Tempus Fugit Rumble: Part Two of Some

Here follows more stuff from my anti-libertarian rantings. If you recall, this was a promised topic from J long ago to lay out my arguments against libertarianism, a la the Non-Libertarian FAQ. (Reread some of it yesterday... Ahhh! Still good.) What was promised is now delivered (more or less):

I promised myself I wouldn’t do this… (not because debate isn’t good, but that I should be doing several other things right now)…

[the previous poster said...]“The assumptions of basic capitalism are simply not met by the modern economy.”
Modern mixed economy? Diluted semi-state-run economy? What do you mean by ‘Modern Economy’?

Sorry, I should’ve been more precise. Capitalistic economic theory, liberal economic theory, is based on premises not borne out by reality, and I failed to adequately list them (my post wandered far more than I meant it to): perfect knowledge, [buzzer: ehhhhh!] Sorry, no. While there have been, to my knowledge, proofs that near perfect knowledge on the part of the consumer works out well enough, the fact is that perfect knowledge is actively prevented in our marketplace in the US, and would be only moreso without state intervention (cf. The Gilded Age, or the numerous companies who try to avoid disclosure of vital information, such as safety) — it is unlikely in the extreme that, for instance, pharmaceutical safety and clinical efficacy would be freely provided by companies without state intervention. And of course, environmental externalities are thoroughly mis-measured and not commonly known to their estimated extent (i.e. $300 billion/year in ecosystem services in the US that are common pool and not internalized economically, and therefore seen as costless when they are lost). Perfect competition — we are surrounded by oligopolies, many of which surpass or far surpass the economic “market concentration” rules of thumb, with sometimes 4 or fewer companies controlling 80% of the market. Monopolies are no more, if not less efficient when run by private industry than by the government (there is some scientific reason to think that government can effectively manage some monopolies, i.e. on common pool resources, while private industry will not, see Elinor Ostrom, Arun Agarwal, Bina Agrawal, Herman Daly, Thomas Prugh, Bob Costanza, Amartya Sen, and others). And, as already referenced, efficient markets require properly accounted externalities — and if you survey economists, most by far will say this is not properly done today, some saying as much as 50% or more of the economic effects of the US (and world) markets are unaccounted-for externalities.

[the previous poster said...]“Capitalism is based on several premises simply not borne out by reality”
Capitalism is the only moral system of governance due to its requirements. It is based on reality and the requirements one must meet if one is to be free to operate on your own volition and have the potential to be happy in your own life. Basically answer this: Do you as an individual have a right to exist for your own sake? The answer to that will determine your future and which side you take on this issue.

Ayn Rand much? Morality in this case, and freedom, are not independent entities, existing “out there” for us to discover (despite what Libertarians may assert). I have the right to exist for my own sake — but in the Libertarian sense, taking reality into account, this means I must: purify my own water, recycle/use only the water I personally own, purify/recycle/use air I personally own, raise sufficient food on my own property and buy all inputs and pay for all outputs, including purfiying and recycling my own waste. IF you want to argue we already do this (i.e. by paying for water and sewage), the costs of these services are established as under their real costs. And being truly independent - doing your own thing on your own land, i.e. — has been shown to be beyond our present capabilities; we cannot create an ecosystem that won’t collapse in very short order without maintaining contact with the rest of the biosphere — the very atoms that you are made of earlier belonged to other people, organisms, minerals, etc. — and you did not pay for the complete process to provide you with these components, as in a very real sense, the complete process has required interaction with common property spread the world over.

But I got distracted — your assumptions of freedom and morality are claimedly based on reality — yet you cannot prove them. Your premise depends on your conclusion. Capitalism is the only moral system because it allows the individual to exist for him/herself. Why is existing for yourself the moral basis? Because it is the only way to be free and exist for your own voilition and happiness. How do you prove that? Because capitalism is the system that best provides for people should they all look out for themselves.

What makes your system of beliefs better than mine? Ayn Rand/Libertarian views presume their definitions to be self-evident; the fact that others disagree means they are delusioned, and there is no good basis to argue their presumptions to a logical conclusion, any more so than the presumption “All morality must come from God, and that which is against God is immoral.” Possibly true — but not provable.

Faith in capitalism cannot be a presumptive basis for rational government.

You point out the ‘flaws’ with Capitalism:
“that people are rational actors”
Some are more rational than others…
“they don’t adequately analyze trade-offs in complex situations”
Sadly this is too often the case. …
“they value non-economic commodities which may be contingently valued”
True. (side note — you cut out the part where I explained contingent valuation can lead to flawed and/or irrational results)

Here you acknowledge my points and use them to back up the need for more capitalism. Huh? If you are arguing, like many do, that capitalism is preferable because it leads to the most efficient outcomes for society, these requisites must be met, and you acknowledge they are not. “Relief” from government intervention would do little to change these mismatches. So presumably again you are arguing that capitalism is inherently moral, which, fine, go ahead, but there’s no point in arguing it. You can’t prove morality, or that human self-serving will is the only true freedom, and I can’t prove that humanism best represents the moral solution to a world nearly totally composed of common goods and uneconomic commodities.

Let me point out two more things:
One is that recent theory shows even purely rational actors can make decisions leading to inefficient or sub-pareto optimal results; that means without cooperation and/or intervention, unfettered rational beings may be worse off than they were with a little (assumedly voluntary i.e. democratic) fettering.

Second Much of modern capitalist theory is based on Ricardo, and to a lesser extent, (at least paralells the work of) Malthus. However, both of these men acknowledged that the rules they “derived” would not serve without an elite/rich capitalist class that would disproportionately consume to keep the economy going; this class also must be wise enough not to reproduce above the replacement rate or to consume too much, but rather just enough. Ricardo, additionally, thought land owners were useless and thus did not account for them — only industrial capitalists fit into his analysis. They based their rules on the good sense of the rich and the uncontrolable reproduction of the poor/laborer class. Adam Smith, himself, wrote a book on morals to go along with The Wealth of Nations that proclaimed the importance of caring for each other (”fellow feeling and propriety” — Theory of Moral Sentiments) for a properly constituted society. These theories all assumed out the idea that classes were not/should not be static — an economic capitalist/libertarian must either reformulate them in order to adjust them around the assumptions of a permanent underclass, or to argue with them that a permanent underclass is a requisite condition of humanity (which is itself an unfounded assumption that then must be proved). That, or make their argument in some world inpendent of the idea that capitalism has any socio-moral basis in equality of people (a permanent underclass cannot be said to provide equality even in the limited US individualistic equal-under-the-law context if their very permanence is formulated as a condition for the society), that is, make their argument outside of classic, liberal/neoliberal economic context. It seems to me your only argument here then is - it’s good cuz it is.

I don’t believe in this conception of deus ex machina and I don’t believe you have a base or a right to make me or anyone else in society believe or follow your faith, not your reason.

Repost of the Rumble, Part Next of Some, to come.

Tempus Fugit: Part One of Some

Re-pasting of my first posting on Tempus Fugit's piece on minimum wage. As of now, the last libertarians standing are saying, in effect, "your argument is so stupid I don't need to respond." Read and judge for yourself...

Is it somehow coincidence that the substantive points made by SteveP, Reece, Hugo, and to a lesser extent Chris Beeman aren’t addressed by the supporters of the simplified argument made above?

I, too ended up here as a result of a link from Slate; I guess I can’t complain too much because it is the same way that my blog got a boost in readers; nonetheless, one wonders about them (as I do whenever they publish Steven Landsberg columns). It’s not that points of view shouldn’t be as diverse as possible; it’s that one constantly is forced to say to oneself: “This is the best argument they have?”

The assumptions of basic capitalism are simply not met by the modern economy. MNCs have oligopolies on many, many products; externalities are something one reads about in “Interest” pieces in the papers or in popular science magazines, and are dealt with day-to-day as if they are a drunken would-be passerby sitting outside on your lawn — wait and hope they go away. Of course, if they were ripping up your sod, tearing out your trees by the roots, polluting your air, and pissing in your water you’d think you might do something about it.

Capitalism is based on several premises simply not borne out by reality (though some lit. argues that all preconditions don’t have to be met, they nonetheless change the human costs at the very least and real-world efficiency doesn’t bear out capitalist predictions if you measure efficiency in terms of resources used:items or services produced or in terms of distribution): for one, that people are rational actors, as has been shown in numerous studies, i.e. people will pay more to avoid loss than they will to preserve a gain; they don’t adequately analyze trade-offs in complex situations; they value non-economic commodities which may be contingently valued (i.e. human life) but such valuation is a concession to practicality and not reality-based value (i.e. you can be compensated for loss of a loved one, but only a very cynical minority of people in the world would literally trade, for example, $15 million, for the life of a loved one)… another flaw: the aforementioned externalities — education, the environment, food security, public health (or lack thereof), depletion of resources — oddly enough, you never hear people looking for purified capitalism to call for the end of government subsidization for oil (and I’m not referring to putative wars on terrorism here, though that is oil hegemony is certainly a factor in a pertinent analysis) — the government help to oil companies in innumerable ways, one large one be the externalizing of environmental costs, keeps gas artificially low.

One could go on — but this is essentially what one is paying for in higher tax brackets. At a higher tax bracket, you have, as established by legislation and (the dreaded activist) court cases: more free speech; money = free speech, esp. as embodied in commercials, donations, publicity, coordination, subsidization and budgeting of political campaigns, etc., so those with more money have more speech than me. I can’t finagle a meeting with congresspeople for my personal edification; a captain of industry at the very top has a much better chance at this; and I certainly can’t finance a campaign for myself or others, or even a modest national ad buy; more money is usually the result of greater use of externalized common goods — even if a rich person didn’t go to public school and/or a university and/or in a field with significant government investment (i.e. computer engineering, biotech), if you have a company your employees likely did, and without the public goods of education and health entitlements, a large burden would have been shifted to citizens and employers who want to have large amounts of qualified people; the roads are a common good that makes many long-distance businesses more efficient (i.e. shipping anything by truck), as poorer citizens certainly have needs for roads, but less so for nation-crossing ones and not for huge, important, vital, on-time shipments (which are safely transported owing in part to the paying of law enforcement people and publicly funded rest stops), and indeed the large shipping trucks are already costing us (the tax base) a lot of money in over-weighted trucks requring more frequent repaving of roads; this cost, which is incurred in the service of companies that don’t share their profits with all of us, is paid by all of us.

I could go on. But I won’t. History (i.e. the previous posts) show that detailed refuting arguments aren’t addressed here.

Meta-blogging continues

I haven't done much here and a while, and that's going to continue, but my inability to control myself has led to some interesting commentary here, fighting the good fight against (imho) uninformed libertarianism.

I'll also repost it here, without the original comments, just in case TxFx disappears at some point.

TTFN,

J

Hot off the Press

Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to be the first of many posts in a triumphant return of the J, but it is the return of erratic posting binging and purging, hopefully. Or in other words, the days of my blogging irregularly have certainly come to a middle.

First tidbit I've been sitting on: Anyone hear the one about free press and Afghanistan? Sadly, it's not a joke. (Note: The article in the link is a bit snippy knee-jerk lefty, but read down -- it's still true, even if snippy.) During a great triumphant press conference emphasizing Afghanistan's newly minted US-installed democracy (democracy not included), Afghan President Hamid Karzai realized he had forgotten to allow freedom of press. That is, they called on the Afghan press during the conference for questions, and were startled to find only one reporter there. But WAIT, it gets better -- they were startled not so much because the Afghan section was nigh empty, but rather because it was supposed to have been filled by American reporters to hide the lack of free Afghan press types. The other 9 reporters from our 2nd newest "democracy", as Karzai well knew, had not been allowed to travel by his aides, because it was strongly suspected that they would flee once inside the US to avoid going back home. DOH!!!!!

As Dr. Katz used to say, sorry, our time is up. Be back in a bit with more news that all should know.

Straight from the pages of Update from Washington

From an e-publication called Update from Washington:

The Humane Society of the U.S. is asking Congress to end the tax breaks of big-game hunters who are "donating" their mounts to US charitable institutions.

According to HSUS, which conducted a 2-year undercover investigation, "HSUS estimates that over 350,000 big game trophies entered the United Statesbetween 1998 and 2003. An unknown number of those trophies were donated to museums....

"HSUS investigators estimate that millions of dollars in tax revenue have been lost because of improper deductions that date back years. Understaffed enforcement efforts have resulted in deductions that are vastly inflated.

"Big game hunters are also eligible for awards offered by Safari Club International (SCI), which promotes worldwide competitive trophy hunting. The competitive nature of trophy hunting is revealed in the group's record
books, which document the size, location and date of the kill....

"Under the Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), permits are required to import trophies from threatened or endangered animals. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the agency responsible for enforcing these laws and for reviewing the permits. Last month, Interior Secretary Gale Norton appointed Matthew Hogan, a former SCI lobbyist, to interim director of the USFWS [US Fish & Wildlife Service]...."
[Editor's note: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH.]

Washington Post Story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26324-2005Apr4?language=printer

HSUS Press Release, go to April 2005 Press Room at: http://www.hsus.org

John Bolton: Wilford Brimley's Evil Twin

The Bolton clusterfuck is something I think bears interesting comment... however, lacking time to make new interesting comments, I'll instead focus on the Red Herring the Bush Crime Family is trying to put across: the UN needs reform, and so an insane hard-driving yelling a-hole who Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell's former staffers admit had to be kept on a tight leash lest he foolishly reveal, deride, obstruct, or overzealously promote the interior workings of the Crime Family Administration is the one to do the job.

Riiiiiiiight.

So rather than deconstructing the Bolton side of this red herring, let's go to the UN side: the UN needs reforming. Baby, you ain't kiddin'. But guess as to why I think the UN needs reforming? Hint: it's from the influence of some"one" with a name and initials very similar to the UN... So I've called in as guest writer J circa 2002, from a Fray post in response to an old Slate article on the UN by Max Boot:

Unilateralists' Odd Logic
From:Nexus7
Date:May 9 2002 12:07PM

Mr. Boot admits much of the UN's effectiveness has been in the past hampered by US actions, and that the US is an essential linchpin.

Relatively close to these admissions, he says the UN isn't and never will be effective, and the US has to take leadership and its own initiative. This seems to be a favorite hawkish argument, but if you put this thought together with the previous one, you get a kind of Mobius strip:

If the UN is often ineffective because of us, the US, and we have to take leadership and initiative into our own hands, then why don't we, guess what, take the leadership and initiative to help increase the UN's effectiveness and advance a multilateral agenda?

Why? Because multilateralism insists on compromising our own interests for larger ones, even in somewhat flawed bargains but supremely important bargains like Kyoto and the International Court. This may sound unpalatable, but stop and think -- are our own INTERNAL policies, agreements, and regulations without flaw? C'mon, think things through here.

The only reason the UN doesn't, and "may never" work is that the world's superpower keeps dragging its feet about it. It may be unimaginable that a world body can ever be effective, but important steps are often unimaginable. (Try explaining US democracy in ancient Sumeria, see how plausible they'd've thought it. Or hey, imagine convincing the post WWI US that today's UN would work at all.) But equally unimaginable is the status quo -- only by *making* the UN effective will the US ever be able to retire as the world's intervenor.

(Editor's Note: This is from a far less revolutionary J; besides which, the "world's intervenor" bit was a more a bone thrown to the opposite side -- who feel we have a moral obligation to intervene and feel it burdensome that we only get criticized when we do so; what does it matter if we only do so for our own self-interest and usually fuck it up? "We're a superpower, it's what we do" seems to be the attitude. In any case, that past last sentence notwithstanding, J is not necessarily a big advocate of US or even UN intervention militarily in most matters (though Darfur might be a good place to do SOMETHING for flying fucks' sake) but does agree the UN is quite often hamstrung in even its peaceful and/or humanitarian goals. The reason, quite often, is the US, which has often been the only objector and has, for example, not signed international agreements committing to children's rights, women's rights, workers' rights, particularly notable in my line of work, signed but never ratified the 1976 Covenant on Cultural, Social, and Economic Rights, which includes within it the right to food and committment of governments to provides means for which their own citizens may all acquire sufficient food for a healthy and active lifestyle). Being the only country, say, using napalm, the largest country still using anti-personnel landmines, the country with the largest number of worldwide military bases, the country condemning other countries for torture while shipping prisoners there to be tortured, to say nothing of our immense prison population, execution of minors and those with developmental problems still legal in some states, capital punishment in general still being legal, and carried out ever-so-sloppily by then-Governor Bush (in the process of which he also bypassed some more international agreements), developing new nuclear bombs...

All that is to say, one of the main problems with the UN is it is dependent largely on the superpowers for it to accomplish anything, in terms of both resources necessary to do them and the votes in the Security Council and the political will to support the UN and multilateralism in general, that if the self-proclaimed world leader refuses to lead in, for example, addressing hunger, which afflicts 800 million people in the world as well as posing dangers to the health and development of an additional 1.2 billion people (i.e. 1/3rd of the world's population give or take) and views expediency as more important than obeying nuclear treaties and justifies increasing the number of times we can raze the surface of the earth and the depths to which we can do so with... well, nothing. We need to be safe, therefore, we need the power to kill you.

And why is this causing a problem with your humanitarian aims which we support less only in money than in rhetoric?... it's simple: all of you other little countries and brown people stop fucking up and allow us to dominate you so that we can slap the shit out of you if you do fuck up, why can't we all just agree to that as a matter of founding UN principle?

Bolton is almost an explicit supporter of this philosophy, saying it in not quite those words but still in no unclear terms... this is the reform we need?

Sending a small child or Ted Kaczinski into the UN as our rep would "shake things up" too -- not all blathering blustering shaking-upping bravado is GOOD for reform, you twits...)

That J is Still Crazy: More Good Sh*t from the Vaults

Heyo, things have been mad busy is the real-life portion of the J Continuum, so very little time for posting. As always, I shouldn't be posting now but rather working, and on the other hand, there are also eleventy billion things I should talk about and be posting on if I had my druthers. Instead, part II of my "Back in the US" diary from my first hours here after returning from Brasil ~ 1 month ago. Enjoy. Or, you know, don't. (Though someone might try COMMENTING one of these days... throw me a frickin' bone here, I don't WANT to be an echo chamber...)

Monday, April 11, 2005, 9:38 AM:
Not sure if I heard the women behind me correctly, but let us assume I did, at least just to be a foil for this rant.

They were talking about traveling and the different politics of different regions – one of them commenting that really it’s only the cities (or hubs was her actual word) that are liberal (blue was her actual word). That the countryside of all the states was red; “I don’t know of one truly blue state,” was what I thought she said, and will pretend that she did in fact say for my purposes here.

Now let’s think about it – it’s worth assuming she said this because it reflects an attitude I think truly exists in the American collective unconscious (or conscious). “Except for the cities, we’re a conservative country.” “Well, most of the state is actually red, but Portland and Seattle are blue so there you go.” Of course, the reason why the “hubs” have such an effect is because that is where most of the people live. To sort of wish away the crazy liberals in the cities is to disregard half of the country! The fact that half of the country lives in close proximity to each other in cities does not, to me, have much to do with how valid their political views are in contrast with the less densely populated larger LAND area the rest of the people live in. Now, I wouldn’t want to make the same mistake of saying that just because a lot of people live in the sparsely populated countryside their ideas or votes should be disregarded. But how many times have you heard, or got the impression of, “if it weren’t for Chicago/Detroit/New York City/Los Angeles/San Francisco/Portland/Seattle/what have you, that state’d be red”? Well sure, and if dolphins were made of jelly we’d spread them on pieces of bread in the morning and have it with some coffee (it took me 5 minutes to think of something that ridiculous, I hope you appreciate it). That is to say, sure, yeah, you’re right, if it weren’t for the cities, the country would mostly skew red (though not as much as many people think – see here and here and here – most of the US is pretty evenly divided, with most of the clearly red areas being very small population-wise, and by far most of the country "purple hazy", very visible here (from M. T. Gastner, C. R. Shalizi, and M. E. J. Newman, (c) 2004):


...But to talk like these women did, it's, it's... it's sipmly to make up world where most people don’t exist and, I guess, the people in the countryside make their own cars, appliances, cheez whiz and all the other heavily processed consumer products that these days they make in those knees-bent running-about so-called enlightened cities.

Yeah, and if it wasn’t for my horse… (award yourself 85 points on your J Continuum Home Game if you recognize that joke)

At some point later, they were complaining about how hard it was to keep a job these days, especially since once you get a little bit of time underneath your belt in a company, they try and boot your ass so they can higher someone cheaper/younger. “All they care about is money – is about that bottom line,” says one as the other nods in agreement. “But that’s Big Brother for you.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.

Does she think the Government (probably composed of some liberal city-like pockets – if it weren’t for those liberal EPA bureaucrats…) is the reason her company and many others fire people in order to hire younger ones, just cuz they’re cheaper and are likely to cost less in health care expenses? Or, is the reason, oh let’s see, who could it be now, could it be…. SATAN! I mean, CAPITALISM? Or does she think Big Brother is just some general term for, I don’t know, institutions that are larger than your circle of friends? Big Brother consisted of faceless bureaucrats and indifferent caprice in Orwell’s 1984; how is it an indictment of liberalism that her company is the same? (Of course, she may not have been connecting this to liberalism but just general… I don’t know, general “things to grouse about”.) Nonetheless – Big Brother? Huh? If only I were a little ruder so I could’ve intruded in their conversation to see what the hell they were thinking (I really wanted to ask the one whose boyfriend still eats only “Freedom Fries” if she and/or her boyfriend knew that “French Fries” are (according to their own accounts) from a country I like to call “Belgium” and that people in the country of “France” don’t give a shit about "Freedom Fries” since French Fries is a long-used US-exclusive name? Or would that be too knees-bent liberal snotty intellectual elitism, to, you know, know what actual words mean and when they might be wrong/stupid/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh?)

Back in the US: Part I

From my writings upon first re-entering the US from Brasil two weeks ago.

Back in the US

So, one of the first things I encounter upon getting back home here in the US is “CNN Morning”, which perhaps would be better named as “Clusterfuck Morning” or “Circle Jerk Morning” or “Oh my God this isn’t even funny any more kill me now…. Morning”. Why this dismay and vitriol on my part? Because I entered the US and in the terminal was subject to some kind of important earth-shaking news about SMUCKER’S and how they had made some new confection or muffin or some shit with CRINKLES around the edges. To be fair, I think the reason they were talking about it is because someone sued Sfucker’s or Sfucker’s sued someone over the recipe or idea or the copyright of peanut butter & jelly or something, but c’mon – does it FUCKING MATTER?

Not that there’s no place for this type of “puff piece” news – not everything needs to be talking about Tom Delay’s being chased down like a wounded wolf by the other bloodthirsty wolves in his pack (PS: I’ve been out of the news loop for a little while, but when Rick “Santorum” Santorum is saying you oughta rethink and/or apologize and/or step down, and the Conservative “News” Network is running it matter-of-factly and not as “Democrats claim that” – well, the pack’s closing in on you, and you’re losing a lot of blood). To be precise: the time for this kind of puff news is when YOU’RE 5 and you’re WATCHING SESAME STREET. Or in the present in some alternate universe when there’s just NOTHING ELSE TO REPORT ON (sort of like the day some years ago when the front page of the Detroit News was something like “Upstart Canton tries to Upstage Plymouth” – about my quasi-hometown Canton, MI which was/is trying to buy culture from the much older Plymouth – i.e. buy off the Plymouth Symphony Orchestra and the Plymouth Players with new facilities in Canton providing they become the CSO and the Canton Players; I think they’re overcompensating for having been the home of the Cow Chip festival some years back, raising the horrifying – to my sister – reality that there was, at a time in living memory, a Queen of the Cow Chip Festival). Some universe where there’s universal world peace, and you’re snowed in by a blizzard in the middle of nowhere.

I just came back from Brasil, which has its share of superficial news, but the time and place for “is the crinkly crust trademarked” is the show with a woman who looks like Joan Rivers only still made of flesh instead of space-age synthetic materials, and her parrot puppet as a sidekick – it’s sort of like Sesame Street meets Oprah meets the Today Show.

Ok, obviously CNN is trying to compete with the Today Show. Then, you know, just don’t call it news, ok? Or “American.” They can keep “Morning.” (“Welcome to the Cable News Network’s American Morning!!!!”)

Walking into one of the airport news kiosks, I was also BARRAGED with Brad Pitt making out with some other mega-star, and bunches of “IT’S TRUE!” headlines. And some stuff about Benicio del Toro’s elevator antics, Morgan Freeman’s taste in Cigars, Britney, Jessica, and Reese’s marriages/babies/whatever (nothing screams “important and pertinent news story” like a cover with 3 bleached blond starlets), and US News & World Report leading with Charles & Camilla. And Time had something on the cover that was “TIME’S 100 MOST” something something. It didn’t say something something, it’s just that whatever there actually was 100 of, the print was too small to see from a ways off. Apparently “100” and “Most” were the, well, most important part of the story. I took pass on finding out what (so hopefully it wasn’t “100 MOST brilliant and important news stories including successful new cures to cancer”).

Now, Brasil has its fair share of star news as well – they are probably more invasive and have at least as much star stuff as anywhere else – but one thing that made sense to me about their kiosks: The ACTUAL news was displayed as or more prominently as the “news”. You could find the Estado de Minas, Estado de São Paulo, Folha de São Paulo and, I don’t know, Hoje em Dia or something in the front, in easy view. Whereas here, I had to cross to behind the check-out counter to see any broadsheets whatsoever. It would be vastly exaggerating to call it the “Actual News Ghetto,” but when has hyperbole ever stopped me – let’s just call it the Actual News Ghetto.

I am very glad to be back where: there’s less smoking, my family is, my girlfriend is, my other friends are (including the soon to be married Mrs. Noroon “Milk” Mollon), my school and office is, my wonderful, much-weaker large-mug coffee is, etc. But the news thing: dude. Seriously. Not cool.

Dirty, Dirty Minds

That's right. All of you who were teens before 1995.

Oh, sure, my generation may watch record porn, but apparently we're in the midst of the lowest abortion, pregancy, and birth rates in decades, and the majority of young teens are still virgins, and the size of this majority has been estimated to have been increasing since 2002. We may watch record amounts of porn, and play insanely-violent videogames, but apparently we're not all that bad, after all.

Not the MOST groundbreaking thing to return to the blog with, but ehh. The J-Family has had a lot of things come up in recent weeks, so blogging has stayed in the backseat it stepped into in Brasil a little bit back.

Incidentally, conservatives have often cried and decried about the declining birthrates, worrying about our cultures literally dieing out (or being outbred by immigrants and hence leading to the decline of our great Western Civilization into chaotic rule by the modern-day Visigoths of Mexico, led perhaps by the stereotypical Mexican housekeeper). Hey, conservatives, question: when IS it appropriate for birth rates to decline? Never? So do we have infinite resources lying around somewhere I haven't heard about, or will God's provenance save us? Or do we just have to wait until the Latinagoths die out first?

Sigh. I would link to stuff about the birthrate claptrap, but I couldn't find anything easily. I know Pat Buchanan spouted some of this stuff years ago. That's all I got right now.

Next time: Brief diary entry from my re-entry into the US.

Low Blow?

Oh, something else occurred to me: has anyone else heard that the Pope is refusing further intensive medical care? That's what it says here, and the linked NYT article says "The pope, who decided not to be readmitted to the hospital, was visited in his apartment at the Vatican..." Now, there could be any number of caveats, mistaken details, or lost nuance here, but didn't the Pope say recently that it is a Catholic's responsibility to all they can to prolong life? Ah, he did, but apparently to "prolong life futilely" is not required. What's interesting is that among the "experts" in this USA Today article, some draw a distinction the other way 'round: the Pope isn't near- or partially-brain dead, so a feeding tube is appropriate; Ms. Schiavo had no higher cognitive functions (this was not among substantial debate among mainstream medical doctors), so prolonging her life was "futile" in the sense that all parts of the brain that were Terri were already dead, and her death was caused by this brain damage suffered as a result of her heart attack. Of course, other ethicists said that there is no reason to let the partially-brain-dead die and that it was unethical for Terri since she could have lived years longer (whereas the Pope, clearly, is near complete bodily shut-down, a different case in this regard). It's an interesting argument. Not one that I want to say much more on right now, though.

Relatedly, Christopher Hitchens, dumbass hack losing-talent-left-and-Right journalist, writing at Slate, has what almost approaches an argument I agree with about the Pope and his, er, unfortunate legacy here, but I warn you: this is not for the weak of heart, or those in grieving for the Pope as it takes him strongly to task. I believe Mr. Hitchens has some correct points, and in this case his usual bilious vitriol seems almost justified in my mind, but many believe it is inappropriate to bring up anything negative about a person nearly or recently deceased. I have some sympathy for this stance, though I feel more that it was the person's responsibility to deal with the negatives in their life, and did they not, in a just evaluation and meditation of their life and legacy, there's not responsibility to whitewash or avoid the bad delicately. But I also don't believe in tormenting those that loved the person, so, like I say, don't read this for some time if you are dearly suffering from the Pope's decline and seemingly imminent death. (What's truly needed in such cases, perhaps, is a Speaker for the Dead, one who tells the truth of a person's life, the whole truth -- what they did, what they failed at, what they attempted, what they accomplished, and who they were in their own eyes -- though this would likely not fly in Vatican City.)

Read also about the porn that is modern news here by movie hipster and J sardonic (tv/movie) culture critic, Lizz Dana Penn Stevens.

Lastly, customarily "news-lite" newspaper USA Today apparently has been giving well-done Iraq coverage (and apparently has a bonzo anonymous source policy, a policy that helps to fight the tendency, in Slate's Jack Shafer's words, "...to degrade the information content of news stories in which they're quoted. Most anonymice spin and leak selectively for political, personal, or institutional gain, and all the "balancing quotations" from other sources can never erase their taint...")

Ok, ok, now on to ants (albeit the southern cousins of those on the linked webpage). Tchau.

Urge to blog rising.... rising...

Hey all. Quick quick stuff before I go (procrastinate) on identifying ants.

The judiciary, part of one of those pesky "separate-but-equal" branches of government, is increasingly under attack as a whole from politicians. I'm going to go out on a limb and characterize them mainly as conservative politicians, and pundits, in the mold of a horrible new book about how the Supreme Court is ruining the US (link to a great discussion of the book by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick). This new book is, take note, written by a conservative, published by the ultra-conservative publishing house Regnery (who have in the past engaged in some, er, questionable tactics to bolster their "best selling" status, as outlined by well-reasoned-critic of the Right-but-flaming-and-unreasonable-Nader-hater Eric Alterman). A conservative, complaining about the Right-leaning Right-Chief-Justiced Rehnquist Supreme Court. Sigh.

Another good piece on the judiciary's attack (though with, in my opinion, mostly ass-wrong proposals for remedies) is here by Jeffrey Rosen, in the Washington Post. He makes good points about the personal attacks on the Supreme Court (though he eagerly remains "nonpartisan" by talking about attacks on the judiciary's independence by the Right AND Left, while being able to give specific examples ONLY of the Right and Bush Administration's attacks on judish. independence -- hackery, or did I misread it? You tell me!) and suggests the remedy is to go back to the good ol' days of judicial opaqueness -- that is, judges should stop making sweeping decisions, claiming the sole right to interpret the Constitution (a polemical opinion, to be sure), stop writing autobiographies (even after they retire), etc. This is clearly claptrap, because it mistakes the idea that not knowing someone's predispositions, proclivities, politics, etc. means they don't have any: He’s apparently asserting that [one] can’t possibly be biased as long as it’s absolutely unclear [to others] what [one] thinks. (From an earlier J post on media "impartiality".) If we know nothing about judges, if they're absolutely mysterious, does that automatically make them wiser and more impartial? Of COURSE not. (J fave Lithwick takes this argument on here in Slate in an analysis that I mostly, though not quite, completely agree with.) So in the end, Rosen comes out with the pre-post-modernism conservative opinion, that being that there are absolutes or near-absolutes (i.e. judicial objectivity), and analysis under a microscope undermines these absolutes (which to me implies they aren't so absolute, but I think the retort is usually that the analysis wrongly gives the impression that they're not absolute, and just unnecessarily confuse people). Judges in a, I don't know, "Ebony Tower" are no more truly objective arbiters of reality than their counterparts in the Ivory Tower of academia (uncoincidentally, another place under siege by conseratives -- sorry this isn't the best article on it but the only one I can find on short notice -- ok, another "ok" one here. I'll come back to this topic some other time -- working title, "The only kind of relativism Conservatives Like").

So get thinking about this. Do we really want ("some little") Judiciary as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Executive and Legislative Branches?

(The answer is: No.)

Something to be proud of.

Wow, among today's (7) hits on the Continuum, one of them was from a seeker for the words "analsex" and "sweden" in what I assume is a German search engine, Fireball. Tracking back, apparently (at least for today), I am #37 out of approximately 5,000 websites returning hits for this word combination. (Due to this post of mine on abstinence-only education leading to a higher rate of anal sex in pledgers to abstinence; and the Sweden link is apparently from this post on extraordinary rendition. Which you should go read, if for no other reason than the fact I get to use the expression "don't piss on me and tell me it's raining." And of course the analsex Sweden connection.) Of course, at #37, my fellow-travelers at that point are a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force webpage from Massachussetts (turning up on the search apparently because it addresses international stances on sodomy laws), a German webpage for abstracts from the 2002 International Conference on Labour and Social History (it's appearance in the websearch seems based on an abstract about sexual practices of Indian workers in West Bengal as it relates to STDs as well as an abstract on sex reform in Sweden), and followed by health, encyclopedia, and law references that apparently turn up "anal sex" and "Sweden" somewhere within their depths (as it were). In case any of you were worried, yes, there are more.... er, intuitive links in the search as well, but I'm not going to post them here (nor elsewhere, for that matter).

So, we're #37 (and by we are I mean I am)!!!! In a category that... well, we're sort of proud to be as far down as #37, though perhaps even farther down in this particular websearch combo would be better yet...

While the Coffee is cooling...

I need to get to work (today: identifying ants), but while my coffee is cooling sufficiently that I may chug it (Brasilians do not walk around eating or drinking), some more round ups of Today's Papers for those of you who, for some reason, find it instructive to come here rather than go to my near-exclusive source yourself.

March 30:

I hope for the best for the Iraqis, but doubts as to the effectiveness of the elite, confusingly-elected, featuring former CIA assets Iraqi Congress seem to be being born out:

"The LAT and NYT front the Iraqi national assembly again meeting and again breaking up without naming a government. With Kurdish and Shiite leaders still fighting over control of ministries and no Sunnis biting on the ceremonial leadership positions, the meeting degenerated within minutes into a shouting session. Then officials told the media to skedaddle. At that, says the Post, the local stations that had been carrying the meeting live dutifully switched to an Iraqi singer belting out, "My Homeland, My Homeland."

More importantly, the next paragraph in Today's Papers says:

"In a Page One piece, the NYT says flight records match up nearly perfectly with the recollections of a Canadian engineer, Maher Arar, who says he was grabbed by U.S. officials, tossed on a plane, and sent to Syria, where he was tortured. "I think that's it," he said, looking at a photo of the jet. "I think you've found the plane that took me.""

I haven't yet weighed in (in this forum) on the Terri Schiavo national inappropriate event, and am not going to now (but feel free to see some of my Slate Fray posts before I post them here), but surely extraordinary extralegal KIDNAPPING AND TORTURING of people warrants a BIT more attention than it's currently getting? People are dying in our prisons, many as a result of illegal practices, and other people are having their lives disrupted, if not ruined, by random and unjustifiable kidnapping. Let's not argue relative importance -- LET'S JUST AGREE THIS IS IMPORTANT TOO, AND GET SOME REAL PUBLIC OUTRAGE ABOUT IT. We don't have a nice, peaceful hospice to demonstrate in front of (note the sardonic tone here), but we need to get on this issue some more (unless, of course, there's a whole lot being said and done about it in the US that I'm missing here in Brasil -- which is entirely possible, but not very likely given that the US news comapanies get a horrible case of hives just THINKING about covering dissent in a meaningful way.)

Sigh. Next paragraph in TP: more rendition.

"The LAT fronts the case of a Yemeni who apparently faced reserve-rendition: He was somehow nabbed off the streets in Egypt in 2002—after which his family didn't hear from him for 19 months—and then turned up at a U.S. prison in Afghanistan. According to his latest letter, he's now at Gitmo."

In other March 30 news, "former Republican senator and recent ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth, goes after his own party, big-time: The GOP "has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement." ("Big-time" link added by yours truly.)

My best wishes of course also go out to Indonesia, and all others in the region suffering from the recent quake and of course the still-continuing tragedy of the tsunami (I encourage any and all readers -- and non-readers, too for that matter -- to continue to be involved with the tsunami as much as possible; an Indian friend recommended the Isha Foundation's Rural Rejuvenation project, from a previously established Indian NGO that thus already has cultural roots in the communities, and is also targeted towards building and rebuilding a sustainable, just, healthy, and quality way of life for rural Indians through long-term holistic work; as was pointed out at the time of the tsunami and now has been promptly forgotten, the emergency aid to the tsunami was no more important, if not less important, than sustained, attentive aid continuing during the rebuilding phase. So go to Rural Rejuvenation and read; if after reading you like, give...)

Much more on many more topics can and should be said (not least of which: TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF AIR AMERICA'S UNFILTERED! BOOOOOO! But kudos to Rachel & Chuck D for putting out the news on our ever-more-destructive shadow Dem leader, Bill Clinton, who's becoming "our finest Republican ex-president," having encouraged Kerry to stay away from endorsing gay marriage (actually, he encouraged JFK to publicly denounce it), having lost Dem seats in Congress and in governorships during his terms, and having encouraged the Dems to keep quiet on the Terri Schiavo inappropriate public event -- and of course, Kudos to all of Unfiltered for the months of informative, lively, entertaining, and highly useful debate and commentary I've enjoyed -- I'll miss you Rachel, Chuck, and of course, Lizz!)

But really now, seriously, the time has come, the walrus said, to go count and identify ant species....

This Land is Not Your Land, This Land is My Land

J Continuum is on a bit of a hiatus, pending our return to the United States. Time permitting, we may "replay" here some more Slate rants, but in the mean time, here's something to keep all of you with as low a bullshit tolerance level as me.

From today's Slate's Today's Papers:

The NYT notices something that is finally bringing together some Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Jerusalem: homophobia. A few leaders from the three religions made a joint appearance decrying a planned 10-day "WorldPride" event slated for the city. "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty," said one Muslim cleric. "This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem." One fine American rabbi who helped organize yesterday's announcement concurred, explaining, "This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land."

AHHHH!

Isn't reactionary homophobia bad enough without tortured puns?

Abstinence: Less fun than it sounds

Ok, actually, this doesn't have much to do with how much "fun" abstinence is, but I thought it was more polite than titling this "Abstinence gets reamed" which was my first impulse (though now I get to have it both ways by talking about it).

In what would be a jolt to the non-reality-based community if they cared about reality, an 8 year study concluded that teens who take abstinence pledgers are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors. About 70% overall end up breaking their pledge anyway.

But in order to avoid breaking their pledge (in their weird little minds), as compared to the "Just 2 percent of youth who never took a pledge said they had had anal or oral sex but not intercourse, [...] 13 percent of "consistent pledgers [engaged in one or both of these activities]."

Ah! Apparently, when you vow "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage," you may end up viewing anal sex as sexually pure in order to avoid breaking the pledge by having "real sex." Or, put another way, I guess since purity is at stake here, the only type of sex that is "dirty" is vaginal -- everything else, pure as driven snow. (What does "pure as driven snow" mean anyway? Is driven snow particularly pure for some reason? Ok, ok, I have too many thoughts.)

This adds to the growing pile of evidence that abstinence-only-based programs and their ilk don't work as well; at the very least, it's been said, there's no scientific evidence they do work, and there IS evidence non-abstinence-only programs DO work. In fact, in a particularly heinous bit of information distortion, practically worthy of the "Bush as Kim Jong-Il" meme, the House Democrats page linked to above points out that the Center for Disease Control, until recently

"identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its web site to interested communities.[8]
In 2002, all five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only.”
In the last year, and without scientific justification, CDC has ended this initiative and erased information about these proven sex education programs from its web site.[9]"

Ref. [8]: CDC, Programs That Work (archived version online at http://web.archive.org/web/20010606142729/www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash/rtc/index.htm).
Ref. [9]: Programs That Work (online at http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash/rtc/) (“Thank you for your interest in Programs that Work (PTW). The CDC has discontinued PTW and is considering a new process that is more responsive to changing needs and concerns of state and local education and health agencies and community organizations”).
But I strongly recommend you also read the original article these are from, presented by the J Continuum's contuining largely unsong House Hero, Congressman Henry A. Waxman, who has been coming through in his position on the Government Reform Committee with reports about substantive lies about WMDs, the environment, and now this. Does he not get the mad mainstream news props because his message is too "radical", or because he doesn't seek it out enough? Whatever the case, we need more of him. Write him and tell him so!


Related to this nonsense is Bill Frist and his continuing, well, frankly, idiocy.

To the record:

In December, on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," he repeatedly declined to say whether he thought HIV-AIDS could be transmitted through tears or sweat. A much-disputed federal education program championed by some conservative groups had suggested that such transmissions occur.
After numerous challenges by Stephanopoulos, Frist said that "it would be very hard" for someone to contract AIDS via tears or sweat. The Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says: "Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV."

Yes Bill, very hard. In fact, there's no recorded cases, as pointed out. Air America Radio at the time rightly ridiculed this acclaimed doctor of the Senate.

Any conservative readers of J (all none of you), please remember this should Frist follow through on expectations to run in 2008. (Well, not to mention remembering all sorts of other bad things about Republicans, and frankly, centrist Democrats, but let's take this slowly, shall we?)

From the Director of Road to Avonlea

Um. That's different.

A Beautiful Undermine

Bush's recent mercury rule will, according to a source I've yet to find online (heard on Unfiltered as well) allow 55,000 more tons of mercury into the air than what would've happened had the rule promulgated under Clinton been enacted and worked under until today. The additional problem: a University of Texas study (to be published in Health & Place) links mercury and autism. BUT, to me, the larger finding (missed on most of the news reports) is that mercury levels is more generally connected to the number of special education classes and autism. This aligns with a conference presentation I saw some years ago pointing out that living within 20-50 miles of a point source of air pollution (esp. lead) (a point source is simply a place where there is a localized output into a system, such as a smokestack) has an immensely strong correlation to lower test scores. As a percentage of population, minorities (blacks, latinos, and even, I believe, nth-generation Asians) are something like twice as likely to live within 50 miles of a point source; but the pattern holds for all races, it's simply that as a percentage, whites are much less likely to live that close to a point source. Relatedly, River Rouge here (er, home, there) in Michigan has, I think, the highest ground lead concentration in the US, and also has the lowest test scores (in Michigan or in the US, I don't remember). Coincidence? (Answer: no.)

Bonus thing: didn't see it, but an Air America caller recommended listening to Roscoe Bartlett's (R-Maryland) floor speech in the House against ANWR drilling. (I assume all of you know ANWR drilling was approved today.) The caller said it was a great speech, sounding like the lectures the caller (an environmental geologist) used to give, or like "some radical environmentalist" like "Paul Ehrlich." (Paul, a Stanford professor of ecology and a relatively famous and widely cited member of the scientific academy, just doesn't fit my personal definition of an environmental radical. I'm pretty sure the number of research facilities he's broken into to free the animals plus the number of oil company executive offices he's firebombed is less than 3. EarthLiberationFront he's not (which is probably a good thing). But then again, he does propose "radical" breaks with current (anti-)environmental policies, and "radical" these days is anything straying out of rightist doctrine, so there you go. However, if you're daring enough to be interested in some of his better "radical" work, this is one of my "popular science" favorites. Judge for yourself.)

Super bonus thing: random old website I found with good, documented Bush problems (and a "countdown to redefeating Bush" clock increasing into the negatives). We still need to convince new people to our side, to oppose Bush in the present and to keep Jeb Bush the hell away from the White House! (Or big Bush supporter Rudy Giuliani.)

Remain a proud member of the reality-based community!

The best thing since senior year chemical engineering

A little punch happy, friends and I named some of our reports in chemical engineering "Laying Some Pipe: OR, I'll show YOU Schedule 40 Steel Piping" (on a city water-pumping design), and "We Give You Gas" (on an ethylene production plant).

Well, the EPA apparently has like minded folks. Annual pesticide report: "Taking Care of Business". (Heard on Unfiltered today from Rachel Maddow on Air America Radio.)

Of course, the "business" they're supposedly taking care of is health and safety in the US.... righhhhhhttttt... what's a cubit?

Curses!

I'm posting this here partly because it's important in its own right, partly because it's important in my line of study, and partly so I can have someplace to keep the link without keeping the whole email I received in my inbox that I'm cleaning out.

So, here, more proof/problems with the depth of committment of the Lula government to stay true to environmental causes in Brasil, at least when it comes into conflict with big Ag(ribusiness).

I want to give him leeway, and a lot of people still believe in him here, but between the various things like this, and the present debacle going down in Haiti... are they aiming to become a world power in the model of repression and greedy trade that the rest have used to achieve such heights?

Delicious.

Here's your healthy and nutritious embarrasing Fox News moment. It's old (from the Pres. inaugaration), but not stale.