide for themselves.  Further, the government continues to conduct a campaign of violence against individual users of drugs, throwing hundreds of thousands of them into expensive prisons, at a cost exceeding $20,000 per prisoner per year.  Actually, this reminds me of an important issue: why do so many people reach for street drugs (and legal drugs) rather than dealing with life’s challenges in more productive ways?  I suspect that it’s because we don’t seriously invest in our children while they are young.

Penn and Teller are not advocating the recreational use of drugs.  Much to the contrary.   Penn indicates several times that the recreational use of street drugs is “stupid” in almost all cases (I generally agree).  An exception is the medical use of marijuana, covered in Parts II and III.  Check out the compelling interviews, undeniable cases where the use of marijuana substantially relieved severe suffering.  To take a contrary position in the face of this evidence of constant suffering is nothing less than sadistic.

The conclusion of this documentary is that the “War on Drugs” is an senseless and expensive war that creates violence, gangs and black markets, as well as ruining neighborhoods and lives.  And it does all of this without creating any measurable benefit, contrary to the grandiose claims of those who support the “War on Drugs.”

From now on, whenever you see any article that talks about the US budget being “tight,” it means that money has been stolen from some worthy cause by George W. Bush, who diverted those precious tax dollars to pursue what is turning out to be one of the biggest financial and social fiascoes in US history. 

I previously wrote that Iraq is a “domestic” issue.  More than ever, Iraq remains a domestic issue. The reason is that money is fungible.   Money that we pour into Iraq is no longer available for worthy domestic purposes. Consider that $409 billion of our hard-earned tax dollars have now been poured into that meatgrinder we call Iraq.

“Isn’t that just a small part of our budget?” you might ask.  “What does it matter to me,” one might ask? But consider how much $1 billion is.   And for those who ask these questions, here’s something to think about, the topic of an article featured in the March 2, 2007 edition of Science, an article called “Tight Budget Takes a Toll on US-Funded Clinical Trials.”  [Available to subscribers only] 

The Science article illustrates the problem.  Many children are being deprived of life-saving cures because funding for pediatric cancer studies are being slashed by the U.S. government:

Cancer specialists are reeling from deep cuts now being made in clinical trials, including what they say is the first-ever request from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland, to slash patient enrollment. They are anxiously waiting to learn in the coming weeks precisely how 2007 funding will be divvied up. But already among the 10 U.S. cooperative groups that run large-scale cancer trials, many are implementing an NCI recommendation to trim their costs by 10% because of growing pressure on NCI’s budget. Roughly 95 trials are at risk, and the number of open slots for patients is being reduced by 3000.

Trials for children have been hit hard, according to pediatric oncologists. Over several decades, they have built up an efficient network to wring data from a relatively small number of patients. More than 50% of children with cancer enroll in a clinical trial, compared with about 3% of adults, says Gregory Reaman, a pediatric oncologist and head of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) that runs pediatric trials.

The researchers are scrambling to make up for the lost funds, trying “to figure out which kids we affect the least . . . Even though many trials are still moving forward, they’re really strip down,” according to John Maris, a pediatric oncologist.  Pediatric oncologist April Sorrell was shocked to learn that a leukemia trial “that she’d spent more than four years developing along with 17 other researchers wasn’t going to happen.”  Jeff Michalski of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis learned that his “medulloblastoma study would have to reduce its enrollment goal to 455 from 600.

Affected studies included protocols for relapsed T-cell leukemia, the brain tumor medulloblastoma, the kidney cancer Wilms tumor, and a rare infantile sarcoma.  Richard Schilsky, associate dean for clinical research at the University of Chicago in Illinois calls the substantial budget reductions, “a bizarre turn.”

Here’s the kicker.  The total amount of cuts causing this mayhem among 2007 pediatric cancer trials amount to $2.1 million.  Compare that to the $200 Million we spend to destroy buildings and people in Iraq every day. 

Or, if you dare, compare the money we spend in Iraq to the cost of alternative worthy social domestic projects (or see here or here) that don’t have a chance because of the “tight” budget.  Long ago, I wrote that Iraq was the 70 Million Children Left Behind War.  It should also be known as the Thousands of Terribly Sick Children Left Behind War.

If you have the horrendous misfortune of having you child stricken with cancer, don’t consider writing to President Bush to tell him what you think about his “War on Terror.” He is the Decider and the Decider doesn’t care.

DemocracyNow reports that the Iraqis have always known what this war is about:

In one of the first studies of Iraqi public opinion after the US-led invasion of March 2003, the polling firm Gallup asked Iraqis their thoughts on the Bush administration’s motives for going to war. One percent of Iraqis said they believed the motive was to establish democracy. Slightly more – five percent – said to assist the Iraqi people. But far in the lead was the answer that got 43 percent - “to rob Iraq”s oil.”

The Iraqi parliament is soon expected to pass a new law, variously called “the oil law.   It seems “almost no one has been given access to the final version approved by the Iraqi Oil Committee.”

Writing for The Humanist, Kenneth Anderson, a scientist living in Baltimore, puts the cards on the table:  “Despite lofty talk of freedom and democracy, the true nature of the Iraq war may very well lie in the Iraqi oil law.”  The terms do seem to be extortionist.   According to Anderson:

The law as detailed in that draft is highly unusual for the Middle East, where other countries outlaw granting foreign companies direct interest in oil production. Under this draft hydrocarbon law, major Western oil companies would be granted Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) for up to thirty years and, in at least the first few years, would reap up to 75 percent of the profits from both developed and undeveloped oil fields. Key to these PSAs is that they would be “locked in” regardless of the government in power.

The profit margin set out in the July draft is unconscionable and we can only assume which interested party suggested such a lopsided deal. To award foreign oil companies most of the oil profits at a time when the people of Iraq would need it most could rightly be described as sociopathic plutocracy. . .

U.S. senators appeared to be just as sheltered. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 11 regarding the proposed troop “surge,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was questioned about the law. “You referred to the oil law as a remarkable law,” Senator John Sununu (R-NH) told Rice. “Well, it’s the most remarkable law that no one has ever really seen.”

Though then-Secretary of State Colin Powell explicitly said in July 2003: “We did not do it for oil,” the draft oil law casts a very long, very dark shadow across those words . . .

Bush has stated quite clearly that troops won’t be withdrawn while he is in office. This is perhaps the most believable statement he has ever made.

Stark is the “highest ranking elected official that rejects God.” Here’s more on the story, from the Washington Post:

Stark, whose district is in the San Francisco Bay-area town of Fremont, confirmed his belief in a statement to The Associated Press late Monday. He said he was “a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being.”

“I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social services,” he wrote.

Unitarian Universalism describes itself as creedless, allowing members to shape their beliefs based on personal experience rather than an authoritative statement of religious belief. Some members believe in God, but not all do.

I’ve been in this position many times.  I know important information is somewhere on my computer, or is it?  And if it’s on my computer, is it in the form of a wordprocessing file or is it something I received or sent on an e-mail?  What’s the best way to find it?  Do I go to dozens of subdirectories, opening in reviewing hundreds of documents, or do I use the simplistic “Find” feature of Outlook, and watch the search results slowly trickle in?

I’ve read articles suggesting that many professionals spend more than five hours per week simply hunting down information that they know is on their own system.  I am sure that I spent several hours per week looking for such information. To say that it can be irritating is truly an understatement.

This constant frustration recently led me to a pleasant discovery, but it wasn’t obvious at first. I started looking at various shareware packages that claimed that they could track down your files based upon Boolean searches.  Many of them seemed promising, and I tried a few, but I really didn’t see anything that stood out, and I wasn’t inclined to try very many of these packages, since there is a learning curve associated with each of them.  Another option was to purchase an expensive package, such as Isys.  Then again, I really didn’t want to be spending several hundred dollars unless I had to.

I then discovered Windows Desktop Search, free to all who use Windows.  Here’s an overview of the product.  Microsoft says Windows Desktop Search helps increase your productivity by:

• Helping users quickly find and retrieve e-mail messages, documents, and many other file types located on their PC and company network; and
• Providing a familiar, integrated, and convenient search experience for Windows users.

I’m a believer, based upon my own use of the program.

The program leaves a bit to be desired as far as allowing one to fashion a precise Boolean search query, but it certainly does offer many options, as you can see here and here.

If you have upgraded to Microsoft Vista, you don’t need to download the free upgrade.

I’ve been using Windows Desktop Search for only two days, but I have been extremely impressed. (more…)

Recent comments in response to posts on Dangerous Intersection have led me to write this screed.  Screed is to be the operative word for this, for it has been born out impatience and anger.  The biggest danger we face in the long run is the basic ignorance people bring to the political discourse.  If we lose our freedoms, it will not be to some tyrannical coup pulled off by a malicious politician, but because we ourselves collectively will no longer know what the hell we’re about.

Remembering my own school days, I cannot say that the situation presently is worse–we all have a tendency to misremember our youth, claim it to be better or worse, but the only thing we can say about it is that it was differently oriented–because most of my peers did not care a bit for history then.  They plodded through their classes, primary interest focused on their own immediate desires and needs, and who cared what happened before they were born?  What has changed is that as the world shrinks and becomes daily more pressing, the buffers that protected us in our ignorance no longer operate as efficiently or even in the same way.  One of the things that makes modern foreign entanglements more significant for the individual is that the cause and effect loop is faster, more immediate, and more threatening.  Therefore, when something begs for understanding and we look to the past for examples and counterexamples, it will not do to simply trust our leaders.  Nor will it do to have merely a Hollywood understanding of the past. 

I expect this will change nothing.  But I am annoyed.

World War II is used often as a touchstone for military adventurism and the necessity of strong foreing policy.  It is also used to excuse present-day actions, to make comparisons of situations then and now, and to validate decisions taken which seem  to bear some resemblence to the past.

But the people who do this the most seem rarely to know what they’re talking about.

The world was in fact very different and America substantially so.  Let me go down a list of why comparisons–specifically between the present Middle East conflict and WWII–are simply not supportable.

One:  the entire globe was struggling to emerge from economic depression.  We personalize the Great Depression here.  An American calamity.  It was bad here, very bad, but our hagiography about our nation’s past tends to blind us to the fact that entire planet was screwed up then.  The world was in depression in the aftermath of the first world war.  The emergence of the facsist states was directly related to this central fact.  They were in many ways economic movements. They didn’t work, they depended on pillage, hence the expansionist aspect to all the fascist regimes with the exception of Spain, which was only partly facsist in the economic sense.

One thing this meant for America at the time is that we enjoyed no clear superiority economically to any other nation.  We did, in fact, have more potential, and the fundamental vitality of our economic prior to 1929 softened–yes, softened–the onset of depression somewhat, but it hamstrung us in ways that make comparisons to the present-day situation absurd.  Furthermore, no one was sure then that capitalism would survive.  We really forget this one.  The global depression put that in doubt in ways we can’t imagine now.

Two:  Along with all the other problems, we had no significant military.  Not even here.  We forget today that one of the central tenets of America since the revolution was a profound distrust of standing armies of any kind.  After WWI, we stood down.  The fleet was aging, infantry were poorly trained an equipped, and numbers were low.  WWI resulted in no occupation by us of anything significant.

Three:  There was no CIA.  Or anything even close to it.  We had embassies and some embassies employed spies, usually locals, and there were a few spies employed by the government, but this was also antithetical to our vision of ourselves.  Spying grew during WWI, but Calvin Coolidge shut it down.  His secretary of state–I forget his name–closed down Room 14 with the famous saying “Gentlemen don’t read other people’s mail.”  The branches of the military had small intelligence units, but there was NOTHING like today’s CIA, NIA, or other intelligence organizaitons.  We did not have the information-gathering capacity in any way shape or form, and even if we did, there was little we could have done with any of it.  The so-called “super powers” of the day were Britain, France, Russia to some extent (although they were rabidly isolationist modern myths to the contrary–the Soviet threat we came to know and love developed after WWII), and the U.S., but Britain pretty much dominated the international scene.

Four: The technology of the day was, with certain exceptions, 19th Century.  Gasoline and diesel power had replaced coal in many ways (for shipping, that is) but by and large, WWII started out as a 19th Century war.  It also started out as a war among relative equals.

I could go on, but just those fundamental differences should show that comparisons cannot be made but in the most careful ways, and generally not at all. WWII was a kind of war which we may never see again.  Saddam Hussein was not Hitler.  The closest thing we have to that kind of dictator today is in North Korea, and he is incapable of doing much more than rattle his chains, his much discussed nuclear program notwithstanding.  The social and political and economic circumstances that to the emergence of Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan no longer pertain.  It’s both simpler and more complex than that, but in any event it is different.  An Osama Bin Laden could not have done then what he has done today, just as an emergent Hitler could not do today what he did then.

This is important, because we have a habit in this country of eulogizing and sacrilizing the past in such a way as to argue current policy points with the underlying assumption that what we did then cna apply now.  Sometimes it can, but for the most part things have changed too much for valid comparisons.  It leads us to presume before understanding, and that has led us into a horrid mess which bears virtually no comparison to anything we did in the past or had to face.

We need to get over that habit if we’re going to find viable solutions to future problems, and that means we better stop treating history–collectively–like a font of sacred text or that boring stuff about dead people.

End of screed.

This is mind-blowing.   To think that I used to have some respect for John McCain.  

The question recently put to McCain, on his Straight-Talk Express campaign tour, was straight-forward.  Here’s the transcript of what unfolded:

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”
Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”
Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”
Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out . . .

All I can figure is that McCain’s lust for power has shorted out some important neurons in his head.  Or he’s convinced that a person who is ignorant on important issues can be elected president–where would he get that idea?

In case John McCain is reading this blog, here is the answer from Wikipedia:

The best evidence to date indicates that typical condom use reduces the risk of heterosexual HIV transmission by approximately 80% over the long-term, though the benefit is likely to be higher if condoms are used correctly on every occasion. The effective use of condoms and screening of blood transfusion in North America, Western and Central Europe is credited with contributing to the low rates of AIDS in these regions.

George Lakoff has once again weighed in on a critical issue of word meaning.  This time, his focus is on what it means to be “responsible”:

Accountability is what is called a contested concept, that is, a concept with different meanings for different people, depending on their values. What we have found is that conservatives and progressives mean systematically different things when they use the word  . . .

Responsibility itself is contested. To progressives, it means social as well as personal responsibility — responsibility for both oneself and everyone else who could be harmed by one’s failure. To conservatives, it means individual responsibility only. The difference is not surprising, since conservatism is about individual responsibility while progressivism centers on both individual and social responsibility . . .

[For conservatives], individual responsibility and whatever accountability they have is satisfied when they hold others beneath them accountable and carry out punishment . . .

To progressives, one is accountable to those one is responsible for — those affected and possibly harmed by one’s actions. In government, accountability is paired with transparency. Government officials are supposed to be “transparent,” that is, to tell the public what one is doing and why. The why is an “account” — an explanation for one’s actions. . .

There is thus a huge difference in the meaning of accountability between progressives and conservatives. To progressives, conservatives look like they are invoking accountability in order to avoid responsibility. Here’s why. A conservative in authority holds other people below him accountable, and upon meting our punishment to those underlings, his personal responsibility is met. Story over. But to progressives, such a person has a social responsibility to everyone who can be harmed by his actions. He has public accountability. Holding an underling accountable and meting out punishment is not enough. He remains socially responsible. When he just holds others “accountable,” he is avoiding that responsibility.

Lakoff gives various examples to illustrate various uses of “responsibility.”  His acount rings true to me.  It often does appear that conservatives think they’ve done their part to address malfeasance by pointing fingers and doling out punishment. It easily follows, of course, that making one “responsible” for a life badly lived requires throwing ”bad” people into hell.  Progressives much more often take a forward-looking view when they use the word.  For progressives, being accountable primarily means making the system transparent.  Sunshine is powerful disinfectant. 

In light of Lakoff’s analysis, it appears worthwhile to take the time to explain one’s use of this important and ubiquitous word before using it when addressing a wide audience. 

Three weeks ago I noticed that I was overweight again, but I’m doing something about it again.

I’m not quite sure what did it.  Maybe it was the almost-nightly bowl of ice cream or maybe those french fries weren’t really counteracted by those side dishes of broccoli.  Whatever it was, three weeks ago I noticed that bad eating habits had kicked my weight more than 15 pounds over my usual weight.  Those 15 extra pounds I was carrying around weighed as much as a bowling ball.

I’ve had to lose weight before. Five years ago, I decided that I was tired of carrying around lots of extra weight.  Back then, I noticed how bad things had gotten after a friend showed me a photo of that 194 pound version of myself at the beach.  Back then, I decided to see if I could lose 10 or 15 pounds.  After doing a bit of research, I implemented a series of the eating and exercise strategies that worked well for me.  They worked extremely well.  I’m going to share them in this post.  I dropped more than 4 pounds per week, week after week, until my 194 pound carcass melted into 159 pounds, a swing of 35 pounds. After I got going with my program, it was almost painless.   I found myself feeling better and I looked better.  Based upon well-established statistics, I knew that I had substantially decreased my chance of being afflicted with heart disease, stroke and various kinds of cancer.  I was comfortable wearing my clothes again and I was no longer obsessed with food.  What was not to like?

I’m 5’ 11”.  For most of the past five years, I have carried about 163 pounds. When I recently noticed my scale rise to 178 three weeks ago, then, I declared war.  I’m fighting that war right now.  I calculated that my approach will take me back at my normal weight in about 5 more weeks, a steady weight loss of about 2 pounds per week. It’s working like clockwork. In three weeks, I’ve lost 6 pounds.  To give myself even more incentive, I’m making my weight loss ambitions public here!

This weight loss story is the sort of thing that has been told many times, of course.  But I’ll continue.

Over the past year, I fell into some bad habits about eating well and working out.  And to accelerate my weight gain, I haven’t exercised much.  I normally commute 10 miles/day by bicycle, but extremely cold winter has hindered that.  Also, I haven’t been getting enough sleep, a factor that is associated with weight gain.  During the day, I work at desk job and I’ve been hovering over my computer several hours each night (much of it writing this blog).  Further, I take care of my two young children quite often; it is hard to work out vigorously when one is with them.  They just can’t keep up (although that is changing rapidly). 

Now that we’ve had our winter thaw, I’m back on the bicycle almost every day.  I don’t belong to any health club.  My exercise program is virtually free. In addition to riding a bike to work (which saves 1/3 gallon of gas every day), I do floor exercises several times a week.  I do these floor exercises for only 10 minutes, in accordance with many of the suggestions of a pretty decent book, Eight Minutes in the Morning, by Jorge Cruise.

Here’s a short version of my “secrets” for losing weight: eat reasonable amounts of good food and exercise.  There’s no substitute.  Don’t tolerate excuses out of your own mouth.  Excuses are a dime a dozen and all of us have thought of all of them ready.  Here are a few of my favorites.   We live in a toxic society, nutritionally speaking.  It’s really tempting to eat all those sugary fatty salty foods.  It does take more effort to chop up some zucchini and stir fry at then to eat a big bowl of potato chips.  I could go on and on.  Tell your excuses to get lost.

When I try to determine a workable series of rules five years ago, I focused on several things.  My number one rule was that my approach to eating could not require any daily menus.  I wasn’t going to buy expensive concoctions or prepared foods.  My approach had to be an approach that I could use anywhere, whether at someone’s house or a restaurant. 

Substituting nutritious food for bad food at home was a terrific jump start for dropping pounds.  In my case, I became sold that eating lots of whole grains (carbohydrates loaded with fiber) was a critically important basis for eating well.  I work whole grains into my breakfast, lunch and dinner (here’s why).  It’s really easy to swap out crappy cereal for cereal loaded with fiber.  There are many delicious whole grain breads available for purchase (look for bread that has at least 3 grams of fiber per slice).  I learned much about whole grains by reading Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, by Walter Willett, of the Harvard School of Public Health.

When I decided that I needed to lose weight three weeks ago, I didn’t realize how many bad habits I had gotten into over the past year.  It’s really easy to overlook all of one’s own bad habits.  I started noticing that I was grabbing food for numerous reasons having nothing to do with hunger: anxiety, nervousness, stress and boredom.  Many times, I was eating food when I was really thirsty and I should have been drinking water instead of eating.  (more…)

March 14th, (3/14), is International Pi day for a somewhat obvious reason. Visit this old site to hear Pi spoken in French (or many other languages) to hundreds of digits, plus links to much pi stuff.

Here’s the wiki for pi day.

Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day 1879, and later redefined the way space curves.

I just found out about Conservapedia, an online service started to combat the educated, generally well-researched, illuminating, and therefore Left-wing, Liberal postings at Wikipedia.

Read about what a Democrat really is, in a way that even Fox News wouldn’t claim.
Read about Evolution, which begins with the chapter “Lack of Any Credible Transitional Forms”

Big Bang contains this dominant section: “Creationist and Theistic Evolutionary Views”. Just what every scientific theory needs.

It’s always good to keep an eye on the opposition when trying to educate the public.

Here’s a good question:  why can’t a woman go topless wherever a man can? 

Sorry . . . I’m not buying answers like “Because that is the way it has always been” or “Because they are women.” 

Talk about equal rights!  The prevalent dress code inequity is motivated by the same mindset that leads some people to kick breastfeeding women off of airplanes.  Or am I missing something?  Here’s a relevant article on cross-cultural attitudes toward nudity.

I didn’t realize that New York state is one of the very few places in the US where women can legally be top free anywhere that a man can be top free.  Photographer Jordan Matter used New York City as the backdrop to a collection of photos he has named “Uncovered.”  Here’s how he explains the collection on “The Thinking Blog.” 

Challenging this inequity between the sexes is the purpose of my work. There has been a recent shift in America towards a socially conservative philosophy, so right after Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed at the Super Bowl, I started asking women to appear topless in New York City. [Uncovered: Busting Out in the Big Apple] is a collection of photographs featuring bare-breasted women in public around NYC, often presented with interviews exploring the issues of body image and sexuality in America today. The informal and humorous nature of these images celebrates women without sexualizing or objectifying them, while creating the illusion of a tolerant world in which shirtless women go casually about their lives. Uncovered represents just one aspect of what America could look like if we were free of shame and liberated from moral judgment.

“The Thinking Blog” contains various links to “Uncovered.”  Here’s Matter’s official site. [Warning to those who are offended or mortified by images of human breasts, including all of you who pummeled the FCC with emails complaining about Janet Jackson: "Uncovered" contains non-sexualized images of human breasts. If you're looking for sexual images, you'll be disappointed and you'll have to surf on over to one of the tens of millions of Internet sites that offer those sorts of images].

I’m sharing this information because I found the Matter’s photos to be both humorous and intellectually challenging.

As reported by Media Matters:

New York Times science writer William J. Broad reported on criticism of former Vice President Al Gore’s portrayal of the threat of global warming in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth by citing scientists who “argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous.” Broad wrote that “scientists are sensitive to [the film's] details and claims” and that Gore has received criticism not “only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists.” But of the sources cited in the article, at least four have records of misinformation on the issue.

It’s pretty amazing to see the claims made by this article in the NYT.  This article by Media Matters exposes the falsehoods of the article and the disreputable backgrounds of the “experts” quoted in the article.  The remaining question is why the NYT would publish such a piece.

Former President George H.W. Bush, on his recent collapse from dehydration:

Bush spoke about the incident that sent him to the hospital on Sunday, telling the audience that he became tired after playing golf in high temperatures.

“The next thing I remember … I fainted and I was on the floor,” he told the crowd.

He joked: “The ugliest part was my dear friend from Las Vegas (a male friend) was giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. We had about six beautiful girls there and there was (my friend) doing his part.”

Am I experiencing aftershocks from Ann Coulter’s recent display bigotry, or is this yet more evidence of a deep and institutionalized bigotry among conservatives?  It all-too-often starts with a “joke.” 

My country, India, claims to be a multi-cultural, multi-religious country. Though there is a sizeable Muslim and Christian population here, 80% of Indians are Hindu by faith. And unlike Christianity or Islam, the tenets of Hinduism are not put down in a book like the Bible or Q’oran. In fact, the Hindu religion has no specific tenets. Religious beliefs, customs, rites, and rituals, vary from region to region (and in some cases family to family). And unlike followers of other major religions of the world, Hindus do not worship any particular god. In India, it is very common for one Hindu to ask another, “Which God do you worship?”  While Hinduism does have its mythology, there is no “official” version put down in Book X or Book Y. You simply believe that a certain god exists, and believe your community’s version of the life history of that particular god.
 
This mythic form of religion contrasts strongly to the rigid and institutionalized religions of the west. One could also say that Hindu beliefs are transmitted through a ‘mythic consciousness’, as opposed to western religions which rely on a consciousness that is linear in nature. While science requires tangible evidence to confirm an event or object to be true or ‘real’, western religions such as Christianity or Islam consider any mention of that event or object in their holy book to be evidence for truth or ‘existence’ of that event or object. Note that western religions still rely on the principle of evidence; it would not be fair to characterize western religions to be completely “illogical.”  On the other hand, Hinduism gives its followers the freedom to take as many leaps of logic as they like, as long as they stay in its very hazy boundaries. This mythic form of religion gives its followers the freedom to choose what they believe is true, and what is not.
 
One would assume that such mythic religions make it difficult for scientific thinking to flourish, but that is not the case. In fact, such mythic religions are known to be some of the most tolerant in the world. Because there is no official version of the truth, Hindus have little problem absorbing alien beliefs into their mythology. Thus, you will find no particular objections to the concept of ‘evolution’ in this country. Facts established by science can be easily absorbed into the mythology of such religions. Similarly, Hinduism is open to the influences of other cultures and its own mythology is often influenced by the mythologies of other cultures.
 
There is a downside. The flexible nature of this mythology is sometimes exploited by unscrupulous individuals interested in making a quick buck. If you claim to be a god-incarnate, you are bound to get at least a few believers who incorporate you into their roster of gods. Also, in such cases, psuedo-science finds it extremely easy to sell itself in the garb of religion. One needs to only switch on the television here, to find a barrage of telemarketing scams which sell religion-related products. Last year, my mother wasted no time in buying a piece of glass crystal which a telemarketing capsule claimed would please the gods you worship, bringing good luck to you and your family. There is no religious authority to rubbish such nonsensical claims and con artists can have a free ride in creating and selling such myths. In fact, the success of these religion-related telemarketing scams has led to many more spurious products not directly related to the version of religion being advertised. These include herbal teas which claim to cure all ailments, from obesity to diabetes to cancer, and more infuriatingly, magnetic shoes which claim to increase your height!
 
So while these scamsters are laughing their way to the bank now, will the future see consumers who are enlightened enough to see through these scams? In my opinion, no. (more…)

Last week I attended a panel at The Tank in New York City, where Ari Melber of The Nation, Democratic strategist Scott Shields, and erstwhile John Edwards blogger Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon were giving a talk on progressive politics, netroots political activism, and how to combat the right-wing noise machine. (Majikthise has pictures for the interested - scroll down to March 4.)

The conference was attended by about seventy-five people, and of those, I’d conservatively estimate that 100% had their own blogs. I know this because everyone who asked a question made sure to mention the name of theirs. (Little bit of self-deprecating blog humor there! - although, in my defense, I didn’t ask anything). Really, this shouldn’t be a surprise; if we didn’t think there were others who were interested in what we had to say, we wouldn’t write for our blogs in the first place. The evening ended up being more like a conversation than a question-and-answer session, not that there’s anything wrong with that - although I could have done with a little less of the obligatory Kos-bashing.

In any case, I wanted to write about some thoughts that’ve been brewing in my mind on one of the evening’s themes. Amanda Marcotte in particular, recently retired from the John Edwards campaign after becoming a target of intense harassment and vituperation from bigots like William Donohue, spoke on the silly and pointless cult of apology that’s become one of the favorite tactics of the right-wing noise machine. The general theme is that, whenever a progressive does something that annoys conservatives, they and often everyone around them are subjected to a barrage of demands to “apologize”. This is not so much a request for a heartfelt expression of regret as much as it is a demand that the offender ritually abase themselves before the self-appointed guardians of decency and seek pardon for transgressing what those self-appointed guardians view as the bounds of acceptable discourse. Liberals do this too, but conservatives are particularly enamored of it.

The endless and insincere demands for apologies have grown to become one of the aspects of politics that annoys me the most. As Marcotte pointed out, what it’s really about is flexing political muscle and attempting to humiliate one’s enemies - along the lines of “I made you apologize, so therefore I am strong and you are weak”. The apology, if given, is not viewed as an expression of regret that clears the air, but merely an admission of guilt that can be more readily used to attack the giver in the future.

All of this came up in a discussion of the vote authorizing the Iraq war, which several Democratic presidential candidates voted in favor of - in particular Hillary Clinton. John Edwards, who was also in the Senate at the time, has publicly said “I was wrong” to cast that vote. Clinton, on the other hand, refuses to issue an apology and says that people who want her to admit that should choose another candidate, though she says that “if I knew then what I know now”, she wouldn’t have voted for the war.

As I said, I am no fan of the cult of apology, and I have not yet made up my mind which candidate I intend to support. But I’m very near certain that whichever one it is, it won’t be Hillary Clinton, and her stance on this issue is the reason why. This may seem to be a contradiction with the previous paragraphs, so permit me to explain myself.

Unlike conservatives who glorify a contrived cult of masculinity, I view apologizing not as proof of the giver’s ritual humiliation, but as a way for them to demonstrate what they have learned. It is appropriate in that context, when an opportunity for learning presents itself. To me, Hillary Clinton’s refusal to apologize for her vote authorizing war is evidence that she hasn’t learned anything.

Granted, she has said that she wouldn’t have voted for war if she had known then what she knows now. But what sort of statement is that? If she had known in advance that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, had nothing to do with September 11 and was bound to fall apart in a bloody civil war in the aftermath of invasion, she wouldn’t have voted to invade? I would certainly hope so! But that isn’t a bold declaration of political principle; that is just proof of some minimal connection to reality. That should be the bare minimum required for any candidate who wants to be taken seriously. But it does not go nearly far enough.

In essence, by refusing to apologize, Clinton is asserting that Iraq isn’t her fault. She wants to place all the blame on Bush for feeding misinformation to Congress, and none on herself for being taken in by that misinformation. That is not how our government works. Congress is not a rubber stamp, blindly considering only the information which the president wants them to consider and then obediently voting however the president wants. Congress is a separate and co-equal branch of government, and as such has not just the right but the obligation to exert its own authority by skeptically and critically scrutinizing any action the president wishes to take, and denying him the authority to take that action if the evidence does not hold up. In the runup to the war, unfortunately, Congress was taken in by hysteria and chose to abdicate that responsibility.

Yes, Bush bears the vast majority of the blame for lying and misleading this country into a bloody, disastrous war. But Congress is not free of blame either. Every member of Congress who voted to authorize that action bears a share of the blame as well. They can expiate that guilt in two ways. First, they should immediately introduce legislation to bring American soldiers home as soon as is reasonably possible. Second, at least as importantly, they should apologize forthrightly for their blind recklessness to lead us into war on dubious evidence in the first place. Again, this is not about ritual humiliation: it is about these congresspeople telling us what they have learned. They must prove to us that they now recognize Congress as a co-equal branch of government, one which has the authority and the obligation to act as a brake on the executive, and will not be blindly led into disaster by a warmongering president again. Hillary Clinton’s refusal to apologize, her refusal to shoulder her portion of the blame for the Iraq disaster, suggests to me that she has not learned anything at all from her part in this.

A sorority at De Pauw University booted out a bunch of its pledges and it made the news.  Here is the link to the story.

Before I continue, I wish to make my own sentiments perfectly clear.  I detest the notion of fraternities and sororities.  They are, to me, childish things which people belong to out of some desire to be special without having to rely on their own abilities–special by association.  Pass the initiation, become accepted as a member, and you then can “borrow” the prestige of the group.

Or be tainted by it, as with, say, the John Birch Society or the KKK. 

This is not to say I see no reason for many of these associations to exist–unions are a very loose form of such things, and I would argue that they serve a positive purpose, although they share the same capacity for abuse of the individual as any large organization, corporate, religious, or social.  They are, to put it in as simple terms as I can, a necessary evil.

My prejudice in this regard stems from one of the more persistent myths underlying American culture–that of the coherent and independent individual.  I say myth because it is patently untrue–likely an impossibility–and yet we struggle collectively toward instantiating the model through our laws, our national ethos, and our image of ourselves as individuals.

Which makes joing a fraternity or a sorority a particularly perplexing contradiction.

One joins such organizations for numerous reasons all of which center or potential benefits from the association.  Anyone who remembers the 2000 election will be aware of the brief flurry of press about Bush’s membership in a Yale fraternity of some notoriety, the Skulls.  His dad was a member, as were many other politicians.  The implication was that membership bestowed an undeserved leg up in life. 

Well, frankly, that is the whole point of such clubs.  Masonry is the model.  Part of the benefit derives from their exclusivity, which is portrayed by opponents of the Greek system as anti-democratic.

But this, too, is based on a misapprehension of the nature of democracy. 

I refer now to the fact of it, not the ideal, which has become something wholly other than its origins.  In his excellent book about the Greek myths, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso writes:

Equality only comes into being through initiation.  It does not exist in nature, and society wouldn’t be able to conceive of the idea if it weren’t structured and articulated by initiation.  Later, there comes a moment when equality is geared into history and thence marches on and on until the unsuspecting theorists of democracy imagine they had discovered it–and set it against initiation, as though it were its opposite.

There’s a lot in that paragraph and it is illuminating to look at the 20th century through the lens it provides.  Everyone, it seems, wants to be part of the club called democracy.  They see the benefits of the club.  Benefits obvious only because it is a club apart from other clubs.  They want to belong to it in such numbers that eventually it will no longer be a club, but simply the state in which we all “naturally” exist.

But it’s an implausible ideal, because in order to belong to the club one has to change from one state to another.  And the benefits, frankly, one expects cease to be benefits once so many people share them that there is no distinction between people. 

This is a paradox, and such things as fraternities and sororities point up the paradox eloquently and make us generally uncomfortable. 

In microcosm, the initiation rites of such organizations imitate the citizenship pledges we expect of new citizens, who do in fact go through an initiation to become part of the club.  There are laws they must abide by.  I think, honestly, the nature of the requirements are less important than that there are requirements.  We have changed them over time, but still, you must speak the language, understand the history of the country, and be willing to take an oath.

There is nothing natural about this.  And the bestowal of benefits upon completion of these requirements is an aritfice.  That doesn’t make these benefits false or unreal, but we need to understand that so-called Rights are constructs.  They do not exist in nature. 

But we wish to pretend they do.  Because Americans are born into a club (more…)

It’s a matter of “how” rather than “whether” to teach religion in public schools, according to the panel over at “On Faith.”  The question put to the panel was whether religion should be taught in public schools.  There was one naysayer (a retired episcopal priest), who argues that trying to teach religion objectively is too prone to abuses. 

Among those who said “yes” was Daniel Dennett.  He quoted from his recent book, Breaking the Spell.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Let’s get more education about religion into our schools, not less. We should teach our children creeds and customs, prohibitions and rituals, the texts and music, and when we cover the history of religion, we should include both the positive–the role of the churches in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, the flourishing of science and the arts in early Islam, and the role of the Black Muslims in bringing hope, honor and self-respect to the otherwise shattered lives of many inmates in our prisons, for instance–and the negative–the Inquisition, anti-Semitism over the ages, the role of the Catholic Church in spreading AIDS in Africa through its opposition to condoms.

“No religion should be favored, and none ignored. And as we discover more and more about the biological and psychological bases of religious practices and attitudes, these discoveries should be added to the curriculum, the same way we update our education about science, health, and current events. This should all be part of the mandated curriculum for both public schools and for home-schooling.

“Here’s a proposal, then: As long as parents don’t teach their children anything that is likely to close their minds — through fear or hatred or by disabling them from inquiry (by denying them an education, for instance, or keeping them entirely isolated from the world) then they may teach their children whatever religious doctrines they like.

Elaine Pagels concurs:

Yes, emphatically! We should teach comparative religion in public middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities.

At that time, many people believed (as my biologist father did) that religion would wither away as science, psychology, and humanism took its place. Now we need the resources of all of these to help us understand the phenomenon of religion, as well as neurology and sociology . . . [I]f we don’t understand more about it than we do, we are not going to understand the 21st century.

Compare most of the respnonses to the response of Chuck Colson, who wants to teach religion as an “us versus them” mentality.

How should you take care of them?  According to one book I’m reading, you need to give them lots of exercise and they need to eat good food.  You need to buy a good leash and collar.  No, I’m not referring to a childcare book–I’m talking about a book on dog care: The Complete Dog Care Manual, by Bruce Fogel, president of ASPCA.

To use a dog book to raise a child, you’ve got to pick and choose the advice, of course.  You don’t put your children on leashes or toss them bones (except when they misbehave!).  It is interesting, though, that dog-raising books are full of good ideas that also apply to raising children.  And it’s especially interesting to compare the way we are supposed to raise dogs with the way many people actually raise children. 

My family has a dog (“Holly”) and two human children, aged 6 and 8.  I am thus an expert on this topic.

My dog-training book stresses that taking care of a dog requires a lot of work.  We need to invest a lot of time in order to have a healthy animal.  The dog book places a premium on early training?  “Your dog relies on you to train it from an early age to be trusting, even-tempered and sociable…” (page 48).  Compare this advice with the way many people actually raise children, ignoring them for long stretches and often abandoning them to the commercial wasteland of television.

Feeding is critically important, according to my dog book.  Dogs need

[A] nutritious, well-balanced diet [which produces] a strong boned well-muscled healthy coated canine.  Dog owners should avoid giving their dogs excessive treats or feeding them more often than they should eat, even if a bag.   This combination of facts explains why obesity is a rampant among dog owners. 

(Page 51)  Compare this advice to the donuts, sugary cereal, and bags and bags of salty oily over-processed snacks that so many people feed their children.  Just walk down the aisles of a grocery store to see the extent of this harmful practice.  According to the experts, we shouldn’t feed such garbage to dogs, but many of us actually feed such foods to children.

There is a lot of information on training in Fogel’s book.  The author emphasizes that animals need to be trained well when young in order to be sociable as adults.  Otherwise, all kinds of bad behaviors arise.  The same thing goes for children, too, but this advice is far too often ignored. 

If this comparison between dogs and humans appears unseemly, keep in mind that humans are animals.  “Human animals” I call them (instead of “human beings”), whenever I want to have some fun with fundamentalists.  There’s no defense to my characterization, of course, since we human animals eat, poop, breathe and procreate very much like other animals, very much like dogs.

What about exercise?  “If a dog is denied mental and physical activity, its energy may be released in destructive and unacceptable behavior.”  (Page 42).  To get real exercise, does a dog need to be driven across town every weekend to participate in organized sports?  No. Does a dog need to join an expensive health club?  Absolutely not.  To get exercise, all dogs need are brisk walks combined with a few very simple toys.  We excel at breaking these rules for human children, however. (more…)

The practice of shifting clocks twice a year is an annoyance to everyone. Its roots go back to the Enlightenment, when such luminaries as Ben Franklin suggested the practice in part to keep urbanites, who lived by the clock, in better summertime sync with the rural majority who lived by the sun.

Back in 1973, the Nixon administration tried out a year-round daylight savings time as an energy conservation measure. To sleep-late senators, it seemed to make sense: You don’t turn on lights until an hour later in the evening. But children (including myself) got up hours before dawn to walk to the school bus stops in the dark. People were turning lights on in the morning, and often forgetting to turn them off because it was still dark when they left for work. The net result was more accidents and no energy savings.

The current administration is showing its usual regard for history and the scientific process as it decided in 2005 to expand daylight savings time by a month in order to see if it saves energy.

That’s this coming Sunday, March 11th, folks! No more April Fools through Halloween, but rather starting and ending a couple of weeks closer to December.

How many farmers do you suppose still can’t afford a clock? I’ve always been in favor of getting rid of this seasonal affectation, this semi-annual cause of universal confusion. Some rural states had done away with it (like Indiana), but now have caved to peer pressure. Every pro-DST argument I’ve seen seems to be based on a vague “it could save energy” basis. The initial idea was that businesses can use natural daylight for an extra hour, saving on lighting (originally candles). When is the last time you noticed lights turned off in an office or factory because the sun was shining?

According to every measurement done every time they change the DST rules, it hasn’t affected energy consumption in any significant way.

Costs are easier to compute than the benefits. In IT, DST costs a minimum of $200,000,000.00 per year (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4609) in the U.S. It is probably closer to a billion dollars once untracked labor costs are figured in. This IT-only cost is already comparable to the dollar value of energy savings that the DOE hopes might be realized.

This wiki provides some concise pro- and anti- discussion of the issue.

Move on is giving away a great bumper sticker. 

I’m not much for bumper stickers, I’ve only ever had three on my car.  My first was years ago, it said, “Indians had bad immigration laws.” My next was during the last presidential election.  I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it wasn’t flattering to Bush.  This one will be my third.  See if you like it, too.

Many of you have probably seen maps like these before.  The geographic size of each country is adjusted (inflated or deflated) to show the relative size of some non-geographic characteristic.  Notice, for example, the map of military spending.

“If I didn’t care about my kids, I’d have an easier time.”

“No real-life problem is ever actually solved, it seems.”

For three years, Geri Anderson has worked as a grade school art teacher. She wakes up every day, willing to try her hardest to make a difference in the lives of the students who attend Walnut Elementary School.  “Geri” and “Walnut” are not real names; Geri and I decided to use these pseudonyms to allow Geri to speak freely. Everything else in this article is based on my recent interview of Geri. 

Geri is a soft-spoken woman in her mid-twenties.  Before being hired for her current job, Geri often substitute taught at expensive private grade schools.  She took her first permanent job at Walnut to make a difference. 

Geri teaches art to each of the 200 students who attend Walnut.  They range in age from preschoolers to sixth-graders. The average class includes about twenty children, although some of the classes have almost 30 children.  Not all of the teacher positions are filled at Walnut; for many months, the school has sought the help of adults from the community to fill in for the non-existent science teacher, for example. 

Walnut is located in the urban center of a large U.S. city.  98% of the children attending Walnut Elementary are African-American.  More than 90% of these students receive free or reduced price lunches.  Based upon Geri’s observations, the great majority of the students live in single-parent homes.  Classroom behavior issues, including infinite variations of acting out and talking out, are constant challenges.

Geri’s sees her overall task as “bringing beauty to her students’ lives.” To accomplish this, Geri acknowledges that she needs her students to sit still enough and focus long enough so that they can understand the assignment. Many of the students “simply cannot sit still and be quiet.”  At a grade school like Walnut, however, this task is an uphill climb each and every day.  Before teaching at Walnut, Geri did not realize it could be this hard to get the children to focus.

The administrators are also concerned with keeping order, but Geri is concerned that, for the administration, keeping the children quiet has evolved into an end rather than a means to a higher end.  They are “not so worried about freedom of expression as much as seeing that the children sit down and stay quiet.” 

Over time, one can see the cycle: the children act up and the administration clamps down.  They react to each other. Sometimes it seems like running through this senseless cycle is, indeed, the main purpose of Walnut.

What is the problem with these children who won’t focus, who won’t listen?  Many of them are loaded down with tragic life circumstances to an extent unimaginable by teachers who don’t teach children who are economically disadvantaged.  One child showed up at class the day after seeing his aunt die the previous day.  Another boy cried when asked why he wasn’t doing his art project.  He told Geri that he “hates” his stepdad and “my mother doesn’t listen.”  One little boy told Geri that his dad was “beating up my mom against a wall.”  To keep the perspective, these are children at a grade school. These children are only 5 or 8 or 10 years old.  The have very few choices in what goes on in their homes.

Recently, one child was so angry at an adult male resident of his own household that he told Geri that he wanted to either “run away or punch him in the face.” Many of the children are dealing with constant flow of disturbing new people who come in and out of their homes and lives.  In such an environment, “Who do you trust?”  Does it make sense to trust at all?

How else does Geri learn about the students’ stressed home circumstances?  She often sees it before and after school, when parents drop off and pick up their children.  She’ll hear, “Get your ass over here now!”  Similar degrading comments are commonly made to many of the children.  Based upon her own observations, Geri suspects that many of these parents are “smacking the children around.” 

As a teacher, one often doesn’t know the mental turmoil these little children are carrying, often without anyone with whom to discuss these things—without any responsible adult to empathize with them.  Geri sadly recounts that these sad circumstances sometimes spill out of her students only when they are reprimanded for not focusing in class or failing to do their homework. 

The stories go on and on.  (more…)

Here’s what new owner Mark Green has to say about the focus of Air America:

Air America will aggressively cover national politics and policies in ways that will be informative, opinionated and entertaining. All three. We’ll be full of news and views. Two views especially. First, America should stop attacking Muslim countries in ways that multiply terrorism. Second, instead of only talking about exporting democracy, Washington should begin practicing it here at home, for example by making sure elections aren’t auctions.

For the full article, click here.

According to this article, Bush’s troop surge, which was aimed at reducing violence in Baghdad, already shows signs of failure.  While violence has fallen inside Baghdad, as you might expect following an influx of U.S. troops, insurgents have simply moved elsewhere, killing American troops and other people in areas not affected by the surge. 

Bush, not surprisingly, focuses on Baghdad, claiming there are “some encouraging signs.” But by far my favorite quote comes from White House spokesperson Dana Perino, who gives u