Why has the Administration of George W. Bush made so many enemies?  It comes from an early intellectual decision to view the world in terms of Good versus Evil.  This article in by Glenn Greenwald sums it up nicely. 

Efforts to impose limits on waging war against Evil will themselves be seen as impediments to Good, if not as an attempt to aid and abet Evil. In a Manichean worldview, there is no imperative that can compete with the mission of defeating Evil. The primacy of that mandate is unchallengeable. Hence, there are no valid reasons for declaring off-limits any weapons that can be deployed in service of the war against Evil.

Equally operative in the Manichean worldview is the principle that those who are warriors for a universal Good cannot recognize that the particular means they employ in service of their mission may be immoral or even misguided. The very fact that the instruments they embrace are employed in service of their Manichean mission renders any such objections incoherent. How can an act undertaken in order to strengthen the side of Good, and to weaken the forces of Evil, ever be anything other than Good in itself? Thus, any act undertaken by a warrior of Good in service of the war against Evil is inherently moral for that reason alone.

So much that is dysfunctional about the Bush Administration stems from this unfortunate and simplistic early move. There is no endpoint to the dysfunction:

Intoxicated by his own righteousness and therefore immune from doubt, the Manichean warrior becomes capable of acts of moral monstrousness that would be unthinkable in the absence of such unquestionable moral conviction. One who believes himself to be leading a supreme war against Evil on behalf of Good will be incapable of understanding any claims that he himself is acting immorally.  

 I’ve written about the power (and danger) of early intellectual moves before.  The Manichean worldview of George W. Bush is Exhibit A.

If you Google “Paris Hilton Jail” you’ll get 15 million hits. If you Google “Downing Street Memo” you’ll get only 800,000 hits. A terrifying real-world topic, “Greenland ice sheet,” will only return 900,000 hits. I suppose it’s because there are no videos of memos or glaciers having sex.

What brought me to the topic of Paris Hilton (other than my world salad mood) might be my fascination with how folks use Google. It astounds me whenever I notice the sexually graphic search strings that bring some people to this site. I don’t know who you are (the feds know who you are, but I don’t). Website traffic software, however, allows me to view your search queries if you click on a Google result that brings you to this site. Lots of kinky stuff. I hope those of you who stumble onto this site in that manner won’t be disappointed, even though you really won’t find the kinds of things for which you are apparently looking. I’m not trying to be preachy, but maybe you can afford to take a break from all that stuff, at least once in a while, and come to this website on purpose.

I really don’t know anything about Paris Hilton, other than that she is famous because of a sex video and that she is otherwise famous because she is famous. Those millions of Google hits (the jail episode involves merely one small slice of her life) really speak to the power of vapid celebrity. But this is a word salad post, so I am at liberty to move on to discuss the next thing that comes to my mind.

After work, I commute home past a stadium where the St. Louis Cardinal Baseball team plays. I often do wonder whether baseball fans are more out of shape than football fans or basketball fans. Here’s a thought experiment I’ve never run because I don’t want a broken jaw: Try greeting every single fan who comes through the baseball stadium turnstiles by saying, “You need to lose 25 pounds. You would be correct 60%of the time. If anyone want to run this experiment, I’ll be happy to watch.

People often excel at what they do most often. If people sit, eat and watch athletes that mostly stand and spit, that has real-life consequences. Fans who engage in this activity much of the time really get good at sitting, eating and watching. Ironically, in my experience, most fans don’t actually pay attention to the baseball game even after paying lots of money for a ticket to get into the stadium. It must be all of those distracting advertising posters and videos, I assume.

Now don’t get all bent out of shape. Professional baseball athletes are capable of doing many things I will never be able to do. They are exquisitely skilled. But here’s the irony: most professional baseball players don’t exercise much during the competition. Only when it’s “time out” do they get busy taking practice swings, taking ground balls, stretching, running sprints and coming in and out of the dugout. When it’s time in, however, there really aren’t many calories burned on the field. Just stare at the outfields and all of those guys sitting in the dugout and you’ll see that I’m correct.

There can’t be much debate on this lack of exercise issue. But now, answer this: Playing what sport will burn the fewest calories? Baseball loses hands down. No question. Therefore, we sign up our kids to play soccer and basketball over tee-ball, right? Not in this town. We can’t wait to take our kids out to a baseball diamond to get very little exercise, well before their little muscles can even function well enough to make a match meaningful. That doesn’t matter to the parents, who come to cheer the kids on. Human beings are great creators of meaning.

Uh-oh. Another transition. Damn that National Geographic! The June 2007 issue features “The Big Thaw.” There are too many dramatic photos of water flushing down and out of Greenland at an incredible rate. The message is clear: If we don’t do something drastic, “the ice will likely disappear.” The only polar bears will live in zoos, just like it already is for tigers and many other endangered animals. The photos and statistics are numbing (see pp. 56 – 71). Go look, if you dare. As I was reading this depressing news about global warming, at least for a few seconds, I felt like a Republican. I was irritated that all of those uppity scientists and writers were telling me devastating things that won’t stop unless all of us dramatically change our lifestyles. That must be what Republicans feel when they decide that it’s easier to deny than to do something meaningful about a problem. All of this environmental damage is going on under the watch the most powerful man in the world, yet he doesn’t give a crap. Well, actually, he does care enough to allow his minions to falsify scientific reports to assure us that everything is OK. Lots of people voted for him, because they like that approach.

Voting? That topic reminds me of a haunting letter to the New York Times Magazine (June 10, 2007): “Today’s manipulation of the uninformed and illogical voting public by puerile ‘sound bites’ and bumper stickers has gotten us into lots of trouble.” What do we do about our big problems? We elect people who make us feel good about not doing anything at all. Nonetheless, many people still claim that that our voting system is a system that has proven its worth. It’s better than any other voting system in the world. There’s no need to actually make a factual comparison. We just know it.

But let me bring this full circle, in a word salad sort of way. Yes, all of us do like to watch videos. We especially love underdogs. Would you like to watch the opposite of Paris Hilton? If you’ve seen this video of Paul Potts before, you’ll thank me. If you’ve never before seen this video, you’ll really thank me. May this be a complete antidote to my frustration and cynicism . . .

This is my official favorite ad of the 2008 political campaign (so far)

If there is a point I don’t get it, but it’s very restful. Very zen, in fact. I had no idea who Mike Gravel was until this video made me go to his website. So it worked, I guess.
Hat tip to Mark Liberman at Language Log

Are they looking for someone with a conscience who will lead a team that will speak with passion and conscience?  Are they looking for someone who bases his or her writing on deep principles, letting the chips fall where they may?  

Keep in mind that this is the modern version of the Post-Dispatch (see here and here and here and here), a paper that is now looking for someone “at ease with regional business and political leaders.” 

Here is the actual text of the job posting by the owner of the Post-Dispatch, Lee Enterprises:

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch seeks a dynamic, talented, and seasoned journalist to lead our editorial page and a staff of 8. The editorial page editor must be able to synthesize complex information on a variety of subjects quickly and produce editorials scrupulously vetted for accuracy, context and tone. This candidate must have a proven track record of producing exceptional journalism in print and online. The editorial page editor reports directly to the publisher.

The successful candidate will have a demonstrated ability to listen with an open mind to all sides of an issue, be able to work collaboratively to build consensus and to resolve conflict in a fair and even-handed fashion. The ideal candidate will be someone with a keen interest in public policy, a passion for advocacy and social justice and a thorough understanding of the mechanics of government and business. The candidate we seek will be a poised public speaker, at ease interacting with regional business and political leaders and the community at large, and unflappable under pressure. You must have at least six years of supervisory experience at a daily newspaper and at least eight years of experience in editorial or commentary writing, as well as extensive experience as a reporter/editor.

To apply, please submit your resume along with a letter explaining your philosophy of journalism, your vision for an editorial page at a major metropolitan daily and why you’d be a strong candidate as well as work samples (Work samples can include news, feature or editorial sections you have overseen and editorials or commentary you have written) to [The St. Louis Post-Dispatch].

Compare the tone of this job posting to the official Platform of the Post-Dispatch, written by Joseph Pulitzer in 1907:

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Stir into this mix the following information from the June 2007 edition of the St. Louis Journalism Review: On April 30, 2007, The owners of the Post-Dispatch announced that they had brought on an “advisory board” of 67 advisors, mostly white males, including numerous prominent business and political leaders.   A former Reader’s Advocate of the Post-Dispatch described them as “a bunch of heavy hitters, each with their own agenda.”  Those heavy hitters include the Mayor of St. Louis.  Hey, maybe the Mayor will recommend that the new Editorial Page Editor will publish a story critical of his own policies!  Maybe the Mayor will heed Mr. Pulitzer’s Platform and strive to become “independent” of his own interests!

For those considering this Editor position, I’d recommend that you think about the new Advisory Board as follows:  you’ll never be alone.  You’ll always have 67 powerful business and government leaders happy to help you write those passionate editorials about social justice. 

That’s not actually the view of former Editorial Page Editor Edward Higgins, who the SJR quotes: “With this board, it’s hard to imagine the editorial page being willing to take unpopular stands or plunge into controversial issues.” Other employees interviewed by the SJR see this new Advisory Board as entirely consistent with the PD’s “soft news focus, its mushy front-page stories as part of a business strategy.” 

So, again, does anyone want that new job as the new Editorial Page Editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch? 

 –

Now that I’m finished ranting, I need to mention that I received a tip about this new job listing from a friend who is a journalist.  

He/she asked me whether any of us “would add, omit or change anything in the job announcement to get what you would like to see in daily (msm) opinion journalism in St. Louis? If so, how would you rewrite the ad?”  Does anyone want to tweak the ad?” 

Your ideas will be taken seriously by journalists who will be monitoring this post.

At Salon.com, Glen Greenwald describes it like this:

If even our Beltway media — rather, especially them — argues that criminality by government officials should not be punished, and that light should not be shined on what they do, then pervasive government corruption and deceit are inevitable. That is just obvious. And that is why [Richard] Cohen’s column so perfectly captures what has happened in our country and the truly indispensable role which most of our political press has played in all of it.

Our media stars have not merely stood idly by while our highest government officials engage in endless deceit and corruption. They actively defend it, enable it, justify it, and participate in it. Keeping the lights off is their principal function, one which — with rare and noble exceptions — they perform quite eagerly.

The occasion was the performance of the beltway media during the sentencing of Scooter Libby.  What had Cohen written?

With the sentencing of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker — Richard Armitage of the State Department — but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.

This is a lively debate, as you might expect. You’ll can view the entire debate at Truthdig.org.

Sam Harris opens the debate by arguing that there are only three types of arguments used by those defending religion:

• That a particular religion is true;
• That believing in religion is useful; or
• That atheist are immoral (and other ad hominem attacks on atheists).

Harris elaborates on each of these three types of arguments. 

Chris Hedges opens by advocating that all of us need to stop tolerating the intolerant.  He joins with Sam Harris on this point.   Hedges then moves on to argue that Harris ”conflates faith with tribalism,” holding that tribalism is not religion.  He credits monotheism with giving rise to the recognition of the individual, altruism and “the open society.”  Hedges makes the argument hard to join, however, when he asserts that “The question is not whether God exists.” 

Hedges is a sharp critic of Harris’s alleged militant stance against Islam (see the end of Part III & the beginning of Part IV).

There’s lots of discussion about sociology, politics, science and disenfranchised populations along the way.  The entire discussion is laced with references to the real world, which keeps it lively.  An issue that haunts this discussion, though, is the difficulty identifying the type of believer who is problematic.  What kind of believer is the kind about whom we need to be concerned? 

These are two highly competent spokespeople.  The debate is well worth viewing.

Ebonmuse looks closely at the religious trends at Daylight Atheism.  The recent rates of growth/decline are especially interesting.  It turns out that the fast growing “religion” is secularlism.

I have to wonder how much more quickly attitudes would change (away from systems involving supernatural claims) if the mainstream media would stop walking on eggshells when it discussed religion.   What if the media truly welcomed the voices of skepticism?   When someone claims to be a devout Catholic, for example, why not make it clear that this set of beliefs (because of the transubstantiation) involves cannibalism?  When it is claimed that the Bible is literally true, why not invite questions like this:  “Isn’t the Bible a book that encourages slavery?“  Sunshine is a great disinfectant

I’m not denying that one can occasionally hear voices of dissent and disbelief on the mainstream airwaves.   For the most part, though, it is still outrageous to question the fundamental beliefs of the most popular religions (Sorry Mormons.  The big religions are ganging up on you. Actually, Mitt Romney is bringing some much-needed sunshine onto the practices of Mormonism). 

If someone claimed that the Earth had two moons or that copper did not conduct electricity, we would be shocked an disappointed if the media stood silent and simply moved on to a different topic.  I sense that we are moving toward a day when we we hear the media raise the obvious questions needed when people make baseless religious claims.

What is my hope?  I’ll be satisfied when, someday, the mainstream media is willing to interlace assertions of traditional Christian beliefs right alongside direct skeptical questions like these:

• Can you really feed thousands with a single basket of fish and loaves?  Has that ever happened since the invention of videocameras?
• What do we really know about the original writings of the Bible?   Who changed the Bible, and why?
• What does cognitive science say about why people believe in many things that are not true?
• Isn’t there a dark side to New Testament morality?
• What are the powerful social reasons for belonging to a religion, reasons that have nothing to do with whether the beliefs have any basis in reality?  For example, would children tend to follow their parents’ religion if that religion weren’t crammed down their throats when those children were young?  And see here.
• Is the threat of hell really the best basis for a moral system?
• Aren’t there many other religions out there?   Isn’t it true that Christianity is only one of them and that they ALL claim to be the one true religion?  What should that fact do to the confidence level of believers?
• Should we really be looking to ancient writings of scientifically ignorant people when determining how to practice birth control?
• Is it a good idea to force little children to recite things that are obviously untrue (e.g., that the world is 6,000 years old)?

(And as Ebonmuse discusses on his site), Do religious beliefs really improve the quality of life in any meaningful way?   

Let the people hear the pro’s and con’s and then decide.  No debate should be one-sided.  Religion should be no exception.   Whenever we hear about the love and peace brought be religion, we should also hear about the wars and ignorance wrought by religious bureacracies.  In many cases, the Emperor has no clothes, and it’s time for the people to hear the obvious objections to the many traditional religious claims that are commonly voiced. 

Wouldn’t we be better off if we focused on actively trying to just get along, without all of the supernatural claims?  Based on the article by Ebonmuse, we can get along without superstition and we can get along well.

The best justice money can buy.   Pretty amazing.   The story was covered on Alternet.org:

The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

Let’s see . . . Blackwater is asked for information by the families of the dead contractors (they were “burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004″).   Blackwater refuses to provide the information.  The families sue to obtain the information.  Blackwater loses a series of appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Are the griveing families about to get the information they seek?  Dream on.  Oh, and bring in the heavies to fight the families:

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

Blackwater has sued not only the estates of the dead contractors, but also the administrators of the estates, seeking to have them held personally responsible.  What is the real purpose for this suit against the families?

After filing its suit against the dead men’s estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families’ existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

I collect my favorites from various sources, though I was reminded of many of these quotes by The Quotations Page (which offers quotes of the day).  There is a condensed book in every good quote:

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg (1933 - ), quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.
Pat Conroy (1945 - )

It’s not a matter of whether or not someone’s watching over you. It’s just a question of their intentions.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive, 03-24-07

In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.
Johann von Neumann (1903 - 1957)

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Einstein

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
The Dalai Lama (1935 - )

The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.
Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould (1941 - 2002)

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
An English Professor, Ohio University

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
Colette (1873 - 1954)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) (more…)

This crisp summary screams U.S. incompentence and corruption.

I am cynical about the day called Father’s Day.   For most of my life, I have seen it as yet another store-sponsored holiday.  America traditionally “celebrates” Father’s Day by buying trinkets from a store.   I can’t think of a better way to degrade any occasion.

Father’s Day has become something much more meaningful to me since I became a father, but it is not about receiving trinkets bought at stores. I write this fully aware that there are other, more comprehensive, ways of interpreting the trinkets.

What is it to be a father?  Like most things in life, being a father is not about being brilliant.  It’s mostly about pacing yourself.  It’s about staying reasonably focused over the long-haul.  It’s about dealing with fatigue.  It’s been about repeatedly saying “no” to one’s momentary desires in order to accomplish something much more important in the long run.

I envisioned this blog to be a place for ideas.  For that reason, I’ve minimized revealing much information about my family.  It’s not that I’m not crazy about my family. I am.  I adore my wife and children.  It’s just that I’ve tried to respect their privacy. Then again, writing about events from six years ago doesn’t quite seem quite so invasive.  Therefore, I’m using this post about my real life children to illustrate the idea of parenthood.

It is true that being a father is about bringing home a paycheck to feed and clothes little children.   Therefore, being a father can sometimes be a lonely pursuit; there are days and nights where I dream of being home, but I just can’t be there.  I might be taking depositions in a city far away or I might just be stuck writing legal memoranda a mere five miles from home.  Why do fathers crank so hard for so many long hours at the office?  I’m not going to pretend that being a provider is the only reason, but it is an important reason.  I wouldn’t work as hard as I do were I not a father.  I am intensely driven by a thought: I don’t want to embarrass myself by failing to provide for my children. 

Being a father draws on numerous other skills too.  I’m called on to be a teacher, coach, referee, clown, counselor, banker, cook, nanny, chauffeur and, yes, “parent.”  It’s hard to describe what it is to be a parent to those who aren’t.  When my wife and I were thinking of adopting a little girl, I asked several competent-seeming parents what it meant to be a parent.  They consistently told me that parenting is incredibly exhausting yet equally rewarding.  Descriptions like that made me apprehensive, of course.  

When we were thinking about adopting a child, I was apprehensive about having children.  I thought that they would be expensive, time-consuming, exhausting and annoying and that they would keep me for accomplishing other goals I had set for myself.  This has turned out to be entirely true, of course.  Being a good parent is necessarily time-consuming.  There are no short-cuts to spending long stretches of quality time with your children.  However, there is something else to know about having children. It has to do with the reward of being a parent.   Being a parent addressed a deep need I didn’t know I had. 

In August 1999, my wife (Anne) and I adopted a little girl in Wuhan, China.  Her name is Ju-Ju.”  Here’s the amazing thing:  after resisting the idea of having a child, I found myself enthralled and fascinated to be the father of little JuJu.  In fact, only three months after bringing JuJu home from China, I clamored to adopt a sister for JuJu.  We jumped on that second round of adoption paperwork, and eventually we adopted Charlotte in March 2001 in Hunan, China. 

For this “Father’s Day” post, I’d like to mention one other thing.   A friend of mine (who sometimes shows up on this blog under a pseudonym) gave me advice about how to be a good parent.  He said that there was only one rule:  “You need to listen to your children.  And by listen, I mean you need to take the time to really actively listen to your children so that you know who they are. Everything else will fall in place if you follow this one rule.”  I’ve found that when I follow this rule, everything else does fall in place.  That is my advice, too, to anyone considering becoming a parent.  (more…)

If anyone is looking for a Good Book that endorses and promotes human slavery, Ebonmuse has a recommendation for you.

No cheating by skipping around, now.  Just read the passages he presents and then heed the conclusions of Ebonmuse.

Main Entry: ad•dic•tion 
Pronunciation: &-’dik-sh&n, a-
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being addicted
2 : compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful

Main Entry: 1ad•dict 
Pronunciation: &-’dikt
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Latin addictus, past participle of addicere to favor, from ad- + dicere to say — more at DICTION
1 : to devote or surrender (oneself) to something habitually or obsessively
2 : to cause addiction to a substance in (a person or animal)

Main Entry: ob•ses•sion 
Pronunciation: äb-’se-sh&n, &b-
Function: noun
1 : a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling; broadly : compelling motivation
2 : something that causes an obsession

I was more fascinated by all the commentary about body building than I was by the actual subject. A note: I once participated in this activity, and I have to agree it is something other than mere sport. But can’t any athlete become an addict? We have all known, or at least heard of, athletes who train addictively. We speak of being addicted to running, or addicted to sex, or to relationships…

I became curious (one could even say, obsessed) with obsession. Of course, I first had to look up the words, addiction and obsession (see above). I have to admit to an opinion, which is that addiction and obsession are common human traits and behaviors. Both seem to be unhealthy, that is, they don’t promote either mental or physical stability. To the best of my discernment it seems that “addiction” is a physical behavior, while “obsession” is mental or emotional.

I believe addiction and obsession are as human as, well, breathing, for instance. You could say I am addicted to breathing. My body sort of craves it. I can’t stop myself from doing it much longer than a minute and a half. But I think breathing is generally a healthy activity, if you define health as life-supporting or enhancing.
My point is this: the body is designed to function in particular ways. A physical craving which is overpowering can, and is, necessary to support life. Otherwise, we could forget about eating, drinking, even breathing.

OK, so breathing is a function of the sympathetic nervous system and happens without thinking about it, so to keep things fair, let’s limit addictive behavior to those activities which require our conscious participation (like eating and drinking). Even so, we’re hard-wired to crave. If you don’t accept the cases of yogis who were able to survive without food, water, (or air for that matter), for prolonged periods of time (months and even years) then you could say that it is necessary for life-support to have a craving to eat and drink.

So sometimes the hard-wiring gets skewed and we crave some activity that isn’t necessary to support life, like drinking alcohol or smoking. I understand that there has been some success with drugs that break the body’s need for these substances. But then there’s obsession.  The mental and emotional component can be profound. If one cannot stop thinking about something, and if one feels extremely depressed, even grief-stricken at the lack of a certain substance in the body, and these could include endorphins caused by running or working out, then the addiction may continue, fed by the obsessive thoughts and emotions.

It becomes difficult as we know to separate the physical addiction from the obsessive thoughts and emotions. We can all obsess on something or someone! As was pointed out in the bodybuilding commentaries, obsessions can begin early in life based on unhappy or traumatic events. It seems that the negative aspect of obsession comes from the likelihood that an obsession is bred by and fed by a crisis, trauma, or catastrophic occurrence.

Is anyone you know addicted to happiness, or to feeling peaceful, calm, or stable? How about obsession with kindness or compassion? Yet we often say we crave quiet, peace, down-time, stillness. How is it that if we crave these things we are almost never addicted to them, nor do we obsess over them?

Even though I would argue that obsession and addiction are as normal as desire, I have to say that desire has a healthy connotation while addiction and obsession are definitely unhealthy. Desire is still under our control. I can desire chocolate, but do nothing to satisfy the urge. Left alone, it goes away. Later I may choose to fan the flames and then give in to it, but I can generally choose when I partake. But lets say I’m at a party where I don’t know anyone except the host, and I’m feeling a bit shy or unconfident. Oh look! There’s a table full of truffles! I can station myself right next to the platter full of truffles and eat to my heart’s content. Contentment caused by what? Consumption of the truffle? The supposed “high” that chocolate can engender? Why don’t I get “high” on happiness? Why don’t I continually choose thoughts and behaviors that cause me to feel happy? Well, isn’t that what addiction and obsession are about? Don’t we do something, or think about something, because it creates some degree of happiness or contentment? So again, we’re back to obsession and addiction as necessary to life.
 
In conclusion, why say “freakish” when talking about ANY obsession or compulsion? We call it “obsessive-compulsive DISorder” but its certainly common enough.  Preoccupations and compulsions can lead to amazing discoveries or to amazing feats, so why not just accept that some people need to build huge muscles in their bodies and some people can’t stop looking at u-tubes.

Today I went to Borders and saw that they had a DVD copy of one of my favorite old movies, Freaks.

You could say I’m a freak for Freaks; I considered buying it so I could watch it again and again and again…

Give Dennis Hope a call and it can be yours. This is truly a prestige property. Location, location, location.

Pants, by definition, are: an outer garment covering the body from the waist to the ankle, with a separate part for each leg. One cannot have one pant, although I suppose if one has only one leg and removes the extra part, one might have a pant? My dashboard dictionary doesn’t suppose, it just defines, and pant has only to do with heavy breathing.

According to this definition then, pants cover the entire lower half of the body. Unless you live in the land of hip-hop, of course, where all bets are off and pants cover the lower half of the legs - no guarantee for anything on up.

Personally, I find it ridiculous. It looks stupid. It makes normal movement less than . . . fluid, shall we say. I’ve watched the boys try to run around my neighborhood with the waistband of their jeans around their thighs and their pantlegs bunched around their ankles, and I’ve laughed out loud at the visual. I watch boys hold their pants up by grabbing the crotch and swaggering, and I’ve wondered if I should allow my daughter to wear tops that require her holding her breasts in order to keep said top from falling off. I’ve decided that no, I shouldn’t.

I’ve heard the stories of this fashion trend originating as an act of solidarity with “the brothers in prison” who’ve had their belts taken away. Which strikes me as ridiculous for two reasons - first, because when belts are taken away, usually one is handed a jumpsuit or drawstring pants to replace one’s streetwear. Been awhile since I’ve been in prison, so I can’t say for sure. Secondly, I find it troubling that kids look to “brothers in prison” to emulate. Sure, some are there unfairly, but face it, most are not. They are there because they are criminals, and the culture has moved from sympathizing through clothing to eyewitnesses not talking to police about crimes simply because one shouldn’t be a rat. Sixty Minutes did an interesting piece on that not long ago.  But that is whole ‘nother post for a more serious time.

Today I am speaking only of pants, because now, a Louisiana town has determined that we must put an end to this wearing of pants incorrectly.  Thank God someone is finally taking action.

Supposedly this is about indecency. Somewhere in the aforementioned article, a councilperson is quoted as including butt cracks in what mustn’t show. Private parts in general should not show. OK, but since when did sagging pants show private parts? They look stupid, they show underwear, they make walking a whole different act - but I have yet to see actual private parts. I see a lot more skin and the edges, shall we say, of a lot more “private parts” on women who wear bikini tops and ultra-lowrise jeans and mini shorts . . . but they aren’t deemed illegal. Except for butt cracks. God save the plumbers of Louisiana.

The town has implemented $500 fines and possible jail time for this. Oh my. This is what is important? This is how we should be spending the time and energy of our local governments? I guess the school system in their town is in excellent condition, as well as all the municipal services, street conditions and common areas. Whew.

Or wait, maybe they aren’t. Maybe they are going to create the “Sagging Pants Fund,” and use all SPF money to improve the quality of life for everyone by planting flowers in the medians, buying new books for the school libraries and lowering taxes. Perfect. Now there’s a plan we can really get behind. And the pants will return to their rightful position, covering the body from waist to ankle. Ahhhhh . . . order. We just needed more order.

That’s the phrase we keep hearing from the Bush administration about the troop surge in Baghdad.  “It’s too soon to tell,” “Let’s give the plan time to work,” “Just give it more time….”  It has all the makings of a Biblical prophesy:  peace will eventually return to Baghdad, the only question is whether it will take months, years, decades or centuries.  No wonder the Bushites want us to wait longer — if we wait long enough, Baghdad will heal itself and Bush can claim the credit.

Well, so far, Bush’s “plan” is failing.  The Pentagon reported today that violence continues to escalate in Iraq, despite the troop surge. 

For the past couple years, I have had the privilege of working as a consumer attorney.  I’ve occasionally written about some of the topics I’ve encountered as a consumer lawyer.  In this post, I’ll address another issue that I commonly encounter in my practice: illegible forms full of fine print that deprive consumers of fundamental rights.

What provoked this topic is a lawsuit I am currently handling.  My client sued a payday lender based on a payday loan that she alleges the defendant repeatedly processed and renewed in violation of the payday lending laws of Missouri.  This is a big deal to my client and to all of the numerous potential class members of this class action.  Why is it important?  For starters, this particular payday lender (and many others) charged 469% interest.  This is not a typo.  I have often asked friends and acquaintances whether they’ve heard of payday loans.  They usually say they have heard of those sorts of businesses.  I then ask them how much interest they think payday lenders charge.  Most people say something like this:

“Oh, I hear that it is an exorbitant rate of interest, perhaps 25%.” 

They are shocked to hear that it is legal to charge consumers 400 or 500% interest on a small consumer loans.  They are shocked to hear that some of these companies make it part of their business plan to repeatedly violate Missouri lending laws.  They are also shocked at one other thing, the topic of this post.  They are shocked to see how unreadable and one-sided many business forms have become.

I should mention that the above lawsuit is not about the exhorbitant rate of interest, which is entirely legal.  How can that be?  See here.  The suit concerns allegations that the lender violated numerous laws concerning renewals and paydown of the loans.

Take a look at the actual form here: arbitration agreement.pdf   If you make it all the way through the form, send me a comment and I’ll publish it so that you get full credit for your diligence.

The above form is an arbitration clause that is printed on the back side of every loan application by one of the businesses that I have sued.  This arbitration form is very much like the forms used by numerous other payday lenders and numerous other providers of goods and services to consumers from coast to coast.  The above form runs more than 1400 words.  All of those words are jammed onto one page in tiny type (about eight point), with fully justified margins running the width of the page (this makes it difficult to find where the next line begins).  The title of this all-important arbitration provision does not even mention “arbitration.”  The lines of this form are less-than-single-spaced to the extent that the lower strokes of a line actually touch the upper strokes of the letters on the line beneath it. 

This form is so badly congested that I scanned the form at 400 dpi, then ran OCR (optical character recognition) on it using two separate programs (OmniPage Pro 14 and Adobe Acrobat Standard).  Both of these programs failed pathetically, because the words and sentences are jammed together too closely for a machine to distinguish between the words and lines.  If a person were to reformat the above form to double-spacing with one-inch margins, the form would take almost 7 sheets of paper.

This printed information on the above form is so absolutely unreadable that the corporate representative of the company that implemented this form stumbled several times while trying to read it at a deposition.  It is written so poorly that a lawyer who works for the company could not explain a key provision of this arbitration clause immediately after being asked to read it.

My client’s readability expert explained that this form was not readable, based upon an analysis he conducted. It could not comfortably be read by anyone with less than a first-year graduate school level of training, he testified.  Further, the form was not legible, based upon the appearance of the words on the page.  Only a tiny sliver of consumers in America could be expected to make any sense out of this form.  (more…)

In this 1971 article, Judith Jarvis Thomson suggests that we’ve spent way too much time and emphasis on the issue of whether a developing fetus is fully human.   She doesn’t concede this point (she argues that acorns are not oak trees).  Yet she prefers to bring the conversation to what to do assuming that the fetus is fully human.

I found Thompson’s discussion unusual in that most abortion arguments (pro and con) focus on the status of the fetus.  Thompson assumes that the fetus is human, yet she argues for an approach that

allows for and supports our sense that, for example, a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane law. And it also allows for and supports our sense that in other cases resort to abortion is even positively indecent. It would be indecent in the woman to request an abortion, and indecent in a doctor to perform it, if she is in her seventh month, and wants the abortion just to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad.

What is Thompson’s approach?  It is a detailed approach filled with vivid examples that creatively and powerfully illustrate her points.  Hers is also an approach entirely lacking in vitriol.  

One of her examples especially caught my eye, in that it quite similar to a pro-choice argument presented at this site by Grumpypilgrim.

Here is one of the illustrations from Judith Thompson’s fetus is fully human pro-choice argument:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. “Tough luck. I agree. but now you’ve got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.”

If you found this example intriguing, there is a lot more for you here. 

A conservative federal appeals court harshly rebuked the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism strategy Monday, ruling that U.S. residents cannot be locked up indefinitely as “enemy combatants” without being charged.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the lone moronic dissenting vote was cast by a Bush appointee, on the bizarre rationale that American residents should be treated as guilty until proven innocent:  “Although al-Marri [the detainee] was not personally engaged in armed conflict with U.S. forces, he is the type of stealth warrior used by al-Qaeda to perpetrate terrorist acts against the United States….”  In other words, the defendant wasn’t guilty, but he was the “type of” person who might someday be guilty, so let’s toss out any Constitutional rights this person has and lock him into solitary confinement for the rest of his life with no hope of ever getting a trial.  Judge Hudson, does the word “junto” mean anything to you?

As human animals, we are condemned to live with great ignorance in an unpredictably violent world.  To compensate, most of us work hard to develop an extraordinary expertise to protect ourselves from considering our precarious existence.  We work hard to pre-screen toxic thoughts.  We rarely contemplate our own inevitable deaths, for example.  We are often successful at protecting ourselves from real-life things that would terrify us if we dared to squarely consider them.

Once in a while, though, we get a terrifying glimpse of unvarnished reality.  For instance, we sometimes suddenly realize that we are affixed to that Conveyor Belt of Life, a “belt” that inexorably moves us toward a time when we will be old if we’re lucky, then lifeless.  Whenever this terrible thought brings shivers, we quickly change channels to consider something less macabre.  Yet we are all strapped onto that Conveyor Belt, even our precious young children.  In 150 years, everyone currently living on Earth will be dead.  It is difficult to conjure up more disturbing thoughts.

What other toxic thoughts occur when our mental guard is down?  How about the thought that we are not meaningfully different from each other.  Or that the world is full of mobile intestinal tracts–walking talking intestinal tracts.  Or that our bodies are rife with parasites. And that we are animals. Or that we are breathing, thinking meat, a point directly yet elegantly made by a touring entourage of corpses known as BodyWorlds.  And here’s another toxic truth most of us dare not consider: that our social order is incredibly fragile, and that it is all too capable of suddenly turning to ignorance and violence (and see here)  Here’s another toxic truth: we know very little about ourselves and our world.  As Nietzsche said,

Just beyond experience!– Even great spirits have only their five fingers breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins. 

Nietzsche (Daybreak, s. 564)

Because we so often practice shielding ourselves from such toxic thoughts, we become experts at concealing overwhelmingly obvious aspects of even our own bodies from ourselves.  Nietzsche had a lot to say about this self-ignorance:

Does nature not conceal most things from him-even concerning his own body, in order to confine and lock him within a proud deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the bloodstream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers!  She threw away the key.  And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous-as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger.

[The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Magnus and Higgins, page 30 (1996).]

About ten years ago, I wrote a paper analyzing numerous social phenomena from the viewpoint of limited human attentional capacities.  It was an over-ambitious paper, but working on it triggered an epiphany for me: I realized that much high-level human behavior stemmed from low level routines and habits and that many high-level decisions resulted from limited attention (that is highly susceptible to manipulation) and fatigue.  In other words, I realized the much human behavior could be explained in terms of attention.  Here is that paper:  heuristics_as_perceptual_strategy.doc

My friend Dea read this paper and reacted with horror.  She didn’t want to consider that humans could be “reduced” to anything predictable or analyzable.  She craved autonomy and freedom and she wanted to believe in old-fashioned versions of love, honor and courage.  For her, one of the most toxic thoughts possible was that complex human behavior could someday be explained in terms of hormones or bouncing atoms.  (more…)

For those of you who waded through my post of last week about my day trekking through the federal bureaucracy on a quest for documents, I have two things to add. First, thanks for taking the time to wade. Second, I got an update from my friend. Remember those records that everyone told him were in “the Archives” in Kansas City? Two different archives, even, if I understood correctly, one in KC and one in Lee’s Summit.

Well, he found those very records, and didn’t have to travel further than the local library. OK, the main library, the headquarters for St. Louis County Public Libraries, in the genealogy room. He found the microfiche with all of it, and got through several years without finding the naturalization papers, which he knew he wouldn’t. So now he can call the helpful woman whose name he was given and tell her that he searched and didn’t find.
No one mentioned the library. Not one employee with whom he spoke, state or federal, knew about this. Hmmm. Secret files? Good thing they hid them so carefully.

On a semi-related note, another friend is wading not through governmental bureaucracy, but insurance bureaucracy. My guess is that every single person who reads this knows someone who has had to fight over health insurance. My friend’s son was scheduled for major surgery this week, the (hopefully) final step in the correction of a cleft palate and lip. As most of you know, clefts of this sort are birth defects. Rarely does a palate or lip spontaneously split . This boy is now a teenager, and has been through all of his corrective surgeries at a large, well-known and well-funded teaching hospital here in St. Louis. Their insurance is through the same university, as his father works there. Every surgery he’s had has led up to this one, the alignment of his jaws. They started when he was a baby, and this one had to wait til his skull reached full size. He’s 17 now, and the entire family scheduled the summer around this surgery, months in advance. He held off getting a job, because the recuperation for this one is tough. Annual trips typically taken in June were delayed, and they prepared to finally get this done so that he can finish high school and put this all behind him.

Days, literally, before the surgery, she received a phone call from the coordinator of the cleft palate team, telling her that the insurance had declined the surgery. They don’t cover orthognathic surgery, or the realigning of jawbones. My friend was utterly stunned - this has been in the offing for years, same insurance they’ve had since they brought their son home. After some tears, followed by the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, she took a deep breath and headed to the insurance carrier’s website, where she waded through all the pages she could find, but not anything about this exclusion. She took another, deeper breath and contacted the company by phone. Through extremely nice manners and by withholding all of the rage she was feeling, she managed to find someone to pull up her file and find the applicable section: They don’t cover orthognathic surgery, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF BIRTH DEFECTS. Oh, really? So how exactly did that little tidbit slip by? Don’t insurance companies actually examine the cases they review? This child’s entire medical history revolves around his cleft and its effect on his sinuses, his face, his skull and his jaw. How did they miss that? I guess they find it easy to just stamp DENIED across the page when they see the single word, “orthognatic,” without examining it any further. Do they not know that clefts are a common cause of this? Are the case reviewers not trained in any level of actual medical terminology? Or was this an honest mistake, an accident caused by the random human error?
I really felt for my friend - she loves this child so much, she’s advocated for him for years, and now to have this last layer of intervention denied . . . I was simply furious on her behalf. The hospital has filed an appeal, and the insurance company has 72 hours to respond.

Hopefully, in a few short days the surgery can be rescheduled in a timely fashion - but no one involved is holding their breath, because this isn’t about what is best for this child - with insurance, it rarely is. This is all about how to save the insurance company $80,000.

And the thing is, I’m sure this is nothing compared to what many have gone through. At least they weren’t denied after the fact, after they’d unwittingly dived deeply into debt. At least they didn’t open him up and then learn, at the 11th hour as he lay in surgery, that they better not proceed. At least his life is not in danger. No, he’s just a kid, a straight-A student, a normal suburban kid, a child dreading a surgery he knows is coming. And they are just normal parents, trying to help him, by paying their premiums on time and doing their best by their child.
I’ll post again when she calls with an update.

Why would God be justified destroying an entire city right now?  Because we’re bad.  How do you know we’re bad?  Because of lesbian sex.

How do we learn all of this?  Because when minister John MacArthur says so, James Dobson nods in approval.  For more, see Crooks and Liars.  Here are Mac Arthur’s words:

We haven’t had a massive calamity such as the destruction of an entire city. We certainly don’t want that to happen — pray that does not happen — but it could happen. And God would be just in any calamity that he brought upon us.

See also Bob Cesca’s spin on this intriguing theological position.

ps.  Someone should tell MacArthur about New Orleans.

Bill Clinton’s Commencement Speech at Harvard - June 6, 2007

The former President explained much societal dysfunction when he asked a simple question:  Should we focus on what human beings have in common or should we obsess about their minor differences? 

The outcome of this simple choice determines innumerable personal and political agendas.  To the extent that we choose incorrectly, the resulting contentious rhetoric has the capacity to mushroom into oppression and violence that can displace, maim and kill millions of people.  It has done so repeatedly.

Many of our political and moral disputes stem from this basic low-level perceptual choice: whether to focus on differences or commonalities.  Here is how Clinton captured the issue:

So if you look around this vast crowd today, at the military caps and the baseball caps and the cowboy hats and the turbans, if you look at all the different colors of skin, all the heights, all the widths, all the everything, it’s all rooted in one-tenth of one percent of our genetic make-up. Don’t you think it’s interesting that not just people you find appalling, but all the rest of us, spend 90 percent of our lives thinking about that one-tenth of one percent?

For at least six years, the air has been thick with violence, bigotry and oppression  because too many people are making the wrong choice up front.  The current Administration excels at choosing badly. The result? A de facto national policy that anyone who is different is suspicious. 

As eloquently stated by Bill Clinton, the alternative would be to focus on the fact that humans are 99+% the same (I’ve written on this sameness in many places, including here and here).  Perhaps it’s tempting to resist this thought in a country where we so often stress individual liberties and where our moral system is so rooted in personal responsibilities.  We aren’t as different as we’d like to believe, however.

I agree with Bill Clinton that to the extent that we fret about minor human differences we can expect massive societal dysfunction.  It’s difficult to turn this all around, though, because focusing on differences sells media ads.   We are currently living in an environment created by media corporations that are spraying out stories involving accusations, threats and paranoia.  What’s more interesting, a news story where people get along or a news story where people threat each other?  Massive societal dysfunction is thus the price we must pay to sell lots of jeans, perfume and cell phone plans.

Bill Clinton commencement address is extraordinary, well worth the 30-minutes it will take you to view it.   I also enjoyed several of the terrific speeches by several Harvard grads, all part of this same video.  If you’d like to go straight to view Bill Clinton’s speech, you can pick it up here (at Andrew Sullivan’s site), then start viewing at about 1:36:00.  You’ll find the transcript of Mr. Clinton’s speech here.  Below, I’m printing my personal “best of” excerpts “below the fold,” based upon this transcript. 

(more…)

This is Colbert at his best: “These agencies need to quit getting Shanghaied by their stated goals.”

The Washington Post reports on a “controversial” meaure that would:

increase funding for family planning clinics, expand Medicaid and private health insurance coverage of contraceptives, require hospitals to make emergency contraception available to rape victims, and allocate money for comprehensive sex education programs that teach youths about birth control as well as abstinence.

Here’s the money quote.   You might have to read it several times to believe what you’ve read:

“There’s a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences _ that’s the bottom line of all these bills,” said Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which opposes the measures.

Now let’s see . . . whose body is it?  

There are many people in power who believe that the government has a right to keep citizens from seeking private consensual pleasure in a way that they choose.   Conservatives often attack Roe v. Wade on the alleged basis that Roe has no basis in the Constitution.  

On this issue of access to birth control I would respond: where in the constitution does it say that consenting adults don’t have a right to seek pleasure, where many of them are adults in their 20’s, 30’s 40’s and up, and especially where many of them are married to each other? 

For more on conservatives and their arrogant attitudes toward controlling the harmless sexual impulses of others, see here and here and here and here. 

For some of the real-life health benefits of having sex often, see this list, based on an article from Forbes Magazine.

Parting thought:  Wouldn’t we be better off as a society if people had babies only when they intentionally had babies?   I can’t believe that we’ve gotten to the point where such a position has become “controversial.”