Dreadgeek's Meme-space

There's Fail, there's Massive Fail, and then there's the Republican Party

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:04:30 GMT

There are simply no words:

http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002253/

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize! Conservatives bust a gasket...

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:51:25 GMT

...and some liberals discover, suddenly, that they don’t like the Nobel Peace Prize.

Okay, so I think that the Nobel Committee made an interesting choice in choosing President Obama. It might even be fair to say that they made a premature and, from a domestic political point of view, bad choice (because of the downstream political implications not because of some inherent unworthiness of Obama). However, as I think about this award I begin to think that, perhaps, it is more understandable than it might seem at first blush. Now, I admit, my first blush thought was “why?” but then I thought a little more deeply about it as the day went on. Looking at America from the outside, which the Nobel Committee is doing, Barack Obama has already accomplished a couple of measures of astounding courage. Firstly, he went to Egypt and gave a speech where he claimed, right out front, that America was not the enemy of Islam. Let’s be real about current-day American politics, that took serious cast-iron cajones to do. Sure, sitting here in Portland, OR it seems like an everyday thing to say “members of my own family practice Islam” but while Portland is an American city, America is not Portland. There are places, many of them only a minutes drive from Portland, where saying “members of my own family practice Islam” is tantamount to saying “and I cheered as the planes crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon”. That alone took courage. Barack Obama has, in something less than a year, begun the rehabilitation of America’s image abroad. Secondly, Barack Obama’s election is a singular event in world history. It may not have occurred to people here but this is the first time in world history that a majority white nation (meaning European or its spin-offs) has ever been headed by a non-white person.

Now, I will admit that some of the critique of Obama--that he has not spun-down the Iraq or Afghanistan wars in six months is somewhat justified but only just barely. I recognize that, as liberals and progressives, we are not used to thinking about military matters beyond the knee-jerk, reflexive “military = bad” mantra. However, it may well be that, in fact, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cannot be spun down too much faster than they are and I am not entirely convinced that spinning down the Afghanistan war is the right thing to do. Certainly we cannot spin down the Iraq war tomorrow. Or next week. I would be pleased if our forces were largely out of that country by the Summer of 2011. Wars are complicated endeavors and, as much as we might not like to think in these terms as liberals, there are both tactical and strategic considerations that our war-planners must take into account. They must do so. It’s what we pay them for.

The Afghanistan war is a bit more complicated. On the one hand, I know enough history to recognize that Afghanistan is proof of Vincini’s (from the Princess Bride) Dictum: Never get involved in a land-war in Asia! It is the place where empires go to learn humility. On the other hand, whether we like it or not, we now do have a strategic interest in the region. That strategic interest is, Pakistan. It is not in our strategic interests for Pakistan to go the way of Afghanistan circa 1999. It simply isn’t. Iraq doesn’t have nuclear weapons. Iran probably doesn’t have them. Pakistan definitely does. We know this. The Taliban know this. Al Qaeda knows this and, most sobering, India knows this. India, by the way, also has nuclear weapons so it is in the best interest of all parties concerned for there to be a very stable region between Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. So we are torn in two different directions. On the one hand, we don’t want to occupy Afghanistan. The Afghanis don’t want us there. And we know, because we watched the Soviets learn humility in these same mountains, that this is a lesson we would just as soon learn vicariously than by the blood of young men and women.

I have to take a moment to criticize my own political faction for a moment here. It is inexcusable for so many progressives who are on the right side of the cause of peace to be so dangerously naive about geopolitics and war. Yes, dangerously naive. We are reflexive in our opposition without thought. We do not, in the main, bother ourselves with considerations like strategic interests or tactical necessity. If we are going to oppose war, we should bother ourselves to understand, at some level, that which we oppose. I think, however, that some of our opposition is, again, merely reflexive and not necessarily principled. By this I mean that we are opposed to America making war. We are opposed to the West making war. We are opposed to Israel making war. But we are not opposed to, say, Palestine making war. I wonder how many progressives would howl and scream if China, say, invaded Taiwan (not Tibet) without provocation. How many would protest if China invaded, say, Iran? Why do I think that any outcry would be muted if present at all? Before you flame me, gentle reader, ask yourself why you are opposed to the Afghanistan war? (The Iraq war is a different situation because it was clearly not justified by any strategic or tactical imperative and so opposition to it is entirely justified.)

All of this to say that while I’m not sure that Obama is doing the right thing in Afghanistan, I’m willing to admit that he might not be doing the wrong thing. What if he is? Would we, as progressives, know? Would we care? One commentator I read on HuffPo observed that Obama didn’t deserve the Nobel prize because the United States maintains a large nuclear arsenal. Let us say, for sake of argument that we could destroy our nuclear arsenal in less than a year (we couldn’t) would it even be an intelligent thing to do? I would argue that it might not be. I would like to see us seriously draw down our nuclear arsenal and I would like to see the rest of the world agree to go to a zero-nuke state in my lifetime. I doubt that is going to happen. (And even if we did, the same people who are upset that we have them would become instantly upset at any plan conceived to dispose of them because of the wastes--at which point you have to make a choice. This is, by the way, what I mean when I talk about reflexive anti-Americanism.)

So, does Obama deserve a Nobel? Yes and no. As I said at the beginning of this essay, I think it is premature and that it creates a domestic headache that I’m willing to bet that David Axelrod would just as soon not have to bother with. On the other hand, I hope that this creates more pressure on Obama to rise to the occasion. He has been bestowed with the laurels of greatness. It is now up to him to live up to the great vote of confidence he has been given in the form of this honor.

Now, having said enough about progressive reaction to this news, let me express my utter joy and glee that conservatives are busting a gut over this. Every time the conservatives think “okay, now we’ve got him!” events intervene and change the dynamics on them. Last week conservatives were glorying in “world rejects Obama” because Rio got the 2016 Olympics. But now, they can’t argue that the world shares their view of Obama. In fact, the two groups they find themselves in bed with are two groups that they loathe---international peace activists (some) and Al Qaeda. You just can’t buy that kind of entertainment! As they usually do with all things Obama, conservatives are over-reacting and, once again, overreaching. Our President just won the most prestigious award you can be given and they hate it. It’s the little things that make life sweet.

HuffPo commenters bring the crazy to LCROSS

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:28:15 GMT

So, tomorrow, at 4:30 AM PST the LCROSS satellite will impact the Moon. (I’ll be up with my telescope to watch should be GREAT viewing conditions) Below is just one of the more sane comments posted on the web site (yes, this was one of the more sane ones). The scientific ignorance on display is absolutely breathtaking.

Bomb the moon? Are we insane? Are we space cowboys now? Why is everything we do to be bomb? The moon shares a delicate etheric web with earth, which is why she controls the ebb and flow of tides, the menstrual cycle in women, enhances growth at night, responsible for gravity, and excites passion to poetry when gaze at. Bomb the moon? How about Bomb NASA! and save trillions of dollars of taxpayers money to be use to pay off our debt, help create universal healthcare, stimulate economic growth, and a dozen other matters of national urgency. NASA is not necessary anymore. It is outmoded, outdated, and without any real purpose.

Here are the numbers my colleague, Richard and I worked up:

   73459000000000000000000 kg (Moon)
                      2366 kg (Maximum mass of LCROSS Centaur Impactor)

                      3000 kg (Hummer H2)
                         0.00000000000000009662532841448 kg (the "bug")

Mass of an average bacterium: 1 picogram. Weight of the "bug" above: 0.09662532841448 picogram.

So... if 1/10th of a bacterium hits the windshield of a Hummer, does it swerve?

Part 2:

So, I got up at 4:00AM (ouch!) and took my telescope out in the backyard on the hopes of being able to see the impact and the plume. Unfortunately, because I’m in Portland, it became overcast about 4;25 so I wan’t able to resolve much of anything. Frustrated, I went back inside to watch it on NASA TV which turned out to be anti-climatic. In my hopeful naivete that intellectual honesty is not just two, completely unrelated words in the dictionary, I went back to HuffPo to see what, if anything, the doomsayers were saying on the subject. Needless to say, my hope that someone anyone might have the courage to say “well, guess I was wrong” was ill-founded.

One person, SUSANINCOLUMBIA, posted a heartfelt and completely wrong-headed lament stating that she would “never be able to look at the moon in the same way”. Another poster, posted that “even though there was no reaction yet” there was sure to be one because “for every action there is a reaction”. The irony of her invocation of Newton’s Third Law was, apparently, entirely lost on her. I attempted to explain that there had been a reaction, which was the debris plume ejected from the lunar surface, and that this was the very reaction that NASA and every scientifically literate poster (all 9 or 10 of us) on that thread had predicted there would be.

At this point I began to despair. Not because the Moon would have its revenge in some vague, unspecified manner, but because I had believed that after the Bush administration and the reign of the non-reality based conservatives, the Progressives had ‘gotten it’ and decided to be the reality-based political faction in America. HuffPo has convinced me that, in fact, reality has no political constituency in America. These same people, who I have no doubt express frustration that conservatives reject the science of climate change for no scientifically adequate reason completely ignore the math and the physics of the LCROSS mission. Instead of ‘being humble before the data’ (which is readily available) they instead go on about vague prophecies of doom that will befall humanity or, just as stupidly, they draw a distinction between a meteorite hitting the Moon and a satellite hitting it as if the physics of those two events are fundamentally different, governed by different laws.

At one point, I had an epiphany that some of the opposition was the reflexive anti-Americanism that conservatives so often accuse liberals and progressives of indulging in. I began to muse upon the question of “what would the reaction be if it had been, say, India or Pakistan or China or Brazil?” I imagine that there would have been nary a peep or worry but because it was Americans this action had to be opposed. Why? Because it was, laughably, militaristic. That’s right, gentle reader, a physics experiment no more different, really, than dropping a stone into a lake observe the water ejected was an act of aggression. It made me embarrassed to be a Progressive, quite honestly.

I have known, for quite some time now, that Americans are scientifically illiterate but every time I think I have a grasp on the breadth and depth of the problem, something like this happens and I realize that we are in much more dire straits than I had imagined we could be.

To reiterate, opposition to the LCROSS mission falls into the falling species

The Moon will be knocked out of its orbital position.
It will throw off “the balance of the Universe” or the tides or gravity or women’s menstrual cycles or astrology.
It is an ‘act of aggression against the beautiful moon, the only one we have’.
It will lead to “Wal-Mart and Disneyland on the Moon” (SUSANINCOLUMBIA again)
The militarization of the moon (Einstein10--on whom more later)
“A reaction and it will be bad”
It will throw the moon off by ten or twenty feet and this will affect the tides (Einstein10 again)
We have no right to mess up the pristine moon until we learn how not to mess up the Earth (The typical anti-space program, anti-science mantra of the scientifically ignorant.)
The Americans are doing it therefore it is bad.

The problem with all of those arguments is that not a single one of them is specific. In fact, to call them vague is to give them altogether too much credit for being coherent thoughts at all! What’s more, they are all based on pure emotionalism. Not emotion but emotionalism. By that I mean that they are driven not by any facts carefully considered but merely by “I don’t like this”. All of the reasons are, in point of fact, backfill to attempt to justify a position that is entirely unjustifiable.

One poster even invoked the ‘hollow moon’ idea. Yes, the purpose of the mission isn’t what NASA stated it was but to determine if the Moon is hollow. Naturally, he invoked the ‘Great Scientific Conspiracy’ to cover up the truth. Now, what I find fascinating about this little gem is that it perfectly illustrates one of the problems with anti-science in almost all of its forms. On the one hand, scientists are, if anti-scientists are to be believed, a bunch of incompetent boobs stumbling about trying to find new and ever more expensive ways to piss of Nature. On the other hand, they are fiendishly secretive and capable of maintaining such perfect operational security that the NSA, KGB and Mossad can only look upon their opacity with awe, envy and wonder. It would appear that the scientific community can carry on conspiracies of such fiendish and byzantine nature that only the most dedicated can even suss them out or understand their convolutions. Yet, these same scientists can’t seem to get correct the mass of the moon, or explain its tidal locking, or the flight of bumblebees, or the evolution of species. One would think that their utter incompetence would preclude being able to maintain such incredible levels of secrecy but apparently not.

Then there was Einstein10 who does what anti-science proponents do so much, namely invoke the name of a Great Scientist, almost always Einstein and then quote him, almost always out of context, from his letters or from “Ideas and Opinions”. All this while being almost entirely unaware of or interested in his prodigious body of scientific work or the implications thereof. Einstein10 was one such poster on HuffPo. When challenged, he would quote Einstein at us but when challenged to provide a single prediction of specific doom OR to even give a description of either Special or General Relativity in his own words, he would either disappear or simply quote more Einstein. It is insulting to the memory of a truly great scientist to treat him this way in the name of “respect” but there’s not much that can be done about disrespect for the memory of the dead.

I will say that the last 36 hours on HuffPo has given me a much better understanding of why PZ Meyers of Pharyngula and Steven Novella of the New England Skeptics Society are encouraging scientists and scientifically literate people to boycott Huffington Post. In-between the decidedly pro-woo spin given to articles related to medicine and health and the pervasive anti-science culture there, I imagine that both Drs. Meyers and Novella are trying to keep a generation of scientists from going to an early grave, either from repeated blunt-force trauma to the head from banging on the desk or from aneurisms vessels brought on by sudden spikes in blood pressure.

Oh and although I doubt anyone reading my blog needs to be told this, the Moon does not cause gravity. Gravity is caused by the warping of space-time by mass. The Moon and the Earth are bound to one another because of their gravitational masses, and both were created by gravity and held together by gravity but the Moon does not cause gravity here on Earth and the Earth does not cause gravity on the Moon.

Stay rational.

Rick Berman and the New, New, New Math

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:49:44 GMT

This morning I was watching Rachel Maddow on the train and she had on a gentleman named Rick Berman, who is head of Bermann and Associates, a PR firm that coincidentally it would appear, happens to fund an astonishing amount of non-profits that are pro-business, anti-worker, anti-regulation, anti-health. In talking about ACORN in the second segment he made the astounding statement that “the average minimum wage household is making 50,000 a year”. This seemed amazing to me so I did some quick math and found the following. Assuming a minimum wage of $8.05 an hour (the minimum wage in Oregon) we get this.

40 hours a week * 8.05 = 322 a week
$322 dollars a week * 4 weeks = $1,288 a month
$1,288 a month * 12 months = $15,456
Assuming a two-income household that comes to
$30,912 a year. This assumes that there are no deductions what-so-ever. With deductions the actual take home amount is going to be about $8,000 less than that.

That means that Berman’s figure is off--assuming the most generous scenario--$19,088! Even if there were three adults working full-time they would still be shy by almost five grand!

Is this some new, pro-business math where $30,000 is actually $50,000? It would appear that Mr. Berman would like us to believe this is the case.

Also keep in mind that these figures also assume that neither adult ever misses a day of work for illness or vacation.

Do these people believe that no one ever fact-checks their statements? This was easy, back-of-the-envelope math that took me all of about three minutes to work out.

Random acts of science geekiness

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:18:42 GMT

So I was on the train heading downtown to take my Mac to the Apple store for repairs and I got into a conversation with a man about the Dawkins book (The Greatest Show on Earth) that I was reading and his astronomy magazine. It turns out he's a bio-statistician at Kaiser Permanente and when I told him that I was studying for an advanced degree in bioinformatics he gave me his card and told him to contact him when I was closer to graduation--along with trying to sweeten the idea by telling me about some of the very, very cool toys they have at their disposal! I LOVE being a science geek!

Say WHAT?!!!!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:58:10 GMT

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

Thus begins an article, posted at Newsmax and

very quickly removed when they started to get heat

, by John L. Perry. For your convenient access to something truly horrible, gentle reader, I have copied and pasted the

entire text into a Google Doc.

So, in the last 48 hours we have had a Facebook poll asking if President Obama should be killed and a piece on a prominent right-wing site advocating a military coup d etat! This is what passes as right-wing thought and ‘civil dissent’ these days.
Perry, realizing toward the end of his screed that perhaps this is a bridge too far tries to pull back a bit so that a couple of nice men in suits and very grim expressions don’t pay him a visit and ask about his plans for the country by saying this:

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.
Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

Not acceptable, Mr. Perry. Not funny. Not cute. Profoundly un-American. As a former soldier and the mother of a currently serving soldier, I am insulted beyond belief that you would even suggest that our military leadership would violate a tenant that is drilled into every person wearing the uniform from the newest recruit to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: civilians control the military not the other way around, ever. Our nation is now and should always remain, under civilian leadership. I don’t know if this fool ever wore the uniform, but I hope he did not. I would be ashamed to know that I chewed the same dirt as someone like him.

A Sort of Last Testament of a rationalist

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:36:20 GMT

I saw this on Pharyngula this morning and it left me deeply moved. The writer is Basava Premanand, publisher of the Indian Skeptic, who is dying of cancer. In anticipation that various types would descend upon his death and try to make up a story of a death-bed conversion (a la Darwin’s alleged death-bed conversion) or that, in the midst of his suffering, he consulted various astrologers or the like, he composed the following beautiful testimony.

I, B. Premanand s/o late Sri Basava Prabhu, 80 years of age resident Chettipalayam Road, Podanur, sound of mind though suffering from physical complications caused by metastases in many organs caused by carcinoma of the stomach herein solemnly wish to place on record the following:

I have been closely associated with the rationalist movement from 1975 onwards and have been a rationalist of full conviction since then and continue to be so.
It is common for the purveyors of superstitions and such anti rational forces to start spreading rumors about rationalists turning to god and other supernatural forces at the end of their lives and becoming devotees of gods and god men of various types.
It is also claimed that at times of crises that we staunch rationalists through the major part of our lives, turn to spiritualism and religion.
I wish to clarify that as on today the twentieth of September,2009 I remain a staunch rationalist and wish to place on record the following:

a. I continue to be a rationalist of full conviction.
b. I do not believe in any supernatural power. All the powers that we encounter are in the realm of nature and nothing exists beyond that.
c. I do not believe in the existence of the soul or rebirth.
d. I have not turned to any religion, god or any sort of spiritual pursuits.
e. When I pass away I shall be leaving only my body which is to be donated to a medical college and no spirit or soul to cause problems for the living.

I want to convey to all that the struggle against the exploitation by god men and so called supernatural forces is a long and hard one but the ultimate victory will be ours. My very survival has been a challenge to astrologers and their so called “science” of astrology, as they had all predicted that I would die soon after birth and refused to cast a horoscope for me.I wish to convey to my colleagues of the rationalist movement to continue the work that I have been doing with renewed vigor and that will be the best of tributes for me.
Abhirami Hospital
Podanur (B. Premanand)

Witnessed by: Dr. Maya Prabhu and Suneera

Some things never change

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:51:01 GMT

Saw this at The Daily Dish and thought to spread the meme around.

One cannot help but notice the familiar theme of “that which I disagree with is communism” and “the person I disagree with is the anti-christ”. Can we just have a moratorium on the political use of the words ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ in this country until such time as our educational system gets around to teaching Americans that A> words have meaning and B> those meanings actually count for something.

If you don’t know what socialism is, then you shouldn’t be calling something you disagree with socialist. Because socialist isn’t a synonym for “I don’t like it”. The same applies for communism.

Clearwire and Snow Leopard

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:24:33 GMT

If you are using Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and are considering Clearwire mobile Internet, let me suggest that you hold off until next year if you do it at all. Here is my saga:

So, we signed up for Clearwire just before Snow Leopard was released. I work in tech. I figured that they wouldn’t have a driver for their USB mobile modem the day Snow Leopard came out (and would’ve been VERY impressed if they had). But I figured “they know this is coming. The whole industry knows it’s coming. They’ll put something out fairly quickly”. Well, that didn’t happen. My mobile USB modem hasn’t worked since I upgraded the OS and I have had five conversations with their technical support (plus an email that was never responded to). Two of those conversations were of the “huh? Snow what? What doesn’t work? Driver? Could you repeat that?” variety. Two were of the “yes, we know it doesn’t work. No, we have no idea about a release date for a new driver. No, we can’t escalate this” variety. The last one was with their Level 2 support who DID know what I was talking about and DID have an idea of when they would have a driver.

This is where you, gentle DPortlander, may want to pay heed: they will be releasing a driver for Snow Leopard in Q1 of next year! Needless to say, when I heard this my response to the poor sap on the other end was “so if I have you right, you’re not going to have a driver until sometime early next year and in the meantime you expect me to continue paying for a service I am unable to use”.

On the Apple forums, someone said that they were able to get their mobile account put into hibernation which I am going to have done---if we decide to keep the service at all.

My last free weekend before school

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:20:58 GMT

Well, this is it. My last weekend where I don’t have homework until the second weekend in December. It’s been a great summer and now it’s time to get serious about classes while maintaining work. Taking yet more math (need to just accept that and recognize that my fear that I suck at math is not, in fact, borne out by reality) and a Philosophy of Science class--which I got the books for from Amazon. This is going to be my ‘light’ class. I’m looking forward to it’s language driven and thus, I can write, which I love. If only they offered a fiction writing class at night but alas, no. Maybe next term. There’ll be a lot of writing and that’s my opportunity to have some fun. Next term its another math class and a chemistry class. Don’t think I could manage three classes unless I did a Saturday class which might be a little bit grueling.

So today and Sunday will be days of getting housework done. Have some new audiobooks to make the time go faster. Started Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution is True” and discovered, much to my joy, that Valor’s Choice, by Tanya Huff, had sequels. I first read Valor’s choice eight or nine years ago and really enjoyed it as a piece of military sci-fi. I loved her character, SSgt Torrin Kerr and enjoyed the world she’d built. So when I saw those on Audible, I got the next in the series--The Better Part of Valor. I haven’t started it yet but I’m genuinely looking forward to it. (Just ordered all four novels from Powell’s. I love the 21st century!)

It’s a rainy Saturday in Portland and my last free weekend until December. I love my life.

Nobody brings the crazy like the GOP

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:18:40 GMT

The GOP has the cray in full-force this week. The latest coming from the Congressional GOP is that Obama’s ‘czars’ are a threat to American democracy. This is the kind of hilarious shit one expects out of the Monty Python boys when they were at the heights of their powers. So just as one example here is Utah Senator Bob Bennett who has said that the various ‘czars’ in the Obama administration are a Constitutional threat.

Apparently, however, they just became so because Bennett on his own official web site lists as one of his accomplishments the following:

The following two screenshots are simply to establish that authenticity of the site:

Please note the time stamp in screenshot above (in the menu bar on the upper left-hand side)

So we can only assume that the problem is not czars, per se, but that these czars were appointed by a Democratic president. Now, the bit that I am most amused by is that the hysteria over these policy czars is that they are supposed to be scary because they czar is a Russian word. I find it amusing beyond belief that the GOP are sounding like bolsheviks who were the last group of people to take on the czars. For those of you not up on your early 20th century Russian history (and in this I regretfully include large swaths of the Republican electorate) the bolsheviks were the instigators of the October Revolution, they were part of a party called the Russian Social Democratic Party. You might be more familiar with this group by the name of Communist Party. That’s right, folks, the allegedly anti-communist American Right are now taking as their model none other then Vladimir Ilich Lenin.

So, if let’s see if we can keep track of the twists and turns of the crazy. At the time of this writing the President of the United State is, alternately--depending upon who you ask and sometimes when you ask the same person--a (pick as many as you like):

Marxist
Islamist
Socialist
Black Nationalist
Anti-Christ
Muslim Manchurian Candidate from Indonesia
Domestic Terrorist
Fascist
National Socialist
Maoist
Pro-Russian aristocrat

The contradictions in this, if we take the GOP at its word and take those words on face value, are so great that if Obama really were this or believed himself to be, some psych graduate student would have her career made!

Now, I don’t believe for a moment that Senate Republicans believe all of this for a minute. The House GOP, I wouldn’t put it past some of those folks. They’re just tossing out synonyms for “evil” and “dangerous”. Nor do I think that these statements in and of themselves are evidence of racial animosity. I would, however, say that items 4, 6, 7 and possibly 8 are ‘dog-whistle’ racist. Meaning that they stoke racial fears of ‘revenge’ by blacks but they are not in and of themselves racist. There’s plenty of that going around and it is just put right out there (watermelon’s on the lawn of the White House in a post-card, Barack the Magic Negro and the Photoshopped picture of Air Force One with a tail number NI66ER). We don’t need to go looking for racist incidents they are popping up like mushrooms.

This iteration of the crazy is just the GOP flailing about hoping that they can keep their base in a state of constant agitation long enough for the 2010 and 2012 elections. The problem is that the GOP leadership is playing with fire here. They hope, against what history would tell us, that they can put this genie in the bottle after they win big. I don’t think that would happen. The far-right wing of the GOP would feel, not incorrectly, that they were owed spoils and would be quite put out if they did not receive what they felt was their due.

For people who claim to love democracy so much they certainly show an unhealthy willingness to cause permanent damage to it in order to score political points.

Nobody brings the crazy like the GOP part 2: Orly Taitz and the Art of the Judicial Smackdown

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:18:40 GMT

Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. has received yet another case dismissal in her continuing quest for fortune and glory, as Indiana Jones might say, as Queen Bee Birther. What’s more, this woman who every day becomes more and more like a besotted, drunk, Zsa Zsa Gabor on a really bad brain day, this woman is finding military officers to use as her cat’s paws. Yesterday, she received the kind of smackdown that only a judge’s written opinion can deliver. Judge Judy and the other cast of TV celebrity judges are pikers unworthy to study at the feet of the master embodied in Judge Land (who heard the latest Orly Taitz legal fiasco) and Judge John Jones III who heard the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board decision in 2005. First Judge Land.

You know you are in serious trouble when the following is in the first part of the judge’s decision:

Furthermore, Plaintiff’s counsel is hereby notified that the filing of any future actions in this Court, which are similarly frivolous, shall subject counsel to sanctions.

But wait, Judge Land is only getting started:

Thus, Plaintiff’s counsel, who champions herself as a defender of liberty and freedom, seeks to use the power of the judiciary to compel a citizen, albeit the President of the United States, to “prove his innocence” to “charges” that are based upon conjecture and speculation. Any middle school civics student would readily recognize the irony of abandoning fundamental principles upon which our Country was founded in order to purportedly “protect and preserve” those very principles.

Okay, at this point the defendant Captain Rhodes, was probably thinking “I should’ve researched my lawyer better. Where was Angie’s List when I needed it?”

Then Land delivered the following which I loved so much I made it my new sig for all non-work related email:

Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so.

I would be remiss if, however, I did not provide the quote from Judge Jones’ 2005 Dover decision which is what first made me a connoisseur of judicial smackdown.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.

Breathtaking inanity has become my new favorite phrase, right up there with ‘not even wrong’ and I worried that I might never have a chance to use it but the Birthers have handed me that opportunity on a silver platter. Orly Taitz continuing quixotic actions are truly breathtakingly inane.

Snow Leopard--64-bit OS X goodness

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:39:54 GMT

So, the nice UPS person brought Snow Leopard to my door. Sweet and sour Jesus it’s fast! With a couple of minor little glitches with MobileMe and the OS X keychain (which I managed to correct by changing my MobileMe password to match my login password) it’s beautiful! Mail now starts *really* fast and the little problem I had been having keeping my work Gmail account in sync appears to no longer be an issue. iChat starts up really fast and even Aperture is speedy. Allegedly, TM is supposed to be faster but I haven’t been through a full backup yet. One nice feature, however, added to TM is now you get a progress report--still not all the information I would like to see but it at least tells you what it is doing. Also, just a nice little thing is that you can now have the date in the menu bar.

All in all, I’m very impressed. The upgrade was smooth and the one glitch already mentioned not-with-standing, I’m very impressed. Well done, Apple!

Arrgh! Google Mail is down

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:16:19 GMT

So my company uses Google Apps for email, chat, etc. Google mail and chat have been down all day. I noticed it during my commute when I was checking email but thought it might be just an issue with Clear. When I got to work and plugged into the corporate network, however, I was still getting the same problem. That was at 8:00 this morning. As of 2:15 that situation has not changed. It’s incredibly frustrating but, oh well.

Angus goes to the vet (again)

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:02:24 GMT

Angus has developed an allergy to something (perhaps chicken but we’re not at all certain) which has caused him to develop hot spots. The poor thing was keeping us up at night whining because he was so uncomfortable so Saturday morning we took him to Powell Blvd. Veterinary Clinic. This was his second time at the vet in as many weeks (the first was mostly a check-up since we hadn’t taken him to the vet since we got him). As usual when we take Angus in public, there was much in the way of oohs and aaahs because, even if I do say so myself, he’s a very good looking dog. They had to shave part of his tail and gave us some allergy meds to feed him which worked their miracle so that within twelve hours he was doing much better! Better living through chemistry! It’ll be interesting to see how fast his tail fur grows out. Right now, he looks rather funny with a two inch section of tail that is bald. But he’s a happy pup again and that’s what matters to me.

And then it hit me

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:48:00 GMT

I live in a world without Ted Kennedy. I know I wrote about this earlier, but it wasn’t until I got home that it really sank in that he’s gone. I’ve been a political junkie a long, long time. I grew up in a family of Kennedy Democrats. When I was a young Republican (still weird to say that) he was the Enemy but I was aware of how he had always been on the side of the little guy. Conservative as I was, I was still black and as such a direct beneficiary of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. As I got older and came to something that could be called political and intellectual maturity and left my youthful conservatism behind, I came to truly admire Ted Kennedy. Was he a flawed man? Yes, all humans are flawed--myself as much or more than anyone. But he was a true liberal who, I believe, got really serious after Bobby Kennedy’s death and the tragedy at Chappaquddick. The grown-up Ted Kennedy became a consummate legislator, a statesman in the best and truest sense of the term, and a light for liberals.

He was able to compromise and negotiate with people with whom he might otherwise disagree vehemently in order to get something done. This is an art--the very core--of politics. Kennedy could do this better than most and probably better than anyone remaining in the Senate and, as such, was spectacularly capable. We can think Kennedy for the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

As I said in my earlier post, Ted Kennedy was always there just part of the background of American politics. Now there’s a hole in our national pantheon and we will likely not see his like for a long time to come.

Queer anarchists get it exactly wrong on DADT

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:26:09 GMT

Over at Queers Against Obama the following was posted:

If a George Bush policy had had the systematic effect of bringing death, injury, sexual assault, harassment, psychological trauma, and suspension of civil rights to poor queer and trans people, while expanding the might of the military, there would have been widespread outrage from queers, anti-war activists, and liberals. Yet President Obama is able to push forward such a policy under the guise of equal rights and with the hearty encouragement of spellbound liberals and wealthy gays.

This was my response:

I'm going to chime in as a minority opinion here. For the record, I am veteran of the US Army, a black lesbian, daughter of a WW II veteran, mother of a current soldier, sister of a retired Army officer, and a thorough-going progressive. I think that Ms. Ariel Attack gets it almost *exactly* wrong in her essay. In order to understand why, a bit more background is necessary.

I grew up in an upper-middle class family--my parents were college professors--and as such, when I enlisted in the Army there was much to-do about it. Kids from my class background went to West Point or Annapolis or the Air Force Academy, or they did ROTC at university. They didn't *enlist*. But I did. It was the first time in my young life that I had to *depend* upon people from the working-class. Before that working-class folks were my poorer relations in Louisiana and Alabama, my best friend Jeff and his mom, or the tenants my parents rented to. Because of that experience of having to depend upon folks who were from a wildly different class background than I was, I got a much needed education in class that took some of the winds out of my sails.

What's more--and this is the crux of the issue for me--I met people in the military who were from little postage-stamp towns where the only people who knew that the place existed were the folks who lived there, the postal service and the military recruiters. One woman in my unit, her nickname was Tennessee (and the first woman I kissed, incidentally), was from such a town. Joining the Army was her way to get out--to get an education, to see a bit of the world, to give herself a *chance* to have a skill she could levy into a job when she got out so that she could move someplace where being queer wasn't likely to get her killed. (This was the middle 80's, a very different America)

When I was kicked out of the Army for being queer (although my commanding officer called in a favor so that's not what my discharge papers say) I ended up moving to the Bay Area and came out. Once DADT was passed (to my horror, Clinton screwed that up) and I found myself having this exact same discussion in groups of my Queer Nation and Lesbian Avenger cohorts, I thought about Tennessee. The struggle for gays and lesbians to be able to serve in the military is about people like Tenn, who needed a chance out. Not some chance out in some utopian anarchist dream that isn't coming true as long as we are homo sapiens sapiens with our peculiar evolutionary history but in a foreseeable future. She needs that chance *today* when she's not got the grades or perhaps the money to go to school out of state, isn't going to follow the captain of the football team to university, and is just looking for some way to get herself started in the world.

I find it ironic that people who allegedly proclaim to love the working-class so much are so quick to look down on them for making rational, good choices from *within their own context*.

RIP Ted Kennedy

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:20:00 GMT

Ted Kennedy died at 77 from brain cancer. While conservatives may very well be dancing on the streets (or, more likely, there will be the predictable false claims that he was universally loved) or laughing along with Limbaugh, as a die-hard progressive who grew up in a family for which the Kennedy name was spoken in reference, I will be mourning. He was a great liberal champion--of labor and of health-care. At this point, I would like to see President Obama tell the Dems in both the house and the senate to go back, start the health-care reform bill over from scratch, and pass the bill that Kennedy would have wanted to see pass. That would functionally be Medicare-for-all (or at least all who want it).

I’m rather tired of the Democratic party pussy-footing about this trying to figure out which way to go. Write a truly liberal health-care reform package, understanding that with the possible exception of Snowe and Collins of Maine, it is vanishingly improbable that the President will get any Republican votes. So if you know that no matter what you do, with the exception of doing nothing, that the GOP is going to vote ‘no’ why even bother pretending that they’ll behave differently? Kennedy, who has worked around these yahoos since before I was born, understood this. I wish more Democrats in Congress understood it as well as he did.

The Joy of Skepticism

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:53:02 GMT

        "Skepticism or debunking often receives the bad rap reserved for activities--like garbage disposal--that absolutely must be done for a safe and sane life, but seem either unglamorous or unworthy of overt celebration.” (Stephen Jay Gould)

Skepticism and skeptics get a bad rap. So I am standing here today to say that I'm a skeptic and I'm proud. Skeptics are mentally from the state of Missouri, the Show Me state. We are people in love with asking questions and whose curiosity is, typically, wide ranging. When skeptics start asking questions about some sacred cow or another, it isn't because we are mocking or ridiculing others nor is it because we don't have an open mind. It isn't that we don't take others ideas or beliefs seriously. We assume that the World, all that we can be aware of in some way, at some level, is real. By real I mean something to which any reasonable person would have to grant at least provisional agreement to.

        Most of the time, most people are skeptical about those things they find foreign, strange or different.

        Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up tune your ears and open your minds! It's the diet break-through of the century! This diet will lower your risk of cancer and heart disease, help you live longer, prevent colds and flu and assist your body in healing if you're injured! What is this miracle diet, you ask? Is it based on Atkins or South Beach? No! It's Dr. Davis’ Patented Yogurt Diet! That's right, you eat Yogurt or yogurt based foods, three times a day, every meal. Why I've been on nothing but yogurt for 15 years and I still look 30 even though I'm much, much, much older than that! Yes, ladies and gentleman yogurt has all the cultures, nutrients and vitamins that a body needs at every stage of life. Just buy my book, “Yogurt for a More Cultured You” and attend my seminars “Yogurt, the Miracle Food” and you'll be on your way to a longer, healthier, more active life!

        Now, what was wrong with that? Chances are that, at least once in that little spiel, you said “yeah, right”. If I were really selling something, you might find yourself wanting to how one could eat yogurt and nothing but yogurt and stay healthy. You might wonder if I really ate only yogurt. You might begin to wonder how much older than 30 I really am. That is skepticism. If I were selling this on TV you might want to know what an organization like Consumer Reports or even WebMD had to say about eating only yogurt. You might Google for 'yogurt diet' and see what kind of information came back. The last thing you would probably do is take my word for it and shell out money to me.

        Skeptics are people who have a simple trust in the Universe and it is this; that the Universe is going to be both more clever than we are and reliably consistent most of the time. What that means is that while, as Hamlet said to Horatio, that there are stranger things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, we can also count on certain things. “You can't unbreak an egg.” “The firmness of the Earth” “Like the sun rising in the East and setting in the West...” these are all statements testifying to the regularity of the Universe. That regularity means that we can expect, for instance, cause and effect to work most of the time in most situations.

        Don't get the idea that skeptics think we know everything or that we just reject ideas out of hand. Do you believe that there is life on another planets? Do you believes that there is intelligent life on other planets? Do you believes that aliens visit the Earth?

        Now, I believe—although I have no proof and very little evidence—that it is very likely that there is life elsewhere in the Universe. I think it is possible, although less likely, that there is life elsewhere in our solar system. I think it is probable that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. It is vanishingly unlikely that the planet has been visited by aliens. The reason I say that is that there is no good evidence for aliens having visited the planet.

We are the watch men who guard against bad ideas in order to discover good ideas, consumer advocates of critical thinking who, through the guidelines of science, establish a mark at which to aim.

Apple to release Snow Leopard on August 28 | Mac OS X | Macworld

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:23:56 GMT

What more is there to say? Apple is releasing Snow Leopard on Friday! 64-bits of OS happiness.

Train full of bikes -- I love Portland bike culture (sometimes)

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:47:35 GMT

The Portland bike community is in full effect on the train this morning! All four pegs are taken plus there four more on my end of the train and four more on the other end. I wonder how many of these folks will still be cycling come October or November when it is far less pleasant? Certainly the guy with the Cannondale and the other bloke at the far end of the train with the Trek Portland will keep cycling, as will I. There’s another guy I saw all last winter so there’s at least half of us are year-round riders (or, in my case, nearly year round--I don’t ride in the ice).

On another note, I got a promotion! It’s an ego thing more than a financial issue as there’s no money for raises this year. However, I’m no longer the lowest ranked person on the team. My boss and team lead both had great things to say in my review and that they thought it an utter travesty that I was on the low end of the scale because I contribute quite a bit and bring some rather unique skills to the table. One thing that struck me in the review (and I was quite taken by this being mentioned) was my ‘impressive home network with media server’. That made me feel really proud. My boss had come to my wedding and so saw my home network and was able to, like others, request music over his iPhone. To have other computer geeks tell me that my network is impressive is the highest accolade I could have.

WHO warns against homeopathy use

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:17:53 GMT

The BBC is reporting World Health Organization has weighed in on the use of homeopathy for HIV, TB and malaria--you know the kind of things that kill you. And, depending upon your point of view either surprisingly or unsurprisingly, found the treatments to be not worthwhile. I was very pleasantly surprised to see this occur. In perhaps the most succinct statement possible on the subject matter, a doctor in Liverpool had this to say:

"There is no objective evidence that homeopathy has any effect on these infections, and I think it is irresponsible for a healthcare worker to promote the use of homeopathy in place of proven treatment for any life-threatening illness."

That’s pretty damn blunt right there.

Milk drinking mutants and human evolution

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:16:39 GMT

Not being a big fan of drinking milk when I discovered that lactose intolerance was the default for adult mammals, I started maintaining that milk drinkers were mutants. When I started really studying evolutionary biology and started to get the subtleties of the theory, I discovered that lactose tolerance was something that evolved fairly recently. Today I stumbled across the following excellent blog post over at Denim and Tweed

Originally, every human on Earth was lactose intolerant, like most mammals. That is, they lost the ability to digest lactose, the major sugar in milk, when their bodies stopped producing the necessary enzyme lactase after weaning. Then, some populations of humans domesticated milk-producing animals, and this seems to have generated strong natural selection for a form of the lactase gene that remains active in adults. [Emphasis mine]

The author goes on to explain that lactose tolerance appears to have evolved at least twice in humans, amongst African pastoralists and Europeans. However, (and this is where it gets really interesting) it appears to be adapted to different things in the two environments. In the Africans, it appears to be favored for just being able to get more nutrition from your animals. In Europeans, it appears to be favored because of Vitamin D production.

The GOP's Misplaced Rage - The Daily Beast

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:23:32 GMT

Bruce Bartlett, a conservative from way back and one of the original supply-siders makes the point the conservatives are angry at the wrong White House resident in a piece posted at the Daily Beast. hey should be angry at Bush but they’re spewing at Obama. He goes on to eviscerate the idea that the economy did so well under the Bush regime.

He concludes with this:

Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect.

I want to turn that around. Until we, as liberals or progressives, hold Democrats to the same standards we hold Republicans we will have no credibility and deserve no respect.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey can kiss my progressive ass

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:57:58 GMT

I found this out at Alternet and Daily Kos, John Mackey wrote the following editorial for the Wall Street Journal against health care reform:

I also found out that Mackey is virulently anti-union and then there’s his stance on health care reform:

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

He then goes on to list ideas like deregulating the insurance market, allowing high-deductible insurance policies ($2500 - $5000), allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines, removing mandates that dictate what kinds of things have to be covered (good bye mammograms) and, perhaps my favorite, tort reform to make it nigh-well impossible to sue for malpractice!

Now, let me be clear, Mr. Mackey is free to hold whatever beliefs bake his vegan biscuits. However, he might want to remember that, by and large, it is progressives and liberals like my wife and I who shop at his stores and who have, over the years, made him a very wealthy man indeed. If he believes that the market should handle health care because it has done such a fantastic job at it so far, so be it. But I see no reason what-so-ever I should continue to give my money to a company run by someone who is opposed to two things I am very enthusiastically in favor of; namely, unionization and universal health care.

So, I’m going to vote with my dollars. We’ve bought our last anything at Whole Foods. We’ll see if the conservatives with whom Mackey has thrown in his lot are now going to shop at the ‘hippy store’.