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.

This is a real ad by conservatives, oh yes... oh, no. This is horrible! I quit (walks off eating frozen peas...)

ACTUAL ad used by USA Next (made from the ashes of the Swift Boat Vets' I think; who knew that shit could rise like a phoenix, too?)

The couple in the picture, from Oregon I think, are suing USA Next for its use of this picture -- remember, this is a real, actual ad by conservatives, illegally using a personal picture of real, actual gay people.

USA Next apparently believes, as playfully mentioned by the hosts of Unfiltered a bit back*, that the AARP has some plan to use their legion of aging persons to, I don't know, graffiti an X on all of our soldiers with spray paint, and then refuse to give their tax dollars for the US' defense so they can hold receptions for a legion of marrying gay men (with green checkmarks)?

(Of course it wasn't a picture of kissing lesbians -- not homophobic enough! What do "men" fear most other than other men kissing?)

The article about this couple suing USA Next is here on Salon, though Salon has a subscription or "watch this commercial" option before you can read it (sorry).

If I recall from the news I heard earlier, the judge in the suit's hearing (or some other preliminary procedure) felt they had a good case, since their permission wasn't asked, and it appears to be supporting a discriminatory message. Oops.

I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT SHIT IS REAL!!!!!

Ah.


*I miss you LIzz Winstead!!!!

Oh... good.

Bernie Ebbers (Jr.) convicted.

There might still be a point to my previous entry on corporate corruption... though I hid the point in that late night entry so well that even I can't find it.

But what do you think? Martha Stewart, extra attention because she's a woman, she's famous, or because she's a famously successful (and cold-seeming) woman?

I still think there was disproportionate attention compared to the size of her crime, even considering her previous fame.

....

PS Oh, so so sad. Lewis Black and Marc Maron so bad on Randi Rhodes on AAR. They're mostly entertaining themselves. I got to hear their fake Swift Boat Veterans' for whatever cause the right wing is paying them for again, it's good every time, but still. Two such sharp guys, and they're mainly talking about "behind-the-industry" stuff on standup. Not that I don't enjoy this type of thing ever -- just, you know, not now. They're unfocused, and the whole, ya know, political side is kind of, you know, not there. C'mon Louis -- I know the angry guy thing is at least partly an act -- but get on it! There's a lot to be outraged about, don't leave the rest of us to bleed from our ears alone here!

What a wonderful idea you've discovered...

"The New Yorker, March 21

In a profile of "national security Democrats" that focuses sharply on Joseph Biden, Jeffrey Goldberg scrutinizes the Delaware senator's hawkish rhetoric. After talking to many of Biden's fellow hawkish Democrats and potential presidential candidates in 2008—such as Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson—Goldberg notes that Biden believes 75 percent of Americans would choose to "end all terror threats against the United States within the year" even if it meant "no help" for education, Social Security, and health care. "

From Slate's In Other Magazines.

Oy oy oy.

How many would choose "to end all terror threats against the United States within the year" even if it meant "no help" for the irradiated mutants in the rest of the world after a tactical nuclear strike against everyone in the world but us?

Biden BELIEVES this shit, does he? What about these apples?

True, the mere 25% of people most concerned with violent actions (19% war in Iraq, 6% terrorism in general) or the 30-45% people worried about those issues in other polls would come 'round if they knew there was a "final solution."

Ok, this is a bit hyperbolic (fictional ed. --Ya think?), but the point is -- does Biden think this is a GOOD thing (it seems so)? And if he had his way, does that mean we'll let the innards of our empire collapse to prop up it's world-spanning reach? Didn't that not work for previous civilizations? (fictional ed. --Maybe their endless states of war weren't endless enough?)

Sigh. Luckily, I'm pretty sure Biden is very very off. I'm pretty sure a lot of people in the US still want to, you know, "get theirs." (And then there's the fact that you can't abolish terrorism because terrorism is a tactic... unless we have telepaths on hand to erase the very concept, the best we could do is -- hey, maybe provide for global equity? ...Nah. Let's hear it for Armageddon and the Rapture!!)

Maybe this clutch of hawks will end up eating their own young. One can only hope.

Absolutely Fabulous

In today's New York Times:

"Judge Kramer's ruling left no argument against same-sex marriage unexamined, and virtually no glimmer of light for the attorney general's office or the other groups that filed briefs in support of current state law. At one point, Judge Kramer compared some of the arguments made by same-sex marriage opponents to those made in cases dealing with antimiscegenation laws."

This is only a preliminary ruling, and the "pro-Family" anti-equality groups are already foaming about the attack on marriage. Sauce for the goose, Mr. Staver...

Added bonus plus: Tom Delay ("The Bug-Killing Dwarf King of the NeoCon Death Cult") is having some problems (for example, being an ethical eunuch).

AND: catch Lewis Black, that's Lewis "I'm so T'd off I'm LACTATING!" Black of Daily Show fame, will be on Randi Rhodes' show today with Mark Maron on Air America Radio. Run, don't walk, to listen to this on the radio or stream online.

Never rains but it pours

Continuing on my weapons of mass posting tour, consistent J-Source Today's Papers has these tidbits:

"The New York Times leads with a senior Iraqi official's disclosure that after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, loads of machinery and equipment were looted from dozens of major weapons sites across Iraq, including "equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs." Most of the stolen items appear to have left the country, likely headed into the possession of foreign governments (Syria and Iran are mentioned), or onto the black market...
Both U.S. and U.N. officials have long known about the looting in Iraq—just a week ago the U.N. reported that 90 sites had been plundered—but yesterday's information highlighted the sweeping extent of the thefts, and the precision with which they were carried out. According to witnesses, teams of men in pickup trucks moved deliberately from site to site, carting off the most sophisticated machinery first. U.S. military officials couldn't be reached for comment, but, notes the NYT, in the past the military has claimed it simply didn't have enough troops to guard the sites."

I guess you go to war with the army you have, and not the army you need to complete your objectives. (Not that, of course, I believe our objectives are to bring democracy or find weapons we knew were probably not there rather than, frankly, global hegemony. But considering the rather massive and formally uncounted civilian casualties (at least uncounted by US & UK who say they "have no legal responsibility [to count civilian casualties]), I'd say that this exercise has been bad on just about all moral counts.) (Bonus moral strikes: Remember women's rights? Yeah, under the US occupation, not so much. Iraq needs proper recognition of International Women's Day too.)

For any out there who may think me a nattering nabob of negativity, yes democracy would be a great thing in Iraq. But I think, you know, they should decide on it without having US agents (achem, Allawi) running things for a while. I'll tell you when I'll stop being negative: when there's substantive equality in Iraq and democracy. It may be a high standard, but hey, don't piss on me and tell me it's raining.

Anyway, more news bits that fit in that just-mentioned category of "simulated weather" by our government (also from TP on Slate):

Apparently, under Bush "at least 20 federal agencies have released hundreds of phony news segments, many of which are broadcast without acknowledging their governmental origin." AAAAHHHHHH. (TP here, TP's source, the NYT story here.) To harken back to my infamous "Bush as Kim Jong-Il Meme: Know it, love, use it" from the Slate article by Jack Shafer on Bush's propaganda machine, some astute observers questioned this meme and its accuracy (and Shafer's journalistic ability), with one of the most pertinent questions being, "How does this compare to Clinton's propaganda, for example?" (from, of all sources, the National Review Online, arbiter of highbrow fair-handed coverage. (ed. --Snarky, snarky. --Sorry.) But Ladies & Germs, we have the answer: "The Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent." (from TP again). (ed. --Isn't this type of stuff by Bush being investigated as illegal? --Yes. --Bubba C was investigated for a whole lot of things; was propaganda like this one of them? --Not that I can tell. Though who would've remembered that with all of the other Clinton-gates? --True. Different question: why are you using this pretentious fictional editor blogging device that one of your least favorite bloggers, Mickey Kaus, also pretentiously uses? --Don't know. Kind of useful though, don't you think? --Shut up. --OK.)

Last TP bit:

"European law enforcement officials are investigating several instances in which the CIA may have illegally detained terror suspects on European soil and then flown them to other countries for interrogation. This WP front documents cases in Italy, Germany, and Sweden, where Arab men appear to have been seized by CIA agents, then "rendered" to secret locations and brutally interrogated (read: tortured). Parts of the claims appear to be corroborated by available evidence."

There's been a whole lot of extraordinarily evil rendition going on recently ("extraordinary rendition" being the practice of sending our prisoners to other countries to be tortured; it was formally started, and used a lot, under Clinton, but by all reports it's only increased under GWB -- which doesn't make it any more legal or moral, September 11th or no.) The J Continuum hopes to come back and address this more later. (At least it's not napalm.)

LAST Last thing, I MEAN it!*

Another related religion post from me.

Subject:
BenK: I really want to know:
From:
HopefulCynic
Date:
Feb 18 2005 8:13AM

What your response is/would be to my earlier [fray.slate.msn.com] post replying to you.

In your post I'm replying to here, you say:
"Secularism does not, I agree, have much in the way of ritual. Many religions have very little ritual, in fact. And as for God, the conceptions of God/Gods/higher powers/immanent deities... there are so many views as to be almost impossible to recount. Secularists don't necessarily hold to one or another view - they simply assert that these views are all fine and totally irrelevant."
Some secularists may assert this, fine, granted. Some Christians profess there is no Jesus and some Jews profess Jesus is the Messiah: these are not mainstream, or, arguably, logical views of their own religions. Secularists who assert the moral relativism of all religions and also their irrelevance do not follow what I consider to secularism proper, as described in my post. Religion is NOT irrelevant, and they are all fine in that I won't presume to choose one or ascribe rightness to any of them in particular in the abstract. In their practices, well, see little below.

You say:
"God can be anything as long as he/she/it/them doesn't demand any action of any group of people."
Poppycock. This is simply a denial of religion, that is, a denial of the idea or validity of divine revelation. Some secularists may do this -- as can people of any persuasion -- but this is not the key to secularism. I believe God may have demanded things of various people, and for them to live by these demands is fine. On no grounds of faith, only personal preference, I would like a world in which the most people can have the highest quality of life. Different religions and philosophies describe these differently -- and here is where we must negotiate with one another. My morality is based on this idea simply for expediency -- along with minority rights even in majority rule -- I don't claim I'm right, that it applies to other people, or that I have unmoveable undoubtable source for this. But given some of the more secular parts of our Constitution, it is clearly a valid interpretation under modern democratic understanding that society should be based on providing well-being for as many people as possible as fairly as is possible. I'm willing to argue all of this -- who is this dogmatic? I want health and happiness for all people, and this is the goal I think society and government should have, and I think it can be done with a government professing no alliance with religion but saying rather that, just like it can't tell you with whom you can associate outside of school, what job you have to take in the economy, how you should fashion your hair, who should be your model in life, or what lies beyond the universe, it can't and shouldn't tell you which, if any, religion is right, or more right.

>But there are many religions that allow some diversity in 'non->critical' beliefs. Secularism is unique, I think, in that the belief in >God is one of those non-critical beliefs.
I believe it is critical to many people. But not professing any religion, I can't dictate to others which form of belief in God, if any, is critical. Government shouldn't either, implicitly or explicitly.

>There are, however, plenty of dogmas and lots of prosetylization, >contrary to some assertions you have made. These dogmas include >beliefs about good and evil, beliefs about the nature and >inalienable rights of man (such as self-determination, free speech, >etc), etc.These are spread quite vocally, advanced quite fervently, >and enforced fiercely. All sorts of apologetics are created on their >behalf"
Hmm... I think you're talking about natural law people, and really annoying secularists. I don't believe in absolute good or evil -- based, as in my other post I wish you'd respond to -- on the fact that science has nothing useful to say on it and I personally don't view it as a concept that has been ultimately useful or productive in the extreme version.
I don't believe in "inalienable rights" -- I believe this is beautiful prose meaning that there are certain rights so basic to providing human well being (baseable on observable/scientific precedents) that if we wish to provide well being, certain rights, from experience, are an irreplaceable bedrock.
Natural law advocates and some libertarians believe in the literalness of these... I do not.

And I don't think I'm the only secularist who espouses these views [fray.slate.msn.com]. So are we not secularist? Do you have other arguments to direct towards this different "sect" of secularism? Or what? Because the arguments you give don't seem to hold water for my "faith."

*anybody want a peanut?
**AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Last thing for tonight...

Hopefully this will put me but on an up-pulse on the steadily declining readership this month (for some reason, when there's no new content, less people read. Who knew?)

A copy of a rumination on secularism, one of my better attempts I think, in response to an article here and BenK of the Slate Fray's post here.

What is Religion if not Faith? What is secul
From:
HopefulCynic

Date:
Feb 17 2005 1:26PM

What is religion if not faith? What is secularism, properly practiced, but based on verifiable facts such that a community can function with different faiths?

M-W defines secularism as "not overtly religious", which actually quite well describes our system, as it is obviously Christian, but only at times overtly so.

Maybe you wrote in full what you call secularism and I missed it, but one of your comments I did see is that it is dogmatic and divorced from science.

Two questions: what are the secularist dogmas you perceive? (Please don't say that one of the dogmas is Christianity is bad, I'll be really disappointed.)

Second question: since you say... let's find the quote... "It is tied up with and preoccupied by science, although the sciences are not themselves tied to it." I suppose this needs clarification -- do you mean it concerns itself with science, but that it doesn't follow the true tenets of science, or that in your opinion science can in no way logically be connected to secularism?

Whatever the case, you and others maintain that no choice is a choice. In a way, you're right, but in a different, more important way, you're wrong. To say that you do not know the conclusions and would not presume to make them with the present amount of information is, yes, a choice -- but is it a belief, that is, dogmatic faith? I take the approach that it is beyond the reach of science to determine the existence of a God or Gods that are above the laws of science. As such, a proper scientific question cannot be posed or answered. (The intelligent-design type arguments, that God can be proved by essentially finding hints in Her work, or finding questions that are unanswerable, are flawed in a similar way: science has often had questions that seemed intractable, unanswerable, or accorded to one pattern or another -- to conclude it is beyond science, or is an intential act from beyond science, is a leap of faith -- which is fine, but not science. Only in the long term, ~infinity, can it be determined that some scientific questions have absolutely no answers.)

To say, as (I believe... is this faith?) that secularism properly practiced refrains from making a conclusion is not a religion. It can be called fuzzy-headed or persecutory or what have you, but it is not a faith -- it is an independent evaluation of the evidence, i.e. self-directed critical thinking, which is acclaimed even in religions (i.e. the oft practiced part of Bar Mitzvah where the young man/boy must read and discuss sections of the Torah... even to the extent of doubting their interpretation, or even validity), and is certainly an acclaimed and necessary part of democracy. Your (kind of) correct point about the simplest government is a government of one holds (given that one leaves out the real-life problems of being a one-person government, from rebellions to betrayal to satire to growing old), but a democracy where people do not evaluate the facts for themselves is no better, in the end, than one run by one man or woman who dictates what the facts are.

This, in the end, is I think the positive and vital part of secularism (properly practiced) in our system: only by questioning (the news, your parents, the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Torah, your president, yourself, your coach, etc.) can you arrive at intelligent decisions about how to participate in your democracy. You may determine, after questioning, that the Bible's law is above "(hu)man's law", and then you have to deal with living in a government of, by, and for (humans). But if you assume it true, just as if you assume Rush, Randi, Brit, Jon, or Dan, you cannot deal with, much less contribute to, a strong and just government.

The point of secularism (esp. as practiced in the gov't and schools) should be: there are some questions science can't answer. What is blue, really? (Try describing it without referencing other objects as in "the sky is blue".) What is beyond the universe? What happens when you faster than the speed of light? What would the world have been like if (I, you, the President, Churchill, whomever) had never lived? IS THERE A GOD? What are His/Her teachings? Are they true literally or as allegory? For someone to say, "This is math class, I don't know if God exists in infinity because that questioni goes beyond what math can do," "this is biology, we can't make a determined conclusion of how evolutions fits with the Bible because we can test evolutionary theory and we can't test the Bible: the Bible may be true, it may not, but that is an answer you find outside of school, just because this subject cannot tell you the Truth on it", "this is politcal science; while many laws are based on religion, they were also enacted by men and women -- we can suss out their reasoning, even if we cannot determine the metaphysical truth, and we can discuss whether or not a given law serves different interests -- including religious interests -- but we cannot differentiate between which religion is right or wrong or if none are."

How are these dogmatic beliefs? I see how they threaten people who feel religion should be in every part of life, but I believe a secularist state of people who can discuss issues in canonical terms AS WELL AS terms of secular morals, where the ultimate goal is how to provide the best quality of life for the most people for the most time. The facets that make up this quality of life may include religion -- but it's not a faith to say that the government should not dictate that quality of life depends on religion within the school or government. Practice what you wish; practice as you want or may or have to in non-instruction time in school; but we cannot tell you which to practice just as we can't tell you why Mom loves Dad, why bad things happen to good people and vice versa, if you will live after death, or why Donald Trump thinks his hair looks "natural".

Where was I...

Oh, yes, International Women's Day. (This link is for this year's sight.)

A belated "parabéns" to all of my female friends and/or readers out there. "Parabéns" is more or less portuguese for "Congratulations," which you also say for birthdays, so I would translate it as sort of a "best wishes", but maybe we are meant to congratulate women (not today -- it was on March 8th). At least within the government office where I am studying, it's a big deal -- everyone congratulated (parabénsed) all the women, the Secretary of Food Security gave flowers to all the women, and there was a "manifestação" (rally(?)) outside the prefeitura (municipal gov't) offices.

It was also interesting that the Brasileiras (as the women were the main ones discussing this, alas) traced back IWD's history to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, where on March 25, 1911 146 of the 500 workers died. Many were women, many were children. The doors to the factory had been locked (possibly for the discernably-less-but-still sinister purpose of keeping workers from leaving or taking unauthorized (any?) breaks), the fire escape led to nowhere, and broke and buckled during the fire anyhow, if I'm not mistaken the doors only opened inwards, and the firefighters were unable to reach the top floors of the building (where the fire was) with water or ladder.

While the true origin of IWD seems to lie more in the socialist organizings of some years before, starting nominally with the declaration of the Socialist Party of America in 1909, as well as with the "decision taken at [the Socialist Internation of 1910 in] Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies." It is notable that the proposal of IWD was met with unanimous approval at the Socialist International, including by the first 3 Finnish women members of Parliament. (It was 16 years later in 1917 when the US had their 1st woman congressperson; 1920 when the 19th Amendment finally deigned to give women the right to vote under law (which sounds somehow still condescending -- it was given to them? It wasn't exactly a gift, you know? It is a right... but I digress). 1931 when the first woman was appointed to Senate (through her husband's death -- somewhat later she was the first woman elected to Senate... (as you may recall from reading an earlier post of mine, the US is still not exactly women in government world leader... we're beating Brasil (to use possibly inappropriate competitive terminology), at 14% women in congress, but there's around 30% in Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia; 36% in Cuba; 20% in Nicaragua. A) These are all way too low b) We're way WAY too low.

End umpteenth digression. The fall of the Czar in Russia in 1917 also helped solidify IWD:

"With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere."

Maybe it's simply the socialist/communist imprimatur on the day that keeps present day US-er's away from it, but JEEZ, we could use a little women's day going on, especially what with the Triangle Fire being related to IWD's history. (Raise your hand if you remember the Triangle Fire from school and/or Howard Zinn's book. Ok, raise your hand if you think more than 1/5 of your peers could say what it was in at least a vague sense. Ok, lower your hands. All several of you. I thought so.) Of course, that repugnant Republiconservative meme that by emphasizing our differences, we're exacerbating sexual/racial discord would probably dampen a present day IWD big fest in the US. This is a rant for another time, but dude -- being different isn't what causes discord -- it's disliking or fearing that difference. (Haven't the X-Men taught us anything? To me, my X-Men!)

Anyway, considering the still going-on inequality (not to mention the Larry Summers claptrap... read me argue this in Slate... or don't, that's ok... I'll try and repost it here... so keep reading here, ok?) of today, even in that great "we're number 2... or 3 or 4... after Canada and Belgium and Finland and a couple others in terms of women holding congressional office..." US of A, I'm just sayin' we could use some IWD. Nuff said.

Parabéns.

Something smells rotten in the state of... err... federal courts

Ah, fine readers, so little to do, so much time to do it in.

Strike that, reverse it.

(Ok so it's not the exact quote. Sue me. It's not that original in the blogosphere either, apparently.)

Much I should be writing about/want to be writing about, but due to visits from J-Parents and J-Friend L, plus trying to finish up some experimental work (or, frankly, get a good start and middle on some experimental work) that I need to complete in the next month, well... Even I had trouble finding a way to fit more procrastination in there (at least in the form of blogging... until now.)

Let's see, let's see...

First thing on my mind, was thinking about Martha Stewart's release and all... I have to tell you, I was somewhat skeptical of the meme that she was heavily prosecuted because she was a successful and uncompromising businesswomen. I would of course agree that there is huge bias against successful and uncompromising women (in general) (not to mention the generally subtle institutional and not-so-subtle bias), but it just seemed to me... well, it does sound like she may have committed a crime, right? I've never been one for the "by paying attention to problem X we're ignoring problem Y" as a knee-jerk response, but it does happen and such things require examination. So, as I said, with her release, and the many obligatory news stories, it got me thinking... What happened to the real criminals? You know, the ones who didn't have a fairly ambiguous he-said-she-said case of relatively lower importance felonies, at least in comparison to massive investor bilking and fraud?

What'ssay we do an (trumpet fanfare): UNSCIENTIFIC QUICK COMPARISON!:

Ms. Stewart (MS): Indicted originally on "securities fraud, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy." If convicted on all counts, it appears the maximum penalty is a total of 30 years in jail (plus $1 million fine). Securities fraud charge dropped by the judge because it was, basically, ridiculous (apparently), taking 10 years and the $1 million fine off the table.

MAX SENTENCE: 20 years, $1 million fine
ACTUAL SENTENCE: five months in prison, five months of home confinement, and two years probation, +$30,000 fine
MONEY RIPPED OFF: Apparently, "By selling when she did, the government alleged Stewart avoided losses of $45,673."
Information ripped off from Wikipedia, the free encylcopedia, from the entry Martha Stewart (duh).


Dennis Kozlowski (DK) (and finance chief Mark Swartz (MSW)): On the docket, 1 count securities fraud, 1 count conspiracy, 13 counts grand larceny, and 9 counts falsifying business records (from CNN). If convicted on all counts in the original trial, it appears his maximum jail time may have been 30 years each. (Only?) They previously had a charge of enterprise corruption, which the judge dismissed (it would have carried a maximum sentence of 25 years). (all this from CNN as well). A mistrial was declared last year in April. Trial is set to resume soon.

MAX SENTENCE: 30 years, fine of ??
ACTUAL SENTENCE: TBD; mistrial was declared
MONEY RIPPED OFF: Apparently around $600 mill.


Ok... so the point I was going to make is, MS seems lower on the rung of bad deeds, but has had much more attention. BUT, looking here, it still seems premature to make many conclusions since DK and MSW had a mistrial, the Rigases were convicted (except for Michael Rigas), as was Frank Quattrone, the former Credit Suisse First Boston financier.

As CNN says, "Two of this year's biggest trials -- against Martha Stewart and her former Merrill Lynch stockbroker and against Quattrone, the former Credit Suisse First Boston financier -- did not involve charges of fraud. Instead, prosecutors brought narrow cases centered on easier-to-prove allegations of obstruction of justice." So, perhaps MS, The Rigaii, and FQ were just, as people in bureaucracies love to say, "low-hanging fruit." Ok, ok. Our friends DK, MSW, (former HealthSouth Corporation CEO ) Richard Scrushy, (ex-WorldCom CEO) Bernard Ebbers Jr., and former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Richard Causey. For the previous 4, DK, MSW, RS, and BEJ, max's range from 10 years (BEJ; BJ?) to 450 for RS (isn't Scrushy just an automatic nickname? Hey Scrush, the Scroosh, Scrushinomatic, Scrushy... hey, it's late).

So I think two things are at work here. First, I think there really is some sexism going on here (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm late to the party in a way, I should've done the research earlier), as MS did seem especially hunted considering all the other shit flying through the air. And while her public stature made her a nice obvious topic, Kenny-Boy Lay nicely disappeared from our "too-rich-and-too-close-to-the-president-not-to-be-suspicious" radars, didn't it? That made a good story? But, of course, there's no news like celebrity news, and MS is more of a celeb than Kenny (Oh my God! They killed... nah, it's been done.) (That joke'll have to wait at least until it ends "convicted Kenny!"), not to mention this press, well, they're kind of scared of asking the President questions... shh.... Anyway, all this is to say, I'm not sure why all the attention is on MS in any sort of legitimate way... perhaps if a fashionable celeb mail CEO had been charged with something, it would be a better comparison but...

...at the very least, even if all the government working on MS (and Quattrone and the Rigaii) was not sex-related, even institutionally, the press coverage seems to certainly be so. Part of this, like I said, is clearly based on her relative celebrity. But don't you think ripping off $600 million or so and/or being up for 450 years in jail, not to mention crashing Enron into the ground and being part of a wave of scandals affecting accounting, energy, trade, and more should be enough to MAKE you a lasting "celebrity"? I know our media isn't interested in, let's say, pertinent background facts (let alone pertinent foreground facts), not when they're boring or come at the expense of anything that is more salacious, but really. Martha Stewart. Big mogul. Convicted of maybe, kind of having tried to cover up a possibly mistaken attempt to save $45,000 dollars. Frankly, this is pretty much along the lines of Chris Rock's comments on Clinton's sex scandal: "You could've taken this to the PEOPLE'S Court!" Seriously.

Meanwhile, when's the last time you heard about Quattrone, the Rigaii, or our other biggies? (More unscience: Google stats I just made up, in the form of # of hits with Name + "crime"/# of hits with Name.
DK:
6,070/106,000 (5.7%)

FQ:
814/21,200 (3.8%)

BJ (ok, BEJ):
10,500/67,000 (15.7% -- under "Bernie Ebbers";
6,340/150,000=4.2% for "Bernard Ebbers",
9/16=56% for "Bernard Ebbers Jr")

John Rigas:
681/75,000 = 0.9%

Timothy Rigas:
504/4,730 = 10.1% (his relative anonymity doesn't help in this non-scientific method!)

Michael Rigas:
516/6630= 7.8% (ditto)

Kenneth Lay (KL):
25,900/104,000=25%
Woo-hoo! Not sure this helps my discrimination-against-MS theory, but it's nice to see Kenny Boy's racking up the infamy (in a relatively quiet, non front page news way...) (the %age is about the same for googling ["kenny boy" lay crime]/["kenny boy" lay])

The Srushinator (now makes Julienne fries):
982/91,400= 1.1%
Whew! Maybe the celeb theory has some legs... Kenny Boy is famous through his connection to Bush, so despite the fact that Sruchinator might get 450 years in prison (probably not), he's not generating so much interest.

Jeffrey Skilling:
5,270/28,100=18.8%

Richard Causey:
2,340/6,140 = 38% (Damn, that relative anonymity just kills you!)

And, for the closest MS comparison, her co-convictee,
Peter Bacanovic (her stockbroker involved in that whole "ImClone" thing and also convicted with the same sentence):
4,220/18,100 = 23%

MS HERSELF:
363,000/2,300,000 = 15.8%

Ding ding ding ding. And the (somewhat useless) results are in. Quick (bad?) conclusions: Celebrity helps you out, it seems, that is, pre-celebrity. If you get your 15 minutes of fame while being accused of something, eh, not so good on you.

MS comes in at 5th highest percentage out of 12 people (I think... it's later than before when it was already late)... of people over the 10,000 hits range, she's 4th of 11. 25,000, 3rd of 7; 50,000, 2 of 6. Only Kenny Boy has her beat dead to rights... perhaps as it should be.

Ok, this is chuck full of caveats, including that many of these articles could say "MARTHA STEWART, convicted for a fairly minor CRIME..." or maybe there's a different RICHARD CAUSEY who serially committed the CRIME of grand theft auto, or even on the same page "MARTHA STEWART, all sweetness and light, page 8; Local CRIME, which clearly doesn't involve Ms. Stewart, page 9."

Nonetheless, I think the media, if nothing else, is emphasizing her a whole bunches. Of course, a lot of it now is about her comeback, so....

Maybe this shouldn't have been my first post back. Maybe I'm out of practice. Well, it was a novel exercise, you gotta give me that?

Having thoroughly obscured my point, I'll move on.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Alright, not precisely a different topic, but an important one. Thanks for hanging with me.

Actually -- to be continued, in a new post...