My conscience hath a thousand several tongues

Showing possible proof the my life is actually guided by the hand of fate, David brought up John Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience last night. I'd been meaning to blog about a recent posting by Glenn Greenwald over at his blog, "John Dean and Authoritarian Cultism - a Review" for a few days now, but forgot this is the same book he was talking about. Go read Glenn's post. It's written by a lawyer so it's got a lot of words in it, but it's very worthwhile. I'm going to have to pick this book up.

Dean's book is an analysis of the conservative movement, what drives it, and what attracts people to it.

Dean contends, and amply documents, that the "conservative" movement has become, at its core, an authoritarian movement composed of those with a psychological and emotional need to follow a strong authority figure which provides them a sense of moral clarity and a feeling of individual power, the absence of which creates fear and insecurity in the individuals who crave it. By definition, its followers' devotion to authority and the movement's own power is supreme, thereby overriding the consciences of its individual members and removing any intellectual and moral limits on what will be justified in defense of their movement.

I guess I've never really thought about things that way, but it makes sense. In reading this description, I was struck at how well it describes the evangelical Christian movement and why they are so attracted to authoritarian conservative political doctrine.

A major component of premillinenialist Christian doctrine is that, after the Rapture, after the post-Rapture Tribulations, Jesus will return to rule over the world as king. If you really stop and think about that, it's a remarkably medieval notion. Completely undemocratic. Positively un-American.

These Christians don't just look forward to the day that they will have an unquestionable ruler over them with absolute power, they long for it. It's a seductive doctrine, surrendering control over your life to an absolute ruler in which you have faith that he can do no wrong.

It's also an amazingly dangerous idea. It's not like people in our history haven't found what they thought was their Messiah, only to be proved frighteningly wrong. Seventy-six people died at Waco. Nearly a thousand people died at Jonestown.

Getting back to Greenwald's review of Dean's book, this is the part of this movement I think is so dangerous: (emphasis mine)

...those who submit to authority necessarily relinquish their own conscience (in favor of serving the conscience of their leader and/or their movement), those who are part of this movement are capable of acts which a healthy and normal conscience ought to preclude. They can use torture, break laws, wage unnecessary wars based on false pretenses, and attempt to destroy the reputation of plainly patriotic and honest Americans -- provided that they are convinced that doing so advances the interests of the authority they serve and the movement of which they are a part.

The most horrible of acts are never committed in the name of evil, but in the name of good. It is with that very sense of righteousness that we are able to hurt our fellow man so effectively. Any movement that swaddles its followers with that same righteousness is dangerous and one that can be twisted to do evil, even with the best of intentions.

How much more can we take?

This Modern World today is pretty good. Go read.

In looking for a link to that comic, I came across Tom Tomorrow's blog, where he points to a column in the New York Post that just floored me:

What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?

This is a column in a major American paper wondering if our best interests lie in committing something very akin to genocide. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth
thy little ones against the stones.

-- Psalm 137:9

David Letterman is gay!

David Letterman brought up Ann Coulter's recent accusations against Bill Clinton for being gay. Remember that Letterman has a child with a woman he's not married to. He must be gay, too, then.

In an interview this week on CNBC, conservative pundit Ann Coulter claimed that Bill Clinton is a homosexual. And while the former president admits he once told Coulter that he’s gay, it was simply a polite excuse to explain why he wasn't hitting on her bony ass. Bill Clinton, only gay when it comes to evil, crazy, bitches.

I've never done this before, but here's the clip from You Tube:

What would it take?

I've read on a few blogs (sorry, forget where) the idea that there is nothing a conservative can say that is so over-the-top, so vile, and so outrageous that it will get a conservative pundit kicked off the air. I'm starting to think that's true. Case in point: Ann Coulter

This week, Coulter suggested Bill Clinton was gay. Why? Because he was "promiscuous." So, it seems, having sex with a lot of women means ... you like dick. Setting aside that ludicrous idea, do you think we will see Coulter saying that Newt Gingrich is a screaming queen? After all, for five years, he was screwing an aide twenty-three years younger than himself while he was married to another woman.

It gets worse. Later, she called Al Gore a "fag." That's not my paraphrase. That's what the (arguably) number-one Republican pundit called a former Vice President of the United States on national television. A fag. Can you imagine the uproar if something similar happened to George H. W. Bush? Or if someone called Alberto Gonzalez a "spic?" The right-wing media machine would be calling for the deaths of whoever said it, as well as the deaths of those in charge of the network where it was said. Well, more than they do now, anyway.

This is, of course, the same woman that called the venerable Helen Thomas an "old Arab," and has called for the bombing of the New York Times building. And yet, she's still on the air.

I wonder if we'll be hearing her call Joe Lieberman a "midget kike," next.

Video of Coulter's fag joke and her outing of Clinton is at Crooks and Liars.

The amazing powers of the gay

Continuing the "How is religion different from a delusion" thread from the other week, comes this poll from WorldNutDaily. Apparently a number of Jewish rabbis are saying that the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict is a punishment from G-d because of the World Pride parade scheduled two weeks from now.

It's not like the Mideast hasn't been a pressure cooker for decades. It isn't as if there haven't been, oh, a few wars here and there or anything. It's not like there aren't a couple of wars going on right now in the Middle East. No, the rockets and bombings are the fault of the queers.

Such is the power of teh gay. Know it. Fear it. Wear Ultrasuede.

The nutty part is that the WorldNutDaily-ers go right along with it. Only 30% of them were willing to say in the poll that either the violence is not a punishment from above or that they did not know. The largest grouping, at 30%, said that the violence was definitely due to YHWH being in a pissy mood because of all the rainbows. For fuck's sake, what can you do with these people?

Actually, I think this could be a good thing. Demand money from local government or else we will schedule a Pride parade in your town, bringing down the Wrath of the Almighty™ upon you. We could make a killing.

(Via Pam's House Blend)

Identify this movie!

If I told you I was watching Corwin's Quest: Uncut tonight, what would you think: porn movie or Animal Planet special? Or do I just have a dirty mind?

Copywhich?

(I was originally just going to append this to my previous post, but I think it may wind up being longer than the original, so I'm giving it its own blog post.)

David left a comment below which makes some good points. I'm going to respond here rather than in the comments because I have better control over the formatting.

1. Unskippable ads

I'm only going on what I've read elsewhere here. The EFF has a legal response they presented to the Copyright Office that lists nineteen movies. The text says consumers were unable to "fast-forward" through the ads, but the title of the document is on "unskippable" material. So it's not clear if they mean the chapter skip function also doesn't work. Sixteen Candles apparently has such ads. This article at MyMac.com says the author purchased a DVD and was unable to fast-forward, chapter skip, or main-menu-jump past the four ads on it, but doesn't say what the title was. Finding Neverland apparently has an unskippable Pontiac commercial on it.

I've often wondered if the versions of all the DVDs out there are the same. Whether, say, the editions of a movie sold to Blockbuster for rental have more or different promotional material on them than the ones consumers can buy. That wouldn't be difficult; there are so many collector's editions, special editions, widescreen vs. 4:3 editions, that making another one for commercial applications would be trivially easy.

2. Ownership

I disagree that it's about ownership. Once I buy a DVD it's mine, for me to do with as I see fit. The studio retains no ownership over my DVD. What they do continue to hold is the copyright over it. But I think that if I want to burn the DVD to my hard drive, edit it, and watch an edited version, I should be allowed to do so. Similarly, if I want to tear annoying commercials out of a magazine I buy, cut recipes out of the newspaper, or even read a book backwards, I should be able to do so.

3. Our viewing of Showgirls

David says that our viewing of Showgirls was different than the CleanFlicks case because we wanted a "lighthearted" evening of entertainment. But then, I ask, why shouldn't a Mormon family be able to do the same (though I am loathe to agree with their decisions of what is acceptable)? We were only able to skip the rape scene because people had seen the movie before and knew it was coming up. What if we wouldn't want to have seen it in the first place? Or what if a parent has no problem with his kid seeing the boobs and splasheriffic sex, but thought that the violence of the rape scene was inappropriate for a 17-year-old? (Aside: considering our society's screwed up attitudes towards sex and violence, this seems to me to be a more sensible way of approaching these matters, rather than taking out the sex and leaving the violence.)

What bothers me about this ruling is not that it means fundamentalists will be making decisions for me about what I can and can not see, but that it actually reduces choice. There was no deception involved in the CleanFlicks case. Everyone renting one of these movies (if "renting" is even the right word) knew that they were getting edited movies with bits cut out. They chose to accept the judgment of CleanFlicks of what was and was not appropriate to cut out. But they went into the relationship with eyes wide open.

4. Copyright

The quote of copyright law is a good one. I always forget that part of the derivative works aspect of copyright law is to protect the reputation of the copyright holder. On that basis, the CleanFlicks decision is probably a good one. If anyone is going to edit a movie to take the naughty bits out, the studio should be the one allowed to do so. Which relates to the next point David brought up:

5. Artistic merit

I daresay that just about every movie CleanFlicks edited had already been edited by the studio to bring it down to standards so that it can be shown on TV. So the argument that editing these movies devalues the artistic integrity of the artist doesn't really hold. I don't even know how much input the director even has in such decisions. Two commenters in the second Slashdot article I think put it best:

I understand where the movie companies are coming from in terms of copyright... they don't want people taking a DVD, adding additional clips/features/menus/etc, and selling that for a profit. Then again, I don't really understand why they have an issue with that. They're getting just as much money from each DVD sale, so it's not like they're losing any business. In fact, they're probably gaining business from those people who wouldn't normally buy a certain movie due to violent/sexual/etc content, but will if they get an edited version of the movie.

As for the directors and producers that claim their artistic vision was impeded upon, they sure don't have an issue with those movies being modified in the exact same way for broadcast on network TV. One of the Slashdot posters says:

-- TheFlyingGoat

And another reminds us about this argument ultimately boils down to:

So if we are to argue that, if you bought something you have the legal right to do whatever you want to it (Fast Forward through commercials, play on a Linux box, rip to a hard drive), then you cannot allow Hollywood to start acquiring new rights for their so-called "artistic vision". Otherwise, you will find yourself unable to fast forward through scenes (or commercials) because that would violate the "artistic vision" of Hollywood.

-- Brian_Ellenberger

6. My ultimate point

The point that I'm basically trying to make is that the digital age has fundamentally changed the way that we view and consume media. (Cue mental image of Godzilla eating a library.) It makes things possible that have never been possible before, and makes things feasible that were uneconomical before. Take for example, the recent Internet fads of Google Video and YouTube. Of the twenty YouTube "top rated" videos right now, eighteen are obvious, flat-out copyright violations, one is so avant-garde I can't tell if it's a video or a seizure, and two might be original works. Google Video is a bit better, of the twelve videos they currently have listed as "Popular," five don't seem to be copyright violations, four almost certainly are, and I can't tell about three.

The media world is changing. We need to have a discussion about how our laws and customs will change alongside it. I am of the opinion that copyright law has changed beyond anything the founders of our country ever intended, and that, in some aspects, it no longer serves the public interest. But, unfortunately, that is a discussion that we as a society are not having. And that's the problem.

In looking up some of the links for this post, I came across this blog entry over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, where Scott Lemieux basically says the same thing that I'm trying to, only more succinctly.

Copywhat?

David blogs about the ruling against CleanFlicks, which deals with the legality of sanitizing movies without the blessing of the movie studio. He makes some good points. This was also discussed once on Slashdot, and again. I want to chime in here and explain why I think this ruling is wrong.

OK, maybe not why it's legally wrong, per se, but why it's bad. I'm not going to shed a tear for CleanFlicks. Seeing a self-righteous moralist get his comeuppance is always something that I take a perverse pleasure in (unless it's me). But this wasn't a case of CleanFlicks downloading a movie, editing it to take out the naughty bits, and selling thousands of copies. Rather, they are a Netflix-like service that loans you edited movies to watch. As I understand it, for every copy of a movie that they edited, they bought a legal copy of the movie. The studios weren't deprived of a dime. Piracy really isn't an issue here.

Rather, the whole issue is is about control. Who controls what we can watch, under what circumstances, and what choices we have regarding it.

You see, I've basically done the same thing that CleanFlicks did. When David, Jon, Billy and I saw Showgirls (and much fun was had by all), by general consensus of the group, we decided to skip over one unpleasant scene in the movie. Zip, we basically went by it as if it weren't there. David says, "If they don't want to watch [a movie] as it was released, then they shouldn't watch it at all." Except that's exactly what we did. If we didn't want to watch a movie with a violent rape scene in it, we didn't have to rent one, but we did, and we wanted to watch the movie without that scene. In this case, we were the self-righteous moralists.

There is of course the legal issue that CleanFlicks was a for-profit venture, and that there were copies being made. Nevertheless, I still think that this ruling is bad for consumers, because it allows someone other than me to decide what I may and may not watch. If, instead, we wanted to hire someone to hold the remote control and fast-forward through the unpleasant scenes in the movie, I suggest that would have been our right to do so, as well. There actually is a service that basically does that, albeit through technological means. It's called ClearPlay, and they, too are being sued by Hollywood. (The lawsuit may have been made moot by a 2005 law; I'm not sure.)

If you think fast-forwarding through a movie scene is different from a copy with the scene edited out, and that this will always be possible, you may be wrong. The next generation of DVRs may not be able to fast forward through commercials. Not because they can't, but because you will not be allowed to. Someone else will decide for you what you may and may not skip. It has also been suggested that digital TV users not be allowed to change channels during commercials.

DVDs already have this feature. Frankly, it pisses me off when I watch a DVD and have to sit through the "opinions expressed in the commentary on the disk are not the opinions of the idiot movie studio" warning, then the movie rating screen, then the FBI warning saying they'll come kill my family if I copy the movie, then the Interpol warning saying the same thing, and then the fucking Interpol warning in fucking French. All of these are unskippable. But maybe it's OK because those are legal warning? Well, no. I understand that Disney is fond of putting unskippable advertisements, sometimes ten to fifteen minutes long, in front of a DVD. How long until some studio decides that an obnoxious product placement should be unskippable?

Copyright started out as a way to ensure innovation in creative works. It is not a natural, innate right of a person. It is intended to ultimately benefit society, not the artist. It was limited in scope and in time. You were expected to live out the copyright on your works. Now, copyright has been extended to the point where an artist's children may not live long enough to see his work enter the public domain. It has not changed to keep up with the changing nature of our now-digital world. And I think that's to the detriment of us all.

Zing!

Oh wow, some writer at PlanetOut was really feeling his Wheaties this morning.

"God's Rottweiler" growls at same-sex marriage

Pope Benedict XVI lived up to his "Rottweiler" nickname this weekend when he chewed into same-sex marriage and Spain's Socialist government.

Like the tenacious dog breed he's been equated with, Benedict indicated that having sunk his teeth into Spain's newfound secularism, he's not about to loosen the bite...

He savaged marriage equality before even getting off his papal plane from Rome. Questioned on the role of same-sex marriage in society, the pope told reporters: "According to human nature, it is man and woman who are made for each other and to give humanity a future."

Critics have been swift to point out that an old man who's experienced neither relationships nor much life outside the church is unlikely to be the most qualified adviser on the subject of love and marriage. Regardless of this screaming anomaly, nearly 1.5 million devotees turned out to hear him.

Bitchy queens: 1, Man in a white dress with a funny hat: 0

No, seriously

1. Right-wing, pro-life nutjob finds the Onion.
2. Pro-life nutjob find Onion article, "I'm Totally Psyched About This Abortion!"
3. Pro-life nutjob blogs a response to the fictional author of the Onion piece, not realizing it's satire.

The scariest thing is these people are allowed to raise children.

(Via Curly Tales of War Pigs, via Pharyngula, via ... oh I give up.)

UPDATE: It gets even better.

UPDATE #2: ArchPundit points out in the comments that this guy just keeps digging himself a hole.

UPDATE #3: Bang, bang, bang; he just keeps going! Not only that, apparently, the whole thing was a "joke" from the get-go. I guess the stupid "intellectual left" just couldn't understand his vast , right-wing wit. Also, all the thousands of comments he's been getting for the past few days, from all over the country have now been purged from the site. No sign of them remains.

Snail-eriffic!

I have these little tiny snails in my aquarium. They came free with some of the plants, I think. Buy one red wendtii crypt, get ten million snails free! They're harmless, and may actually help to keep the tank clean, but I still pick them out when I can. I never really knew where they were all coming from until the other day. This explains it.

What makes a delusion?

I don't grok religion. I don't know why, it just slides right off my brain like it was non-stick coated. I don't mean I don't understand certain religious beliefs, I mean I don't understand why anyone has those beliefs. Generally, religious people have the religion they grew up with, which says to me that it's an emotional thing, a comfort thing. In other words, people believe and behave the way that they do because they are used to believing and behaving that way.

I think we can all agree that the Heaven's Gate cultists were nuts. They killed themselves so their souls could go to another planet on board a UFO that was hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, for crying out loud. But are the Raelians similarly nuts? The head of that religion believes a 25,000 year old alien named Yahweh communicated with him directly in an encounter he had with a UFO in 1973. The beliefs of the Raelians really aren't all that much more outlandish than the beliefs of Scientologists, with their beliefs in extraterrestrial past lives.

As of 1999, 47 % of Americans believed that the Antichrist was already walking the earth (a Jew, of course, according to Jerry Falwell) and 45% believe Jesus will return in their lifetimes. So, basically, half of all Americans think the end of the world is imminent. Are these beliefs really any different from what mainstream fundamentalist Christians believe? The Heaven's Gaters believed that their souls were rising up somewhere to be taken to an extraterrestrial paradise. Falwell's crowd thinks that they will be taken up into a supernatural paradise. What is different between the beliefs of the Gate-ists and the Rapture-ists? Is it just the ubiquitousness of their belief system?

Religion requires belief in shadowy, ill-defined worlds of things that can never seen, never be experienced. Things that aren't actually there. Some of these beliefs, apparently, are things to be respected; some are not. If my friend comes to me and says, "Dude, I totally saw a unicorn last week," I am expected to disbelieve him. If he says, "Dude, Jesus totally rose from the dead two thousand years ago," there are those that say that, if I do disbelieve him, I will be punished for all eternity. Yet, ultimately, why are these two things different? If anything, the latter case is worse. I can judge my friend's character based on how well I know him, and whether he has a tendency to say outrageous things, so I should be able to judge whether it is reasonable or not to believe that he actually did see a unicorn. When he talks of Jesus, he's just repeating something he was told by others. All religion is hearsay.

My sister is finishing up her psych rotation, and told me a story about a woman that is absolutely convinced the voices in her head will not stop unless she returns to the small town of her birth and marries the priest that baptized her. Obviously she belongs in the psych ward. But why don't the majority of Americans that believe in angels belong there right alongside of her? If I told you that there was a leprechaun in my garden, you'd lock me up. If I told you an angel had visited me in my garden, there are a lot of people that would sit down and politely ask what he had to say.

There's a lot more spinning in my head, but I'm going to end this now before I ramble on and bore you, gentle reader (too late). More later.

One is the loneliest number

There's an article in today's NY Times about how the social circles of Americans are shrinking to include family, a spouse, or sometimes no one at all. It says that about 25% of all Americans have no close confidants at all.

The article's pretty short, go read it; it won't take long. But I was interested to see this paragraph:

The study "should provide a wake-up call to our society," said Bill Maier, a vice president and psychologist in residence with Focus on the Family, the evangelical Christian group. "We're missing out on deep, meaningful interpersonal relationships."

Focus on the Family. One of the most virulently anti-gay, not to mention, anti-gay-marriage organizations out there. On one hand complaining about the fact that we aren't forming "deep, meaningful interpersonal relationships," but on the other hand, fighting against the ability of gay Americans to form healthy, stable, and long-term relationships.

There's something ironic in there, but I just can't quite put my finger on it.

Hey-na, hey-na, David's back!

The blogosphere shed a tear the day David decided to hang up his blogging ... um, beret? Whatever his choice of headgear, he has returned to this virtual Land of the Opinionated, and started blogging again. I give you: reportsfromtheedge.blogspot.com. (Note the new URL.)

I don't really know what to think of this

Angel Maturino Resendiz, aka the "Railroad Killer" was executed Tuesday. I didn't realize that until tonight.

Schadenfreude!

It's so wrong of me, but I couldn't help but chuckle.

Limbaugh Detained At Airport

West Palm Beach Sources have confirmed to CBS4 News that conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been detained at Palm Beach International Airport for the possible possession of illegal prescription drugs Monday evening.

Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when officials found the drugs, among them Viagra.

I wonder if this, too, is part of the "liberal Hollywood Jewish" conspiracy?

UPDATE: Matthew suggests that this whole incident is sad rather than amusing, and that hopefully Limbaugh will receive more help with his drug addiction problem.

OK, it looks like this was a legal, but possibly-unethically-mislabeled, prescription bottle of Viagra, so this discussion is fairly moot. He was briefly detained at the airport, then released and not charged with anything. That seems fairly reasonable to me for a known drug addict carrying a bottle of prescription medication apparently not prescribed to him.

But, unlike what Matt says, this has nothing to do with his drug addiction. Viagra is not an addictive drug, you can't use it to get high. So, saying that this would have been just another symptom of a disease he should get treatment for is innacurate. Had this been an illegal prescription, it would have been for entirely recreational purposes, not been his stash. Had he been caught with OxyContin, I would agree, this would have been a relapse.

All that being said, what does an unmarried conservative need with Viagra anyway? Surely not for premarital sex?

Can we use their talking points against them?

So, during the past week or so, when Republicans were calling John Murtha a coward, there were accusations of treason, and any discussion that didn't involve "staying the course" in Iraq was, by definition, "cutting and running", it turns out that the Republicans had a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq the whole time.

When Bush was first elected, it was sometimes said that he was going to run the country like our national CEO. I suppose that was to bring up his business background and make him sound actually competent. It never struck me as a good idea, what with him running every country company¹ he's ever been in charge of into the ground. Not to mention the charges of insider trading. But that's a discussion for another day.

My point is that, when you're a CEO, you don't run your company with your gut. You actually look at numbers. You make plans, set goals, and have targets. Why, then, is doing the same thing in Iraq "cutting and running?" No one ever suggested pulling all American troops out next Thursday. But saying that we should have a goal of having X numbers of Iraqis trained by the end of the year, so we can pull out Y number of troops is cowardice?

The Democrats should co-opt the Republican talking points on this one. No Democrat should mention the plan to pull these troops out of Iraq without accusing Bush of "cutting and running." I just doubt that's going to happen.

¹ Interesting typo, no? I swear it wasn't intentional. But it was so Freudian, I decided to leave it in place.

Who is watching?

Yahoo has a Reuters story about terrorist cells inside the United States: (not bothering to link because Yahoo news stories aren't permanent)

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities are discovering new home-grown cells of Islamist radicals in the United States that draw inspiration and moral support from al Qaeda, officials said on Tuesday.

Like local terrorism cells that have recently come to light in Canada and Europe, officials said the groups are comprised of disaffected young men in their teens and 20s who rely on the Internet to try to organize and plan potential attacks on the U.S. homeland.

A few months ago, when the warrantless wiretapping story broke, Republicans staunchly defended the program as necessary to defend us. There were numerous claims that baby-eating liberals "didn't want us to use all the weapons in our arsenal" against the terrorists.

What has never been entirely determined is whether there was a similar program in which the NSA was deliberately wiretapping the entirely domestic communications of US citizens. If there was such a legitimate, legal program (i.e. that complied with FISA), then great. But why couldn't a similar program be used in the case of what we now know were (are?) warrantless wiretapping? And if there was no such program domestically, I can think of only two possiblities:

1. Why was this administration oblivious to a threat in our midst that they had to know was at least feasible?
2. There was (is?) such a program, and it is grossly unconstitutional, and the administration knows it.

Surely I can't be the only one wondering about these questions.

Glenn Greenwald over at Unclaimed Territory is a lawyer that has been following this issue, and writing about it. He's calm, quite reasonable, and offers well-thought-out analysis.

Pharyngayla

Pharyngula has an interesting response to an interview with a biologist about homosexuality and evolution. There's a lot of discussion about where homosexuality comes from. I have my own ideas, and I'm sure we all do, but this bit I found particularly interesting:

Homosexuality is a byproduct. This is my favorite explanation, because ultimately it's about development. Why do men have nipples? Because women need them. Both men and women have the same set of genes (more or less), and follow very similar developmental pathways, and the nipple represents a developmental constraint or byproduct: mutations that knock out the male nipple might also knock out the female nipple, so the structure is retained in both sexes. Male nipples are a byproduct of a function needed by the other sex.

We might also ask, why do some men love other men? The answer: because women need to love men. (We could also propose the complement, that lesbians exist because men need to love women.) If there are pathways that can predispose an individual to find males sexually attractive, the base structure is present in both men and women, and what we have are additional mechanisms to modulate the expression of the trait in men vs. women. Just as we guys have an echo of a female attribute in our nipples, why not assume that we also bear echoes of female mate preferences in our brains—echoes that can't be expunged without also eliminating women's desire for men (and oh, no, we mustn't have that, I know)?

That is one way of looking at it that I had just never considered before.

PGP Key

This is the PGP public key I've generated for this blog's email address. Yes, I'm a big ol' nerd. It really surprises me that we all just send email around in plain text, viewable by anyone with access to a mail server used by the sender, recipient, or anyone in between. I'm not saying that emails should be encrypted to hide something nefarious, just that it's the electronic equivalent of putting your mail in an envelope.

I've switched to Thunderbird for most of my email needs. Enigmail is a Thunderbird plugin that makes encryption pretty hassle-free. It acts as a front end for GnuPG. There are fairly easy-to-follow instructions online for setting these up on Windows or on OS X.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) mQGiBESDLaIRBACMT14A0HQoqRdWW3fYcQLdeenMQfNPJ5gmj64ehzynG7Jwp7LN 2HfjZ6LC6D6gAaypzM6lRodBQE8mWyHSHLR8j+Lwimv0W7uA9ItbI5HdBREjohzN zf2R7rQYQny5NUrqk0v8FmqLoXajjp7oJ1FaZQmrRrhdoy7aHhq8wF0wAwCg3iTu Dep51sMdnAPEpnGydZ/Wjg8D/0Xc6AkcncSDhR/Scszvekc9WiAapKtatnvD9VAw ZUHa6RR9o9EroROAuwj5sWh6DfnczDSmkZPa6WS6bCJpD4Csr7YWTpAm7oL7Gvk3 FTFrEPXUO2FD6G0pBkvcoNuogeQjMqAVuLs+W9ZpGWH/zqIIKpq7uwr/hoXyFw+J zcObA/46aGdd1w3S10HbdWVGRzOGRvFIcIrDR3JkiITOwH8Ha+9fEWGcERgGs41C szhm+PmKpDjUem2T7I9iSkiW+p+nVB0TafnPK6ySCliVG/3pHWT12TDL9Sq1IQ+9 fWwjUaSkRpCDpIihd23QwK6gGF+ShCd6OaEyYpDPFheOobj2/bQaTmFyYyA8bmFy Y2libG9nQGdtYWlsLmNvbT6IZgQTEQIAJgUCRIMtogIbIwUJCWYBgAYLCQgHAwIE FQIIAwQWAgMBAh4BAheAAAoJEDb9po9JIW+EvycAoIAFQEapDsS2YOieq2rMYdIO R0KHAKDLCz3rfzt9olDUy1R4rOeDGIXxXLkCDQREgy2lEAgAhk5Rb9/QFKegRXNk x7JXIv/Be7DcphIg9FiOq9lANf1m5K9/SfdtToekmv7DOb/nLjxReQrc2k1hHcpB XyK9h6No0Ci/P6UPgSeg9EQwY5IKlp9xJm3eo7Xi1u+HZ4E0pMaReqvAFHa2NOhd B6RDMIPmw59JPeJl3mwr53CnEjs4JFFiJtYN7IvoP+uOJf28PSJscxhv5I71HqfT ZcQJbb6yjmPppKKly4nznF70N/4pn3PfZf/A7lZgBvQa36oY0LDUwhnmYM/oqKpd b4D50x7fbK19hIdrKEZWiN/RiMDSX1MEIX5NR6fJqz5iRIeD7tTqXszyQ1gSckXf i0TGKwADBQf7BHl349zuLBoFlibxDHjNs0XAUCHvuWPzNf/OFYro6qJEBKVLKalh RJZKZHQJjBaB3tMVZZ0hRNp7MXKrHhSAmvdLkIooc4x9juyvqNqYXsrhukMBBlhp XyYKOYQsF5hD9+uvig4wzIdyKlqdq56R+Bdc6I8Mitisq0yO4wt20LCfySiXlgEX 3PZDzwAJbM9fKzQrirHAFdniKo0CD7WusAiNuAIKqTO68E7LtGmj+kLrmbM6hfpM 6AMXCUTrK1kau009y22bAUXhKgYbISJrG2DVakgJQrReGKFsEsVy3SYdr2ZgDsim 3DPdYzkPYmJM+IdoG3Mx5h0nlBWG9jFR2ohPBBgRAgAPBQJEgy2lAhsMBQkJZgGA AAoJEDb9po9JIW+E9u8An0RnLB1lpN50b5hZC2pD5DYl5H9qAKCjB+ZgncuZ88z0 vRvah70S9Br9BA== =dhem -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

(This is probably a waste of time, since I think I've received something like three emails to this address, but I just think it's neat.

Kinda missing the point

Over at It's Matt's World, Matthew is upset that the Federal Marriage Amendment has again reared its ugly, spite-spewing head. Fortunately, not only did it not pass, but it is losing traction, even among Republicans. Today, he is surprised that "protecting" marriage will be a campaign issue this year.

I would suggest that he is missing the point. In a way, I don't think conservatives actually want the FMA to pass. Without periodic votes on it, you can't call your opponent anti-family or accuse him of being sympathetic to the homosexual agenda. This amendment is an excellent way for Republicans to distract the public from the war, and make it look like they are fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

This is an incredibly emotional issue. It's not something that is even being discussed in a rational way. Actually, it's not something that's being discussed at all. It's just a hail of buzzwords, soundbites, and talking points. All you hear about is "protecting marriage," but never any explanation of how gays getting marriage damages the institution. What, are we running low on our supply of marriage? Are we in danger of wartime marriage rationing?

No, but this is an issue that is fundamentally grounded in moral values religious doctrine. People like to be on the side of right and goodness. So much so, that they will often behave in ways contrary to their own well being in order to be there. I imagine that it's much like why people enlist in the military. Not because going to Iraq is particularly good for your health, but because you believe in the cause.

Gay marriage is a good way for Republicans to get their base energized. They can show how much they are defending "good, Christian values," which distracts people from their policies that are only in the best interest of the rich and powerful, like the estate tax repeal. People will sacrifice their own welfare to do what is "right."

So don't expect to see the gay marriage issue going away any time soon. The good news is that I don't expect the FMA to pass anytime soon, either.

(Blogger appears to be having a nervous breakdown today, so I'm going to try this post-by-email thing. Here's hoping it works.)

Lemons, garlic, and olive oil

No, this isn't a cooking-related post, although all the things in the title are great. I taped Frontline this week, and am about halfway through it. This four-hour, two-part series is titled "The Age of AIDS," and it's about the dawn of AIDS and its history up to now. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the entire program is available online in your favorite crappy streaming video format. Just as a side, note, this should be what the Internet is. An always-on, accessible-anywhere, comprehensive library.

Anyway, it's just amazing and simultaneously horrifying to realize that this disease has spread to seventy million people, but originated from a single event when it crossed over from apes to humans sometime in the 1930s. The oldest confirmed case of HIV infection dates back to 1959. It really makes you wonder what other nasty little bugs are waiting for us out there, or possibly are already circulating. I wonder if we will be able to cure those, or will religious nutjobs fight their treatment, saying that that would mean slutty women would not die in sufficient numbers from cervical cancer.

I remember back in the 80s, when people were very scared of this disease. There was so much misinformation spreading about the disease and how it was spread. That's probably not too unusual when it comes to things that people are irrationally afraid of.

People like to say that Reagan didn't even mention AIDS until 1987, but that's not strictly true. In 1985, after he was briefed that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact, he gave a press conference saying, in a very wishy-washy fashion, that he would not send his children to a school that had a student with AIDS. This was in response to a memo written by a White House lawyer that said:

There is much to commend the view that we should assume AIDS can be transmitted through casual or routine contact, as is true with many viruses, until it is demonstrated that it cannot be, and no scientist has said AIDS definitely cannot be so transmitted.

That lawyer is now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Coincidentally, the NY Times has two editorials today related to AIDS. One is about how the response to AIDS in the gay community has ultimately led to the current debate on gay marriage. (Today, by the way, in the midst of a war in Afghanistan, a worsening war in Iraq, the President will be focusing on barring same-sex marriage in the Constitution.) The other Times editorial is about how HIV-denialists are hampering efforts to treat and prevent the disease. How people can, in this day and age, deny that HIV causes AIDS simply baffles me. I guess that's "faith-based" medicine for you.

More leaks of classified information

Great. I haven't even recruited enough straight boys into the gay lifestyle deathstyle to get a dollar off my next rental at Blockbuster, let alone the toaster, and now Chris Perardi goes and reveals the entire goddamn homosexual agenda over on his blog.

Ruin it for the rest of us. Thanks a lot.

Free money

No, really, I'm not kidding. I use my Discover credit card for pretty much everything. It's easier than writing a check, and safer than carrying cash. As long as you pay the bill off every month, and electronic bill paying has made that easier than ever, there's no down side. Plus, you get cash back. For Discover, it's 0.25% on your first $1,500 of purchases a year ($4), then 0.5% on your next $1,500 ($8), then 1% after that. Hmm, I actually thought it was more than that.

I just found a much better deal. Chase has Cash Plus Rewards Visa program that offers 1% back on all your purchases, but 5% back on all grocery, drugstore, and gas purchases. It's four times better than Discover right out of the starting gate.

Say you spend $50 a week at the grocery store. With Discover, that means that you're getting back about $9 per year. Not a huge amount, but that's a couple of free movie rentals. With the Chase card, you're getting back $130 a year, which is nothing to laugh at. That means gas is thirteen cents cheaper a gallon. I've heard of people driving across town to save five cents per gallon.

Mind you, you'd better have the financial self-discipline to pay off the bill on time, in full, every month. If not, don't bother. Use cash.

UPDATE 2006-07-31: That link doesn't seem to be working anymore. Try this one instead.

You probably can't get these at Lenscrafters

These are some pretty cool glasses, if a bit on the freaky side.

Whence comes this xenophobia?

In the past few weeks, I've noticed a disturbing amount of what I can only call xenophobia in the press and in political chatter. I just don't understand where it's coming from, and why it's descending on our collective consciousness from all directions simultaneously.

For example, a few weeks ago, a mainstream conservative pundit referred to Muslims as "ragheads." The comment was greeted with wild applause. This wasn't on television on in a newspaper column. This was at one of those most significant conservative events of the year. I guess we'll be hearing "sand nigger" next.

Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, immigration has become a topic of immediate urgency. Not that it's something we need to rationally and reasonably deal with, but something that is suddenly so important, Bush it talking about mobilizing the National Guard and shipping them down to the border. (I guess after they return from Iraq, they don't have enough to do, like living their lives or returning to their jobs.) No one is talking about increasing the strength of the forces of the Border Patrol. The National Guard is to be federalized in times of national emergency, not political expediency. Where is this emergency? What's happening this month that wasn't happening last month, or every month for the previous few decades?

The influx of illegal immigrants to this country is increasingly becoming referred to as an "invasion" by those on the Right. Activating the National Guard is actually an appropriate response to an invasion. But I don't call people coming over to be hired by Americans to clean our toilets and pick our vegetables an actual invasion. Orcinus has an excellent analysis of this and how it's just a repetition of typical anti-immigrant hysteria, previously directed towards the Japanese and Chinese (i.e. the "Yellow Peril").

Don't think that this is about GWOT security, either. No one is talking about building a fence at our northern border. There are no Montana Minutemen. Remember that the Canadian border is the one that actual terrorists have actually crossed illegally.

Coincidentally (snort) Congress is voting on making English our national language. Not "official language," mind you, but "national language." Now, I think it's a good idea for immigrants to have a decent proficiency of English, but the resolution in front of Congress strikes me as mean-spirited, unnecessary, and ineffective.

I'll give you two guesses which language the use of which conservatives are objecting to. It ain't Sumerian. On FOX News a couple of weeks ago, John Gibson chided America, saying "we need to make more babies" so that the majority of the country isn't Hispanic in twenty-five years. "We" of course means "white people," not blondes with bad haircuts.

Rush Limbaugh recently said a letter written by Iran's president contained "liberal Hollywood Jewish people talking points." That's actually rather clever because it manages to conflate the current political bugaboo (Iran) and the traditional nemesis of the Republican party (the evil, liberal, baby-eating -- and now apparently Jewish -- Hollywood elites). Behead two birds with one stone, if you will.

None of this sort of behavior from the Right is new. It's been going on for quite some time. It just seems to be ratcheting up in intensity lately.

Private eyes are watching you

Now that we find out that the Bush administration has been building a database of every phone call made by every American, and possibly retaining the information in perpetuity, I can't help but wonder, what's next? Fortunately, Dubya says that in doing so, our privacy has been "fiercely protected." I'm sorry, but closely recording my communications is not "procecting my privacy" it's "invading my privacy."

So what is next? A lot of cars these days, and I think every car that GM makes from now on, has a GPS chip in it that can report the vehicle's location. A lot of cell phones have similar chips. Why not start tracking that, too? After all, now that the NSA program has been reported on by the treasonous liberal media, Al Queso is aware of the program, and will stop using the telephone. (At least that's the logic conservatives used when the warrantless surveillance program was revealed a few months ago.) They might stop using telephones all together, and start meeting in person. So we need to know where everyone in our country is at all times. You don't want the terrorists to win, do you?

Give me a valid reason

Gay marriage is in the air... Matt has had two recent blog entries about gay marriage and gay rights. It is interesting that the conservatives that showed up in the comments to oppose both these issues never really make a solid argument. There's a lot of vagueness, but never anything based in a solid, rational argument.

In this week's Advocate, there's an article about the scientific research studies going on about gay marriage now that it's been legalized in several countries, and in Massachusetts. From the article:

[Two researchers] found that legal recognition of same-sex marriage has an impact on public health. Countries the recognize same-sex couples have had lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. "When we asked couples how being married has affected their lives, a common answer was that it made them monogamous."

About another journal article, published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy, a peer-reviewed journal the Advocate article says:

It shows that in spite of their ability to create alternative family structures, gays and lesbians suffer hindered mental health and well-being as a result of being denied the right to marry.

So here we have actual evidence that denying gays their right to marry has actual and tangible harmful effect on their health and mental well-being. This is no longer an abstract argument about "values" and "lifestyles." This is about Republicans pushing policies that will actually harm people's health.

In light of this, the standard conservative anti-gay arguments are no longer adequate. I have never heard a Republican argument against gay rights that had a solid, logical, and rational basis. They're always vague and handwaving about "values" (thank you, but I'm a moral person in my own right) and "protecting marriage" (are we going to run out of it?).

So I'm asking for one. Tell me exactly what is so important that it is more important to deny gays the right to marry that is has to come at the expense of their physical well-being. No emotional arguments. No appeals to the Bible. No handwaving arguments. Spell it out for me, and use small words if you have to. Show me in specific and tangible ways that heterosexual marriage has actually been damaged in Massachusetts and Canada.

This is not just about gay marriage. Remember, that the Republican Party doesn't just want to restrict marriage rights to men and women (and only how they define the terms, mind you). The current state of affairs is only a temporary cease fire. Once they defeat gay marriage, they will start working to criminalize just being gay. Criminalizing sodomy was part of the Texas Republican party platform in 2004.

For when valid intelligence is a nuisance

Porter Goss, the head of the CIA, resigned unexpectedly this week. Reasons haven't been given, but the Washington Post printed speculation that it was because he was incompetent. Because, you know, this administration has been a stickler for putting competent people in charge of federal agencies.

So, who does he get replaced with? Probably Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency. I knew that name was familiar, and now I remember why. I guess it's not important to put someone at the head of a spy agency that understand trivalities like the constitutionality of spying on Americans.

Reuters also has an article up today saying that Republicans, oddly enough, may object to his nomination because they think putting a military general in charge of a civilian spying agency is probably not a good idea.

Just my thoughts on immigration

I have no particular insight into the immigration issue, but some things have occurred to me over the past few weeks, especially after all the protests earlier this week.

When did "illegal immigrants" become "undocumented workers?" It makes it sound like someone just lost their paperwork or they didn't fill out form WBM-625/2 properly.

When did there become "jobs that Americans won't do"? I think that's just code for "jobs that Americans won't do for $4 an hour and no health insurance." So much for the free market for being the solution to things. I guess we're as addicted to cheap Hispanic labor as we are to oil.

Conservatives are lately all up in arms about the National Anthem being sung in Spanish. Dubya has even said it should be sung only in English. I guess things were different back when he was on the campaign trail and was trying to court the Hispanic vote.

Dubya is also convinced that we need a "guest worker" program. In fact last year, he gave a speech describing it:

I propose a new temporary worker program that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs... This program will offer legal status, as temporary workers, to the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States... The legal status granted by this program will last three years and will be renewable -- but it will have an end.

So, in other words, he expects that illegal immigrants that have come to the country to work and live here permanently will up and register for a program that will make them leave after three years.

Except that we basically have that program already. It's the HB-1 visa. Dubya is just planning to extend it to unskilled labor and limit it to three years. Then, he claims, the immigrants that were happy to come here and live here illegally right now will just pack up and go home, rather than staying here and working here ... Illegally.

His program also expects American employers to look for American employees to do the job first, before going looking for immigrant labor. Yeah, because right now the reason that these businesses hire illegals is because they can't find Americans to do the work? I imagine that if Blockbuster paid what meat packing does, had the same hours and the same risk of injury, you'd see a lot more video clerks named Jose.

The notion of building a fence across the US-Mexico border also is getting a lot of play. Partly for illegal immigration reasons, partly for "security" reasons. I forget where, but one some other blog, the author pointed out that the number of immigrants that have entered over the Mexican border is zero. The number that have come here across the Canadian border is two.

One thing that does annoy me is people that go on about how this is a "nation of immigrants." That's bullshit. Yes, white people did immigrate to this country, and yes, our country is quite multi-cultural with all its creamy, melting-pot goodness. But I'm sorry, that doesn't mean we have a moral obligation to throw the borders open wide and say to anyone, "If you can get here, you can live here." At some point this became a sovereign nation, and we actually get to decide who lives here now. Unless, of course, this faction is suggesting we turn the entire country over to the American Indians.

This isn't to suggest I'm at all anti-immigrant. In fact, I think we should find some sort of legal status for people that immigrated here illegally, but have lived and worked here for years, put down roots in their community, and probably even have American children. I just think that all the proposals I'm hearing -- from both sides of the political spectrum -- are stupid.

Look up ahead: it's Jesus

(Wrote this on the last trip, but forgot to post it here.)

Driving out to St. Louis, one must pass that giant white cross in Effingham. It's astonishingly big. And white. And cross-shaped. It's not in front of any church or anything. It just sits there saying, "Hello, I'm a giant white cross. Wouldn't you like to try Jesus today?"

It turns out that, not only is that cross not unique, it's not even the largest of its kind. It turns out that, just outside Groom, Texas, there's another, even larger, one. If the Effingham one is tacky, this one is the grandaddy of tacky. This is the level of tack that glow-in-the-dark plastic Virgin Mary statues strive to be. If the higway billboard is to be believed, this is the largest such cross in the world.

At least the Effingham cross doesn't have -- and I kid you not -- a gift shop at the base. A place where, I suspect, you can buy all the Lost Behind books, replica crucifixion nails and Savior-flavored lollypops your little heart desires. If you told me there was literature there on how evolution was all a lie thought up by evil, liberal, university scientists, well, I wouldn't be one bit surprised.

I just don't see the purpose behind all this. I think I remember reading that the guy behind the crosses (they are done by the same person or organization or whatever) said they're so some truck driver driving along can see them and get a warm, fuzzy feeling, remembering that he's Saved.

I just don't buy that. I suspect that these (presumably conservative and evangelical) Christians really think unbelieviers will be driving by and have a Saul-to-Paul, blinding conversion experience. Basically, smack their foreheads and exclaim, "I could have had a Jesus!" It's very patronizing, really. But then again, the whole evangelical movement is pretty patronizing.

It seems unfathomable to these people that we Hellbound unbelieviers are that way, not because we've never heard the Good News, but because they don't believe it. They seem to think that all they have to do is tell a heathen that he is saved, he will see the light, and they will be responsible for rackinq up another point for God's side on the Holy Scoreboard.

Then he will need to spend lots at the gift shop.

What Robin Hood drank

I was cleaning out a lot of old Gourmet magazines off my shelf today, and thought of this. This is a recipe that I made long, long ago. I love the name of this drink, and the whole idea. The weird thing is that I can't find it anywhere on the web, or even at the Gourmet archives at epicurious.com. I can't really remember if it was any good or not. So without any further ado, I give you...

The Sherwood Forest Cocktail

0.5 cup water
2 whole cloves
6 juniper berries, crushed
zest of 1/2 lime
2 teaspoons honey
a 1-inch piece cinnamon stick
1 cup blackberries
0.25 cup light brown sugar
2.5 cups ice
a bottle of sparkling wine

In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil, and remove from heat. Add the cloves, juniper berries, zest, honey, and cinnamon stick, and let cool. Pour through a fine sieve into a blender, and add berries, sugar, ice and blend until smooth. Sieve again. (At this point, it can be put into the fridge for a few days.)

To serve, put 3 Tbsp. of the puree into a Champaign flute, and fill with the sparkling wine.

Goodbye...

It looks like, not only has the wise and maybe not-quite-all-knowing IL Pundit given up blogging, but his blog name has already been claimed by someone else. No clue what he or she is trying to do with it, though. So he is gone from the blogroll.

BNN

This is turning into your 24-hour Bambenek news blog.

Archpundit has jumped on the Bambenek creationism train, giving him a righteous smackdown in one of his latest entries.

AP picked up on it from That's News To Me!, who has also commented.

And here's the best part: In the News to Me comments, John wonders why people who disagree with him "hate America." Yeah, that's it. People who are pro-science hate this country. I know I'm not real fond of baseball, apple pie, or my Mom, either. The most ironic part is that this is the same Bambenek that was complaining about ad hominem attacks over at Squire's blog.

Someone should revoke Bambenek's invitation to the adult table.

UPDATE: The comments at Archpundit's post are amusing, too. But come on, AP, take the gloves off; tell us how you really feel.

It's all just fodder for the blog

After yesterday's post, my fingers ached and I just didn't want to hear the word "Bambenek" for a while. Perardi points out that there is a debate on gay marriage going on tonight (which I won't make because it starts in nineteen minutes) in which everyone's favorite conservative will taking part.

I hope it's better researched that his DI column on gay marriage this week. I just can't face going over his arguments yet again, but I'll point this out:

Marriage [without sex] becomes merely an economic relationship wherein the parties organize themselves for mutual financial benefit.

Sigh. For most of human history, that's what marriage has primarily been. Marriage for financial and political gain for oneself and one's family is the ages-old definition of "traditional" marriage. Marriage as an emotional relationship and commitment is a radical and recent change.

This week's exercise in futility

Local arch-conservative John Bambenek complained last week in his Daily Illini column that the university doesn't offer a course in intelligent design. Clearly, he says, this is because intelligent design is being stifled by closed-minded scientists who just won't give ID a fair shake and ban it “from the classroom with all the zealotry one would expect to find at a book burning." Squire, more on the ball that I am, caught this before I did, and responded to Bambenek's columnhere, here, here, and especially here. Bambenek stops by in the comments, but doesn't really make a coherent argument. His column drew one letter to the editor, then another one, and also sparked a post by another local blogger.

I’ve long been of the opinion that arguing with creationists is a waste of breath, since there is no refutation to their argument, no matter how correct, that will cause them to change their position. That’s because it’s based in emotion, not reason.

From some of the things I’ve seen Bambenek mention in his column and in other places, it seems he’s of the opinion that ID proponents have actual, scientific claims and theories that just aren’t getting considered by scientists. What he doesn’t know, or isn’t willing to admit, is that the entire Intelligent Design movement was invented by creationists -- not just to discredit evolution -- but to reframe science and the entire study of the natural world so that it is consistent with their view of God. Any discussion of ID is incomplete without understanding it. But for right now, I’m going to work under the assumption that Bambenek thinks ID proponents have some good, genuinely scientific ideas that aren’t getting the attention they deserve. His column is still wrong.

So, I’m going to turn the rest of this blog post to looking at what Bambenek wrote in his April 12 column:

Ward Churchill said in a recent appearance on Fox News that professors should be in the business of "challenging assumptions" and presenting "opposing points of view." He summed up what a university should be.

Right off the bat, a conservative invoking Ward Churchill immediately makes me wary. The guy is a bit of a kook, and is usually mentioned only by conservatives to paint liberals as anti-American.

In the intelligent design debate, we can clearly see that the University fails to live up to the ideal. Intelligent design is disregarded as "religious nonsense" and banned from the classroom with all the zealotry one would expect to find at a book burning. The charge? Challenging established orthodoxies.

Right there, Bambenek is wrong. Where has anyone suggested that intelligent design not be taught in schools because it "challenges established orthodoxies?" The problems with intelligent design are numerous and far-reaching, but the fact that it is unconventional is not one of them.

By denying intelligent design any space in the academy (at times with less than ethical means), they have declared that there are forbidden questions that may not be asked. The placement of restrictions on the question of how life began is the same behavior that fundamentalists visited upon science leading up to the Scopes Monkey Trial.

There's one accusation of unethical behavior on the part of scientists, but no explanation or description of what he's talking about. One thing he doesn't mention is the unethical behavior of evolution deniers, like lying about having a doctorate and cheating on your taxes. Note here that Bambenek is implying that evolution describes the "question of how life began."

Fundamentalists allowed no question of six-day Creationism. Decades later, the scientific community has returned the favor. They have come full circle and become what they hate.

Not content with simply ridiculing it out of the realm of inquiry, some have brought the force of law to bear with the ACLU. It is interesting to see the so-called defenders of liberty suggest that in order to protect freedom, free inquiry cannot be allowed. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. You know the drill.

I don't see anyone, including the ACLU, saying that research into intelligent design can't be allowed. There really isn't any, of course, but that's not the issue here. Bambenek's complaint in his column is that the university doesn't have a course teaching intelligent design. There's a significant difference between not allowing "free inquiry" and deciding what gets taught in a classroom to students. We don't have classes on theories that are incredibly controversial -- and that's a major understatement in this case -- regardless of the field of study.

The foes of intelligent design like to throw out the charge that it is not scientific. If by scientific you mean "capable of being confirmed or disproved by observation or experiment" then you would be correct. But you would also be stating that evolution as a theory of creation is not scientific. Evolution as a biological force is easily observed. Evolution as a theory of creation, however, is completely flaccid. The primordial soup theory is novel and interesting but, at best, it is a theory that fits the facts. It has never been observed or tested and cannot be. We have never seen life come from non-life. There is a strong metaphysical case to be made for that being the way it played out, but it's firmly in the realm of metaphysics, not science.

Again, Bambenek gets science fundamentally wrong. Science isn't always about direct observation. That would be great if it were always available. Sometimes, you have to infer your results from available data. That's how we know about things that haven't been directly observed, like the existence of the electron, continental drift, star formation, and the Revolutionary War.

I want to turn to Bambenek's criticism of "evolution as a theory of creation." Evolution says nothing about "creation." I'm going to assume good faith here, and assume Bambenek is simply confused about the distinction between evolution and abiogenesis. Evolution is the gradual change in species over time. Abiogenesis is the about the generation of life from non-living matter. Make no mistake, they are completely different things. Creationists like to conflate the two because abiogenesis is, admittedly, a lot more sketchy than evolution. Note, however, there is no course at the university on abiogenesis, as far as I can find.

I'm glad that Bambenek concedes that "evolution as a biological force" is easily observed. That's all that evolution is, the gradual change of one species to another. Unfortunately for his argument, that’s exactly what Intelligent Design denies! ID proponents especially hold to the belief that that Homo sapiens did not evolve from other life forms, but was created in its current state. All the Australopithecines and other Homo species have nothing to do with us biologically, they say. The whole point of intelligent design is that species are static, and growth and change are not possible.

They argue that evolution is scientifically complete and therefore, by exclusion, eliminates intelligent design. The irony is that while they use this argument, science itself doesn't believe that it has all the facts on evolution. With the discovery of tiktaalik roseae - essentially a fish with feet - last week, scientists lavished accolades on finding one of the "missing links."

Why celebrate an established fact? When I search for a burrito, I don't shout "Eureka!" when I cross the threshold of Dos Reales. The answer is simple - there are gaps and limitations in what we know about where we came from. That is why we're still searching.

Sigh. Why was the discovery of Tiktaalik so lauded? Creationists are always complaining that the fossil record is too incomplete to show evolution from one species to another. So this is one more piece of evidence that shows a chain of development from early species to now. Unfortunately, it's an old chestnut that creationists complain about missing links not connecting gaps between species, then when one is found, they then complain that there are now two gaps!

Furthermore, Tiktaalik isn’t just a cool fossil. Science isn't about just going into the lab and measuring a bunch of voltages, and writing a paper about what you found. The real, fundamental power of science is that we can make predictions about what we don't know based on what we do know. Tiktaalik wasn't just a fossil that someone found, it was a fossil that was predicted, and then found. Someone said, "Based on what we know about X and Y, there should be a Z out there somewhere." And then someone went out and found Z. Tiktaalik isn't just a "fish with feet," it's a clear link -- one of the "transitional forms" that creationists are always saying don't exist -- between fish and four-legged animals. (More on Tiktaalik at The Lancelet.)

If Bambenek lived in a world where fundamentalist Christians vehemently denied that Mexico and Mexican food existed and said that Mexican restaurants were just a figment of Ronald McDonald's imagination, he might just yell "Eureka" when finding a burrito. We are fortunate, however to live in a world that flows with queso and salsa.

The underlying conflict is just another battle of the same war fought in many different fields in the modern experience. The two camps can be summarized as "man is made in the image and likeness of God" and "God is made in the image and likeness of man."

Instead of trying to search out the truth free of presuppositions, science chooses arguments and theories that make the assumption that God must not exist. Anything challenging that assumption is labeled heresy and discarded, quite unscientifically. That's why theories that aliens brought life to Earth are O.K. while intelligent design is not.

Now Bambenek starts getting metaphysical. I'm tempted to ask if God has an appendix and if so, what's it for? And why does he need platelets? But I won't.

Science does not “choose argument and theories that make the assumption that God must not exist." What science does is choose explanations that make sense without needing to turn to those that require the existence of God. Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is likely to be the correct one; given two explanations, one that makes no claims about God, and one that does, the one that doesn’t say anything about God (but still adequately explains the data) is the one that we should use. When lightning strikes, we attribute it to well-understood electrostatics, not the righteous anger of the Lord.

Anyway, no one important seriously makes claims about panspermia that I'm aware of. Ironically, it's a valid theory, since it is theoretically testable. Imagine if (after inventing warp drive or something) we start visiting other planets, find life, and start measuring how similar it is to our own planet. Now, imagine measuring genetic drift, not between races and across continents, but between alien races and across star systems. It is something that would be testable. Intelligent design's concept of "Poof, let there be mankind..." well, I'm just not sure how you could test something like that.

Is there a class on intelligent design at the University? (I couldn't find one). If not, why not?

The intellectual mind is not served by denying any challenge to assumptions and rejecting opposing points of view without consideration. For those interested in learning more on intelligent design, please attend the talk on it at 7 p.m. on April 18 in the Lewis Lounge at Newman Hall.

Pity, I never noticed that bit about the talk until it was too late.

Actually, I assume that intelligent design is covered, at least briefly, in the many courses at the university that deal with evolution. It would be difficult to teach such a subject without at least mentioning it. It was covered in mine, and that was more than a few years ago. Just to give you an idea of the scale and importance of evolution, and how well-studied and fundamental it is to modern science, there are fourteen classes taught that deal with evolution in one form or another, and that's just in the Department of Animal Biology.

There isn't a class on intelligent design for the same reason there aren't classes in the Political Science department on World Politics and the Bible Codes, in the Economics department on Predicting the Stock Market through Astrology, or classes in the College of Medicine on The Flow of Qi Through the Human Body. We don't teach courses on things that are not accepted by the mainstream community. This is probably less true in the humanities, where it's harder to determine which things are "true" and which things aren't. But evolution isn't subjective like ethics or philosophy, it's actually a science. Why isn't Bambenek complaining about the lack of courses covering cold fusion or the hydrino?

I'm a grandfish!

My fish have had babies! From what I've read, platyfish often come from the fish store already pregnant. I assure you that, once they're here, they're always chaperoned when in the presence of fish of the opposite sex, so I know there certainly was nothing fishy going on in my tank.

Anyway, I now have two little baby fish. One is much bigger than the other; I figure they were born at different times. I'm not sure if they have the same mother, or if two have spawned at the same time. The bigger one is pretty much entirely orange and yellow in coloration at the moment. The smaller one is about the size of a grain of rice, and has the same black tail as the ones I got from Sailfin.

UPDATE: Just noticed a third, even tinier fish. Must be something in the water.

Getting my kicks

One thing I do like about traveling across the country is getting to see so much of it. Not just the geography (which is impressive in and of itself), but how different parts of the country are different; how they are the same.

Nevada has gambling. Lots of gambling. Gambling in an Arby's in a truckstop. Some of the casinos cater specifically to truckers, even. This isn't Las Vegas I'm talking about, either, but northern Nevada, like Reno and parts east. Hardly affluent areas. I couldn't help wondering if the gambling draws lots of money out of the local economy, or if those regions would be even worse off without it.

Avoiding the Sierras and their accompaning snowstorms means going south through Arizona, New Mexico, and some of Texas. That's the old Route 66. We're spoiled to the idea of the interstate highways, but it wasn't lonq ago that the idea of a single highway stretching from Chicago to Los Angeles was a new and significant undertaking. Only a few a decades before that, imagine being a trucker having to go all that way before such luxuries as well-maintained roads, radios, public bathrooms, air conditioned vehicles, and seat belts. Not too long before that, it was done by people in horse-drawn wagons. I'm glad I live now.

Two cents on immigration

... just not my two cents.

With all the immigration noise going on lately, it seems to me that this letter in the NY Times is the best and most succinct analysis I've seen:

The value of the illegal immigrant to our economy is his illegality. If you understand this fact, you understand the problem.

So long as he retains his illegal status, he can be paid less, denied health care and dismissed at will. This is what those corporations that employ undocumented workers value the most. And this is why a "guest worker" program will never succeed.

When today's illegals become tomorrow's federally recognized guest workers, the jig will be up. Because of their legitimate status, guest workers will have to be treated like human beings. This will not sit well with those employers who thrive on illegals today.

By adopting a "guest worker" program, we will be creating millions of legitimate workers, and those hard-pressed employers will be forced to seek out (and "invite" into our country) another illegal group willing to be paid less, denied health care and dismissed at will.

George Moss
Columbus, Ohio, April 10, 2006

"Forensic vagina inspectors"

This is positively chilling. The NY Times has a feature today, Pro-Life Nation, about abortion (or rather the lack of it) in El Salvador. The new South Dakota abortion law, subtitled "Let's see if we have enough Supreme Court judges under our belt to overturn Roe v. Wade," makes an exception for the life of the mother, but not for her health. It also doesn't criminalize getting an abortion, just providing one. El Salvador will put both the doctor and the woman in prison, possibly for up to 30 years. It not only makes no exception for the mother's health, but not even if the abortion is necessary to save her life. It's enshrined in Article I of their constitution.

Go read the article. It's an easy read, and it's important.

The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries where abortion is circumscribed — rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of the mother — don't apply in El Salvador... Abortion is now absolutely forbidden in every possible circumstance. No exceptions.

[El Salvador] has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women

The consequences for this are positively stunning. Not only does it mean that there is an active back-alley abortion trade, but women experiencing the inevitable complications are afraid to receive medical treatment because their doctors will report them to the police.

This insanity continues to the point where doctors can not even treat an ectopic pregnancy.

Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.

According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube... She described the hospital's practice. "Once we determine that they have an ectopic pregnancy, we make sure they stay in the hospital," she said. The women are sent to the dispensary, where they receive a daily ultrasound to check the fetus. "If it's dead, we can operate," she said. "Before that, we can't." If there is a persistent fetal heartbeat, then they have to wait for the fallopian tube to rupture.

I'm not upset at this because it's a peculiar law in an exotic country. I'm upset because this is what the Republican Party wants to turn our country into.

More traveling notes

• Rented a Jeep Grand Cherokee this time. Largest thing I've ever driven. Not overly comfortable. But at least I think there is now an oil well in Iraq that has my name on a little brass plaque in front of it.
• It has this GPS map system that guides you from place to place, much like having Google Maps or Mapquest constantly on. I could get used to something like this. Not sure how useful it would be in an area I was familliar with, but on a trip like this, where every place is new, it's quite useful.
• Fifteen miles to the gallon? Are you kidding me?
• $3.29 a gallon? Are youfucking kidding me?
• Berkeley: Fairly urban, crowded, and surprisingly dingy, especially a mile away from the campus. Not my first choice for someplace to live, especially at Bay Area prices.
• Last night I woke up and couldn't remember if I'd locked the car door or not. I hate that. I checked and, yes, it was unlocked. Fortunately I'd left the big, red "Steal Me" sign in the trunk. Now if only I could remember if I'd turned the coffee maker off before I left home...

Ugh, more traveling.

Back again. Sigh. The last for a while, I certainly hope.

But I came home to find a new, itty bitty fish in my tank. It looks like one of the plays had a baby. Possibly multiple babies. We won't discuss what happened to the little guy's brothers and sisters. Anyway, it's cute. Pictures coming soon. Does this mean I'm a grandfather or just a fish pimp?

UPDATE: Here is a photo of the baby.

Here's a prediction for ya

Matt notes that John McCain, probably in preparation for a 2008 Presidential run, is starting to pander to fundamentalist Christian voters. Frankly, I lost all respect for McCain after he started cozying up to the Bush II administration. This was after the Bush campaign, masterminded by Karl Rove,¹ ran a whisper campaign suggesting that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was the result of an interracial, adulterous affair he had with a black woman. I'm sorry; I realize that politics makes for strange bedfellows and all, but if anyone went after my family like that, they would be on my shit list never to get off it.

In the comments to Matt's post, prariebiker notes:

Giuliani is probably more electable than McCain. Most Rs are aware that McCain is merely a RINO² and there is a substantial amount of bad blood between him and the heavy donors who pulled all their support out from under him during the 2000 primary.

If Giuliani does get the nomination, then that will prove once and for all that the Republican claim to being the "moral values" party is just a load of bullshit. Gay rights and abortion have been the points that Republicans scream most vocally about. The many gay marriage initiatives on ballots in 2004 are probably what got the holier-than-thou Christian segement of the population fired up enough to come out and vote (and therefore vote for Bush) in 2004.

If Republicans abandon that part of their platform -- and mind you, from their point of view that now means condoning the murder of babies -- then they will be putting political expediency in front of their precious moral values. They will be proving themselves hypocrites.

Really, that's what the Republican party and the right-wing media machine are and have always been about: power. Getting power and maintaining power.

¹ That's speculation. The actual origin of the calls is and, barring some deathbed memoir, will always be unknown. But, come on, we all know who was behind it.

² Wow. If the anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-creationism McCain isn't a "real" Republican, Good Lord, who is?

I don't get Christians

On this last trip, I got to listen to the radio a lot. If I can get NPR (which is most anywhere), I'm pretty much content, since it's usually interesting, and they actually go into depth in their news stories. They also cover topics other than the latest missing pretty white woman. Then again, NPR is staffed with only America-hating, baby-eating liberals, not real people.

Occasionally, however, I channel surfed just to see what I could find. The two constants I could almost always get on the radio, no matter where I was, were NPR and some sort of Christian radio. I actually listened to the latter a bit now and then, feeling a bit like an anthropologist visiting an alien culture. I just don't get the need of people to have their believe so continuously and constantly reinforced. Is their faith really that weak? To have one segment of the media 24/7 focused on reminding me non-stop of just a single idea would bore me, frankly, and I don't understand why people listen to it. Are they afraid that they're going to forget that "Christ Jesus died for their sins"? Or that only by following the "right" rituals and by worshipping in this proscribed manner (no, not in that manner, that's a heresy) can they avoid the everlasting torture that they so richly deserve and that their God of infinite love will be more than happy to bring down upon them?

The notion that the Christian media is constanly pushing isn't a particuarly pleasant idea, either. To be continuously reminded that you are unspeakably loathsome, and that no matter how hard you try to be virtuous, you are still lower than the slime that grows in a polluted cesspool isn't all that nice. This satirical blog post pretty much sums it up perfectly: (via Pharyngula)

...by thinking those thoughts, you have chosen to be branded with hot metal and repeatedly, brutally sodomized. You have said, through your thoughts and actions, that you want to be chained down on a splintery rack, stretched, and shat upon by rabid livestock, while buzzards peck out your eyes. You said, "hey, mister. Would you mind putting me in an episode of twilight zone, where I slowly go into a psychological horror, despair and despondency, never to receive comfort from another human being? That would be great." Hey--that was you talking. Not me...

All you have to do is to agree with me, and your unforgiveable thought-crimes will be erased. Admit that your thoughts are vile, and that you are vile, and that you deserve to sit in a hot tub full of feces and vomit, and handed a large spoon, and you will escape the fate of someone peeling your skin off and forcing you into an iodone and lime juice shower.

It's a wonder that Christians have any self-esteem at all.

Maybe this isn't charitable of me. Maybe I'm making sweeping generalizations. But looking at it from my point of view as an outsider, this really is what Christianity, at its heart, seems to be.

I'm back ... but lazy

Details on the trip later

UPDATE: See below.

Isn't traveling fun?

So when the Nevada highway people saythat snow tires or chains are required, they really mean it. Going slow and in low gear really isn't an option. They will stop you and make you turn around. Now, if you're driving a rental car, snow tires are a bit problematic. (What to do, buy a set and then a new set of regular tires before returning the rental?) And then, when looking through the Nissan manual to find out exactly what tire chains actually are, only to find that the tires on the car are the wrong size to take tire chains... well, you can understand why I'm not in CA yet. And why I'm wondering how/if I'm going to get there at all.

UPDATE, 8:19: To make matters more fun, the interstate to the east is also closed. I can't go forward and I cant go backward. Excuse me while I go have a small nervous breakdown in my hotel room.

Travel notes

• It appears that Wisconsin has not yet discovered the joy of cellphones. Nor has most of Nevada.
• I'm amazed that is actually possible to make a cup of coffee taste like hot water.
• Surprisingly, McDonald's coffee isn't half bad.

Yay, traveling

I have to go out of town for a while, so there won't be much (i.e. any) posting while I'm gone.

Why Brokeback matters

Brokeback Mountain didn't win the Best Picture Oscar, and only came away with three of the eight for which it was nominated. Various bloggers have lamented the fact that the two main characters were played by straight actors, and that even the gay aspect of the film has been played down. Seriously, next time a Brokeback trailer comes on TV, just try to tell me that you could come away from that with an understanding of what the movie was about. (The online trailers seem to be less ambiguous.)

It bears asking, then, what two out, gay actors in Hollywood would be better to play Jake and Ennis? Chad Allen was probably off filming End of the Spear. Ian McKellan is too old for the part. Rupert Everett is too tall and too British. To be blunt, Nathan Lane or Harvey Fierstein really wouldn't be right for the part. Sean Hayes still won't talk. There just aren't many butch gay actors, and none with the decent name recognition that Ledger and Gyllenhaal bring with them.

Even though Brokeback didn't win Best Picture, it's probably the movie with the most buzz circling it. Yes, all the late night comedy show Brokeback-ing jokes probably didn't hurt. But there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Anyway, the biggest reason I think this movie is quite important, even in this day and age, is that I suspect there's a lot of Brokebacking going on. J.L King's book On the Down Low and stint on Oprah opened a whole can of worms about married, otherwise-"straight" men having sex with other men, then returning to their wives. If nothing else, Jim West's recent excapades have shown that the closet is alive and well even to this day. Dan Savage took West to task for being a very anti-gay Republican while still having sex with men in secret. The hypocrisy is, of course, reprehensible, but the closetedness is understandable. We don't yet live in an accepting, loving world and coming out is still an emotionally difficult and sometimes even physically dangerous act.

Dan Savage said in a New York Times editorial: (emphasis mine)

[Playing straight is] precisely what Jack and Ennis attempt to do in Brokeback Mountain... These gay cowboys try, as best they can, to quit one another. They marry women, start families. But their wives are crushed when they realize their husbands don't, and can't, ever really love them. "Brokeback Mountain" makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together...

If they don't think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren't actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?

Brokeback ends in the early 1980s, I think. Before AIDS, really. Before Matthew Shepard. Before that then-scandalous and now-ho-hum thirtysomething episode. Before anyone in rural Wyoming had ever heard of Stonewall, probably. Before Will and Grace, certainly.

I can't help but wonder how many real Jake and Ennis-es there have been. I wonder how many there still are now. And to any disapproving straight people that somehow find your way to my little blog, I must ask you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?

Oscars post-game wrapup

Just some thoughts.

• Yes, we know 2005 was a slow year for the movies. Please stop begging.
• Is this the first Oscar-winning song that contained the word "bitches?"
• I did not know that Sean Penn had a brother, let alone that he had died.
• Whenever the camera turns to people on these award shows, I always want to tell people, "You're not supposed to applaud yourself." Miss Manners would not approve.
• How cool is it that the Brokeback Mountain article at Wikipedia was updated only seconds after it won Best Adapted Screenplay?

A wikiwar

John Bambenek's article over at Wikipedia has been nominated for deletion. It's interesting to note that a number of those commenting on the deletion page (both for and against) are anons or virtually brand new editors.

UPDATE: Things did not go well for John.