Month: March 2010

CrimeChurch

As the Christian Holy Week progresses (and Passover ends), it becomes harder to ignore the fact that not all Men of God are in fact Holy.

Exhibit one is, of course the problem of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. While this was initially thought to be “a few bad apples,” it has become clear that this scandal is continuing to bloom and spread its scope like wildflower blossoms in springtime. Lately, you can’t go a week without learning of some new problem. Nor can we even safely say the problem is isolated to one country. As things stand, there is every indication that child molestation is epidemic if not endemic! The nice folks at Crooks and Liars helpfully sum it up as “Holy Crap.”

And what has the Church done about it? Have any Bishops said “Say 200 rosaries and turn yourself in to the police while I apologize to your congregation or school”? No! They’ve covered it up! The “infallible” Pope himself has dirty hands, and he would do well to remember what Jesus said about hurting little children. Because if he even half-way believes what he preaches, it’s coming. It’s coming for him, and all the molesters he enabled.

At what point should the entire thing be considered a criminal enterprise?

The apparent answer: when a “church” starts threatening to shoot people.

Oh, the media is careful not to call the Hutaree a church! If they did that, people would start to draw parallels between this and the Branch Davidians — Is your church approved by the BATF? They allegedly threatened police officers, and while nobody sane wishes any harm to our police (or other citizens), they had not actually done anything. Yet. Nevertheless, let us not forget two things: first, we aren’t calling them terrorists nor even terrorist sympathizers (they are white Christians, not brown Muslims); second, they are only accused of plotting murder, whereas the priests have actually harmed little children.

As wonderful as it is to prevent a tragedy, it is more fitting for our justice system to right wrongs that have actually occurred.

In Closing: Due process for detainees is not a pretty business; about time the President followed the Chief Justice’s hint and got some recess appointments in place; too big to put in jail? I bet Bernie Madoff could use company!; school lunches are a lifeline for many families (and it’s hard to pay attention to math and reading when your stomach grumbles), but there’s not really enough money to do the job right and some places don’t even seem to want it done right; the treaty that has to go; Wallstrington; because clearly a 15 year old girl is “confused” about how important it is to graduate high school?; killing bibliophiles; at least the government is set to make a profit somewhere; put some fear into the banks, enforce the law; “Welcome to the club of states who don’t turn their back on the sick and the poor“; state of financial emergency; and yes, let’s talk about ballot initiatives! Vote NO!

Just another day in Vegas

I took this picture yesterday from the third floor of the Clark County Courthouse, around noon. It was a beautiful day.

In Closing: “And the recess appointment power doesn’t work why?”; common sense; keeping their priorities straight; yeah, I think many of us would have bought the T-shirt; NY Times catches up to the end of private practice (they’re only about a decade late); now can we work on the unemployment problem?; and as much as I hate to even think about it, lessons from the Baby Sitter’s Club.

Paging Dr. Dynasaur!

For the benefit of younger readers: Back in the old days before cell phones, there were pagers. And before that, there was the overhead paging system. Not that many years ago, it was normal to hear things like “Dr. Jones to 4B nursing station, please” on the hospital public address system.

Ok. It’s law now. It looks like the health insurance reform bill that got passed and signed into law was neither as bad as it could be nor as good as it should be. There’s some benefits, and some stuff that’s absolutely odious. However, it is only a first step. At least two crucial things are missing.

First and probably most important is a non-profit health insurance option. The law, as it stands, requires us to all buy health insurance by 2014, which forces us to do business with the very same companies that got us into this mess. The best answer to this problem by far is Alan Grayson’s Medicare-For-Anybody bill, which has 80 co-sponsors so far (click here to sign the petition to demand a vote!). Howard Dean has even endorsed Rep. Grayson at least partly as a result. You remember Howard? The doctor who became a Governor and managed to get health insurance for almost every kid in his state despite the fact that they don’t vote? This bill is revenue neutral for the Government — it won’t raise the deficit a cent because it says the premiums will be set at what it costs to provide the insurance. Bringing this thing to a vote puts the opposition in a tough spot: if Medicare is good enough for Grandma, why isn’t it good enough for me?

The other thing it needs is a program I like to call MediKids. Regular readers have heard me beat this drum before, but we have a system where most health insurance is purchased by employers. And most kids don’t have employers. The existence of an automatic enrollment health insurance program for kids under 18 (and in my ideal dream world, any full time student under 25) would help almost every family in America. It would of course have a disproportionate effect on low income families that are likely to have inadequate insurance for themselves and their kids, if they have insurance at all. Moreover, by keeping our kids healthy, it would improve schools and the quality of our future workforce. Even if there were a modest premium associated with the program like there is for Vermont’s Dr. Dynasaur program, it would be worthwhile.

In Closing: Why aren’t you in school, you lazy bastards?; stupid banker tricks; three times more Chapter 7 than Chapter 13 bankruptcies; air worship is like air guitar for shrine visits (maybe the Catholics could try this? Then it doesn’t matter if the priest is a pedophile); as fast as financial reform made it through committee, I must wonder what political favors are embedded in it; and let Mr. Otis get you high. I mean, like to the 20th floor.

Shorties Row

Follow Up on Sexting Case: Remember a while back we learned about a Pennsylvania prosecutor who decided to prosecute girls whose pictures had been taken unless they submitted to a re-education class on what it means to be a girl? A judge has ruled that the parents have the right to block the prosecution. No ruling on the fundamental Constitutional issue of not letting anybody see the evidence.

Stick a fork in the airlines, they’re done: TSA official has gone on the record that full body scans will very likely become mandatory for airline passengers, despite the fact that the scanners don’t really do half of what they would like us to think they do towards deterring — let alone preventing — terrorism. That’s over and above the health and privacy issues. Heck, if they want to strip search everybody, just be honest about it.

In Memoriam: There will be a memorial garden in honor of the pets killed by tainted food. Scroll down for information and links on how to donate.

Why do we need Health Insurance Reform to stop this crap?: Fortis (and probably other insurers that just haven’t been caught yet) has been actively trying to find ways to cancel the policies of HIV positive customers. Stopping recission and punitive cancellation should be a simple, 3-5 page bill that should have unanimous support in both houses of Congress (or else), but no! They want to pass a monster-behemoth bill that nobody has read that’s loaded with oodles of political favors.

Hey Mister, Wanna Buy a Factory?: Factory utilization is near an all time low. This means we have lots of currently unused capacity. Pair that with the current unemployment rate and it sounds like an opportunity to make some stuff and get the economy going again. Maybe you could even get a piece of that new $38,000,000,000 jobs bill to do it.

Modest, by Billionaire Standards: Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, makes do in a 5000 square foot home.

Oh, you knew I couldn’t resist giving you some obligatory Health Insurance Reform items: Susie Madrak got to interview Michael Moore, and here’s part of what he had to say. Ok, the bill is supposed to cost roughly $940,000,000,000, but it’s supposed to save $1,300,000,000,000. Did the progressives win anything here? Enh, a little. This is why buying your abortion coverage separately is a terrible idea for every woman. Well, actually it’s only one of several reasons. And thankfully, Grayson’s Medicare-for-Anybody bill is up to 75 co-sponsors. I love the fact that it’s short, and politically difficult to stand against. It gives me hope that some things can be fixed with this turd in the punchbowl of a bill after it gets passed.

Where Health Care Meets the Scandal of the Day: Senator John Ensign’s office “organized a telephone call Wednesday night to thousands of Southern Nevadans represented by Rep. Dina Titus, where he spoke out against the pending health care reform bill and urged his audience to call her about it.” A local political scientist called the move “clumsy”. Rep. Titus, if you hadn’t guessed, is a Democrat, newly elected in 2008. Now, the interesting thing about this is that today, Senator Ensign got subpoenaed by the Department of Justice. Oh, and his wife. His Chief of Staff. His political advisor. A few local businesses. Probably the local power company. And a veritable “who’s who” of local political rainmakers. And they don’t just want stacks of documents, they want people to appear before the Grand Jury at the end of the month.

No Child Left Behind: What the heck went wrong? I mean, other than “better” as a standard, and rules designed to make even good schools fail.

You mean they want the banks to pay up? Crazy Talk!: It so happens that 82 of the roughly 700 banks that got TARP funds aren’t paying the dividends they owe the Feds.

And now, a moment of Spring: how to tell if last year’s seeds are still good.

Goodbye Kitty

If you have known me for a while, you probably know that I have been a Hello Kitty fan for a number of years. Alright, decades. I’m not one of those fanatics such as this man’s wife, but I do have some household Hello Kitty items, a few Hello Kitty T-Shirts, and yes just a little bit of Hello Kitty jewelry. There’s a little Hello Kitty hanging from my rear view mirror, along with a Starfleet Academy dogtag.  Ok, and yes, I have a Hello Kitty/Chococat tattoo. So something I enjoy doing when I happen to get to the mall is wander up to the Sanrio store. In fact, I was there yesterday afternoon.

Sanrio used to make its money selling cheap stuff like coin purses and pencils to schoolgirls. No more! The target demographic has grown up, and now you can purchase everything from baby towel sets to garnet pendants. I kid you not. I guess you don’t have to sell very many $3500 watches to be wildly profitable.

But has this backfired? The cute little handbag that I might have whim purchased for $20 was $80, a price at which it better be leather and not have a cartoon cat on it. As it turns out, that was a bargain; it would run me $120 plus shipping online. It’s just as well I didn’t even see the $500 Hanamo limited edition 35th anniversary commemorative handbag. Sorry, these are prices at which I’m just not buying. Have they priced themselves out of their core audience, or are they taking advantage of the fact that there are many women my age who are willing to shell out this kind of money?

I guess the economy can’t possibly be as bad as it seems if these products are actually selling. So then the question remains: at 35, is Hello Kitty having a midlife crisis, has she jumped the shark, or is she crazy like a fox?

In closing: American maternal mortality rates are appalling; imagine there’s no government; nearing retirement, and unemployed or underemployed; loan modifications delaying the inevitable; food stamps and obesity; Howard Dean and Karl Rove set to debate, live!; why don’t we use some stimulus funds to, you know, renovate crumbling infrastructure?; should police really be arresting people they think might be planning a crime, particularly without anything like a warrant?; Why “liberal” ideas die in Washington (ha, not many real liberals up there anyway, just a lot of “moderates” whose opponents paint them as liberal); Cheers and Jeers; the “Screw the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions at the Same Time Act of 2010“; and PC World officially doesn’t get the iPad. It doesn’t need any of that crap for business, because it’s not meant for business at all! Saying it needs alternative browsers to Safari is like saying the iPhone really ought to run Windows Mobile.

Twist the Facts

Yesterday morning, I wrote a post over at Age Against the Machine on British research showing that oral contraceptives reduce women’s risk of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Those happen to be the top two causes of death for American women, so it’s a big deal. And we aren’t talking about some teeny study, but over 46,000 women in a study that went on for 39 years. I think this is good news for the vast majority of women!

Yet I could not help but think that this news might not be welcomed by all. After all, there is a segment of our society that might think this encourages promiscuity. When I ran this past my partner, he thought that was just nuts.

But unfortunately, we live in a society where parents withhold vaccines that could someday save a woman’s life not because of safety concerns with the vaccine itself, but because they think she might think it’s ok to have sex (because good girls don’t like sex, good girls are never sexually assaulted, and good girls certainly never have cheating husbands). We live in a society where pharmacists who should know better are arbitrarily deciding not to dispense oral contraceptives because of “moral objections” and/or the mistaken belief that they can cause “abortion” of an embryo that has not implanted (never mind the other medical indications for oral contraceptives, and never mind that these pills prevent pregnancy rather than end it; arguably they prevent abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancy). We live in a society where the so-called-pro-life crowd thinks abortion causes breast cancer. We live in a society where some people value the lives of embryos more than the lives of full-grown adult women and their families.

So yes, I expect this study to be either ignored, mis-quoted, or mis-used by the Religious Right. They will focus on the small but unexplained increased risk of death by accident or violence — See? The Pill increases your risk of [violent] death! —  if they acknowledge the research at all.

Mere minutes after posting, I found this article at the Christian Science Monitor — hardly a “liberal media” source — with the headline “High divorce rates and teen pregnancy are worse in conservative states than liberal states.” It turns out that educated women and access to contraceptives lead to greater family stability and fewer unwed or teen mothers than “that old time religion.” Yet the Religious Right  has hamstrung both trends by getting the Feds to go along with “abstinence only” sex ed, which not only doesn’t work, fails to teach about contraceptives and disease control, and outright lies to children, but attempt to reinforce very outdated gender roles.

And then I read about how the Texas State Board of Education has decided to re-write history, decreeing what may and may not appear in textbooks. Sure, the Civil War was about “states rights” — specifically the right of states to say it’s ok to own other human beings! Sadly, Texas is a large enough textbook market that students around the country may be subjected to this ultra-conservative, highly Protestant, reinterpretation of reality.

You can say what you like about reality, but you can’t change it.

In Closing: 30! 30 bank failures this year, ah ha ha ha! (reference); fattiest fast foods; mortgage insurance providers say “sorry, we won’t cover this fraudulent claim“; obligatory health insurance reform items (notice I don’t call it health care reform, or worse yet HCR which always makes me think HRC instead) includes Go Grayson Go! Put them on the spot of either saying yes to a real public option, or going on the record as being against Medicare!; oh sure, let’s make it more complicated; what recovery?; Oh No! Obama’s Liberal base is “disengaged!” Could that be because they’ve kicked it in the butt at every opportunity?; most Americans think Wall Street needs better (i.e., more) regulation; for that matter, most Americans would like to see the Government make some progress on anything; don’t take the battery for granted; median wealth, $5; and Blog Against Theocracy weekend is coming.

They Don’t Like Baths

Complimentary water bottle, courtesy of the Cashman Cougars of Cashman Middle School.

In Closing: Anybody know where we can score 11 million jobs?; women need to stay the heck out of Utah; aw, poor banks may have to write down some “assets” to what they are worth!; obligatory health insurance reform would be incomplete without pointing out that Rep. Grayson has written a brilliant, 4 page law that would let anybody buy in to Medicare at cost — but only if they want to of course; “Today, Richard Nixon would be considered a flaming liberal. In Nixon’s day, Barack Obama would have passed as a typical conservative….” (my, how the labels have shifted since Archie Bunker’s day!); a picture worth a billion dollars words; poor effing babies; and finally, can everybody shut up about overpaid doctors now? That’s a load of crap! Now CNN tells us the obvious, that some nurses make more than your typical family practice doctor — the guy you actually need for your sore throats and blood pressure meds —  and I bet they have lower student loan debt too.

Bad Company 2

No, sorry, this isn’t about corporate malfeasance! This is (mostly) a guest post written by Warren Magnus. I’ve done a little editing, and my additions are in italics. I added all the links. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 came out Tuesday — that’s 2 days ago. He’s already finished the single player scenario. Let’s see what he has to say about it.

Our house is a little different. We have three avid video gamers and we play together regularly. We’re not talking Wii sports and party games like Rock Band either. We’re talking hard core online competitive first-person gaming. Our son has recently joined us in this and he’s an aggressive competitor in his own right. Most of all, though, we have fun playing. This is genre we know and love and we’re always ready for new and exciting games.

ShortWoman has written on games periodically and hailed the arrival of the highly cinematic single player games of the Modern Warfare series. These games are so good and so compelling that even after a fairly short single player game (6-8 hours) the full price of the game is realized. They play really, really well and network play keeps them fresh for months afterwards.

Last November Modern Warfare 2 arrived. The network play has been plagued by hacks and bugs just like most new software, but Infinity Ward has patched the game regularly and kept these from being a real problem.Even so, it would be nice to have something fresh. Enter DICE’s Battlefield Bad Company 2, a sequel in a long line of games that the ShortWoman and I have logged many hours playing.

Despite superficial graphical similarities, BC2 has exactly none of what makes a Call of Duty game compelling. The soundtrack echoes movies like Raider of the Lost Ark. That wouldn’t be bad, but the suspense music from Raiders every time a plot point is revealed gets old quickly. It’s like a giant banner reading “Look! Here’s something important! Pay attention!”

This game initially reviewed exceptionally well, but the rating has fallen to an 89 at Metacritic. Oops, it’s dropped to 83 since this morning. A quick look of gaming communities will reveal a lot of enthusiasm and dedication to this game especially amongst the PC gaming crowd. Don’t believe it. Part of their enthusiasm is for reasons other than gameplay or quality.

The single player campaign for Bad Company 2 was short and shockingly shallow. BC2 shows that DICE simply doesn’t get single player gaming; it just doesn’t provide the kind of immersive experience that both Modern Warfare chapters did. The game did take a few direct digs at Infinity Ward (the developer of Modern Warfare) in the game dialog but instead of being funny it felt forced.

Nearly every frame of the game felt like I had played it before and recently too. Spoilers below the fold for those that care. There was a whole lot of “Been there, done that, unlocked the achievement.”

Infinity Ward has been widely criticized for improbable or incomprehensible plots, but BC2 beats any Call of Duty game for that. The team in Bad Company ends the first game driving into the sunset with their truck full of gold ala the movie Three Kings (which was itself a remake of Kelly’s Heroes). This isn’t even mentioned and no explanation is given for how they are hijacked by Army special operations. What happened to the gold? Why isn’t the first scene with our protagonists somewhere in a South American villa with the Sarge sipping a fruity drink and asking exactly why they should agree to work with the United States Army at all, for any price?

The plot of BC2 hinges on discovery of a Japanese WWII vintage secret weapon that ends up being hijacked by a Russian agent and used against the US. The American spy that has coordinated the movements of Bad Company suddenly turns the weapon over to the Russians, a complete surprise because it comes with no real lead in and includes a non-sensical explanation. At least the Russian bad-guy kills the American spy immediately. That at least made sense!

The framing and dialog of the game creates an environment that just isn’t compelling or immersive. One only develops a passing interest in any of the characters thanks to shallow portrayals, inane dialog and game play that is almost completely on rails and feels it. Call of Duty games are just as linear, but through careful pacing and use of cinematics makes it feel the player has more freedom of motion than he really does.

One “feature” of Bad Company and Bad Company 2 is the Frostbite engine. This gives players enhanced graphics and for the lack of a better term, enhanced destruction. Almost anything can be blown up: people, trees, buildings, vehicles, those ubiquitous red barrels, just about everything beyond rocks and supply crates. For a while, this is incredibly cool in a “let’s see what we can destroy next” sort of way. And then you come to realize that almost anything you could possibly hide behind for cover can blow up, leaving you in the open. You can actually be killed by a building collapsing on you under tank or RPG fire. Nowhere is this feature/problem more obvious than multi-player mode; don’t be shocked to see that certain areas of the map have been reduced to rubble.

There are two small ways in which Bad Company 2 is at least an improvement over its prequel. First, your AI teammates are better shots and more likely to actually take out enemies instead of leaving you to kill absolutely everything. Oh, you’ll still do everything, you just won’t have to personally kill every tango. Second, the enemy’s bullets are slightly less protagonist-seeking. Slightly.

It’s not often that I feel truly short changed for what first run video games cost. I’m a careful buyer. BC2 is worth playing for those that rent games and maybe later when it’s a discount priced “greatest hit” but at full retail fare the value just isn’t there. Judging from the rapidly plunging Metacritic score, you just might be able to pick up a discount used copy at Game Stop by the end of the month.

Continue reading Bad Company 2

Economy Jigsaw Puzzle

Normally, you start a jigsaw puzzle with the edge pieces. However, that’s really hard on this one because the fallout of the dysfunctional banking system that resulted in many of our economic issues is in the process of bringing down a foreign nation: Greece.

Mr. Buffett is really good at these puzzles, so let’s let him have a go first. Oh look, he’s put together a housing recovery in 2011 (I think that’s assuming we actually get through all the foreclosures) and a slow recovery. He thinks that something has got to be done to punish the financial whiz kids who got us into this mess, and that our current system of paying for health care is a colossal drain on our economy. This is one of the two richest guys in the world and as nearly as I can tell he didn’t need to defraud anybody to get there, so just maybe we ought to listen to him.

Of course there are other parts of the puzzle that bring into question whether there is really a recovery, even a slow one. We’ve got millions of people who are unemployed, millions more who are “underemployed”, stagnant wages, and just enough inflation to mean the savings rate is going down. Those low interest rates — which were supposed to make businesses borrow money from banks who won’t lend it and renters buy houses they can’t afford (but that are actually tempting people with higher mortgage rates and underwater homes to walk away and buy something nicer and cheaper at a lower rate) — mean that there’s not much point in saving money. That hooks in with lousy consumer sentiment, the continuing (and at least partly bank-caused) bubble and subsequent crash of housing prices, and a trillion with a T dollars in lost economic growth. That’s a million million dollars. $1,000,000,000,000.

See? These puzzles are a lot easier when people work together!

Over by the bankers, brokers, and other financial whiz kids there’s these rumors of “reform” and “consumer financial protections.” Careful, though. If you don’t put that together just right, it’s worse than nothing.

Oh yeah, and in this corner over by underemployment, we unfortunately have government budget deficits. It doesn’t take a financial whiz kid to know that when income is stagnant, unemployment is up, underemployment is high, and not enough jobs are being created, that means tax revenues aren’t what they should be either. That in turn means bigger deficits, even without any sort of spending on economic stimulus. Senator McCain wants to cut that deficit just exactly the way Reagan did, which I suppose means he proposes higher deficits.

The nice people at Forbes think all those government workers need a pay cut. Now riddle me this, Batman: while I understand their sentiment, exactly how is cutting the pay of the guy who delivers my mail or the lady who processes my passport application going to help? That’s just going to exacerbate the “stagnant wages” problem. I feel certain that they can’t really mean cutting pay for high wage workers like our Congressmen and key people in the Executive branch; such a proposal would never make it out of committee. Besides, until campaigns become solely publicly funded, I think you can argue that all those people are underpaid. After all, every one of them spent more to get elected than they will ever make at the job itself!

Of course, state governments don’t have the option of deficit spending. That’s why Nevada is moving most employees to a 4 day workweek. The only way this works, of course, is to make all those offices like the DMV open only 4 days a week. Right, because nobody needs to get a drivers license or car registration on a Saturday, right? That way they aren’t spending money to light, heat, air condition, and clean those buildings all weekend. And I suppose it’s probably good for the environment that all those state workers will be sitting at home instead of getting on the freeway. Maybe they will spend some money on their extended weekends — assuming they aren’t deathly afraid of job cuts.

There’s still pieces missing. I’ll check the box and under the sofa. In the meantime, it’s a pretty ugly picture.

In Closing: How much scientific research is thwarted by harassment that borders on textbook definition terrorism?; the Chile quake actually tilted the Earth on its axis, such that the day is 1.26 milliseconds longer (funny how Pat Robertson isn’t dredging up some made up reason why Chile has a pact! with! Satan! that explains why they had an even bigger quake than Haiti); no **** ***** cuss free week at this **** **** blog!; man accused of selling outdated videogame systems to help a terrorist group; origin of the peace symbol; ok, ok, something on health insurance reform; happy daddies; and your overdue dose of Japanfilter, Cat Costumes. Oddly enough the cat doesn’t look unhappy, and the human has no obvious wounds.