Sorry

It's been quite a long time since I've had the time to update this site. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon so until I can actually find the time to read new material and find things worth sharing, I'm afraid that this will sit mostly as-is for a while

But don't think that this doesn't mean that I love you any less. :)

In the meantime, check out my linked sites and read your own stuff. Then share it with me, why don't ya?

Until then...

Science is thrilling – except in our schools

This article confirms a sore-point with me, that science isn't taught properly. Of course, neither is history or civics or a number of other topics. All of these are important and relevant to being an educated citizen of the world -- and by "educated" I mean minimally aware of how the world works so you can meaningfully participate in improving your community, your country, and the world.

I think that science, like math, gets an added dose of stultification because of its analytic nature. Instead of showing the creativity, the purity, the logic, the beauty; instead it's all about memorizing the periodic table and maybe some simple experiments. Sure we all need to learn how to *do* science but we all need some perspective of where this leads and why it's important.

Here's a great comparison:

It's as if art classes consisted solely of learning how to perform individual little brushstrokes, without ever stopping to look at a painting.

And if you think that science is only important for scientists, you definitely need to read this article.

Two-tiered Justice in America

See if you can guess if your tier has any insider ties that allow you to skirt the law. This Salon article nails the issue of retro-active immunity -- either for politicians or the corporate elite. Just because they get to make the laws does NOT mean that they can break them and then expect a pardon -- wink wink; nudge nudge.

What all of this is really about -- the reason why political elites like Nancy Soderberg are so eager to defend it -- is because they really do believe that lawbreaking isn't wrong, that it doesn't deserve punishment, when engaged in by them rather than by commoners. People who defend telecom immunity or who say that it's not a big deal are, by logical necessity, adopting this view: "Our highest political officials and largest corporations shouldn't face consequences when they break our laws as long as they claim it was for our own good." That's the destructive premise that lies at the heart of this deeply corrupt measure, the reason it matters so much. Just like the pardon of Nixon, the protection of Iran-contra criminals, and the commutation of Lewis Libby's sentence, this bill is yet another step in cementing a two-tiered system of justice in America where our highest political officials and connected elite can break our laws with impunity.

Before you vote McCain

I don't believe in "one issue" voting unless the candidates are close enough in other areas that they don't pose a significant concern for the fate of our nation but if this TruthOut article is telling the truth (and I don't have any reason to doubt that it is) then McCain's stance on healthcare reform ALONE should be enough to clearly demonstrate that he's not our man. Read the whole thing but here's a snip:

John-Care is a plan to get rid of the employer-based insurance that most of us rely on presently. Senator McCain would eliminate the tax deductibility of employer-provided insurance, in effect requiring employers who offer insurance to take money out of workers' paychecks for their tax liability on their health insurance. Needless to say, this will make dealing with insurers even less attractive to businesses. Most employers will soon get out of the health insurance business and leave it to workers to buy their own plan.

Hopefully back in business

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a month since my last post. Things have been too busy for me to read up on current events much less bring them to you [yes, I know that I'm assuming here that someone is actually reading this stuff -- let a man dream]. It seems that there's some light coming in even if this isn't quite the end of the tunnel so I'll try to leave a tasty morsel now and then. Hopefully, the sidebar content has been enough to make it worth checking in every now and then.

Bill Moyers -- on Democracy and Media Reform

This should be required reading for EVERY American, and really every human who cares about liberty an democracy. Here's the video if you're not big on that readin' thing.


The speech is choc-a-bloc with good quotes but here are some of my favorites:

You represent millions of Americans who see media consolidation as a corrosive social force. It robs them of their voice in public affairs, pollutes the political culture and turns the debate over profound issues into a shouting match of polarized views promulgated by partisan apologists who trivialize democracy while refusing to speak the truth about how our country is being plundered.

Whether employing professional journalists trained at prestigious universities or polemicists whose ignorance, arrogance and malevolence serve partisan agendas, our dominant media are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards whose mission is not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the whole body of our republic, but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders; organizations whose self-styled mandate is not holding public and private power accountable so that there is an equilibrium in society, but aggregating their interlocking interests; organizations whose reward comes not from helping fulfill the social compact embodied in the notion of “We, the people,” but from the manufacturing of news and information as profitable consumer commodities, rather than the means to empower morally responsible citizens

So what will happen to news in the future, as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely and as content programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package? Last year, the investment firm of Piper Jaffray predicted that much of the business model for new media would be just that kind of hybrid. They called it “communitainment.” “Communitainment.” O, George Orwell, where are you now that we need you?

“It is impossible not to wonder what will become of not just news but democracy itself, in a world in which we can no longer depend on newspapers to invest their unmatched resources and professional pride in helping the rest of us to learn, however imperfectly, what we need to know.” What we need to know.

For example, we needed to know the truth about Iraq. The truth could have spared that country from rack and ruin, saved thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and freed hundreds of billions of dollars for investment in the American economy and infrastructure. But as Knight Ridder reporters told us at the time, one of the few organizations that systematically and independently set out to challenge the claims of the administration, as the Knight Ridder reporters told us at the time, as my colleagues and I reported in our documentary on PBS, Buying the War, as Scott McClellan has now confessed, and as the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed just this week, the administration, with the complicity of the dominant media, conducted a political propaganda campaign using erroneous and misleading intelligence to deceive Americans into supporting an unprovoked war on another country, leading to a conflict that, instead of being over quickly and bloodlessly as predicted, continues to this day into its sixth year.

We now know that a neoconservative is an arsonist who sets the house on fire and six years later boasts that no one can put it out. You couldn’t find—you couldn’t find a more revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing ubiquitous presence on the air and in print of the very pundits and experts, self-selected message multipliers of a disastrous foreign policy, who got it all wrong in the first place.

As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses and broadcast outlets, news organizations are folded into entertainment divisions. The “news hole” in the print media shrinks to make room for ads, celebrities, nonsense and propaganda, and the news we need to know slips from sight.

When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people who have neither power nor privilege, you can no longer claim to have a representative government.

Global Food Crisis

This emerging global food crisis is only a shot across our bow of ongoing food and water shortages. If this gets worse it will make peak oil, pollution, and global warming seem like minor issues. Unfortunately, all of these items are interrelated and compounded by unsustainable population growth, over consumption by rich countries, and an unfair distribution of resources -- all of which are not being addressed by global leaders.

Given that 2.5 billion people subsist on less than $3 A DAY, they already spend the majority of their income on food. Many are already so malnourished that it causes health problems and death. Each year, some 3.5 million children lose their lives as a direct result of malnutrition. Around a third of all children in developing countries aged under five have their minds and bodies impaired by hunger. So any increase in food prices causes an immediate and significant increase in suffering and death.

This is not the behavior of an intelligent and moral species. We must make some radical changes. We can't just say that this is "their" problem. Everything is intertwined. This is an issue affecting the entire human race. It's *our* problem and we need to own it -- then we need to do something -- fast.

More here including some good video coverage. Thanks 1gm.

How Much DOUBT Do You Buy?

If you're like a typical American -- way more than you probably realize and certainly more than you should... and it's costing us lives. Here's a great Slate article on how science is being sidelined by a systematic attack of obfuscation and doubt explicitly intended to avoid us finding out the truth and taking steps to mitigate the massive detriment we experience and will experience as a result of such inaction.

This started in 1969 when tobacco companies started a spin campaign of monumental proportions trying to prove that there's no evidence to prove that cigarette smoking causes cancer. Their slogan became "doubt is our product." Now we all know that this is patently false but this was the position of big tobacco executives as recently as 10 years ago when they flatly lied to Congress along these very lines.

Sadly, they were very successful at delaying such action by about 30 years, generating enormous profits while the rest of us "waited for the final proof." Unfortunately, the average person doesn't have a workable definition of proof and this is use to the advantage of all sorts of charlatans. This wouldn't matter so much if they only wasted their own money on superstitions such as Astrology or Palm Reading.

Much to the detriment of the planet however, the same lack of reasoning is applied to important items involving world resources. Now the same tactics are used to sow doubt and keep us from progressing on critical issues such as global warming, stem cell research, pollution standards, genetic engineering and a whole host of technologic improvements that are stalled due to scare tactics by the current industries that are (understably) just myopically protecting their interests at our expense.

Now it's not just Evolution that is under attack for "not enough evidence" but there's a burgeoning cottage industry selling the latest conspiracy theory backed mostly by the notion that somehow we're being manipulated by "the man" -- when in fact (ironically), the manipulation is actually the conspiracy. Once we've been nullified by our own paranoia, we will then be unable to take any action against those at the top ripping off the other 99% of us. And when someone points out that we're being taken, well that's just one more conspiracy theory that gets lost in with thousands of others -- and it barely makes a ripple.

We need to bring back critical thinking and public dialog where experts can weigh-in and we can all participate. Remember, the balanced, well-reasoned and fair position is not necessarily equidistant from the extremes. Sometimes, one side is wrong, crazy or just plain stupid. Can you spot the difference? Not if you only listen to one side of the dialog. We all need to listen to rational opposing opinions and then make up our minds. First making up your mind and only then looking for substantiation of your preconceived notions doesn't create a reasoned opinion -- it creates an ideology!

Read the article.

Scott McClellan - this seems important

The inside scoop on how we were all deceived...

On the run-up to the Iraq War


Responds to critics


On Bush and the media

George W. Guilty of Murder?

The Great Journalism Meltdown

Sure we've all seen the lustre lost from professions once respected and now disdained: lawyer, politician, businessman and sometimes even policeman (given the many scandals). Those still (mostly) holding their head up high include school teachers, doctors and firefighters. But what about the fourth estate, probably the most important part of our democracy right after the Judicial branch? It was thought that laws are the backbone of our society and while the Supreme Court keeps the lawmakers honest from the top, it has traditionally been the journalists that keep them honest from the bottom, as it were -- in the daily fight to find the truth and then deliver it to the people.

"An informed citizenry is the bulwark of democracy" Thomas Jefferson

So let's take a look a recent study that shows how bad it's become for the press (near the bottom of the page). Not only has the esteem of the press dropped to the lowest of nearly all institutions, but the widely used excuse that "they are merely providing what the people want" is also shown to be without merit as most people (at least claim that they) don't like the way new is delivered.

Also of note in this same article is that the National Political Editor of The Washington Post , wrote a column acknowledging the extremely obvious truths about his "profession" -- that because they are obsessed with attracting traffic-generating links, they focus on empty trivialities at the expense of substantive news. As we've long noticed, everyone appears to be in a race to the bottom, landing somewhere between People magazine and the National Enquirer. How pathetic!

For an insider's opinion from a real journalist, everyone should read this scathing expose by David Halberstam on today's American press -- in stark contrast with his 2005 speech to Columbia School of Journalism grads on what a real journalist should be.

But now that Big Media is focused solely on the bottom line, they can be easily manipulated by anything that threatens their profit. So they fall back on cheap reporting methods, little fact checking, fewer investigative reports, appeasing big advertisers, and avoiding offending anyone by staying away from hard hitting stories -- because that has to offend someone -- too risky! Now they've neutered the news making it so bland that no one will complain, not the viewers, not the big companies ripping us who may stop advertising with them, and in the latest case they avoid asking difficult questions of our government fearing that they'll have their access removed. So instead, they have been indicted with the most flagrant abdication of their journalistic responsibilities -- and what does the news media say about it? Nothing; of course. That would make themselves look bad.

Even Bush's own Press Secretary mocks them for being weak, complicit little mouthpieces for government propaganda. Not only do they not even try to deny it, they don't even mention it! So to keep from losing even more viewers to the Internet, they can't even talk about what amounts to one of the biggest news stories of our time. And they call themselves newsmen? I hope that Walter Cronkite isn't watching this debacle as it will surely cause enough despair to send him to his grave.

I'm guessing that the big brass is pressuring them to sweep this under the rug and hope that it will go away. Sadly, it probably will get insufficient notice because we have been barraged with too many other scandals and we're all numb. But this one in particular is one of the worst. To know that we no longer have thousands of journalists throughout the globe looking out for the public good -- holding people accountable. Now who will do it?

Maybe other countries haven't turned their news people into craven pigs slurping at the trough of virtually all other businesses -- that of trading any integrity for a quick buck. The Internet is the last place where you can find news that isn't about the latest celebrity meltdown or some such other empty distraction.

So here's a chance for our "best and brightest" TV news anchors to tell it like it is. Unfortunately, it's obfuscated by some giggly reparte and then quickly gets pushed aside for some self-gratulatory pat on the backs about their fundraising efforts. Sad. This Salon article does a great job shredding this encounter and clearly demonstrates the difference between vapid TV news and substantive Internet news.

So Katie Couric gets it right arguing that the media did fail to do its job -- pointing out that the White House threatened networks which were perceived to be too critical with cutting off access to the war. But the two bobble-heads next to her, especially the painfully empty-headed Charlie Gibson insists that the media did a perfectly fine job and that he would do nothing different.

I suspect that we'll look back at this time and realize that these last few years were the beginning of the end of REAL journalism -- at least in the mainstream. Since now Big Media only cares about following the money, the only journalists with any integrity will be working for small shops or blogging on the Internet.

For now, I'll see if BBC news still offers any hope. But what will the American people do?

What harm belief?

Well, I'd say that we have enough problems just trying to rationally deal with real world problems using science and reason. I don't see how muddying the waters with superstitions or beliefs will help in any way whatsoever. Maybe it's just me.

Thankfully, I'm not alone.

McClellan Bombshell

Sure we all knew that his job was to lie to the World about the real machinations going on inside the White House. Apparently, after 3 years he couldn't take it. Now, even after being a Bush insider and friend for 7 years, he's written a book finally talking about what really happened. Wow, now that no one is putting words in his mouth he can say what propaganda driven lies we were told and likely are still being told by this Administration. No shocker there -- but from a Bush insider? That's a shocker.

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL - Honoring Veterans

Since it's Memorial Day, it's only fitting that we think about how we can best honor our veterans, both living and dead. Certainly the very least we can do is to care for them and their families as they face the hardships of returning from battle -- the battle we sent them to fight -- for us. Whether or not we believe in the cause, they have to fight it on our behalf -- even when they don't believe in it, they have to fight it!

So to stand behind the troops, these Americans putting their lives on the line, the very least we can do is to provide sufficient medical care, mental health facilities and possibly educational opportunities to better themselves upon their return -- at least, for those lucky enough to return. So why is that Walter Reed Medical Center is a cesspool? Why is it that we're not providing adequate post traumatic stress treatment when 20% of them need such care? Why is the VA trying to withhold funding to save the many who are attempting suicide upon their return? Why is it that the Republican party, who supposedly stands behind the troops, was behind the Walter Reed debacle and is now trying to vote down the G.I. Bill for veterans of the Iraq war? Is it because they are now suddenly fiscally conservative? After spending a Trillion dollars, BILLIONS of which are unaccounted for? Or is it because they just can't make any money off that decision because there are no corporate lobbyists offering them payola for our veterans? I'm pretty sure I know the answer.

What I'm not so clear on is how the Republicans neutered the formerly "straight-talking" McCain into being FOR torture but AGAINST the G.I. Bill. Wow -- that saddens me! He was able to withstand years of torture as a POW but threw away his principles in order to run for President. It makes me want to cry.

The great Bill Moyers has more to say on this very important day:

The (non)Change You Deserve

Geeks and Guinness

Sounds good to me! Apparently, Science Cafes are catching on in Europe and have started to be exported to America. According to one organizer:

'It's great, as you get to think about things you wouldn't normally talk about
in everyday life,' said 24-year-old Madeleine Milan, who works in
communications. 'It's all really relaxed and you don't feel intimidated about
challenging speakers' beliefs or scientific research. Science is becoming more
part of our lives, and I want to hear about it from the experts.'

These are popping up all over the world. Here's one in LA.

The $3,000,000,000,000 Shopping Spree!

See if you can think of a better way to spend $3 Trillion:

more here

Boy are we screwed!

Bill McKibben: Civilization's last chance

All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.

There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.

In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.

And suddenly the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. It appears that we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost, and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.

Speaking of right-wing group-think

Actually, "think" is a mistatement since it's more about not thinking and instead just parroting the Republican talking point dujour. It's disgusting that important political discussions have degenerated to propaganda pushed at the masses in 30-second commercials, sound bites and repetitive talking points. Where are we supposed to get any substantive discussions about these important issues?

As a result of this sad state, we do occasionally get the minor benefit of catching one of these boneheads sticking their foot in their mouth. I love seeing dumb people skewered, especially when they arrogantly deny this patently obvious fact. If they had any humility and were willing to discuss things they could salvage some respect. Sadly, this guy doesn't. He would rather just say the same thing in a loud voice hoping that this will pass for a rational argument. Read a book dude.

Too bad the old McCain isn't running

This new McCain is just a glad-handing, puppet of the Republican party who sadly has reversed himself so many times that the hypocrisy is sad to witness. I might have voted for the original McCain, the principled war veteran who was willing to speak his mind and challenge the status quo. This new guy has drunk the red Kool Aid and speaks only in the sound-bite groupspeak of the right-wing propagandists. Too bad.

Here's a recent example:
Exclusive Video: McCain Was For Talking To Hamas Before He Was Against It...

McCain 2008 -- A path to extinction

Yeah sure, I believe that Republicans are interested in the Environment and care about Global Warming -- youbetcha. That's why they've been systematically denying that there's anything wrong and throw under the bus anyone who says otherwise -- even in their own Administration. Yeah, they meet secretly with big oil and coal producers, don't fine the polluters and put Exxon in charge of our energy policy and, what the heck, let's toss in the national parks system. Them trees & mountains ain't making us enough money just sittin there being pretty! F#@$ them!

What's next, putting aligators in charge of babysitting? Let's hear what the Daily Show thinks:

Just when you think GW can't get any worse

He tops himself again not just with his typical lies, stupid comments, disregard for democracy, poor treatment of the military, or craven attempts to build & keep power at ALL costs. No, he does all this at the same time -- it's a quinfecta!

Here it is, two different ways -- so choose your medicine: Olbermann ...
(transcript here)


...or Stewart...

85% of Americans Want a Presidential Debate on Science

This makes sense -- not only because it's rational to look for answers to many of our current problems in healthcare, global warming, peak oil, food/water shortages, etc; but also I think because we've been so starved for any science from the current administration for the last 8 years. If anything, they've been anti-science. It's about time the pendulum swang back the other way -- let's just hope that it's not too late!

More on the Templeton Debate

I see that in my earlier post I neglected to link to the site. Here's some additional commentary, this time by renown skeptic, Michael Shermer:

"Religious faith and belief in God have equally adaptive evolutionary explanations. Religion is a social institution that evolved to reinforce group cohesion and moral behavior. Religion is an integral mechanism of human culture to encourage altruism, reciprocal altruism, and indirect altruism, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the social community. Believing in God provides an explanation for our universe, our world, and ourselves; it explains where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. God is also the ultimate enforcer of the rules, the final arbiter of moral dilemmas, and the pinnacle object of commitment.

But it is time to step out of our evolutionary heritage and our historical traditions and embrace science as the best tool ever devised for explaining how the world works, and to work together to create a social and political world that embraces moral principles and yet allows for natural human diversity to flourish. Religion cannot do the job because it has no systematic methods of explanation of the natural world, and no means of conflict resolution on moral issues when members of competing sects hold absolute beliefs that are mutually exclusive. Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our only hope for survival."

I wish I had said that.

The press is manipulated by the Pentagon -- and they *like it*

Wow, I thought it was bad enough that the press was secretly manipulated by the Pentagon and indirectly (constantly?) by this Administration. It's much worse than that. Not only is the press not angry, or not fighting back, they are trying to whitewash their complicity -- virtually guaranteeing that this will continue because they are too afraid (I guess) to even stand up for themselves -- 0r too interested in the money train. Wow -- it appears that the press has silenced itself. They've turned into willing puppets of the Executive Branch and their advertisers.

What happened to the Fourth Estate? Oh that's right, we allowed it to become a profit center for ever larger media conglomerates who not only don't care about the public, they don't care about the news! That is, unless they're trying to shovel their own personal agendas upon us and make us think that it's news (think Faux News). No wonder people don't watch TV anymore and are turning to the Internet. It's our last hope of knowing what's really going on.

Edwards Endorses Obama

Finally!

Did You Know - Shift Happens

I've commented on this before, so this time I'll let the content speak for itself:




Our kids are already living in a much different world that we are. Try to imagine what it will be like for their kids!

Fiona Apple - Criminal

Since I ran into Fiona Apple I thought I'd share this classic video. Good thing for her that I have this blog, eh?

50 Most Memorable Movie Cars

Kind of a fun list from Rotten Tomatoes.

The Adam Carolla Radio Show - enjoy

I always knew that this guy was funny, smart and entertaining. You can listen to the show live in the morning (good), download MP3 segments (better) or get the RSS feed (best). Here are some sample clips for your enjoyment:
This Week in Rage
Fighting Chicken-S Tickets

Mr. Fish

Why is it that humor can tell the truth better than anything?

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

This the third of the Templeton Foundation sponsored debates on the Big Questions. Steven Pinker, psychology professor at Harvard University, answers the above question most closely to how I would (were I a bit more eloquent):

Yes, if by "science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white lab coats. Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral?
Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.

Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a more abstract role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick simply replaces the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the equivalent puzzle "Where did God come from?" What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer to explain it all.

No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of natural selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how replication itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding creationist propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, including our DNA, the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth, and our own anatomy and physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished fur).

For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our brain. True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner experience—some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just an open scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a limitation of human cognition (like our inability to visualize four-dimensional space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with the word "soul" adds nothing to our understanding. People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a conscience. But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental faculty, such as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions work, why they evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain.

This leaves morality itself—the benchmarks that allow us to criticize and improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow sense cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's not just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide, slavery, rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that morality cannot be grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly?

Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no reason), I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat you, if I want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is logically consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no role in it.

For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete, and we are the better for it.

Ben Stein has lost it

Apparently, our favorite teacher from Ferris Bueller, Ben Stein, has gotten senile. I don't think that we need to actually watch his new movie Expelled, just listen to him being interviewed about this anti-Evolution, pro ID screed:

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Yeah, sure thing Ben. Before The Origin of Species was published, there weren't any massacres, pogroms, slavery, forced conversions or torture. Especially by people with religious beliefs.

Thanks Boing Boing.

The Supremes

Once again, Supreme Court Justice Scalia shows that he's a Supreme A-hole.

Scientology explained

In case you can't keep your Body Thetans straight from your Endgrams without a playbook, no worries Boston Legal can sum it up in 2:47.

Manufactroversy

What a great new term, manufactroversy:

1. A manufactured controversy that is motivated by profit or extreme ideology to intentionally create public confusion about an issue that is not in dispute.
2. Effort is often accompanied by imagined conspiracy theory and major marketing dollars involving fraud, deception and polemic rhetoric.

Although it's unfortunate that it had to be invented at all. This article shows how this wonderful concept weaves together the equally sad but otherwise seemingly disparate issues:

• global warming skepticism
• AIDS dissent in South Africa
• the intelligent design movement’s “teach the controversy” campaign including Ben Stein’s new misguided movie, Expelled
• the link showing that smoking tobacco causes cancer

And for those "open-minded" folks who are quick to remind us that there are always two sides to every argument... yes, we know there are; but please note that the truth is not equidistant from each extreme. Sometimes, one side is right and the other is just plain wrong.

AT&T willing to spy for NSA, MPAA, and RIAA

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070613-att-willing-to-spy-for-nsa-mpaa-and-riaa.html?bub

So if they can't win the net neutrality argument, they'll just start labeling certain technologies as "encouraging illegal piracy." They can then route this through their filters and effectively slow down and/or harrass users -- thus essentially creating a two-tiered system; one for those who pay and one for the rest of us.

So contact your congress-critters and tell them that they should tell businesses to keep their grubby paws off of the PUBLIC Internet. We shouldn't be treated as guilty until proven innocent. The only effective solution is social NOT technical. Otherwise this will turn into an arms race that cannot be won, just like the failed war on drugs -- the cost of which is greater than any positive outcome both in terms of money and lives ruined. Ah yes, but there's money to be made and that appears to be the only thing that matters to both businesses and politicians. We need to change this.

Some things just stay funny

I'm getting scared

...that politicians are willing to spout such bald-faced lies -- especially when we have documented facts to the contrary:

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080429_bush_passes_the_buck/

Once again, they think that they can rewrite history by repeating a lie long enough to make people believe it to be true. Unfortunately, this probably works only too well, considering how little actual real news most people see (or allow into their brains).

Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

A recent debate tackled this subject -- more info here. Here's how it starts:

If religion isn't the greatest threat to rationality and scientific progress, what is? Perhaps alcohol, or television, or addictive video games. But although each of these scourges - mixed blessings, in fact - has the power to overwhelm our best judgment and cloud our critical faculties, religion has a feature of that none of them can boast: it doesn't just disable, it honours the disability. People are revered for their capacity to live in a dream world, to shield their minds from factual knowledge and make the major decisions of their lives by consulting voices in their heads that they call forth by rituals designed to intoxicate them.

This imperviousness to reason is, I think, the property that we should most fear in religion. Other institutions or traditions may encourage a certain amount of irrationality - think of the wild abandon that is often appreciated in sports or art - but only religion demands it as a sacred duty.

It used to be the case that we tended to excuse drunk drivers when they crashed because they weren't entirely in control of their faculties at the time, but now we have wisely inverted that judgment, holding drunk drivers doubly culpable for putting themselves in that irresponsible position in the first place. It is high time we inverted the public attitude about religion as well, finding all socially destructive acts of religious passion shameful, not honourable, and holding those who abet them - the preachers and other apologists for religious zeal - as culpable as the bartenders and negligent hosts who usher dangerous drivers on to the highways. Our motto should be: Friends don't let friends steer their lives by religion.

37 Lessons to Help You Live a Life that Matters

Following on the earlier thread of "living a life that matters" here's a few items from the list at LifeOptimizer of 37 different ways to help you do something we should all strive for -- to matter more. Click the link to see them all.

• Discover what matters to you
• Have the courage to do what matters
• Don’t rely on others’ approval
• The real definition of success is a life and work that bring personal fulfillment and lasting relationships and makes a difference in the world
• Be sure you do what you love
• Check whether you’re on the right track
• Never retire from what you love
• Have integrity to do what matters to you
• Be yourself
• Have passion, determination, and skill
• Make a difference with your knowledge
• Earn opportunities through expertise
• Have the right attitude toward difficulties - "Having many difficulties perfects the being; having no difficulties ruins the being" (Lao Tzu).
• Make failure your friend
• Always make new mistakes
• Manage your weaknesses
• Earn your luck through focus and knowledge
• Have a prepared mind
• Have clear goals
• Think about your relationships as long term
• Align your intentions, words, and actions

In reading through these again, I'm pleased to see how many of these we stress in my Hwa Rang Do martial arts academy training our students to become strong, accountable, self-reliant individuals.

Pentagon secretly manipulates the press

Yesterday, the New York Times exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda. The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of "military analysts" to spread favorable views of the war via every major news channel -- without revealing they were working from Pentagon scripts and often lobbying for major military contractors.

Spreading "covert propaganda" is illegal under federal law.

The more than 75 analysts exposed by the New York Times have become fixtures of war coverage on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. The front-page article reveals the many ways that the Pentagon fed them pro-war talking points and misinformation. The White House even has a name for these covert propagandists: “message force multipliers.”

The pundits trade on their access to the media and the White House to secure high-paying jobs as lobbyists, consultants and contractors -- vying for hundreds of billions of dollars in military business generated by the war.

An administration secretly forcing favorable views via the press is not a partisan issue. This is a violation of every conceivable standard of journalism -- and possibly of federal law.

Free (your) Culture

I've started reading Free Culture, by the great Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, and have already decided that this material shouldn't just be read by everyone but it should be part of a mandatory course taught to all high school students. I haven't decided what to call it but it should include all the topics that are key to maximizing personal freedom -- basically, to see that you're being ripped off and how to stand up for your rights. Things like understanding the importance of civics, freedoms (as in 1st Amendment), right to privacy, protecting our secular democracy, balance of power, stopping the corporate rip-off of the public for private gain.

This is becoming more and more important as various powerful factions are gutting our freedom for the sake of profit and control -- from the government removing habeus corpus and politicizing the judicial branch to the multinational corporations that neuter our ability to get unfiltered news or even decimate the environment. An uninformed citizenry will not be able to sustain democracy. As it is, we are rapidly becoming a plutocracy.

So back to Free Culture, which I just started now that I finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy -- also recommended, by the way.

You can get your own Creative Commons copy of Free Culture in various formats including PDF, HTML and others. Here's a little blurb:

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology And The Law To Lock Down Culture And Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig. Site for the book is here, Lessig's site is here. Lessig is the one who argued (unsuccessfully, alas!) the Eldred v. Ashcroft case before the US Supreme Court, the case being about the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This book includes a detailed account about that in chapters 13 & 14, but in general is a great primer on all the things wrong with the system today, how it got there, and what we can do about it. Lessig walks the talk and puts his money where his mouth is: the book was published under a Creative Commons License.

Get it now, while it's still free -- and so is your culture, although less and less so!

South Park now online?

This clip is hilarious -- if you're enough of an Internet geek like me to know who these characters are.

Amazingly, this site also lists full episodes for every season but it's not quite working (on my PC). The site does say that it's still in beta so maybe....

Early opinions on the Pope's visit

Pope blames society for sex scandal

THE Pope yesterday berated US bishops for their poor handling of the child sex scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church, but laid part of the blame on the breakdown of values in US society.

He told a gathering of bishops they had "sometimes very badly handled" the problem of pedophile priests.
But, rather than blame the church, he pointed to a breakdown in the values underpinning society. "What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?" he said.

He praised the bishops' efforts to heal the wounds from the scandal, angering victim support groups.
Barbara Dorris, from Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, said: "Five years ago, US bishops begrudgingly adopted some minimal promises on paper.

"There's no evidence to suggest they have had any real impact."

more at http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23557180-663,00.html

Her full comments are available here http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?ID=10947

Victims Call on Pope to Appropriately Address Sex Abuse Scandal
A support group for victims of clergy sex gathered in Washington, DC for the pope's visit to demand that he hold bishops and cardinals accountable for concealing sex crimes committed by priests. Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) denounced the pope's speech in which he criticized the way the scandal was handled. SNAP says that the pope's criticism is not enough; he must act.

Barbara Dorris, SNAP outreach director, issued a statement saying, "Five years ago, US bishops paltry, begrudgingly adopted some minimal promises on paper. There's no evidence to suggest they've had any real impact and it's terribly naïve to assume that's the case. Child sex crimes and cover-ups have plagued the church for decades, and the church is an ancient, rigid, secretive, all-male hierarchy that moves at a glacial pace. No one who truly understands institutional behavior could believe that centuries-old patterns can be undone in a few short years."

Victims are demanding a change in Catholic canon law requiring priests who commit crimes against children to be immediately defrocked. They are also demanding disciplinary action against bishops and cardinals who enable abuse to continue by covering it up.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the website Bishop Accountability, told the New York Times, "Rather than shifting attention to pedophile priests, he needs to focus on the culpability of bishops. The crisis occurred because many U.S. bishops were willing to hide their priests' crimes from the police with lies."

Another good comment:

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said the sex abuse crisis is not over. "The pope must focus now not on soothing words and vague pledges, but on tangible action to prevent abuse," he said. "Saying pedophile priests are bad fixes nothing. Disciplining complicit bishops prevents more abuse."

And, correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that Ratzinger was complicit with the Vatican protecting some priests, including continuing to shelter Cardinal Bernard Law so that he can't be extradited back to the US to face trials. CBS covered the story years ago here http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/06/eveningnews/main566978.shtml

The 40-year-old confidential Vatican document, obtained by CBS News, lays out a church policy that calls for absolute secrecy when it comes to sexual abuse by priests - anyone who speaks out could be thrown out of the church.

As one commenter on these sites so succintly put it:

If any country leaders had a spine, they would charge the Catholic Church as a criminal organization with conspiracy to commit child abuse.

I guess at this point, I need a little humor to help take the edge off http://www.videosift.com/video/Bill-Maher-New-Rules-April-11-2008

...<snip>
And, finally, New Rule: Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there's going to be some child-f*cking going on. In fact, whenever a cult leader sets himself up as "God's infallible wing man" here on earth, lock away the kids.

Which is why I'd like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound. And this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. [photo of the Pope shown]

That's right. The Pope is coming to America this week, and, ladies, he's single! Now, I know what you're thinking: "Bill, you can't be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy Texas cult! For one thing, altar boys can't even get pregnant."

But, really, what tripped up the "little cult on the prairie" was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided. Religions get parades. How does the Catholic Church get away with all of their buggery? VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME!

If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you "Pope."

It's like if you can't pay your mortgage, you're a deadbeat, but if you can't pay a million mortgages, you're Bear Stearns, and we bail you out. And that's who the Catholic Church is, the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia. Too big to fail.

When the - when the current Pope was in his previous Vatican job as John Paul's Dick Cheney - he wrote a letter instructing every Catholic bishop to keep the sex abuse of minors secret until the statute of limitations ran out. And that's the Church's attitude: "We're here, we're queer, get used to it."

Which is fine. Far be it from me to criticize religion. But, just remember one thing: if the Pope was, instead of a religious figure, merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of daycare centers where thousands of employees had been caught molesting kids and then covering it up, he'd be arrested faster than you can say, "Who wants to touch Mister Wiggle?"

FOX News' Journalistic Integrity?

Outsourcing the government is a BAD idea

Yes we know about the horrors of Halliburton and Blackwater but many don't realize how much our government is being "privitized" -- aka. sold to the highest bidder. Not only do no-bid contracts guarantee that we are overpaying but we are doubly blessed with lesser service that comes with virtually no accountability.

As the Washington Post recently reported:

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The Government Accountability Office [GAO] found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion.

$295 billion wasted. To put in perspective, Bush vetoed more health insurance for kids supposedly because $35 billion -- $7 billion a year over 5 years -- was too much to spend.
Presiding over a wasteful defense budget is not a "strong on defense" position. It is, however, a conservative position.

Part of the problem is rooted in the fundamental conservative belief that government is bad, and key government functions should be privatized.

UN says "Human Rights, not important"

Incredibly, spines are hard to come by in today's society. Case in point, the UN has allowed themselves to be ruled by convenience and fear of economic consequence by allowing Islamic states to rule that Freedom of Expression will no longer protect anyone who, for example, dares speak out against Sharia laws that require women to be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran. They must have a different meaning of the word "Freedom" -- something meaning quite the opposite. There's more here but here's a sample:

Don't exercise your right to freedom of expression because your opponents may become violent. For the first time in the 60 year history of UN Human Rights bodies, a fundamental human right has been limited simply because of the possible violent reaction by the enemies of human rights.

The violence we have seen played out in reaction to the Danish cartoons is thus excused by the Council – it was the cartoonists whose freedom of expression needed to be regulated. And Theo van Gogh can be deemed responsible for his own death.

Freedom of expression is that right which – uniquely – enables us to expose, communicate and condemn abuse of all our other rights. Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press we give the green light to tyranny and make it impossible to expose corruption, incompetence, injustice and oppression.

George Carlin - Fear of Germs

It's sad how wimpy Americans have become, especially when it comes to any risk whatsoever -- take germs, for example (you can listen along here):

Where did this sudden fear of germs come from in this country? Have you noticed this? The media constantly running stories about all the latest infections? Salmonella, E-coli, hanta virus, bird flu, and Americans will panic easily so everybody's running around scrubbing this and spraying that and overcooking their food and repeatedly washing their hands, trying to avoid all contact with germs. It's ridiculous and it goes to ridiculous lengths.

In prisons, before they give you lethal injection, they swab your arm with ALCOHOL. Wouldn't want some guy to go to hell AND be sick.Fear of germs, why these fuckin' pussies. You can't even get a decent hamburger anymore they cook the shit out of everything now 'cause everyone's afraid of FOOD POISONING! Hey, wheres you sense of adventure? Take a fuckin' chance will you? Hey you know how many people die of food poisoning in this country? Nine thousand, thats all, its a minor risk.

Take a fuckin' chance bunch of goddamn pussies.Besides, what d'ya think you have an immune system for? It's for killing germs! But it needs practice, it needs germs to practice on. So if you kill all the germs around you, and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along, you're not gonna be prepared. And never mind ordinary germs, what are you gonna do when some super virus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit?! I'll tell you what your gonna do ... you're gonna get sick. You're gonna die and your gonna deserve it because you're fucking weak and you got a fuckin' weak immune system!

Let me tell you a true story about immunization ok. When I was a little boy in New York city in the nineteen-forties, we swam in the Hudson river. And it was filled with raw sewage! OK? We swam in raw sewage, you know, to cool off. And at that time the big fear was polio. Thousands of kids died from polio every year. But you know something? In my neighborhood no one ever got polio. No one! EVER! You know why? Cause WE SWAM IN RAW SEWAGE! It strengthened our immune system, the polio never had a prayer. We were tempered in raw shit!

So personally I never take any precautions against germs. I don't shy away from people who sneeze and cough. I don't wipe off the telephone, I don't cover the toilet seat, and if I drop food on the floor I pick it up and eat it!Even if I'm at side walk cafe! IN CALCUTTA! THE POOR SECTION! ON NEW YEARS MORNING DURING A SOCCER RIOT! And you know something? In spite of all the so called "risky behavior ".... I never get infections. I don't get em. I don't get colds, I don't get flu, I don't get headaches, I don't get upset stomach, And you know why? Cause I got a good strong immune system! And it gets a lot of practice!

My immune system is equipped with the biological equivalent of fully automatic military assault rifles, with night vision and laser scopes. And we have recently acquired phosphorous grenades, cluster bombs and anti personnel fragmentation mines.

So, when my white blood cells are on patrol reconnoitering my blood stream seeking out strangers and other undesirables, and if they see any, ANY, suspicious looking germs of any kind, THEY DON'T. FUCK. AROUND. They whip out the weapons, they wax the motherfucker and deposit the unlucky fellow directly into my colon! Into my colon. There's no nonsense! There's no miranda warning, there's none of that three strikes and your out bullshit. First defense, BAM! Into the colon you go!

-- George Carlin

Friday Flotsam

First some humor to take the edge off:
http://www.955klos.com/messagewall.asp?id=4118

The 9 Manliest Names in the World
http://www.cracked.com/article_14982_9-manliest-names-in-world.html

It's tough being a veterinarian in Taiwan:
from http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-12/06/content_7209538_12.htm

--------------------------

YIKES!

Hacked Through The Heart And You're To Blame
Researchers have demonstrated that implantable defibrillators and pacemakers can be hacked from the outside leading to all manner of undesirable outcomes.

It's not surprising that implantable devices such as these are programmable through a wireless interface. Allowing a physician to do so is far preferable to opening the patient up just to change settings. But it's also not surprising that the wireless interfaces and programming protocols were not sufficiently hardened against deliberate attack. Such attacks could, theoretically, either cause the device to shock or mistime, but also could deplete the battery.

The researchers also studied potential defenses against such attacks and is encouraging about them. They also stress repeatedly that these are theoretical attacks and that patients with such devices should not be concerned at this point.

The authors of this study did the hard research, but the basic approach to body hacking was suggested by Gadi Evron far earlier. As Evron suggested, devices like pacemakers are just the primitive foot in the door of our bodies. In 2040 we may be much more bionic, and we'll need to know that our electronic parts are secure.

A Life That Matters

Ready or not, someday it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.

So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end. It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone. What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters.

Michael Josephson

I want to see this documentary

No water? That seems important! Kinda makes global warming and peak oil seem more like an annoyance, doesn't it?
Blue Gold : World Water Wars

$6,000,000,000,000

Wow, that's a lot of samoleans! Yes, that's $6 TRILLION in what used to be strong American bonafide greenbacks. If this confuses some Brits who have a totally different definition for "trillion" -- so to be clear, let's just say it's way too much f-ing money to be in debt. I'm sure that the Brits also see this as the beginning of the common pattern denoting the fall of a civilization. Since every major civilization has waned, many think that America is starting its downward fall. I hope that we're wise enough to do something about it -- but I'm not particularly sanguine.

But back to the main point, $6 TRILLION dollars is also apparently what the Reagan and Bush years have cost all of us Americans. I originally saw this stat somewhere else, but here's a bit of sugar to help it go down a little easier.

More signs that corporations ARE the problem

Perhaps Obama isn't as clear as Nader, Kucinich or Edwards on the problems caused by unfettered corporations -- but he's not bad either. I expect that he's ahead of Hillary on this and I'm sure that we know in whose pockets McCain is deeply ensconced. Check out this great quote that I lifted from TIME:

Senator Barack Obama issued the following statement today in response to reports that two Countrywide executives, who are accused of exacerbating the ongoing home mortgage crisis, are slated to receive multi-million dollar payouts tied to the company’s performance during their tenure:

“All across this country, we’ve seen how it’s becoming harder and harder for working families to make ends meet. That’s because for far too long, the rules in our economy have been written to benefit Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

“We saw this again today when we learned that two executives at Countrywide, the nation’s top subprime lender, are set to walk away with nearly $20 million in payouts. This is an outrage. Top mortgage lenders spent $185 million in recent years lobbying Washington to look the other way, while they tricked families into buying homes they couldn’t afford, forcing millions of Americans to face foreclosure and pushing our economy toward recession.

“These executives crossed the line to boost their bottom line. We should be reprimanding them, not rewarding them. Rewarding their bad behavior just encourages others to pursue the same kinds of irresponsible practices that led us into this financial mess in the first place.

“That’s why nearly two years ago, I introduced legislation to treat those who commit mortgage fraud like the criminals they are. And it’s why in a speech last week, I called for realigning incentives and compensation packages, so that both high level executives and employees better serve the interests of shareholders.

“We have to restore balance to our economy, and make sure that we have rules of the road that work for ordinary Americans, not just the wealthy and well-connected. And that’s what we’ll do when I’m President of the United States.”

Let's Make a Deal

I'm sure that you've all heard of the famous Monty Hall puzzle -- if not, Wikipedia can help. You can also play the game here if like many others (including some mathematicians) you don't buy into the logic of it. Let me know if you're still unconvinced as I'm happy to help. I'll play Monty and will pay you $1.50 for each time you win and only charge you $1 for each loss -- cause I'm a giver. :)

Restore the rule of law!

Naomi Wolf offers a good wake-up call on our rapid downhill slide to losing all that defines America. She points out how painfully clear it is that our civil liberties are being eviscerated:

The rest of the world is agog at our inaction as what makes us Americans is being set aflame; and they are more scared of what an unsheathed US could do to the rest of the world than we are. Our strength as a nation stems from our commitment to our core values, and that we are strong enough to protect both our security and those values.

... and on which candidate most clearly gets it:

Remember: when activists started to push hard to raise awareness of the dangers of torture and indefinite detention, many on the Hill were scared to join the fight because it was then politically unpopular. But to me, if you are not really against torture -- always and under every political change in climate, and let us note that former torture victim and prisoner of war John McCain shamefully dropped his fight against the torture loopholes in the law as well -- then you are not really, in my view, fit to be an American President.

Gender has nothing to do with it. Race has nothing to do with it.

Integrity has something to do with it.

That is why Barack Obama has my vote. Of all the leading candidates, he is the only one on these issues who has consistently acted like a true American.

Speaking of religious freedom...

So here's a good example of what happens when we don't maintain the critically important wall separating church and state:

A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results.

Bush's War - Frontline

PBS's latest Frontline 2-part episode on Bush's War is great. It's a must-see, as they say. Wow!

Religious Freedom - this sounds important, right?

It's not only more important that you might think but current forces AGAINST religious freedom are having a very insidious effect in all levels of our goverment and society as well. Click here for more.

First Freedom First is a grass-roots organization trying to emphasize the critical importance of the First Amendment and how our liberties are being eroded. They have a pretty good video on several of these topics -- you can skip through the slow parts. They also have an interesting list of some very important questions that no one is asking our current government officials. I'd love to hear Clinton, Obama and McCain answer them:

1. Leaders on the religious right often say that America is a “Christian Nation.” Do you agree with this statement?
2. Do you think Houses of Worship should be allowed to endorse political candidates and retain their tax exempt status?
3. Do you think public schools should sponsor school prayer or, as a parent, should this choice be left to me?
4. Would you support a law that mandates teaching creationism in my child’s public school science classes?
5. Do you think my pharmacist should be allowed to deny me doctor-prescribed medications based on his or her religious beliefs?
6. Will you respect the rights of those in our diverse communities of faith who deem same-gender marriage to be consistent with their religious creed?
7. Should “faith-based” charities that receive public funds be allowed to discriminate against employees or applicants based on religious beliefs?
8. Do you think one's right to disbelieve in God is protected by the same laws that protect someone else's right to believe?
9. Do you think everyone’s religious freedom needs to be protected by what Thomas Jefferson called “a wall of separation” between church and state?
10. What should guide our policies on public health and medical research: science or religion?

How to properly clean your monitor

http://appraisercentral.com/cleanscreen.swf
...and leave it smelling minty fresh!

By popular request

Steven loves billiards so much that we had to get him a kid's table for Christmas. Then he got into trick shot competitions on ESPN and our DVR is filling fast. Here he is making one of his favorite trick shots.

The Dumbing Of America

A good Washinton Post article by Susan Jacoby.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

An interesting take on Obama

Sam Harris' recent article in the Huffington Post makes some good points. It ends with:

Despite all that he does not and cannot say, Obama's candidacy is genuinely thrilling: his heart is clearly in the right place; he is an order of magnitude more intelligent than the current occupant of the Oval Office; and he still stands a decent chance of becoming the next President of the United States. His election in November really would be a triumph of hope.

But Obama's candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason?

Obama is a good leader

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we really need a leader who will bring out the best in our human nature -- not someone who is most like "the common man" who likes huntin' or playing sax on Arsenio. Sure it's nice to know that the President can understand the plight of all Americans but he shouldn't stoop so low as to pander. Besides, it was a bit ridiculous in the last election when people were trying to compare who's more an Average Joe, the Yale grad or the Harvard grad. Especially in the case of Bush when he comes from one of the biggest political families and has corporate ties to big oil -- yeah, a real regular guy!

Look, I don't want my President to be someone I'd like to have a beer with -- I want him to be a leader; better than than the average American; way better. We need someone who will inspire us; someone who will help us overlook our own myopic views and come together for the greater common good.

So take a quick look at this recent Obama video and pick any 5-minute segment.

Then try to imaging his comments being said by Hillary, or better yet, by McCain. I can't do it. For that matter, try to imagine it coming from anyone from the current administration. What am I saying? Bush wouldn't even be able pronounce the words correctly. :) But seriously, over the last 5 years since 9/11 the Bush clan has done nothing but try to manipulate us with opportunistic fear mongering. I expect nothing but the same from McCain.

We deserve better! Go Obama.

Friday Funnies

[note: I've since learned that NBC has asked YouTube to pull most of these but you can still find them if you search for the key words, like "snl punched."

SNL DIGITAL SHORTS
(if they haven't been pulled)

Roy Rules
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZGs1V_5Pmo

Punched
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxIEjZUw8yg

Natalie Portman
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/42822/detail

…almost as good as this Dave Chapelle bit with Wayne Brady
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SEp4oVPx0A

Business Meeting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4vpT4UrY1M

Peyton Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZpPf-q2_es

POLITICS
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters The Onion - America's Finest News Source (video)

Couldn't have said it better myself

For the conclusion of this harrowing episode, click here http://www.viruscomix.com/page433.html

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

From a recent Bill Moyers interview of Susan Jacoby's new book, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON:

I can imagine a politician succeeding by saying, "We as a people have not lived up to our obligation to learn what we ought to learn to make informed decisions." I can imagine candidates saying, "And we in the Congress have been guilty of that too." Because it's not just the public that's ignorant. We get the government we deserve.

We need to wake out of our American stupor. We need a President who will lead us out by appealing to our better nature -- someone like Kennedy, FDR or Lincoln. Who comes closest to this right now? The answer is clearly Obama.

Happiness

Is 60 Minutes suggesting that to be happy, you shouldn't look to the American Dream but instead to the Danes?
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/02/the_pursuit_of.html

Thanks 1gm.

The Case for Universal Heathcare Has Been Made

Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers