Category: Random Thoughts

Remember Postcards from Africa? Well now “CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walking away from about $45 million a year in federal funding, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.”

I’ve written about Jose Padilla a number of times, but now that the verdict has come out, it is worth reading the Christian Science Monitor’s pre-sentencing thoughts and Andrew Sullivan’s initial observations, which he cautions are all he’s willing to say until he’s read some of the legal documents involved.

New research says fat is critical in a child’s diet, a fact which supports the story I pointed out last week about how “diet” foods aren’t good for kids. Elsewhere, we find that fat may not really be that bad for adults, either, when they eat it the way they would have eaten it tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe. The jury is still out on this one, and anecdotally, the fellow who went on the “all meat” diet described in the second page doesn’t seem to healthy to me, despite his claims that it was the broccoli he was forced to eat as a child that caused his problem.

It’s hard to seem like Joe Average common sense middle America while riding on Daddy’s yacht. He does look happy, though. You’d never know his approval ratings were so dismal. And you know, for an old guy, Bush 41 has some nice abs there. Maybe there’s something to not eating broccoli after all.

This isn’t following up on anything, really, but here’s OpenLeft’s First BlogPac Progressive Entrepreneurs Contest Winners. If you see something you are in a position to support, you will figure out what to do.

This week, judges have been hearing arguments on a lawsuit by AT&T customers against NSA warrantless wiretapping. I just love some of the comments and questions from the judges, including “Who decides whether something is a state secret or not?”, “What does ‘ultimate deference’ mean? Bow to it?”, and “Every ampersand, every comma is top-secret?”

Remember that US Attorney firing scandal? The one that Harriet Miers and later Karl Rove himself were ordered not to testify before Congress about? ABC News suspects it’s bigger than we now know.

As mortgage woes progress, we will see more Country Forclosures and City Forclosures.

Sometimes I don’t agree with Michael van der Galien, but when it comes to immigration we are on the same page:

This has nothing to do with racism, it is all about something called the Rule of Law. When people break the law they should be punished, it is that simple. One can migrate to America legally – if one chooses to move to America illegally it seems logical and fitting for one to be punished. Not only should the person who lives in America illegally be punished, those who make it possible for him or her to do so should be punished as well.

If there are roadblocks preventing hard-working, honest people from legally immigrating to this country, let’s fix it. But that’s not the issue; the issue is people who come here illegally and the people who hire them, also illegally.

I wonder why a law passed in 2005 was a CNN top story today? Hmm. They point out that “Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act,” but neglect to mention that they would also need a passport to get into a federal building such as a courthouse, Social Security office, or IRS office. You see, I think that’s more important than having a picnic in a national park, personally. “Chertoff said the Real ID program is essential to national security because there are presently 8,000 types of identification accepted to enter the United States,” but what does that have to do with the movements of American citizens? Since when are people presenting “baptismal certificates from small towns in Texas” to get into Yellowstone? Chertoff also told the states “There’s going to be an irreducible expense that falls on you, and that’s part of the shared responsibility,” or suck it up. They go on to mention that “Applicants must bring a photo ID, birth certificate, proof of Social Security number and proof of residence, and states must maintain and protect massive databases housing the information,” but neglect to mention that anybody who does not go by the name on their birth certificate would need documents to support their current name. That means the overwhelming majority of married women will have to bring their marriage certificates to the DMV. Thankfully they will not have to bring a male relative too. Speaking of the DMV, CNN also fails to mention that increased load for the DMV will almost certainly mean longer lines and more waiting. But I love most these paragraphs near the end:

But, [Bill] Walsh [senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation] said, “any state that’s refusing to implement this key recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, and whose state driver’s licenses are as a result used in another terrorist attack, should be held responsible.” [snip]

Chertoff said there would be repercussions for states choosing not to comply.

“This is not a mandate,” Chertoff said. “A state doesn’t have to do this, but if the state doesn’t have — at the end of the day, at the end of the deadline — Real ID-compliant licenses then the state cannot expect that those licenses will be accepted for federal purposes.”

Or, you don’t have to, but then your citizens are screwed, and if there is a terrorist attack it will be all your fault!

And one last thing, about the TSA program to identify Bad Guys based on what they do; I can proudly say my opinion has not changed.

If you are a human being, you have been in a relationship with another human being at some point in your life. Indeed, you are highly likely to have a relationship with another human being in the future.

You know people who are also human. Some of them are men; some of them are women. They also have relationships with other human beings.

And some of those relationships have something horribly wrong in them.

And that is why I am asking you to read this item on BlogHer entitled “Are you in an abusive relationship? How domestic violence touches us all.” Please, read it with an open mind, look at some of the links, and if you see anything that raises red flags in your life or the life of someone you know, read some more so you will know what to do.

That is all.

Oh wait, no, in closing 3 forces behind a market crash, economic blunders in post-Saddam Iraq, One Million Dead Iraqis in post-Saddam Iraq and counting, if we really have a shortage of tech workers how come wages for tech workers haven’t gone up? and finally, I kid you not, Extreme Ironing. Yes, that person carried an ironing board to the top of a semi-active volcano. To do some ironing. Some stuff you can’t make up.

Of all the places I could be this morning, there is one remarkable place I am not, and that would be Chicago, Illinois. That is remarkable on this particular day not because I happen to have been born there, but because it means I am not at BlogHer 2007. Theoretically I could, and maybe even should be there, giving a hug to the, oh, probably 3 people I actually know, and networking with moms who document public restrooms to twenty-something economists to people working for global issues impacting the quality of life for billions of people.

When you consider the fact that they didn’t exist 3 years ago, it is quite remarkable that they have 13,000 members. I am just one of them.

However, we have reached a point where there is no such thing as a slow news week. It would be very easy to have spent the whole week paying attention to nothing more than Gonzovision and the escalating tension between Congress and the Bush Administration over subpoenas and such. But if you did that you would have missed the Senate calling for universal internet filtering and the House actually passing a Farm Bill that the President will likely veto (along with the current version of the SCHIP renewal bill and anything else that means he doesn’t get exactly his way). You would have missed the President asking for an overhaul of the FISA statute that he can’t even be bothered to follow. And that’s just the news from Capitol Hill!

In other political news you would have missed an effective end to voters registration drives (so for goodness sake, why don’t you pick up a half dozen of those cards and make sure your friends are registered?), the Republican Presidential Candidates deciding they won’t debate on YouTube, this item on Purple America, and the World Can’t Wait campaign, Declare It Now: Wear Orange.

From economic news you would have missed the fact that wages are stagnant and the lowest job growth in 40 years, and I honestly don’t know why the Neo-Cons aren’t screaming about how Clinton’s numbers weren’t much better and blaming him for everything (with added bonus Hillary-smearing!). You also would have missed millions of people getting a raise, the only ray of sunshine in the last Iraq spending bill.

Speaking of Iraq, did you know that we’ve stopped gathering data on how much electricity per day they get in Baghdad? Just so you don’t forget, it’s a typical July day there, with a projected high of 116 F. That might have something to do with why “In Baghdad, the search for ice becomes a deadly struggle”. Oh, and we might be abusing the workers we imported to build the American Embassy, begging the question of why we aren’t hiring locals considering the current unemployment rate there. And to top it off, one of the Iraqi Vice President’s bodyguards was shot by an off-dute Blackwater operative.

Speaking of assassination, just when you thought we knew everything about Pat Tillman’s unfortunate death as a hero, no wait by friendly fire, more keeps coming. Friendly Fire doesn’t normally result in 3 bullets to the forehead.

From the world of science, we have a hospital reducing infections through the inexpensive and liberal application of common sense and even the Pope says that evolution probably happened! He did caution that didn’t mean God didn’t make evolution. Somehow that seems like a good middle ground that should be palatable to many Christians, even the not-Catholic kind.

Somehow through all this, CNN has time for Lindsay Lohan and Zsa Zsa Gabor’s naked husband. Go figure.

Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation with someone, when suddenly you realize that the person you are talking to has such a radically different viewpoint from yours that you don’t even know where to begin finding common ground? And such a disconnect is almost always concerning some subject where it is not so simple that you can say “Ok, well if that’s so, please explain this thing that doesn’t fit with your idea.” You may feel some stirring of disbelief that your companion feels that way, a moment of shock where you wonder if it is even worth continuing to talk about the issue at hand. You struggle for a way to express what is — to you anyway — the obvious.

But no, this is like two young adults arguing about which came first, the chicken or the egg, with one shouting about how clearly eggs evolved before chickens did because after all dinosaurs laid eggs, with the other insisting with equal fervor that God created all creatures including the chicken that laid the first egg. If one could reasonably prove the other wrong, it would have already happened. Each will talk about how the other’s theory is unproven, and the other will reply, and each will find flaws — real or imagined — in the other’s reasoning. As Tim Iacono said about a completely unrelated issue, “It’s easy to ignore [something] when it goes contrary to everything you want to believe, so that’s what we did.” The only possible end to this argument is stalemate, regardless of the merits or flaws of either position.

Today I offer two examples: one from the Halls of Academia and one from the core of Neo-Conservatism.

First, thanks to Ken DeRosa at D-Ed Reckoning for pointing out this item called “Read It and Weep: Why does Congress hate the one part of No Child Left Behind that works?” This lengthy but excellent article details the ongoing philosophical battle between two opposing reading pedagogy methods, “whole language” and “phonics.” One works for almost all kids, one only works for some kids (the ones whom, I personally suspect, are actually being taught with the other method at home by Mom and Dad), but to listen to the dueling research papers, you’d be hard pressed to tell which is which. Systems that stress phonics and comprehension and building new skills on a foundation of recently learned skills work. The evidence is strong enough that part of No Child Left Behind will give schools money to implement such systems, and schools that have taken the money have watched their test scores soar, with teachers and administrators exclaiming things like “We could see immediate results,” and “It’s exciting to be successful.”

But you’d never know that to listen to the whole language proponents. They deride the thing that actually works as “drill and kill,” and “cutting learning up into itty-bitty pieces,” and even “the factory model.” They claim to have research that says their system works as well, but every time someone knowledgeable digs into the research they find flaws. No amount of research on the other side will ever convince them that simply exposing kids to the written word will not teach them to read by some sort of literary osmosis. The losers in this war are of course the kids, many of whom never become good readers, and many of whom end up spending time with expensive tutoring and Kumon to learn what their first grade teacher should have taught them in the first place.

My other example is far more horrifying. A British journalist went on the National Review’s annual cruise. She listened attentively to people who were absolutely certain that Muslims were “breeding” and taking over Europe, anti-war liberals want nothing more than to demoralize America and thus should be executed for treason, Vietnam was only a failure because of the “Left”, there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq but they were moved to Syria, all non-whites are inferior so any discrimination they are victim to is deserved, Rumsfeld and Pinochet were both heroes, and of course the Middle East would run so much better if enlightened conservative Republicans controlled it (for the benefit of those poor inferior and Muslim non-whites currently there of course). Don’t miss page two, where Robert Bork is heard saying “The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You’d think we’re the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren’t covered. We’re doing an excellent job killing them.” Oh and scroll down for Norman Podhoretz on why things in Iraq are great and that the invasion of Iran can’t come soon enough.

These views, clearly held in sincerity by some, are foreign to my reality. People like these are why I look like a progressive leftist freak, when in fact I am moderate and my views generally in line with Joe and Jane Average — assuming of course that Joe and Jane have actually thought about the issues and not just gotten the soundbites from highly biased sources. In the places where I am a little more progressive, I can explain my views such that Joe and Jane at least know why I feel as I do even if they do not agree.

Is there any reasoning with these radical Neo-Con points of view? Any common ground? Are these views common, or just peculiar to the sort of hyper-conservative who has both the money and desire to go on a cruise with people like William Buckley?

In closing, Paul Krugman and Dan Agin and Robert Weissman on health care, particularly the “universal” kind; Cheney vs. Rice on Iran, and as Joe Gandelman points out, the article says the President and Vice President “did not trust any potential successors in the White House” and clearly believe they are the only ones who can safeguard America. Indeed, whither the middle ground?

Greetings from Nephi, UT, where I am connected via my cellular phone despite the fact that the Super 8 advertises “wireless high-speed internet.”

The cat says hello too.

First, a few observations: the Element holds an amazing amount of stuff but it is still finite; Washington roads kind of suck; and “conditioning shampoo” is an oxymoron as shampoo is designed to get stuff off of hair and the conditioner is designed to leave something on hair; last night we were in a town with a clearly growing local economy, yet there was still room next door to the K-Mart that was across the street from a Wal-Mart for a “$1 only” shop.

Tomorrow we should arrive in Fabulous Las Vegas.

There are two issues I would like to bring to your attention today. First, on the very same day that a White House spokesperson admited that as many as 5 million emails were “accidentally” lost — some of the very same emails that were not in the White House system to avoid scrutiny (and subpoena) — President Bush asked Congress to greatly expand domestic eavesdropping rules that have been in place since the Carter Administration. Because we can totally trust him, right?

Right?

Meanwhile, on the other coast, Google is buying internet advertiser DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion (that’s $3.1 Thousand Million). CNN says the “great irony” of this deal is that “Google is the 800-pound gorilla in online advertising.” No, the great irony of this deal is that Google’s official corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” and DoubleClick’s invasive web advertising is about as evil as you can get without actually writing a virus. This deal is fundamentally incompatible with Google’s professed worldview.

Unless of course their motto is a command to others rather than a guideline for themselves.

Most of this week, I will be in transit. As a result, I do not expect to have a lot of time for writing. If you need to contact me personally, I should be able to respond to email within 24 hours.

Yesterday’s news was a shooting on the campus of University of Washington. Here is the national coverage from CNN, and local coverage from both the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times. Both local versions of the story have links to related items that are worth seeing. Items like a copy of the protection order the young lady took out against her ex-boyfriend, a letter from the President of the University, and two warnings from two different columnists that a piece of paper can only do so much.

The nicest thing I can say about this man is that he had the courtesy to save the state the expense of a murder trial by ending his own life.

Here we are, less than 24 hours later, and instead of merely reporting breaking news, CNN is breaking news: a man killed a woman at CNN Center in what police euphemistically refer to as a “domestic situation.” That’s cop-speak for “beating the snot out of your spouse.” In the interest of balance, it is only fair to include coverage from the Seattle P-I, albeit a canned Associated Press story. I will be utterly shocked if there is not commentary in the Seattle Papers tomorrow comparing the incidents.

The gunman in this case was shot by a CNN security guard, and will surely go to trial assuming he is found competant to do so. I will leave aside for today the issue of armed security guards and their authority to shoot people.

Domestic violence is serious, serious stuff. There is no telling if or when it will get out of hand and become deadly. If you are in a relationship that is abusive, I am begging you right now to call 1-800-799-SAFE. If you know someone who you suspect is in an abusive relationship, you can click that link and find out what you can do to help. Everyone else, indulge me for another few paragraphs.

If you are not familiar with the work of Gavin De Becker, this is as good a time as any. You can find his book, The Gift of Fear at Amazon, most local bookstores, and most public libraries. Oh, and he’s got a sequel about terrorism. Some of the things I learned are :

1. Someone who won’t take “No” for an answer is trying to manipulate you. “No”, by the way, is a complete sentence that requires no further explanation.

2. Normal, sane people do not resort to violence until or unless it seems like the only rational course of action. Not all people are sane, however. And even sane people can be driven to violence by outrageous circumstance.

3. The only effective way to cut off contact with someone is to completely, utterly, without exception not respond to any of their attempts to contact you.

4. A restraining order — the traditional tool of The State to tell someone to leave you alone — often serves to enrage the recipient. Remember, if this person were normal, he or she would already know you don’t want anything to do with them.

5. If you find yourself in bad relationship after bad relationship, it is time to stop having relationships until you figure out what you are doing to inadvertently attract nutcases.

6. It is easier not to get involved with someone — on a personal level or a professional level — than it is to get rid of them. Screen potential employees, potential renters, potential business partners first.

This is no substitute for reading the book. Your take-away points may be very different from mine. I think it ought to be required reading for every school administrator and office manager. Frankly I’d like to see more high school and college kids reading it.

In closing: Bush threatens to veto any war funding bill that actually requires him to start finishing up, accusing Democrats of playing a “political dance” (yeah, it’s called doing what the voters sent them to do, look it up sometime); I suppose everyone has heard about McCain going to market with a hundred bodyguards and a few attack helicopters; great short film series at Hometown Baghdad; some scattered reports that we might have another war by the weekend; follow up on David Hicks, “If Hicks was such a menace, critics argue, why did he get just nine months?”; Condi won’t return Waxman’s phonecalls, but will she show up for hearings?; the Motley Fool brings us the end of retirement; turns out meat inspections have been a little lax since the Nixon administration (feel safer now?); and yet again the rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer.

Today, I turned on the TiVo to watch something, and noticed that there was a video by MC Lars in the main menu. I like MC Lars, and if you are unfamiliar with him, you really ought to go check him out. While you’re at it, look into Frontalot and Lady Sovereign. These folks and people like them are new voices in [hopefully soon-to-be] popular music.

Anyway, it is a video for MC Lars’s Download This Song. It is a catchy tune about the fundamental shifts taking place in the music industry whether the music industry likes it or not.

The funny part is that at the end, there was no way to — in fact — download that song.

Some time ago I wrote about the First Amendment and the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The third installment of my impromptu series on the Bill of Rights has been slowed by the fact that nobody knows what it says. This isn’t one of those Amendments that comes up in Supreme Court cases all the time; it’s not one the ACLU or the NRA has to rant about. In fact, this Amendment has worked so well I can’t imagine anyone wanting to violate it.

If you’d like the context, the whole Bill of Rights is right here, but the part we need says:

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Remember, this was important enough to guys like Jefferson and Madison that they stuck it right in there between the right to bear arms and the right to be secure in your own home. As the title says, it was a bigger deal back then. quartering of British troops in private homes was a big issue prior to and during the American Revolution, a British tradition of necessity, and in fact one of the grievances mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

It worked like this: Farmer Jones would open his door one day to find a British Officer informing him that two dozen men would be staying on his property for an indefinate period of time. Farmer Jones would be expected to make accomodations, feed them all their meals, and maybe even see to their laundry and entertainment until such time as the soldiers moved on. Woe be to Farmer Jones if he did not see to his guests properly, and woe to Farmer Jones’s daughters in any event (if Farmer or Mrs. Jones were clever and had any sort of warning, the girls might be sent away into the woods to fend for themselves — for their own protection).

This was a big enough and bad enough problem that it was worth writing not just a law, but a Constitutional guaranty that it would never happen in peacetime, and during war would require a special act of Congress.

In closing: help for those of you trying to lose weight this year; by way of follow-up I am not the only one who says software sucks, but Harvard is willing to say software sucks because of programmers; another follow-up, somebody is trying to do something about the problem of kids with no health insurance; a tidbit on the problems with eVoting in Florida points out that “Some observers have suggested that the 18,000 voters simply did not vote in the District 13 race; others claim the touch-screen ballots did not record the votes,” but the real problem is that without a paper trail we will never know which; rapists are the number one cause of rape, causing 100% of them; a quarter of start-up companies in the United States are started by people who weren’t born here; some friendly advice for the Democrats; and Wil Wheaton is mad about it and you should be too, once again the President has used a signing statement to undermine a bill as he makes it a law, and asserts his right to violate the Fourth Amendment while he is at it.

I remember the day well. We were looking through our selection of PlayStation 2 games when I noticed that the DragonBall Z video games were rated “T for Teen” but Tokyo Xtreme Racer was rated “E for Everyone.” In the former, cartoon characters from a TV show rated “Y7” fly around, do impossible martial arts moves on one another, and hit one another with energy blasts. In the latter, Junior can race a photo-realistic onscreen replica of Dad’s sports car.

Which game would you rather your 8 year old was playing?

Video games are rated by the ESRB. This organization has had its share of controversy over the years. I will leave these issues aside. For our discussion it is only important to know what the ratings are supposed to mean.

To begin with, please note that although there are a half dozen actual ratings, you are unlikely to have seen more than 3 of them. Yes, it turns out that in addition to Everyone, Teen, and Mature, we have Early Childhood, Everyone 10+, and Adults Only. How does E 10+ differ from Teen? To use our example above, what makes DragonBall Z somehow not “cartoon violence” under the E 10+ criteria?

This brings me to the next issue, that game makers clearly game the system to get a desired result. What makes Counter Strike, rated M, more violent than Battlefield 2, rated T? A little bit of splut, that’s all. And from my point of view, at least the Battlefield games encourage the use of individual and squad strategy. Neither game is appropriate for our theoretical 8 year old, above.

So when considering a video game for family play, the rating on the front of the box is useless. The hapless parent is still reduced to reading a parade of reviews, and hoping. And other ratings systems are no better. Disney managed to turn the rating for Pirates of the Carribean into an ad all by itself, by pointing out that the movie contains “intense sequences of adventure violence, including frightening images.” Well heck, that sounds better than what Rolling Stone had to say about the film! And what the heck is “adventure violence” anyway? Is it more violent than fantasy violence? Less violent than a typical football game? How does it compare to the evening news? Who is the marketing genius that came up with this nonsense?

In Short, ratings systems are not a substitute for research and rational thought. They are only slightly misleading signage.

In closing, more restrictions on carry-ons mean more checked luggage which in turn means more lost luggage (I know, duh); just when you thought it was safe to talk about politics Congress is back in session to decide little things like the budget for the fiscal year that started October 1; a funny if slightly sexist cartoon; information on weight training for women; and Rumsfeld, War Crimes, and “Universal Jurisdiction.”