Elections are mostly depressing affairs, but occasionally something spices events up. Something like fringe candidates. Take a look at Keith Judd who is running against Barack Obama in West Virginia. He was a member of the League of Superheroes back in the day. He's also currently in prison for making threats at a university.
He's not doing too bad either, picking up about 40% of the vote. Those West Virginians know how to pick 'em.
One of the things I thought I would do now that I'm blogging again is start featuring some of my photos. I don't do this because I think I'm some great photographer, but as an incentive to actually get off of my butt and get out taking pictures. I still have a lot to learn about the craft, but I'm not going to learn it sitting in my room. Here are a couple I took just today.
Flower
Self Portrait
From the #realtalk from your editor tumblr. This cracked me up.
WHEN A GOOD WRITER SUBMITS A PIECE WITH DOUBLE SPACING AFTER THE PERIODS
Related to my point about people judging the Bible on a different set of standards than the Koran, here's Conor Friedersdorf writing about the backlash Muslims have faced since 9/11.
It sounds to me like there was a significant backlash in 2001, and that even after that, hate crimes against Muslims stayed from three to five times more likely than they were before the terrorist attacks. And, of course, hate-crime statistics are hardly the only valid measure of discrimination.
We need to stop blaming all Muslims for the actions of a very select few. We don't tolerate that with any other religion or ethnic group; we shouldn't tolerate it against Muslims, either.
I don't recall hearing about monkeys being trained as service animals before, but this is rather amazing. I have to say, though, that as someone with MS (relapsing-remitting, not progressive) this was particularly hard to watch.
Maybe I'll have a monkey someday.
I heard some coworkers talking about something today that bothered me. Somehow discussion came to the Middle East and Muslims and one woman brought up the Koran. She said she and her daughter had read parts of it after 9/11 to try to understand why the terrorists did what they did. Based on her readings, she determined that Muhammad was crazy and that Muslims just had radical notions that were completely antithetical to Western beliefs. The guy she was talking to nodded in agreement and said some things that weren't much better. Both of these people are nominal Christians.
Whenever anyone brings up the Koran and things they've read in it (or heard were in it), I wonder if they've read the Bible. I mean really read it. There is a lot of messed up things there. Too many people seem to conveniently overlook these parts when they talk about their wonderful Christian faith. But being a Christian should mean grappling with the hard parts of the Bible and not just the Beatitudes. Let's take a look at some troubling passages in the Bible.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Sure, there are some denominations that still believe in this passage, but most don't. Why not?
Everyone likes Psalm 137, right? It's quite beautiful. Many people never seem to make it to the last couple of verses, though.
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
I know there are some Christians that seem to get excited about violence, but how many think it's okay to pray for the death of babies?
And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.
So, according to the Bible, a slave owner who beats his slave to death should be punished; but if the slave lives then the slave owner is free and clear? Got it. How come I haven't heard any preacher building a sermon based on this passage?
I could go on, but I'll let you find some more fun verses on your own. My point with this is not to say that the Bible is monstrous and should be thrown out. My point is to say that the Bible is very similar to the Koran in that there are some very beautiful things in each and some very troublesome things. We can't look at either with blinders (or blast helmets) on and make judgments on fragments. We must be fair and evaluate the whole. Perhaps you'll come to the conclusion that one or both are full of garbage and only idiots would read them for guidance in life. That's your prerogative. However, you should make your judgment based on a fair reading of the entire text and not just the bits and pieces that support your preconceived notions.
Here's your funny for the day.
Why don't more anchors do this? Are they so desperate for the attention and adoration of famous figures that they are too scared to call a spade a spade? Whatever it is, it's not healthy.
Conor Friedersdorf writes about how ideological voters are easy to manipulate.
The fact is that ideological voters are easy to manipulate. Think of the last presidential election. Conservatives had been complaining about John McCain for years. What did it take for them to rally around the Arizona senator? A vice-presidential pick and the perception that the media was attacking her unfairly. This makes no logical sense. The media's treatment of Sarah Palin had no bearing on whether or not McCain would be a good president, or sufficiently better than Obama to justify conservatives going out to the polls for him despite their misgivings and the signal it sent about the future -- that the base is always going to rally around the Republican in the end.
I won't hide my liberal proclivities, but I don't want to be a Democrat. I don't want to feel pressure to conform to the party line even when I disagree with it. It's too easy to say, especially in a two-party system, that your team is the good guys while the other party is the Evil, Scary, Un-American Other who will probably, most likely wish to do unspeakable things to you. How can we have effective governance when politicians spend more time telling us how bad the other person is instead of what their ideas are? Ideas get dismissed out of hand as soon as someone from the other team espouses them. See for example the origins of the ACA ("Obamacare"). It's basically a bill built on Republican dogma! But as soon as the Democrats embraced it, it became an unconstitutional assault on our freedoms.
There's a reason the Founding Fathers were wary of political parties. Perhaps it was naive of them, but it's hard to say that political parties have really done much to benefit our country, especially when today's Republican Party has gone completely off the deep end.
I've made no secret of my disdain for using two spaces after a period. What amazes me is how prevalent it is. It's been a year or two since typewriters were widely used and you'd think that would be more than enough time for this dinosaur to be laid to rest. Alas, 'tis not so. I made a crack about this on Facebook today after reading a coworker's report that somehow managed to put three spaces after a period. Lo and behold, Two Spacers jumped out claiming that they were correct.
I don't want to hurt any feelings here, but Two Spacers are wrong. Here is Grammar Girl with the skinny.
Although how many spaces you use is ultimately a style choice, using one space is by far the most widely accepted and logical style. The Chicago Manual of Style (1), the AP Stylebook (2), and the Modern Language Association (3) all recommend using one space after a period at the end of a sentence. Furthermore, page designers have written in begging me to encourage people to use one space because if you send them a document with two spaces after the periods, they have to go in and take all the extra spaces out.
Okay. Okay. It's a style choice, so feel free to use it if you must. Just don't be surprised if I'm editing your document and I do a find and replace to make all of the double spaces into single spaces.
No, I mean I feel damn good compared to how I feel on most Sundays and it's because I'm taking fewer medications now. Last week I had my regular three month appointment for the MS study I'm in. I told them I wanted to withdraw from the study mostly due to being tired of how the weekly Avonex I take makes me feel. Ever since I enrolled in the study back in December of 2006, my Sundays have been mostly ruined. The drug makes me very tired, gives me body aches from head to toe, and just generally makes me feel like garbage.
That's a lot of time spent feeling that way for anyone; but when you also are a single dad, work full-time, manage another disease, and are trying to finish school, it can be overwhelming. So, I finally decided I was through with it. I'm not sure what's next in managing my MS. I have to schedule an appointment with my regular neurology provider to explore my options. Cost will be the biggest hurdle. Check out this chart of MS drugs and how much each costs.
Now, I have good insurance, but the last time I looked it was only covering approximately half of the two drugs I checked on. There's no way I can cover the remainder. That means I might not be taking anything for awhile. On one hand that's rather scary. On the other, my thinking is "come what may." Even with medication there is no guarantee of what will happen with the disease in the future. None of these drugs are cures; they only work to slow progression of the disease. None offers a promise or any sort of guarantee of an MS-free future. They only offer hope of prolonging it. And, you know what? I don't need drugs for that. If I can find some sort of cost-effective solution now or sometime down the road, I'm sure I'll start taking something again but until then I'm not going to fret it.
In other news, I'll be starting school again tomorrow. It's long overdue. I only need 30 more credits to finally get my degree and I intend to do it by the end of the year. That's a lot of work for anyone let alone someone with all of the responsibilities I juggle, but somehow I'll make it happen. The next chapter of my life is past due and it's time I moved on. This will, of course, keep me quite busy. I'm not sure how often I'll be posting around here. I'll try to pop off something from time to time, but no promises. You can still catch my snark on Twitter or Facebook if you know me there. Live long and prosper.
One blog post on the Eagle Forum Alaska site praised efforts at criminalizing adultery in Michigan, and Paskvan asked Haase if he thought it should be a felony in Alaska.
"I don't see that that would rise to the level of a felony," Haase said.
Paskvan: "Do you believe it should be a crime?"
Haase: "Yeah, I think it's very harmful to have extramarital affairs. It's harmful to children, it's harmful to the spouse who entered a legally binding agreement to marry the person that's cheating on them."
Paskvan: "What about premarital affairs -- should that be a crime?"
Haase: "I think that would be up to the voters certainly. If it came before (the state) as a vote, I probably would vote for it ... I can see where it would be a matter for the state to be involved with because of the spread of disease and the likelihood that it would cause violence. I can see legitimate reasons to push that as a crime."
Newt Gingrich does a complete 180 on Libya in a matter of weeks. This led to one of my favorite Tweets of all time, of all time!
Newt Gingrich changes positions on Libya as often as he changes wives.
It's ostensibly about early versions of the Bible and how a researcher believes that they told stories of Asherah, God's wife. For those who haven't studied religion or the ancient Middle East, Asherah was a fertility goddess and mother figure. Stories of her and similar goddesses abound in the region from those times. It is quite possible that she was in early versions of the stories that now make up the Torah/Bible.
But other than the fact that this researcher believes Asherah was redacted from the Bible and a very quick primer on who Asherah is, what does this article tell you? It doesn't give any examples of passages from the Torah that the researcher believes point to Asherah's removal. It doesn't give any concrete examples of the "Hebrew inscriptions" that supposedly evince his hypothesis. It gives no historical background for the writing of the Bible other than a brief aside about "heavy-handed male editors" and one sentence about the pivotal destruction of the first Jewish temple in 587/6 BCE. All of this information would have given this article some weight, some merit. As it is, I find it worthless other than giving me the name of this researcher (Francesca Stavrakopoulou) so that I can dig around for some more helpful material on his research.
Religion is hard to write about. I get that. It rarely has a clear narrative. Many adherents and their beliefs are opaque and confusing. But it seems that effort is rarely made to clearly elucidate the subject. Articles like this (and their headlines) seem made to generate controversy and traffic instead of relying on an excellent writing to bring in readers.
The image is a statue of Asherah (from the Wikipedia article). Isn't it great looking? I'd put that on my mantle.
I really enjoy long-form journalism. It's like a story instead of just some bland recitals of he said/she said. We could use more long-form articles because many stories are too complex and nuanced for three paragraphs complete with misleading headline. I know that goes against the grain of our instant gratification, Twitterific culture, but, you know. Anyway...
I recently came across this story about a couple of 20-something pot heads who became wealthy international arms dealers.
His business plan was simple but brilliant. Most companies grow by attracting more customers. Diveroli realized he could succeed by selling to one customer: the U.S. military. No government agency buys and sells more stuff than the Defense Department — everything from F-16s to paper clips and front-end loaders. By law, every Pentagon purchase order is required to be open to public bidding. And under the Bush administration, small businesses like AEY were guaranteed a share of the arms deals. Diveroli didn't have to actually make any of the products to bid on the contracts. He could just broker the deals, finding the cheapest prices and underbidding the competition. All he had to do was win even a minuscule fraction of the billions the Pentagon spends on arms every year and he would be a millionaire. But Diveroli wanted more than that: His ambition was to be the biggest arms dealer in the world — a young Adnan Khashoggi, a teenage Victor Bout.
To get into the game, Diveroli knew he would have to deal with some of the world's shadiest operators — the war criminals, soldiers of fortune, crooked diplomats and small-time thugs who keep militaries and mercenaries loaded with arms. The vast aftermarket in arms had grown exponentially after the end of the Cold War. For decades, weapons had been stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe for the threat of war against the West, but now arms dealers were selling them off to the highest bidder. The Pentagon needed access to this new aftermarket to arm the militias it was creating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble was, it couldn't go into such a murky underworld on its own. It needed proxies to do its dirty work — companies like AEY. The result was a new era of lawlessness. According to a report by Amnesty International, "Tens of millions of rounds of ammunition from the Balkans were reportedly shipped — clandestinely and without public oversight — to Iraq by a chain of private brokers and transport contractors under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense."
This was the "gray market" that Diveroli wanted to penetrate. Still a teenager, he rented a room in a house owned by a Hispanic family in Miami and went to work on his laptop. The government website where contracts are posted is fbo.gov, known as "FedBizOpps." Diveroli soon became adept at the arcane lingo of federal contracts. His competition was mostly big corporations like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed and BAE Systems. Those companies had entire departments dedicated to selling to the Pentagon. But Diveroli had his own advantages: low overhead, an appetite for risk and all-devouring ambition.
I had an, ah, interesting experience last weekend.
Last week I realized I was nearly out of my insulin. I was so used to getting it regularly from the mail-order pharmacy my health insurance uses that I forgot it had changed. Everyone's prescriptions were supposed to seamlessly transition over. Clearly something had not gone seamlessly. I called them up and they said, "Oh, uhm, yeah. It looks like there has been a mix up. We'll get this fixed as soon as we can."
Except that it wasn't fast enough. Saturday morning I ran out of insulin. That means my body could not process carbohydrates and my blood glucose level was going to go up. I thought I would be okay for a couple of days if I stuck to a diet of nuts, non-starchy veggies, and water as none of those things have much in the way of carbs. Yes, my insulin would go up, but it shouldn't go up high enough that I wouldn't be okay for a couple of days until my order came in.
The only problem with that clever plan is that I forgot about other medication I take.
Every week I take an injection of Avonex. This nasty drug is for my multiple sclerosis. It has the pleasant side effect of flu-like symptoms for approximately 24 hours after injection. The first couple of times I took it, it knocked me on my ass and I could barely get out of bed. Since then I have gotten somewhat used to it so that now my body aches from head to toe all day, I feel more exhausted than usual, and I just feel rather blah. I take it every Saturday night so I can spend my Sunday feeling like crap instead of trying to deal with it during the work week. Without even thinking about how it might affect my insulin-deprived body, I took it as normal Saturday night and set myself on a nasty course.
Sunday morning I woke up feeling worse than I usually do on Sundays. My stomach was a tight knot and I felt on the verge of vomiting. My mouth was extremely dry and full of cotton. I tried to sip some water because that's all I felt I could stomach. Unfortunately, even that was too much as I started vomiting. Anything in my gut from the previous day was quickly sent back up. Anything heavier than water or 7-Up sounded sickening, but even those had me puking and dry-heaving. I felt like I had no water in me and, in fact, the one pleasant side-effect of my vomiting was that it put just enough moisture in my mouth that I could talk.
I continued to feel worse throughout the day. By early evening I knew the only way I was getting better was if I went to the Emergency Department. I also knew that I was going to be admitted to the hospital. As dehydrated as I was I knew my bg was sky-high and the only way to get it down was insulin. This was not a decision I made lightly, but I needed to if I was going to get better. My mother called my brother who picked me up and carted me off.
Since I work there, most of the staff know me and were clearly concerned about me just seeing me before I even started telling them what was going on. They got me a room, started pumping me full of fluids and gave me Zofran so I would stop vomiting. They drew blood and took a urine sample. As the tests started coming back the doctor came in, gave me a look, and said, "You're sick." Thanks, doc. I actually felt like I was being tickled by thousands of butterflies, but now you've gone and set me straight.
The diagnosis was diabetic ketoacidosis. This is a potentially life-threatening condition caused by very high blood glucose which begins to cascade through a whole series of other wonderful things. Sure enough I was admitted and not just to any floor but the Intensive Care Unit. This was so they could closely monitor me and allow me to rest.
Rest? Ha! For anyone never having the opportunity to stay in an ICU (this was my first), rest is about the last thing that happens. I was lucky to have a 30-minute period of being uninterrupted by someone coming in and drawing blood or checking my vitals or something. Despite not getting much in the way of sleep I started feeling better rather rapidly. With insulin and fluids pouring into me, I was getting somewhat back to normal. With the Zofran on board, I was able to drink some actual water, too. The ice water the nurses gave me was about the best thing my arid tongue had ever tasted.
Later in the morning with my numbers stabilizing, I got transferred to a medical floor. I ate a normal meal. Well, I tried to eat it. I ordered a fruit bowl and a piece of toast, but the roof of my mouth was so raw from the vomiting that the natural acids in the fruit burned too bad to eat much. Even the crunch of the toast made it difficult to swallow.
By 6:00 pm, I was much closer to normal if not quite there, yet. My doctor sort of wanted to keep me another night, but I told him I would rest much better at home (which is very true) and he let me go. I went home, ate a bit and before too long I was in bed. The next morning I was up and going to work. It's not 'cause I'm sort of tough guy. I was just feeling better and I've got a ton of stuff on my plate.
I'd like to say I learned some deep truth from my near-death experience or that I had some nugget of wisdom to offer. In the future I intend to watch my insulin supply more closely especially when changes are made to my health coverage to try to prevent this from happening again, but that's rather banal for any sort of grand statement. I got very, very sick. I pulled through thanks to modern medicine. I'm back to normal.
Really, what more could one ask for?
This makes me sick. I don't understand why Americans aren't more upset about this.
To follow-up on yesterday's observations about the prolonged forced nudity to which Bradley Manning has been subjected the last two days: brig officials now confirm to The New York Times that Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future -- not only when he sleeps, but also when he stands outside his cell for morning inspection along with the other brig detainees. They claim that it is being done "as a 'precautionary measure' to prevent him from injuring himself."
Has anyone before successfully committed suicide using a pair of briefs -- especially when under constant video and in-person monitoring? There's no underwear that can be issued that is useless for killing oneself? And if this is truly such a threat, why isn't he on "suicide watch" (the NYT article confirms he's not)? And why is this restriction confined to the night; can't he also off himself using his briefs during the day?
How about a funny?
A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across, takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea Partier, and says, "Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."
The long-awaited (five-and-a-half years!) fifth book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series finally has a publication date! Hallelujah! I'm glad Martin took the time to get it right, but I sure hope the next one doesn't take as long. I'm sure HBO feels the same way considering the TV adaptation is beginning in April.
Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies of all time - of all time! - which is why I'm not really excited to see that prequels and sequels are coming. The odds of these being any good are slim. How can anyone come close to matching the movies's dark, moody cinematography, the sparse but dense script (watch the director's cut, not the original with the shoddy voice-over), and the beautiful final words of Roy Batty.
Leave well enough alone, I say. Not that Hollywood is any good at that.
Words you don't use to describe someone who just stabbed their own infant child to death.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church today, saying they had a right to picket funerals. As much as it pains me to say it, this is the right decision. Fred Phelps and his followers are amongst the worst sort of scum. Their hate-filled rants against homosexuals, Jews, Catholics deserve all the scorn that can be mustered. The First Amendment gives them the right to spread their filth, however, and restrictions of that right need to be done very, very carefully. We don't let people falsely shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater because it could lead to harm. Members of the WBC were far enough away from the funeral from which this (most recent) lawsuit ensued that their actions were not considered stalking or harassment. They should be allowed to do what they do because restricting their speech is a slippery slope that we should not start down.
The best thing to be done about things like this is to exercise one's own free speech and counter-protest. Excellent examples of this can be found here.
"[I]t's one of the weirder aspects of our political circumstances that being a hypocrite is a much greater moral failing than being deeply cruel." -Adam Serwer
Radley Balko writes about a cop who had consensual sexual relations with two girls, one 16 and the other 17. Now he's been convicted of having child pornography because he had nude pictures of both of the girls.
Here's the catch, though. In Indiana, where this occurred, the age of consent is 16. So, the cop could legally have sex with the girls. He could also have legally married the girls without their parents' permission. But, he could not have pictures of them in the nude because according to federal law, pictures like this are child pornography.
Whatever you think about what he did, this seems rather ludicrous. Laws need to line up together and work in tandem. What's the point in having a law saying it's okay to have sex with someone of a certain age, but not being permitted to have nude pictures of them? Either the age of consent needs to go up or the child porn laws need to have exceptions for people of consenting age. This guy presents no danger at all to society, but he's now stuck in prison for fifteen years. Was what he did smart? Probably not. But locking him up for a long period of time accomplishes nothing except costing taxpayers a good chunk of change.
**I couldn't resist the opportunity to post a picture of Matthew McConaughey from Dazed and Confused. "That's what I love about these High School girls man. I get older, they stay the same age. Yes they do."
Another trailer for this series.
There are not words to describe how excited I am for this.
This is a beautiful use of technology.
The cop cited him for going over 40 mph in a 25 zone, which he was too frazzled to contest at the time. After he had cooled down and parked his car later, he remembered that he had been running the My Tracks app by Google which records your GPS info and speed. Pulling up the data, he found that he hadn't been speeding. When his court date arrived, he plead not guilty, presented his GPS data, and successfully got out of the ticket.
A woman who wrote an article who wrote an article about helping the poor back in the 1960s is getting death threats now after Glenn Beck blamed her paper for leading to the current economic crisis.
Piven is a professor at the City College of New York. Back in 1966, she and her late husband, Richard Cloward, wrote an article for The Nation outlining a plan to help the poor of New York and other big cities to get on welfare.
In their research, they found that not all the poor who were eligible to receive welfare actually did. They advocated that all the nation's eligible poor should apply. They felt such a strain to city budgets would force Washington to address the poverty problem.
Forty-five years later, Beck took to the airwaves of Fox News and his own radio program, warning the public about the obscure article.
"Let me introduce you to the people who you would say are fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system. They're really two people," he said, "Cloward and Piven."
For about the last three months, week after week, Beck's been hammering away at Piven and her husband. From their 45-year-old article, he sees a vast conspiracy to overthrow the American financial system.
...
Soon after Beck made her infamous, Piven says hundreds of death threats poured into her e-mail account and conservative blogs. Things like, "'May cancer overtake you soon!'" Piven says. She ended up asking the FBI and state police for help.
While Piven acknowledges that Glenn Beck has never advocated violence against her, she still feels Beck's screeds led directly to the threats against her life.
China cracks down on the growing reincarnation problem.
In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation." But beyond the irony lies China's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.
A case is made that Top Gun was the film that started Hollywood's downward spiral.
Then came Top Gun. The man calling the shots may have been Tony Scott, but the film's real auteurs were producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, two men who pioneered the "high-concept" blockbuster—films for which the trailer or even the tagline told the story instantly. At their most basic, their movies weren't movies; they were pure product—stitched-together amalgams of amphetamine action beats, star casting, music videos, and a diamond-hard laminate of technological adrenaline all designed to distract you from their lack of internal coherence, narrative credibility, or recognizable human qualities. They were rails of celluloid cocaine with only one goal: the transient heightening of sensation.
Top Gun landed directly in the cortexes of a generation of young moviegoers whose attention spans and narrative tastes were already being recalibrated by MTV and video games. That generation of 16-to-24-year-olds—the guys who felt the rush of Top Gun because it was custom-built to excite them—is now in its forties, exactly the age of many mid- and upper-midrange studio executives. And increasingly, it is their taste, their appetite, and the aesthetic of their late-'80s postadolescence that is shaping moviemaking. Which may be a brutally unfair generalization, but also leads to a legitimate question: Who would you rather have in charge—someone whose definition of a classic is Jaws or someone whose definition of a classic is Top Gun?
The Top Gun era sent the ambitions of those who wanted to break into the biz spiraling in a new direction. Fifteen years earlier, scores of young people headed to film schools to become directors. With the advent of the Reagan years, a more bottom-line-oriented cadre of would-be studio players was born, with an MBA as the new Hollywood calling card. The Top Gun era shifted that paradigm again—this time toward marketing. Which was only natural: If movies were now seen as packages, then the new kings of the business would be marketers, who could make the wrapping on that package look spectacular even if the contents were deficient.
So I had to take a look, because I wanted to see what Gates had really said, and about whom. It turns out he didn’t actually use the phrase “child killers,” but he did say that anti-vaccine groups “kill children,” which does pretty much amount to the same thing. I can see why people would be outraged by that — I’m outraged, too, but not in the way the people who issued the press release would like me to be. Because I’m outraged that there most likely are 50,000 people who are willing to protest, when what Bill Gates said is absolutely, 100% correct.
The best news of the day.
Star Trek: The Animated Series has been unjustly neglected by all but the most devoted Trekkies for most of the 36-plus years since it originally aired. The animation may — does — look cheesy by today’s standards, but some of the stories are truly excellent, and they did get all but one of the original cast members to do their characters’ voices.
Well, StarTrek.com has now put every episode of the series online for free viewing (though not, alas, downloading). If you’ve not seen any of the 22 episodes of the series, but are a fan of ST:The Original Series, you’re in for a treat. Some of them are just so-so, but even the worst of them is better (to my mind, anyway) than 70% of the episodes of ST: Enterprise.
I had never heard of this. Apparently sometimes ants can get caught up in a circle following the ant in front of them and then keep going in a circle until they starve to death.
This is a species of army ant, Labidus praedator. These ants are completely blind so they get about by sniffing trails left by the ants in front of them. They, in turn, leave chemical trails of their own. The system works smoothly when everybody's going in a straight line in one direction...
But when the lead ants start to loop, bad things can happen (and remember we humans loop too, we can't hold a straight course over long distances without external points of reference). If the ant-in-front loops and intersects with its old trail, the whole crowd then turns in on itself and everybody gets caught in the endless circle.
Most people know that our pets, especially dogs, like to please us. Well, it goes for police dogs, too.
My confusion about what was going on in Harper's head reflects a common misconception that is also apparent in the ways dogs are used in criminal investigations. When we think dogs are using their well-honed noses to sniff out drugs or criminal suspects, they may actually be displaying a more recently evolved trait: an urgent desire to please their masters, coupled with the ability to read their cues.
Several studies and tests have shown that drug-sniffing dogs, scent hounds, and even explosive-detecting dogs are not nearly as accurate as they have been portrayed in court. A recent Chicago Tribune survey of traffic stops by suburban police departments from 2007 to 2009, for example, found that searches turned up contraband in just 44 percent of the cases where police dogs alerted to the presence of narcotics. (An alert is a signal, such as barking or sitting, that dogs are trained to display when they detect the target scent.) In stops involving Hispanic drivers, the dogs' success rate was just 27 percent. The two largest departments the Tribune surveyed—the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois State Police—said they don't even keep track of such information.
But don't blame the dogs; their noses work fine. In fact, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently conceded, after 12 years and millions of dollars of research, that the canine snout, fine-tuned by millions of years of evolution, is still far more sensitive and reliable than any technology man has been able to muster when it comes to detecting explosives in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
The problem is our confusion about when dogs are picking up a scent and when they are responding to cues from their handlers.
Watch this very cool video where 500 people attempt to trace the line the previous person drew. What starts off as a straight line quickly becomes a mess.
A Sequence of Lines Traced by Five Hundred Individuals from clement valla on Vimeo.
Ezra Klein brings us a chart showing what Wisconsin's state and local government workers make compared to their private sector counterparts.
So, why would these people take less money? Presumably they like their work. Maybe they like being public servants. Maybe both. Either way, it seems ludicrous to want to pay them less money. You will just get fewer qualified people wanting to take these jobs. Maybe that's what Republicans want. However, the GOP is often quick to decry government incompetence. You're not going to get the best workers if you're not paying them enough to make it worth their while. I'd rather have someone choose to go work for a state government as, say, a regulator than go work on Wall Street and contribute nothing to society other than pushing for lower taxes on rich people in order to only benefit themselves.
I'm so proud of my state. We made the national news!
A Montana legislator is proposing the state embrace global warming as good for the economy.
Republican Rep. Joe Read of Ronan aims to pass a law that says global warming is a natural occurrence that "is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana."
Reaction by scientists and environmentalists to House Bill 549 has been harsh. University of Montana climate change professor Steve Running calls it an indefensible attempt to repeal the laws of physics.
I just finished The Great Hunt, book two in The Wheel of Time series. My thoughts on the first book are here. Again, I am going to try to avoid spoilers; but if something crops up, don't say I didn't warn you.
TWoT really takes off with this book. We get to see much more of the world and we have more POV characters, too. One of Jordan's strengths with these books are the numerous mysteries he sprinkles about - character motivations, bits of prophecy, murders. It really engages the reader as you try to figure out what is going on. In fact, there is a whole website setup for discussing theories.
Another of Jordan's big strengths is battle scenes. The epic finale here is excellent and it's not even close to being his best one (that would be at the end of book six). He has a great way of detailing them at small and large detail that far from bores (as some authors do with battles), but makes them very vivid and exciting. I especially love the evocative names he gives to the sword techniques that the characters use.
So, as much as I enjoy the first book I think this is where the series really starts to shine.
From Ken Jennings' story of battling Watson on Jeopardy!.
Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It's very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.
Stuff like this is why I have problems with so many people in the pro-life movement.
Anti-choicers are really on the march lately, but even I was shocked by this latest news: South Dakota legislators are trying to amend some changes to the “justifiable homicide” definition to include killing someone to prevent the killing of a fetus. This proposed change is one of the best exposures of the beliefs about gender that are lurking underneath the maudlin fetus stuff, because the bill doesn’t allow anyone to play a white knight killing an abortion provider.....just a family member of the woman getting the abortion. And, it seems that it might include allowing the killing of the woman, too, though it’s tough to say. If a woman tells her husband she’s getting an abortion whether he likes it or not, and he kills her to stop it, he also kills the fetus, but he did act in accordance with the law in the sense of motivation. Lawyers in the house?
...
If this bill passes into law, a wife beater whose wife is trying to abort for the entirely sensible reason that you don’t want babies with a batterer could walk into a clinic, shoot the doctor to prevent the abortion, and plead justifiable homicide, with the blessing of the South Dakota legislature and presumably the anti-choice movement that lobbied them.
Matt Yglesias highlights an incredible bit of polling data.
This is the reason I always shake my head at polls showing what voters want or politicians talk about giving the voters what they want. The fact is that most people have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to things like this because they are big and complicated and they are more focused on their day to day life. They have some politician from a political party that they sorta listen to and go along with but they don't really understand what they are going along with.
This is, of course, why it's so easy for politicians to manipulate voters. They can spout banal red meat for the base who lap it up while not paying much attention to what is really going on. The problem is amplified by journalists who don't feel it's their job to call a lie a lie.
If we want better government, we have to have a better understanding of our policies and what our government is doing. Ignorance is not bliss.
This is a fascinating discussion on language and why we have innuendo even when both people know exactly what is actually meant.
And, of course, this is a perfect time to link to Queen's song, "Innuendo."
Upsetting Google, a company that could make or break you, by attempting to scam their search results. Not that it's going to scare people off. The benefits are too great.
I recently started rereading The Wheel of Time, a series of books that I've been reading for going on twenty years now. The first book, The Eye of the World came out in 1990. I started reading it a couple of years later after getting the second book as a gift from a friend. Even though I ended up reading it first because I didn't know it was the second book, I fell in love. I have read and reread the series numerous times since even though it's not done, yet.
Robert Jordan, the author, passed away from a rare blood disease after the 11th book came out. He had planned one more book to bring the story to a conclusion. His wife and editor, Harriet, hired Brandon Sanderson to finish the final novel. He decided that the book would be too big and it would need to be split into three books to do it justice. The never-ending series was getting longer.
It is true that Jordan started to get lost in the wilderness as the story went along. Some think it happened as early as books three or four. I'm more forgiving and tend to peg it more at book eight. Despite the epic story getting adrift somewhere along the way, I have not lost my passion for it and have been looking forward to this reread for awhile especially since I have not read either of the Sanderson penned books that have come out so far.
Part of Jordan's genius is taking well-worn tropes and giving them a fresh coat so they don't seem so (over)used. Tell me if this sounds familiar.
A wise, older wizard finds some young kids in a tiny backward village and tells them that one of them is the Chosen One who must battle Ulimate Evil to prevent the End of the World.
Most of the time beyond some mild side effects (fatigue, sensitivity to cold temps), I don't really have anything indicating that I have multiple sclerosis. In fact, the biggest reminder is probably when I feel the side effects stemming from the weekly injection of Avonex that I take. Every Sunday I feel like I've been roughed up by a gang of jocks. That's why I don't recommend anyone take this drug. It's not pleasant.
Anyway, I got a more serious reminder on Friday at work. I was walking down a flight of stair and in mid-step I felt a wave of dizziness and numbness on my right side. I'm glad no one was around to see me suddenly grab the handrail and waver there for a second like a neurotic dancer until the feeling passed. It's strange to me how scary this feels, but losing control of your body like this even for a few seconds is terrifying. I'm not sure if this was a one-time deal or if I'm on the verge of a relapse.
Either way, I suppose my MS was feeling bored and forgotten and wanted to remind that it's still lurking around ready to torment me.
Here it is.
I'm nervous about this one after X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine: Origins, but I'm still anxious to see it. I think McAvoy is an excellent choice to play a young Professor X and there's certainly enough drama within the escapades of the younger Xavier and Magneto to tell a great story. I hope it actually delivers.
I've been thinking about it lately, though, and earlier today I asked myself, "What benefit does prosecuting and locking up prescription drug abusers provide society?" Seriously. I want to know what benefit I'm getting out of my tax dollars being spent this way because I'm struggling to come up with anything. If someone gets high and drives, causing a wreck, we have laws for that. If someone gets high and neglects or abuses their kids, we have laws for that.
So, why exactly do we care if someone want to sit at home and pop a bunch of Hydrocodone? I don't endorse it, but, frankly if someone wants to make that choice I'm not sure why tax dollars should be spent to stop it. Why can't doctors and pharmacists and local support groups and families handle this? Victimless crimes like this seem to me to be a poor thing for the government to regulate and enforce. We have laws in place to deal with it if other people are harmed, so that seems to me to be more than adequate. Certainly bad things happen now when they are illegal so I don't see how keeping them illegal makes things any better.
Jon Stewart and company do us all a favor and watch Fox to bring teh funny.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| 24-Hour Nazi Party People | ||||
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I don't get why it's so hard for parents to talk to their kids about sex. Okay, I get that it's hard, but isn't it better than the alternative?
The girls know to be wary of strangers on the Internet—but they’re also wary of how the web is affecting the boys they might actually want to date.
“Guys wouldn’t really know about that much stuff if it weren’t for the Internet,” Kelsey says. “It freaks them out.”
“Yeah,” Alexa agrees. “It makes them kind of, like, inappropriate.”
“It can make them perverts at a younger age.”
“Like, sometimes you’re not ready for stuff like that.”
Funny stuff, but it highlights just how political rather than principled the fight against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has become. Conservatives aren't against the bill because of some deeply held conviction about individual liberty. They are against it because Democrats are for it. Just look at the similarities between the PPACA and the bill proposed by conservatives back in the Clinton days. To Republicans (and unfortunately many Democrats), politics is a zero-sum game. If Democrats proposed a bill supporting daylight, Republicans would immediately come out condemning the sun, proclaiming that it was a dangerous anti-American thing, and certainly not something our holy Founding Fathers supported.
This is no way for a government to tackle large, complex issues; but I suppose in a democracy we get the leaders we deserve.
UPDATE: The Onion makes the same point as only they can.
Here are two geeky videos I saw today that, frankly, kick ass.
First up, a nerdy girl wants a guy who understands her.
And a young boy tries to channel Darth Vader.
Here is part 1 of a series of videos designed to explain this arcane process.
Filibustery: Episode One from Newsbound on Vimeo.
Chris Hayes explains a theory.
An interesting idea which does seem to explain a lot. It also seems related to the idea that people are happier with less money as long as it's more than the people around them.
A doctor is busted for trying to help his patients with their pain.
Siobhan Reynolds entered this fray when her late ex-husband, Sean, began suffering the symptoms of a congenital connective tissue disorder that left him with debilitating pain in his joints. After trying a variety of treatments, he found relief in a high-dose drug therapy administered by Virginia pain specialist William Hurwitz. But Hurwitz was later charged and convicted on 16 counts of drug trafficking. The judge acknowledged that Hurwitz ran a legitimate practice and had likely saved and improved the lives of countless people. His crime was not recognizing that some of his patients were addicts and dealers. Meanwhile, Reynolds' husband died in 2006 of a cerebral brain hemorrhage, which she believes was the result of years of abnormally high blood pressure brought on by his pain.
Ezra Klein has a post up about how unemployment has been especially hard on older workers and offers up this graph.
This is one of the biggest reasons I'm skeptical of raising the retirement age for Social Security. I understand the logic behind it and I used to support it, but things like this have made me think it's not such a good idea. If we had a strong, vibrant economy and weren't biased against older workers, then it might not be a bad idea. As things stand now, though, I think raising the retirement age would not be the right thing to do.
Over on Facebook recently there was a bit of a discussion prompted by the posting of this video of a back and forth between Richard Dawkins, noted atheist, and Wendy Wright, creationist.
The question was asked, "Do you think evolutionists and creationists can reach a mutual understanding? By that I mean something that both sides can NOT polarize themselves over. Some sort of common ground." I decided that was worth a blog post so here I am.
In theory, I think they can (mostly); but, of course, that's the problem. "In theory" is great for...theory, but often stumbles when hitting reality. The problem seems to be that both sides view the other as a threat. Evolutionists think that creationists are leading people away from reason and science. Creationists think evolutionists are out to lead people away from God (at least their perspective of God, anyway). Naturally if one feels threatened, one is likely to lash out at whoever it is that is attacking.
I think that despite all of the heated rhetoric, there is less of a divide than most people imagine. That's because most of the time the people debating this point (like Dawkins and Wright) are on the extreme edges of the spectrum. Most people tend to be somewhere in the middle. Dawkins even makes reference to the Archbishop of Canterbury believing in evolution (and I'm pretty sure he believes in God).
Look at this data showing people's belief in creationism, evolution guided by God, or evolution without God. It shows over time that more and more people are shifting to believing in evolution being a tool of God. It also shows that people who have attended college are much more likely to believe in it. As our economy changes and more and more people get post-secondary education, this number will only grow larger. With more people finding themselves in the middle, there will likely be less vitriol on this topic.
That's not to say it will disappear completely. There will always be people who cherry pick the science they want to believe in. Who disputes gravity? Likewise, there will always be staunch evolutionists who can't accept belief in a God. There shouldn't need to be conflict over this. If people were more humble about their own knowledge and more respectful of other people's thoughts, then arguments over this wouldn't occur.
But that's not likely to happen anytime soon.
I am Jack's Complete Lack of Surprise that a new study shows that rich people have a lack of empathy.
The paper, published in October by the Association for Psychological Science, recounts three experiments conducted among students and employees of a large (unidentified) public university, some of whom had graduated from college and others who had not. In American social science, the definition of class is generally based on measures like income, occupational prestige and material wealth. In these experiments, class was determined either by educational level or by self-reported perceptions of family socioeconomic status.
In the first experiment, participants were asked to look at pictures of faces and indicate which emotions were being expressed. The more upper class the judges, the less able they were to accurately identify emotions in others.
In another experiment, upper-class participants had a harder time reading the emotions of strangers during simulated job interviews.
In the third one — an interesting twist of an experiment — people of greater socioeconomic status were asked to compare themselves to the wealthiest, most powerful Americans, thus diminishing their own relative stature. When asked to identify emotions by looking at 36 sets of emoting eyes, they did markedly better than their upper-class peers.
The ukulele is not on my list of "Things That Are Cool." However, I may have to rethink that after listening to a rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" played on one. Okay, the instrument still probably won't be on that list, but this version of BoRhap just might be eligible.
Note: the guy pictured above is not the guy playing BoRhap in the link. I just found this picture and thought it fit.
This is a fascinating map.
I'm curious how some of these were measured, though. Look at Ohio. It's the "Nerdiest state." How is that determined? And why is it a bad thing?
What about New Mexico being the most "anti-social." What were the metrics for that?
I must also say that I'm very proud of my home state, Montana, for being the worst in drunk driving. Way to go, guys! You earned it!
So, anyone out there who has seen some of these other films think they are better directed than Inception?
Adam Frank has a post over on NPR entitled "Life Is More Meaningful Than Mere Facts Can Convey."
There are many reasons human beings institutionalized their spiritual longing into religions. Those reasons often devolved into considerations of power, control and real estate. Those institutions certainly have needed to enforce creed and doctrine, i.e. "knowledge."
But the reasons individuals find their lives transformed by spiritual longing are intimate and deeply personal affairs having little to do with dusty "proofs for the existence of God." As all those "spiritual but not religious" folks popping up in surveys on religion will tell you, the essence of the question is about experience, not facts.
Along a similar vein, in the pro-science/anti-religion camps one often hears the quest for understanding the universe put in equally ultimate, quasi-theological terms. Finding the final theory, the Theory of Everything, is held up as a kind of moment "when the truth shall be revealed once and for all." While many practicing scientists might not see it this way, the scientific knowledge/enlightenment trope has been there in popular culture for a long time reaching all the back to Faust and up through movies like Pi.
I love Pandora. It's a site that allows you to build your own stations by starting with an artist or song you like. It then plays music similar to them and you can rate it with a thumbs down if you don't like it or a thumbs up if you do. This is great for tweaking a radio station for any genre of music or any mood.
Still, Pandora occasionally plays some odd songs. I've got a station I've dubbed Epic Metal which as the name suggests is for epic sounding heavy metal (mostly power and symphonic), think Nightwish, Edguy, Blind Guardian, Iced Earth, Symphony X, and Rhapsody of Fire. This stuff is mostly over the top with songs about adventures, fantastic quests, and so on. Cheesy, yes, but I love it.
So, imagine my surprise the other day when I'm listening to this station on my phone while I'm driving and this song comes on.
What the hell? I thought. There's nothing metal about that.I had to double-check the station to make sure it hadn't been changed on me somehow. It hadn't. The Pandora algorithm somehow thought this New Age soft song used on Pure Moods was an appropriate fit for my station of over the top metal (\m/). If I had been at my computer I would have clicked the "Why was this song chosen?" button, but that's not an option on the phone version. If I had to guess, I would say that it was chosen due to the orchestral elements which many songs on my station have as well as the strong vocal aesthetic which again is a common element of the songs on Epic Metal.
But it certainly was an odd selection and not the first time it's happened to me.
In my hometown, a lawyer is charged with misconduct - again - for having sexual relations with a client.
A complaint filed by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel on Jan. 12 alleges that Solomon Neuhardt violated the rules of conduct for lawyers by having a sexual relationship with a client in 2008 and 2009.
Neuhardt denies the allegations in the recent complaint.
Neuhardt's license to practice law in Montana was suspended for four months in October 2007 after he was found to have had a sexual relationship with a client in 2005.
[Neuhardt] said he has a “legion of satisfied current and former customers.”
