The "Religious Right" and Randy Brinson

Randy Brinson came across my radar a year ago. He's a doctor in Alabama and a dedicated Christian seeking to lead fellow Christians out of the political wilderness in which they have wandered for...well, it's not exactly forty years but it's over twenty-five. The alliance between Republicans and political Christians runs all the way back to Ronald Reagan snatching the bacon away from Jimmy Carter, the most conspicuously Christian president to hold the office in our lifetime.

Sleeping with politicians for twenty-five years has not led the nation any closer to Christian values. And politicians seem to be growing weary of Christian nagging about morals. The moral terpitude of the Clinton years drove Christians even closer into the arms of the GOP, and the election of a second George Bush was for many the next best thing to a Second Coming.

But the bloom is off the roses and Randy Brinson's Redeem the Vote movement is an idea whose time has come. Talk to Action is a site put together with the intent of addressing what has come to be called the "Christian Right," or as they describe it, "a platform for reporting on, learning about, and analyzing and discussing the religious right -- and what to do about it." Last October they wrote about Brinson's organization.

Two years ago many conservative Christian leaders were sending direct and indirect messages that voting for Bush and the republican party was the only right Christian way to vote. Not much has changed in two years, but there are some signs that a few leaders have changed their minds about politics.

In 2004 Randy Brinson organized a voter registration campaign aimed at young people called Redeem the Vote. It seemed to me at the time that this looked more like a Vote for Bush the Redeemer effort. Right before the 2004 election, Rick Warren sent out a message to thousands of pastors in his network and basically gave an appeal for the Bush-Driven Life.

A couple of weeks ago (Are you ready for this?) the Christian Coalition of Alabama, with Randy Brinson now at the helm, broke ranks with a lot of their followers by taking a moderate (read realistic) view of controling electronic gambling.

To be accurate, there is no more Christian Coalition of Alabama. A core group controlling the URL changed the name to Christian Action of Alabama, and an epitaph for the group has already been published. I'm not sure where the remnant being led by Randy Brinson will affiliate, but my hope is that similar grass-roots movements across the country will rise to form a critical mass that can be identified.

Read this editorial from the Anniston Alabama Star.
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In recent campaigns the Christian Coalition of Alabama has been a vocal if not always potent political force.

It also has been a controversial one.

Often at odds with the national Christian Coalition over political goals and strategy, leaders of the Alabama organization finally broke away and formed Christian Action Alabama, which they claimed would better represent the views and values of “pro-family Alabamians.”

But the Christian Coalition of Alabama remained. With Randy Brinson at its head it continued to pursue what many felt was a more moderate and more pragmatic course.

The difference between the two groups became evident recently in the debate over whether or not to legalize electronic bingo machines at the greyhound race tracks in Mobile and Birmingham; the machines already are legal at tracks in Greene and Macon counties.

Christian Action Alabama came out unequivocally opposed to the bill. Long on record as being against gambling in any form, the leadership of CAA said it would not be a party to anything that would expand gaming in the state.

Even though the Christian Coalition of Alabama also is opposed to gambling, Brinson took a different approach.

Aware that illegal electronic bingo already was moving into the state, he reasoned that if legal electronic bingo was available in these four locations it would make it easier to identify and shut down the illegal operations. So he came out in favor of the bill.

The fact that spokesmen for two different Christian organizations differ on this bill has confused some folks. It shouldn’t.

Although many people who call themselves Christians firmly believe that gambling is a sin and should be outlawed, some people who call themselves Christians feel that gambling in a controlled and regulated environment is no sin at all.

It is a debate as old as religion itself. Believers on both sides of an issue — whether it be gambling, homosexuality, tax policies that favor the rich over the poor, and so many others — devoutly believe that Christ, or God, or Allah, or Jupiter, or Jove is on their side.

In our democracy, it is up to the individual to decide if he or she wishes to go along with this group or that group or no group at all.

It is up to the groups, and the individuals who lead them, to present their positions openly and fairly and without demonizing those who oppose them.

That is how the system is supposed to work.

Woo-hoo!
Who'd a thunk it?
In Alabama, too! I'm gonna have to stop making jokes about Alabama if this keeps up. Good luck, ya'll.

Don't Forget Mother's Day

This came via email.
Too good not to share.
(Actually the email clip had ebaumsworld.com credited. I watched the clip, but couldn't get the embed code to work. So I looked it up at YouTube and found it there. Different attribution, I see. Who knows where it came from?)

Diedtra Henderson on Washington Journal

This is a post about food. The key link will be the archived record of today's Washington Journal which will not be available until tomorrow. An informative segment with Diedtra Henderson, staff writer with the Boston Globe, covered a range of topics including melamine and other contaminants in the food supply, how the FDA and USDA work, the impact of global markets on the domestic food supply and a rich spin off of other food related questions raised by call-in viewers.

May 14. Link is now up:
Go to Washington Journal.

Scroll down to May 5, find the segment with Diedtra Henderson, 46 minutes. The link will not copy here.

Good luck with Real Player not timing out. I tried to follow up with a better post but I couldn't get the thing to play back longer than a few minutes without "timing out" and starting over. Too bad. She is excellent...clear, full of pertinent information and replying to well thought out questions with tons of information. This is a great listen and learn piece.

Rather than work from memory, I plan to wait until I can watch the segment again before putting together a post about it. Besides, I missed the first few minutes. Rarely do I find something on TV that makes me want to go back and see what I missed, but in this case I will. This young woman has done he homework and is working on a piece about pharmaceutical additives (antibiotics) in the food chain. The case in point is catfish imported from China and she expects to have the story ready for publication by Wednesday.

I'm not easily impressed with journalists unless I sense they are doing more than riding the crest of a topic du jour. In the case of Diedtra Henderson she drops phrases that tell me she has dug deep into her subject and ingested a lot more information than she can cover in the restricted space of an hour or so. For example, in response to a call-in question she said simply, regarding the FDA, that "they are not going to inspect their way out of this," meaning that the issue of food safety is a lot bigger than a single agency of government will be able to manage.

And she's correct. When imported products can be brought to North America cheaper than we can produce the same products at home, the arithmetic of business will outrun all other considerations and the efforts of government agencies will be left in the dust. She used the illustration of the e-coli crisis arising from the Jack-in-the-Box story in 1993, pointing out that no individual agency could take credit for resolving the problem. But thanks to immediate and effective reactions on the part of politicians and an aggressive public relations response by those involved the end result was an improvement in the food supply chain that impacted the whole industry. (I hate to admit it, but the threat of mammoth settlements from liability litigation also played a part. It seems the same threat of financial ruin may be one of the variables leading to the next step improving the safety of the food supply.)

I'm particularly interested in how the two biggest agencies charged with overseeing our food supply, the Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture, divide their respective areas of concern. Thanks to the way the Lord has provided politicians with the sacred trust of protecting and worshiping the Free Market, these two agencies inspect by day and sleep by night with the businesses they are charged with monitoring. (I hope that doesn't reveal any bias on my part.) In the end I expect to find that individual states and local authorities will be the best hope for improvements. California often gets the spotlight in this regard, but other states are taking important steps to fill gaps in the federal system.

Another footnote: they brouoght up the T-word.
She called this case study a "roadmap for terrorists" who may want to do harm to great numbers of consumers while at the same time crippling large segments of the economy. In the case of melamine, an industrial chemical, the product got past whatever tests are in place because those tests were not looking for iondustial chemicals but nutrients. The "protein" test, for example, was actually looking for nitrogen because protein in foods is measured by the amount of nitrogen it supplies. Well, hello. Chinese suppliers knew what to do to make the test look better. Why bother add real meat when an industrial chemical gets the same results?

Edward Luttwak on "The Middle of Nowhere"

The cover story of this month's Prospect magazine is ponderous reading but it does me good to plow through it. The whole piece is deliciously politically incorrect, but in a good way. Edward Luttwak is not being cute or blaming anyone in particular as he chips away at what comes across as one big meaningless hoopla in the Middle East. Not only war in Iraq, but just about everything making headlines, from the over-rated importance of the players and their lands to the putative threats advertised as much by our own leaders as the sources themselves. The term paper tigers comes to mind, except it is the wrong part of the world for that image.
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Why are middle east experts so unfailingly wrong? The lesson of history is that men never learn from history, but middle east experts, like the rest of us, should at least learn from their past mistakes. Instead, they just keep repeating them.

►The first mistake is "five minutes to midnight" catastrophism...

►The second repeated mistake is the Mussolini syndrome....

►The third and greatest error ... is the very odd belief that these ancient nations are highly malleable.
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Go read the first part and your weekend will be better for it. We are still stuck with the same misguided leadership, beating the same tedious drums no matter what happens, but after reading this I am less worried that they will do as much mischief as I had been worrying about. I love the ending.
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That brings us to the mistake that the rest of us make. We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.

Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.

The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the UN's 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 per cent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 per cent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 per cent. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire middle east generated under 4 per cent of global GDP in 2006—less than Germany.

Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and east Asia—places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.

Thanks Dr. Coutinho for the link.
His remarks are also worth a look.

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Underscoring one of Luttwak's main points (that the ME is overly-dependent on oil..."parasitism" was the term he used) one of the youngsters at the sparkling little group blog, Mideast Youth elaborates on the same theme.

In the United Nations Arab Development Report for 2002 the Muslim’s world literacy rate stands at only 53%, against 81% for China; Arab literacy is only 50%.So when oil begins to diminish,what’s going to happen?

In Israel — of the 1.2 million Israeli Arab citizens of Israel - the rate of female literacy is 88% for Israeli Arab women and twenty-six percent of Israeli Arab students who graduated from high school went on to receive some kind of secondary education in Israel at colleges and universities !!

Quoting a popular Arab religious commentator the writer says the main problem is that Arabs have a poor work ethic.

This is a smart bunch of kids at Mideast Youth. They don't all agree about everything but they don't hesitate to speak their minds. Check out these bios. They may be out of date by now, but any additions are probably impressive. I've been reading Nouri Lumendifi for some time and I know he's no longer 17.

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Serendip, an Iranian blog less than a year old, comments on Luttwak's article. This blogger publishes mostly in English and frequently makes critical points about Iran's heavy-handed autocracy. At the same time he (or she) seems to be a patriotic Iranian at heart whose criticisms seem intended as constructive.

Luttwalk is not only unmindful of the long history of the Middle East, but also completely in denial about certain genocidal maniac and his ilk who want to repeat this history and are quite vocal and perilously honest about it since Khomeini took power in 1979 and embeded his 'Islamic manifest destiny' (Khomeini's Doctrine) into the Constitution of the country itself. This includes even our best Arab allies in the region who wouldn't mind to establish an Islamic Empire again.

Lutwwak, apologists, and those navigating in the circles of denial in foggy bottom, tend to forget that Iran, India and all other "Arab" states - including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as the entity under the Palestinian Authority - were originally non-Arab nations that were conquered by the Muslim Arabs when they spread out from the Arabian peninsula in the first great wave of jihad in the 7th century, defeating, killing, enslaving, dispossessing, converting, or reducing to the lowly status of dhimmitude millions of Christians and Jews, Zoroastrian exodus to India, and destroying their language (Phoenicians in Lebanon didn't speak Arabic)(Iran is the only country that was able to sustain its own language thanks to our brave poet, Ferdowsi) ancient and flourishing civilizations. (Prior to being Christian, of course, these lands had even more ancient histories. Phraonic Egypt, for example, was not an Arab country through its 3,000-year history.)

It is precisely this history that Khamanei and Ben Ladanite want to repeat if we allow them to have their "own history". Islamic Republic's ambitions are not just repressive and incendiary; they are nuclear (their nuclear programs started 20 some years ago secretly and we just found out about it 4 years ago) and global (See the Islamic Republic's Constitution and Read Khomeini's book, "The Islamic Government" and not just for Iran) and to this end they have formulated and continue to implement all of their foreign policies since 1979.

Obama's MySpace Flap

Looks like the Obama campaign hit an Oh-shit! moment yesterday.

One Joe Anthony last year registered a MySpace url and became a true believer in the Obama for President campaign. He built a huge following and was one of the campaign's most dedicated promoters, but campaign operatives took steps to take over the space with little more than a Thanks-a-lot (read $$$$ here) and the rest is a tawdry tale of how money trumps principles (or doesn't). John Robb's blog furnished the dirt link. Kos already has over a thousand comments.

Whatever the case, at this point it appears the Obama people simply decided that they would get control of the myspace.com/barackobama url by going around Anthony and getting MySpace to lock down his access to it. In their view, Anthony was violating MySpace's terms of service by falsely representing himself as Obama, and thus they didn't have to pay him anything. The worst that would happen, they reasoned, is that they would have to rebuild the candidate's network of friends.

I'm not all that interested in the details. Barack Obama himself made a personal call to Anthony, the details of which were not recorded. But that's not important at this point. What is important is that the poop is in the street and there is no way it can be stuffed back into the elephant.

It will be interesting to see how this is handled.

This is why I don't spend time with the top-tier people. They waste so much time and energy on stuff like this that there is little left for issues that are really important. Call me when it's over.

Wikia Works, a Case Study

Most readers are aware of Wikipedia, the online resource for information that isn't (and never will be) printed as hard copy. This remarkable creature of the Web and a growing number of cousins live in a netherworld midway between speaking and writing, a collective expression of a vast number of users, any of whom can tweak the content as long as they are willing to subscribe to a few basic rules. Moderators keep some measure of order, but their role has about as much control over content as the operator of a ferris wheel has over the monster standing there in the fairground.

My own awareness of Wikipedia grew several notches when I discovered that it was the go-to place for information about unfolding disasters. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and the aftermath of Katrina on the Gulf coast come to mind. It was not surprising, then, that within a few hours of the Virginia Tech killings a Wikipedia entry was under way, It became for me the place to go for the most timely breaking news.

A few weeks ago I was flattered to be invited to join, contribute to and participate in another Wikia site about politics. The contact person is a staff member working for the same individual or group that put Wikipedia together. I mention this not to brag, but to point to an expanding group of Internet phenomena, user-driven sites that take on lives of their own as swarms of users, like fish in a school or birds in a flock, move their collective mass in this or that direction.

My site, of course, has very few regular readers, but I like to think that one reader at Hootsbuddy's Place is worth scores of others among the teeming masses. I spend a lot of time putting my posts together and am vain enough to imagine that the quality is largely a cut above that of the average blog. (I tend to be wordy, I know, and my opinions about a few topics represent such a narrow view as to be near madness. For those drawbacks I have no defense. Charity on the part of my readers is all that stands between me and complete oblivion.)

I am content that about eighty percent of my traffic comes from search engines, mainly Google but others as well. I noticed yesterday that my Google Page Rank dropped from five to four, but I have no idea what that means, really. As I have said before, I blog more for my grandchildren and myself than the rest of the world. And if anyone else finds something interesting here, welcome. At the same time my TTLB rank barely returned to the top ten thousand so I expect to remain a pretty small fish in a very big pond.

Having said that, I now link to a timely and interesting piece from the Politics.wikia site which includes a YouTube video illustrating how the Virginia Tech story grew during the first twelve hours. Here is the article in toto at this moment. If enough readers at the site expand or edit, the content may change, but I don't expect that to happen. I do expect that in the future this will be one of the prescient footnotes of our time.

So on April 16, there was the Virginia Tech shooting. 2 hours later, it had a Wikipedia article that had these 19 words:

The Virigina [sic] Tech shooting incident occurred on April 16th, 2007. One person has been reported to be slain.

The article has since been edited by some 2,000 editors, with some 7,500 revisions. Here's what The New York Times' Noman Cohen wrote:

IMAGINE a newspaper with more than 2,000 writers, researchers and copy editors, yet no supervisors or managers to speak of. No deadlines; no meetings to plan coverage; no decisions handed down through a chain of command; no getting up on a desk to lead a toast after a job well done.

Think about it. In one week, the article went from 18 words, to a full length, referenced, and polished article. That's the beauty of Wikipedia. I couldn't imagine how this type of thing gets done, except for the fact that I contribute to a wiki. It's just a great thing.

Marc Lynch aka Abu Aardvark on NPR

One of my favorite resources regarding Middle East affairs is Abu Aardvark. Mark Lynch is one of the best-informed, most even-tempered experts on the region. Those two qualities are not easy to find in one person.

Yesterday he was interviewed on All Things Considered. The clip is worth hearing. He speaks about divisions in Al Qaeda in Iraq.

As the months and years pass, forces in Iraq that are carelessly lumped together in the single word "Insurgency" continue to crystallize into various groups. It is hard to discern from this far away exactly where each of them stands in the churning, chaotic, dysfunctional political and social matrix of that ancient country, but all seem to have one aim in common, the expulsion of American forces. Marc Lynch makes as much sense of the confusion as anyone. Getting rid of Americans is the most compelling unifying dynamic that Sunnis and Shiites of all stripes seem to have in common.

The "flypaper" approach seems to be working wonderfully well. Nothing unifies people like an outside threat, and the US occupation of Iraq, if it does nothing else, certainly provides inspiration for groups and individuals who might otherwise have little in common to come together for one cause. Iraq has become the destination of choice for the well-informed, aspiring anti-American terrorist wannabe.

I'm just an ordinary guy with access to the same news sources, the same blogs, the same public information as anyone else. By now I shouldn't be surprised when vast numbers of the public continue to wallow in ignorance, but I am mystified that so few people see the insanity of the US military presence in Iraq.

"Fiddler on the Roof" in Japanese (and English)

It's May Day.
I was looking for one of my favorite musical treats, a festive version of The Internationale by a Japanese klezmer band.
Sadly, the link is gone and YouTube doesn't have it either.
But never mind. I remembered something just as much fun: a Japanese version of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof!

In case you need a refresher for the lyrics, I found another clip in English from the movie.
Here they are.
Enjoy!

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This is a bait-and-switch post.

Now that you've had some fun, those who care to be serious for a moment are directed to a profound little essay on Tradition by a very wise teacher/blogger, Gil Bailie.

The word "tradition" and the word "treason" come from the same root.

The very name "modernity" self-consciously used to describe the period of the last several centuries in Western cultural history clearly exemplifies the spirit that has dominated these centuries, and the "postmodernism" that has lately been offered as its sequel -- as it's name makes obvious -- is nothing more than the same spirit, in Shakespeare's words, having eaten everything else in sight, at last eating up itself.

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The precise point I want to make is about the very nature of both tradition and culture. Both are received from the distant past, not concocted in the present or in the recent past. That is why we must try to resolve any differences between ourselves, our contemporaries, our ancestors, and our descendants in favor of our ancestors. Paradoxically, that is the only way we can resolve them in favor of our descendants. For what our descendants will most desperately need is an inheritance, a tradition, a moral, religious, and cultural patrimony that has the weight of centuries of affirmation, reflection, scrutiny, and living experience. Anything less ballasted than that will surely be washed away in the cultural tsunamis which are doubtless coming in the decades just ahead.

To hand on to the next generation a culture cobbled together out of the fashions and ideological enthusiasms of the last few decades is to betray them in the most irresponsible way, for such a culture is no culture at all, and it will do them not good. This why the New Testament warns against the "spirit of this age," not because of the peculiar toxins at work in the late-first century Greco-Roman culture when the New Testament was being written, but precisely because every age produces its own unique myths and rituals for warding off the truth that Christians are charged with announcing to the world, and Christians are warned to be wary of them, in season and out.

Read the whole thing. It's not all that long, but you'll probably have to read it through slowly and think about what you are reading to absorb the message. I did. But the message is worth absorbing.

Slim Galliard and The Hellzapoppin' Jam

Another gem via Motion Abbey.

Notice how YouTube has become such an essential repository for videos that we have to credit the sources that help find the treasures? Aside from the quality of the music, dancing, and historic significance of this 1941 clip, that's the story I find most important.

Look for the metal clarinet. I haven't seen one of those for years. They used to be the economy instrument for high school bands because they were cheaper than wood and probably more durable. Sounded more like a soprano sax (which this may also be) but in the hands of a competent musician they still made music. Snobs, of course, had to have wood, but most high school freshmen were less into style those days.

Office Party Video

Somebody is paying this office staff to have a party.
And this is what they do...
This is how the next generation gets their work done. My guess is that when they focus on a business challenge they do one helluuva job.
Gimme these kids any day over the zombies I see depicted in most office environments.
H/T Motion Abbey. Thanks, this is great!
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I was wrong.
They weren't on the clock.

We did this video one night after work. We are a company called Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker.

I still think they are probably a great bunch.

Forbes Looks at "Google Hell"

Andy Greenberg, writing in Forbes, points to a place where the Google gatekeepers will send sites that...what?...look too much like spam?
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Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site's pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible--because site operators often don't know what they did to get placed there.

Google's programmers appear to have created the supplemental index with the best intentions. It's designed to lighten the workload of Google's "spider," the algorithm that constantly combs and categorizes the Web's pages. Google uses the index as a holding pen for pages it deems to be of low quality or designed to appear artificially high in search results.

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Interesting reading.

Google is a free service. And for all practical purposes so is the Internet.
So when people with something to sell depend on a free service to do their advertising, they sometimes get exactly what they pay for: nothing.

Businesses that depend on a free ride to stay profitable are hitch-hiking. If they want to have dependable transportation, they need to hire a cab or buy their own car. What's not to understand about that?

Google is on to these games and is doing a worthy job of keeping internet content clean, easy to access, pertinent and relatively free of garbage. I recall the early days when just about any search term returned a crazy mixture of everything from literary trivia to porn and everything imaginable in between. I can't recall the term, but I was once shocked to see it turn up (thanks to a Google search) buried in a chapter of a Dickens novel! Cute, but useless information. And surprising. I never realized the Google people read Dickens but it made me feel better that they did.

After spending a career in the food business I can tell you a thing or two about people trying to get something for nothing. I heard Neal Boortz complaining one morning about QT convenience food stores (one of my absolutely favorite places to go) not furnishing his favorite coffee sweetner. All they have, he said, were sugar and the pink stuff. Other than that, he indicated theyr were a classy operation. Just too "cheap" to put out the good stuff.

That's how people sometimes think who never have dealt with the public. The reason for their product mix is more likely stealing.

What? People steal? Surely not! Most people are not that cheap. That's right, most people aren't that cheap. But enough freeloaders are out there that the rest of us have to be subject to tighter controls than otherwise might be the case. I have two favorite stories about the public's expectations of what is meant by the word "free."

The first concerns lemons, as in lemon wedges for iced tea. I learned early in the game that when a product was unavailable that is paid for by the customer, it may be bad business to let yourself be out of stock, but the results was not altogether terrible. Being out of chicken -- even for ten ninutes or so -- was always a point of frustration, but there were lots of other entrees available, or the guest could always choose a different entree, soup & salad or a vegetable plate for lunch that day. Ruffled feathers, of course, but nothing unforgivable.

"Unforgivable" is running out of something "free."

"Whaddya mean, you don't have any butter? You always have butter!"
"No lemons! I can't drink tea without lemons. Just give me some water. I can't believe there are no lemons..."

...and so on. I only ran out of lemons ONCE. After that it was worth a trip to the grocery store and whatever price was necessary to avoid ever running out again. We never let ourselves run out of condiments. I can't imagine what might happen if there were no ketchup. Or steak sauce. Spare me the humiliation.

The second example is about crackers. Saltines for soup.

My associate manager worked on Sundays and I was scheduled off on Sundays and Mondays so I rarely got to meet the Sunday crowd except when the associate manager was on vacation. My dining room staff told me about a family that was stealing crackers and I reacted by being blad that it was on Sundays. "The associate manager will handle it," I told them. "He's the man in charge on Sundays."

The day came, of course, when I had to be on duty when this family came in. A couple of the staff came whispering up to me...."They're here! That's the people who are stealing crackers. Right back there in the second booth!"

"Chill out," I said. "Let me check into this...." [Why ME? I thought. I always get stuck with the stickiest public relations problems.]

Sure enough there was a family of four. Two kids (watching and learning from the example of their mother), Mom and Dad. Mom had brought a purse that looked like a converted school lunch pail. Cute. Just the right size. And sure enough she had picked up an inventory of saltines and was getting them organized to pack into the "purse." Stacked up neatly on the table like poker chips, about six or eight to the stack. They fit perfectly in place. It was about half to one-third the size of a standard box of crackers.

What to do....

I put it off, trying to think how best to confront the situation...or maybe ignoring it altogether and telling the staff that we have to overlook stuff like that because some people are just that rude and selfish and we need their business just like everyone else's. (Kinda like smokers who insisted on lighting up in a non-smoking section. Always, it seemed, only a few feet away from a child with asthma---or so Mama said. This was before the ban on public smoking.)

As they left, Mom took the girl child to the restroom and Dad went up to pay. This is great! Mom was the problem and Dad didn't seem to have anything to do with it except letting his pushy wife do her thing. As he was handing the check to the cashier I walked up and said "Ann, give him back his money. I want him to be our guest today."

The cashier was well-trained and instantly handed him his money, waiting for me to say something.

"I hope you all enjoyed your lunch today," I said. "And anytime you get soup, please have as many crackers as you want to eat. But I have to ask you not to take out as many crackers as you took because we need to have the same rules for everyone. Mostly, if my staff sees customers carrying out food without paying for it, they think it's okay to do that and you can see what that could lead to."

He was mortified. Poor guy. He got in trouble because of what his wife had done. He mumbled something weak, like, "I understand. Thanks for mentioning it..." and left quickly with the son.

Whew! That was easier than I thought.

But wait. About five minutes later I saw the woman coming in. Walking down the line of waiting customers and making for the dining room. I pretended not to see her...She made her way through the Sunday crowd and came directly to me. I smiled at her and said, "Hello, what can I do for you?"

"Here," she said stiffly, dropping a check for their meal on a tray that I was carrying. "Go buy yourself some crackers." She turned and left, saying nothing more.

I never saw them after that. I can imagine what happened when that poor, hen-pecked husband had to face his pushy wife, telling her how embarrassed he was at the checkout. I double that even he was prepared for her reaction. I toyed with the idea of mailing her check back to her jsut to underscore my point, but I decided to deposit it instead. The point had already been made. No reason to add insult to injury.

For me it was yet another footnote in a long history of meeting, serving and loving that great American Public. Thank God, I'm getting close to retirement.

And as for so-called "business people" and "marketers" looking for a free ride with Google: Get over it. If you find yourself confined to what you call "Google Hell" just know you got there on your own. Google didn't do it. You did it to yourself.

Next time, take only the crackers you need and leave some for others. Some of us are "just looking."

Casting the first stone

Google tossed this old post up to one of my referrals. I am reposting it although it is a year and a half old and some of the links are no longer active. Reading over it again, I recall how badly I was affected by watching a stoning video. I guess if the reader wants to see one it's out there to be had, but verbal descriptions are enough for me. Last week a family member rented the movie Blood Diamond and I had to find something else to do after seeing the savagery of how child soldiers are captured and trained.

So why repost this piece?
Because I want to remind myself and all who read it how close we are to our ugliest impulses. All are complicit. Stoning is not very different from other forms of capital punishment. Even if we as citizens don't personally participate, thanks to a modern, sanitized system, the final responsibility remains with us. This is especially true in representative forms of government. In totalitarian systems we might be able to blame a tyrant.

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There is an online video of stoning linked at Pebble Pie. [Link no longer active] I started to watch it but stopped as soon as bloodstains appeared, so I can't report what is on the entire link. What I watched was all I needed. The person being stoned to death is bound in sheets, very much like a cocoon, then stood in a hole up to about the waist. The hole is filled in so there can be no escape and the arms remain bound. The stoning is performed by a crowd of people, presumably ordinary people who want to participate, using rocks, the size of which is also governed by Sharia law. Stones cannot be as small as "pebbles" which would have little effect (no play on words, I'm sure, for the blog host) nor large enough to kill the person with one or two blows, which would bring the punishment to an end too quickly.

This video is not just a documentary. It begins with warnings and other information that lean toward editorial comments, such as "Islam, the religion of peace." These ironic reminders appeared several times in the narrative lest the viewer forget what he is watching.

The images I saw were so haunting that I have been thinking about them for a day. I wish I had not watched as much as I did, but I have been thinking about the editorial screens as much as the content of the video. The comment screens are intended to underscore the savagery of what is being done, associate that level of cruelty with Muslims, and make peace-loving people cringe in horror that they are not even close to that level of barbarity.

After thinking about it, I have not come to that conclusion. As an opponent of capital punishment I find that video to be nothing more than another reason to remain strong in my opposition. As I have stated elsewhere, my objection to capital punishment is not what it does to the subject, but what it does to society, us - you and I, as executioners. In the same way that a very different value system practiced in countries guided by Sharia law seems barbaric to us, our own methods of executing criminals have isolated us from capital punishment in a way that most people cannot imagine they have anything to do with it personally.

A crowd of ordinary people casting stones is not very different from more clinical methods of execution. That execution is more easily understood as what it really is: society turning on one of its own for the protection of some greater purpose, whatever they imagine that purpose to be. We are a generation of meat-lovers but most people, except for hunters and fishermen, recoil at the idea of slaughtering even a chicken for dinner. As a recent link shows there are plenty among us who seem to have little problem with killing other people and celebrating what they have done, but those people are acting in the line of duty, don't you know. [Additional link May 11, 2007: This art "installation" by an Iraqi in America allows web visitors to fire paintballs at him day and night for a month. And they do.] [Followup LINK to the paintball story. Very revealing.] We have improved civilized behavior to the point that we have trained executioners instead of doing the job personally. Likewise, we develop trained warriors to kill designated enemies.

Spare me the indignation about stoning. The practice predates the New Testament. That does not mean I approve. Forms differ in the level of cruelty, but result is the same: society kills one of its own. We who are peaceful and loving have more civilized ways of expressing that love, don't we?

Lee Iacoca on Leadership

We bought a minivan because of this guy. First of the model year.

We also had to take the kids to New York on vacation instead of going out West. We had to wait several more years to see the Grand Canyon. Why? because Lee Iacoca's face was on the teevee all the time telling about how the Statue of Liberty was all renovated and ready to open to the public once again.

Lee Iacoca is an American hero. He knows how to make things happen. This time I hope he can do what it takes to shake some sense into a lot of people. Chapter One of his book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? is online.
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My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to—as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.
[...]
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
.

Good luck, Lee. Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.
It's good to read what you say, even if no one seems to be acting on it yet.

H/T 3 Quarks

Jessica Lynch Video

Raw footage of the rescue of Jessica Lynch. In front of a congressional hearing in which Jessica Lynch is a key witness, she said "I am not a hero". The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding a hearing entitled "Misleading Information from the Battlefield." The hearing focuses on the death of Army Ranger Specialist Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture and rescue of Army Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq. The Committee examines why inaccurate accounts of these two incidents were disseminated, the sources and motivations for the accounts, and whether the appropriate Administration officials have been held accountable.

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If this little girl were one of my daughters I would be so pissed off I couldn't see straight. It's bad enough to let children go to war, but to manipulate stories as blatantly as this one belies the whole reason we are supposed to be in Iraq.
Ugly. Disgusting. Really frustrating.

I'm now expecting some source to question the integrity of this video, as though that in some way might blow away the stench of the whole, big lie.

We already knew about the misrepresentation of Pat Tillman's death. It does my heart good to see that story coupled with this one to underscore the deceitful conduct of this war.

Nour al-Khal and Lisa Ramaci, Upcoming Interviews

Update May 4

You can hear the show online at the website.

Nour remains in hiding in another ME country, awaiting approval of a visa.

The clip is just over twenty minutes.

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» Next Time on

NOW, with David Broncaccio

"An American reporter murdered in Iraq and the woman who risked her life trying to save him."
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Times and availability may vary from market to market, but the scheduled air time is 8:30 to 9:00pm Eastern, Friday evening, May 4.
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Nour al-Khal and Lisa Ramaci will be interviewed.
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For those of us who have been following their story, this is a must-see.

A broadcaster for 28 years, Brancaccio spent 13 years at Marketplace, which tripled its audience and received a duPont-Columbia University Award (1998) and the George Foster Peabody Award (2001) during his tenure. Before becoming host, Brancaccio served in London as the European editor of the program, covering the continent's economic and political integration. During that time, he also covered diplomatic stories from Europe for the radio service of THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR.

Brancaccio has contributed to CNN, CNBC, and Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS. His print work has appeared in such periodicals as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, AND JOURNALISM and MASS COMMUNICATION EDUCATOR.

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Update June 29

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Lisa, Nour has arrived in New York.

"...a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war."

Thomas Ricks, writing in the Washington Post, reviews an article in Armed Forces Journal. Ricks writes an appetizer. Lt.Col.Paul Yingling provides the meat. These are not moonbats, you know. They're not even politicians. Both are professional military men with years of training.

The passion of the people is necessary to endure the sacrifices inherent in war. Regardless of the system of government, the people supply the blood and treasure required to prosecute war. The statesman must stir these passions to a level ommensurate with the popular sacrifices required. When the ends of policy are small, the statesman can prosecute a conflict without asking the public for great sacrifice. Global conflicts such as World War II require the full mobilization of entire societies to provide the men and materiel necessary for the successful prosecution of war. The greatest error the statesman can make is to commit his nation to a great conflict without mobilizing popular passions to a level commensurate with the stakes of the conflict.

Am I the only one who has noticed that the war in Iraq is really not popular? It seems to me that the "passion of the people" and their willingness to "supply the blood and treasure required to prosecute a war" are more a source of conflict than anything resembling unity. There have been disagreements about many issues in my lifetime, but I cannot recall a time, even in during the Vietnam conflict, that our elected representatives were as badly split over an issue. Even during the Watergate hearings and impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton decorum trumped vitriol.

Melamine Awareness, Updated

I thought melamine meant those old-fashioned plastic plates that didn't break if you dropped them on the floor. Maybe so, but recently it has been in the news because it is a product that in chemical form, among other effects, causes food tests for protein to indicate false postives.
Mmm.
Update: It seems the use of melamine as a filler and cheap food additive is commonplace in China. See addendum at the end of this post.

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Yummy! More protein!
It also causes kidney damage and death.

Melamine made the news a week or so ago because it was found in pet foods that were being recalled.
It's a story in progress, but melamine seems to have been fed to hogs as well.
Chickens, too.
And you know who eats ham and chicken...

Melamine is an organic compound that is often combined with formaldehyde to produce melamine resin, a synthetic polymer which is fire resistant and heat tolerant. Melamine resin is a very versatile material with a highly stable structure. Uses for melamine include whiteboards, floor tiles, kitchenware, fire retardant fabrics, and commercial filters. Melamine can be easily molded while warm, but will set into a fixed form. This property makes it ideally suited to certain industrial applications.
[...]
Aside from common commercial uses, melamine became a topic of much discussion in early 2007, when veterinary scientists determined it to be the cause of hundreds of pet deaths, because of pet food contamination. Prior to these reports, melamine had been regarded as non-toxic or minimally toxic. However, because of the unexplained presence of melamine in wheat gluten added to mass-produced dog and cat foods, it is the most likely cause. Pet owners report symptoms that are commonly associated with renal failure, which could be explained by the ammonia that may result from the digestion of the melamine.

What is Melamine? by Wise Geek

A nitrogen-rich chemical used to make plastic and sometimes as a fertilizer may have been deliberately added to an ingredient in pet food that has sickened and killed cats and dogs across the country, public and private officials say. A leading theory is that it was added to fake higher protein levels.

Melamine has been found in wheat gluten, rice protein concentrate and, in South Africa, corn gluten, all imported from China, and all meant for use in pet food, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed Thursday.

USA Today (here's an interesting date stamp: 5d 8h ago)

Melamine, the additive suspected in the deaths of pets around the country, was in food given to hogs and chickens in several states, and the Food and Drug Administration is trying to determine if the animals entered the human food supply, FDA officials said Tuesday.

Several thousand hogs have been quarantined and are being tested. The affected farms are in North Carolina, South Carolina, California, New York, Utah and possibly Ohio. A poultry farm in Missouri is also under investigation.

Hog urine has tested positive for melamine in several of those states after it was determined that the animals ate salvaged pet food that originated in factories that produced the tainted food. It is a common practice in the United States to take pet food that does not meet quality standards and reconstitute it into livestock feed, Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's chief veterinarian, said in a conference call with reporters.

Sarah Abruzzese of the New York Times, Times Argus

Across America, thousands of dogs and cats have been sickened or killed by dangerous ingredients contained in the foods that stock our nation's pet food stores.

It's made killing your pet as easy as laying out a generous bowl of food.

And this is more than a pet food story. It's become a story about the dangers posed by the food humans eat every day.

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration revealed that melamine -- the industrial chemical killing pets -- had made it into hog food in six states and a poultry farm in Missouri. So the question now becomes whether this chemical is also in our pork and our chicken.

Even more disturbing: There is no official word on how melamine got into our food supplies in the first place.

Marcos Bretón, Sacramento Bee

Nancy Lungren of the California Department of Food and Agriculture says meat samples have been taken from some pigs that were slaughtered at the farm. That meat is being analyzed for traces of melamine. Melamine is the chemical suspected of killing and sickening dogs and cats acrouss the United States. Officials of the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration believe that the food was spiked in China with wheat glutens, corn glutens and rice proteins in an effort to boost profits. And those glutens and rice proteins were contaminated with melamine, a chemical used in plastics and some rodent poisons and pesticides. Some critics now question the safety of other imported food products.

KOIN News, Portland

Lots more at the links. More than you want to know.

The free market's a great place, don't you think?
If government would just stand aside and let the marketplace work things out everything would be all better.

Riiight.

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Addendum, May 2
From the NY Times

ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.
For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
[...]
The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

For its part, Chinese officials dispute any suggestion that melamine from the country could have killed pets. But regulators here on Friday banned the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for use in domestic food supplies.

Yet what is clear from visiting this region of northeast China is that for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry and fish feed.

Many animal feed operators here advertise on the Internet, seeking to purchase melamine scrap. The Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, one of the companies that American regulators named as having shipped melamine-tainted wheat gluten to the United States, had posted such a notice on the Internet last March.

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is then used to create plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, golf ball-size chunks of white rock, is sometimes being sold to local agricultural entrepreneurs, who say they mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that is high in protein.
“It just saves money if you add melamine scrap,” said the manager of an animal feed factory here.

Last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, two animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine scrap, whose chemical properties help the feed register an inflated protein level.

Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea — another nitrogen-rich chemical — is illegal for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily detected in China as well as in the United States.

“People use melamine scrap to boost nitrogen levels for the tests,” said the manager of the animal feed factory. “If you add it in small quantities, it won’t hurt the animals.”

The manager, who works at a small animal feed operation here that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas, said he has mixed melamine scrap into animal feed for years.

He said he was not currently using melamine. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color to match the right feed stock.

He said that melamine used in pet food would probably not be harmful. “Pets are not like pigs or chickens,” he said casually, explaining that they can afford to eat less protein. “They don’t need to grow fast.”

The resulting melamine-tainted feed would be weak in protein, he acknowledged, which means the feed is less nutritious.

But, by using the melamine additive, the feed seller makes a heftier profit because melamine scrap is much cheaper than soy, wheat or corn protein.

“It’s true you can make a lot more profit by putting melamine in,” said another animal feed seller here in Zhangqiu. “Melamine will cost you about $1.20 for each protein count per ton whereas real protein costs you about $6, so you can see the difference.”

Feed producers who use melamine here say the tainted feed is often shipped to feed mills in the Yangtze River Delta, near Shanghai, or down to Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong. They also said they knew that some melamine-laced feed had been exported to other parts of Asia, including South Korea, North Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.

Evidence is mounting that Chinese protein exports have been tainted with melamine and that its use in agricultural regions like this one is widespread. But the government has issued no recall of any food or feed product here in China.

Indeed, few people outside the agriculture business know about the use of melamine scrap. The Chinese news media — which is strictly censored — has not reported much about the country’s ties to the pet food recall in the United States. And few in agriculture here do not see any harm in using melamine in small doses; they simply see it as cheating a little on protein, not harming animals or pets.

As for the sale of melamine scrap, it is increasingly popular as a fake ingredient in feed, traders and workers here say.

At the Hebei Haixing Insect Net Factory in nearby Hebei Province, which makes animal feed, a manager named Guo Qingyin said: “In the past melamine scrap was free, but the price has been going up in the past few years. Consumption of melamine scrap is probably bigger than that of urea in the animal feed industry now.”

And so melamine producers like the ones here in Zhangqiu are busy.

A man named Jing, who works in the sales department at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory here, said on Friday that prices have been rising, but he said that he had no idea how the company’s melamine scrap is used.

“We have an auction for melamine scrap every three months,” he said. “I haven’t heard of it being added to animal feed. It’s not for animal feed.”

UPDATE, May 5

Washington Journal had a segment this morning which was very informative.
The interested reader will find lots to think about watching this segment when it becomes available in the archives.

What part of "GET OUT OF HERE!" do we not understand?

I's so tired of writing about this war I want to stop trying. But too many people are dying because US policy will not let it change direction, so fatigue is no excuse for not keeping up the pressure.

There's this growing US government line that Iraqi Sunnis are turning pro-American. So hold your breath and have a look at the most recent major public opinion survey (carried out just last month), 97% of Sunnis oppose the US presence in the country, 97% say that they have little or no confidence in US and UK occupation forces, and 94% say that the presence of US forces in Iraq makes the security situation worse. Only 5% expect putting more US forces into Baghdad and Anbar to improve the security situation (68% expect it to make things worse, 27% think it will make no difference). Only 2% blame al-Qaeda for the violence, and none (at least statistically significantly) blame Sunni insurgents. 94% of Sunnis
say that attacks on coalition forces are acceptable, while 66% consider attacks on Iraqi government forces unacceptable (showing starkly the political line that the insurgent factions are laying down against al-Qaeda). Bottom line: local opinion likely is turning against al-Qaeda, but the beneficiary is more likely to be the insurgency factions than the United States, no matter what the Weekly Standard tells you.

Mark Lynch

And the Tillman/Lynch testimonies are old news for many of us.

I suppose the next development on the national political scene will be the villifiction of these two families by the same voices that have stained the names and reputations of John Murtha, Harry Reid and Cindy Sheehan.

Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007)

I will leave it to others to write obits for the late first president of modern Russia.
To mark his passing, here is a great story I remember from about fifteen years ago.

The first President Bush on a visit to Russia and was talking with Mikhail Gorbachev. They were discussing how to pick smart men to work with as they did their jobs. Boris Yeltsin was at the time second in command under Gorbachev.
"When I'm looking for someone to work," said Gorbachev, "I want someone with a quick mind, someone who can solve problems in a hurry."
"That sounds right to me," said Bush. "How do you find someone like that?"
"Well one of the things I do is ask them a riddle and see how long it takes for them to come up with an answer."
"Riddle?" said Bush. "Why that's so easy. I never thought of that. Give me an example."
"Sure," said Gorbachev. "How about this: Sisters and brothers have I none, but this man's father is my father's son. Who might that man be?"
"Hmm..." said the president. "I guess that means you are talking about yourself. If If you have no siblings but your father has a son, then you are the only one it can be....right?"
"Exactly," said Gorbachev. "It works every time. The smartest people always get the answer."

So the president comes back to Wasington and among other things is sharing this bit of information with his Vice-President, Dan Quayle. He told him that Mikhail Gorbachev and he were talking and Gorbachev told him how to find the smartest man in Russia.
"Really?" said Quayle. "How so?"
"Easy," said Bush. "Just answer the question to a simple riddle: Sisters and brothers have I none, but this man's father is this man's son."
"...and Yeltsin got it right?" said Quayle.
"He sure did," said the president. "He's the smartest man Gorbachev found."
"Amazing," said Quayle. "I can't wait to ask that riddle to someone."

Later Quayle met a staffer in the hall and said, "Excuse me. I would like to ask you a riddle and see if you can get the answer."
"Sure,"said the staffer, "Go ahead."
"okay, here goes: Sisters and brothers have I none, but this man's father is my father's son. Who do you think this man might be?"
"Hmm.." said the staffer. "I guess it must be you."
"No, silly," said Quayle. "It's Boris Yeltsin!"

Videoa: Super-cooled Water amd Shampoo Stream

The water is at six degrees below zero...
Is that cool or what?
Just watch.
H/T Motion Abbey


You think that's cool?
Take a look at this...

Drugs, Violence, Depression, Heart Disease, Whatever...

Arianna Huffington sees a connection between drugs and violence.
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We urgently need a national debate about guns. But we also urgently need a national debate about the epidemic of mood-altering drugs being prescribed to young Americans.

I'll take my teachable moments wherever I can find them. And Virginia Tech has the potential to be one of them.

Reports that Cho had been taking antidepressants once again turn the spotlight on the uneasy question of what role these powerful medications might have played in yet another campus massacre.

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Kerry Howley looks at prescription and over the counter drug sales in Reason Magazine.
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The system that puts drugs over the counter is driven by profits and patents. Patents--legal monopolies--exist to drive innovation in the drug industry. In order to protect the intellectual property packed in every pill, pharmaceutical companies are granted exclusivity for 20 years from the date they file for a patent. In an industry where the next big thing typically costs between $300 million and $500 million to deliver, patents help keep companies afloat. But as long as there's no competition, drug companies have no incentive to put their products over the counter.
.

My own view is that the Virginia Tech tragedy has more to do with a broken health care system than anything else.

And who has anything more to do with health care than drug manufacturers and insurance companies?

Just asking.
Trying hard to connect the dots.

Keeping up with Irshad Manji

Irshad Manji is what happens when a Muslim woman gets liberated. Thanks to a plucky personality, quick mind and sixth sense of effective public relations she puts a positive modern face on an ancient faith that has suffered a lot of bad press lately. I became aware of her only recently thanks to Pieter Dorsman. She is the focus of a snip in FP by Preeti Aroon commenting on the Public Broadcasting program Faith Without Fear which focused on Irshad Manji.

All these links are worth a look. No need for me to belabor simple points.

As an aside, Aroon said (twice, already)...

"If Christianity could have its Protestant Reformation, it seems possible for Islam to have one too." Yesterday's program mentioned that the Protestant Reformation was accompanied by its share of violence, which took place over centuries.

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Daniel Nexon at Duck of Minerva picked up a good point, namely that it is an unfortunate but common practice for those who don't pay attention to history to conflate the Protestant Reformation with the Enlightenment.

The Protestants, in general, were the back-to-basics religious extremists of the sixteenth century. More of that sort is decidely not what Islam needs.

I'm not arguing that the Catholic Church couldn't get downright nasty and repressive. It could and it did. But Catholic humanism represented a far more tolerant strand of Latin Christianity than early modern Zwinglianism, Lutheranism, or the Reformed Church. We shouldn't confuse pre-Reformation Catholicism with Counter-Reformation Catholicism, nor Protestant movements with later, often Protestant, champions of liberal enlightenment.

I'm currently finishing a book manuscript that points to some interesting parallels between early modern Europe and the contemporary period, yet I cannot stress two points enough:

First, the "does Islam need a Protestant Reformation" question depends on a grossly distorted view of the nature of the Protestant Reformations.

Second, even if the question didn't precede from bad history, the circumstances of the Reformations simply don't travel well to those of contemporary Islam.

Tired old saying: Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.

If there's anything we don't want it is a latter-day repeat in Islam of a Protestant Reformation. A retrograde fundamentlist extremism is quite enough. In fact, that stripe of back-to-basics religious extremists is what we already see (and face in combat).

What we can pray for is another Enlightenment.

Atheists in Foxholes, Massacres and Other Places

This is a "FYI" post.

The Virginia Tech killings are getting a lot of attention. Even as numbers from Baghdad or Somalia far out weigh those from Blacksburg, Virginia, there is something about domestic mass murder that cannot be ignored. NPR did a piece this morning describing the memorial wall that has been erected on the VT campus, a place where grief can find a collective expression. I was reminded of my own experience at such a place a few weeks after 9/11.

In matters of faith, this might be a "teachable moment" but faith for many people is what Twain described as "believing what you know ain't so." The old line is: For the believer, no evidence is necessary; for the non-believer, no evidence will ever be enough. Here are a couple of links I have come across just to make notes.

Leila Abu-Saba found this at Kos. (I'm copying from her site. As for Kos, I don't "go there.")

We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls that endure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can be said and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in the possibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity of compassion in our lives. We believe in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas and their wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and we know what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. We may believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we know that friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despise atrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because if not massacre then nothing could be wrong.

I am to be found on the drillfield with a candle in my hand. “Amazing Grace” is a beautiful song, and I can sing it for its beauty and its peacefulness. I don’t believe in any god, but I do believe in those people who have struggled through pain and found beauty and peace in their religion. I am not at odds with them any more than I am at odds with Americans when we sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” just because I am not American. I can sing “Lean on Me” and chant for the Hokies in just the same way and for just the same reason.

Krista Tippett's radio program from last June came to mind. She interviewed a military chaplain who very candidly stated...

What I saw in Iraq, and I ended up my tour of duty in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. But what I saw in my combat experience, and I've seen through my 22 years, is on the battlefield, using crude numbers, a third of the soldiers were men and women of faith, growing in their faith or coming to a new understanding of faith. A third of the soldiers were indifferent or fatalistic. And that's — that religion on the battlefield bears a lot of looking at. The other third were either indifferent or jettisoning their faith. And many would say to me, very bluntly, "I've lost my faith. I saw my buddy get blown away," or "I was involved in a firefight that killed innocent people, and if there's a good God, He wouldn't let that to happen. So I do not want to believe anymore."

And finally, Gordon Atkinson this morning pointed to someone now reading scripture whose inspiration is, let's just say, atypical. I will let the reader find the link via the Preacher's blog.

Do you get this? Do you know how interesting and rare this is? A man with no real adult connection to the Christian Church is going to read our scriptures and write about what he finds there. This is a spiritual experience/quest for Hugh, who now calls himself a "Christianist." (He explains what he means by that on the new blog) He and I are going to email and talk on the phone during this journey. I guess I'm a kind of guide or mentor for him in this, but I will definitely only be there to give careful feedback when asked. I don't want my insider views getting in the way of his honest writing.

He's no Biblical scholar, so I'm sure there will be many times when he is very unorthodox. So what? Good! That's what I want to hear. I want to hear what a gay man in Los Angeles has to say about this collection of writings that is so precious to us. I'm looking forward to it. I think you'll enjoy it too.

Ethanol Cars as a Public Health Problem

Betcha weren't ready for this. I know I wasn't.
My dad was an auto mechanic. So is one of my sons-in-law. I have learned to be careful about anything that comes out of the car business and this is one more example. That's part of the reason we now only buy second-hand cars. (It helps, too, to have a family member in the business.) Car dealers are the modern version of horse traders.

Ethanol-fueled cars will create an equal or even greater risk to public health than those powered by gasoline, according to a new study. Gasoline emissions are estimated to cause at least 10,000 premature deaths in the United States alone every year. Yet ethanol is no panacea, says Mark Z. Jacobson, the Stanford University atmospheric scientist who conducted the study.

Using sophisticated computer modeling techniques to simulate air quality in the United States in 2020, Jacobson found that vehicles fueled by a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (E85) increase atmospheric concentrations of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, canceling out the reduction of carcinogens that are prevalent in gasoline but not in ethanol. What's more, E85 can increase ozone in some areas. And that means ugly smog and the deaths associated with higher levels of ozone. Jacobson projects that widespread adoption of E85 would lead to slightly higher mortality rates in the United States (+4 percent) and especially smog-friendly Los Angeles (+9 percent).

And it doesn't matter, according to Jacobson, whether ethanol is made from corn, switchgrass or other plant products—the results remain the same. So we have yet another reason to be skeptical of the prevailing obsession with ethanol. Well, what should we do? Jacobson highlights alternatives such as battery-electric, plug-in-hybrid and hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles, which can derive energy from wind or solar power. He says, "These vehicles produce virtually no toxic emissions or greenhouse gases and cause very little disruption to the land."

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Here's an interesting puzzle:
How might the shock-jocks handle this piece of information?
On the one hand, boosting support of ethanol would put them squarely into the patriotism sector, because it "reduces dependence on foreign oil," but it's also something the much despised "tree huggers" like. You know, that commie-infested environmental movement that wants to destroy America. Now we have yet another wrinkle in the argument, that old smog and ozone thing, which everyone knows is part of that global warming clap-trap.
Am I being sarcastic enough?

Video: Parakeet Tricks

Found while surfing at Bereft.

I don't know anything about the blog, but it seems to have a lot of information regarding Iran. I am adding it to the aggregator accordingly.

Deinstitutionalization Hasn’t Worked

I am pursuaded that the tragedy at Virginia Tech was a preventable event.
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This reference is nearly eight years old.

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans are eking out a pitiful existence on city streets, under ground in subway tunnels, or in jails and prisons due to the misguided efforts of civil rights advocates to keep the severely ill out of hospitals and out of treatment. The images of these gravely ill citizens on our city landscapes are bleak reminders of the failure of deinstitutionalization. They are seen huddling over steam grates in the cold, animatedly carrying on conversations with invisible companions, wearing filthy, tattered clothing, urinating and defecating on sidewalks or threatening passersby. Worse still, they frequently are seen being carried away on stretchers as victims of suicide or violent crime, or in handcuffs as perpetuators of violence against others.
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All of this occurs under the watchful eyes of fellow citizens and government officials who do nothing but shake their heads in blind tolerance. The consequences of failing to treat these illnesses are devastating. While Americans with untreated severe mental illnesses represent less than one percent of our population, they commit almost 1,000 homicides in the United States each year. At least one-third of the estimated 600,000 homeless suffer from schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness, and 28 percent of them forage for some of their food in garbage cans. About 170,000 individuals, or 10 percent, of our jail and prison populations suffer from these illnesses, costing American taxpayers a staggering $8.5 billion per year.
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This prescient op-od was written eight years ago.
In the intervening years we have managed to swell the size of that population to include economically advantaged individuals with access to more up-to-date methods to act on their broken and lethal impulses. A growing number of individual and mass killings should be a wake-up call to every thinking person that some part of our system is broken and dangerously in need of repair.

In 1965, Congress excluded most payments to state psychiatric hospitals and other "institutions for the treatment of mental disease" (IMDs) from Medicaid because the Federal Government did not intend to take over what historically had been a state responsibility, and because it intended to implement a system of community mental health centers that would replace the state psychiatric hospital systems. (LINK)

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I have no way to validate my suspicions, but my instinct is that this initiative, well-intended though it has been, was quietly promoted by both pharmaceutical and insurance interests, which after defence contractors and agri-business are two of the most powerful (read "well funded") of all special interests.

Patrick Moynihan saw it coming. His was one of the brightest minds that ever served in the Senate, but unfortunately he seems to have no successor to fill his shoes.

The source of the above quote is from a site advocating for more effective treatment for people who cannot pay. I have no problem with that, but I would argue that a greater challenge that has been added to the effective management of deranged people comes from a well-intended but dangerous over-sensitivity to issues of "privacy" and "due process." It's easy to discover plenty of arguments for keeping dangerous people medicated, thanks to the tawdry history of what we once called "insane asylums." Those sites are easy to spot because they are plastered over, very much like the evening news, with advertisements for drugs.

My time is limited this morning, and my thoughts are still in a state of confusion. But the more I think about it, the more I believe that we are missing something. When medical records are not available to their parents and others in loco parentis because of "privacy issues" there is something wrong. When individuals whose behavior indicates they may be a danger to themselves or others are identified, it is better to err on the side of safety than to yield to the fear of litigation.

Do some homework.
Search for "deinstitutionaliztion" and see what comes up.
Join me in learning what works and what fails.
Take a look at HIPAA. Learn about that monster and ask yourself whether the protection of medical information is as important to the community as the dangers that it might engender.
And as you read and learn, ask yourself these questions:
If I were in the insurance business, how might I feel about the costs involved with covering this problem?
and
If I were selling prescription drugs, would this kind of thing help me to sell more drugs at a higher price or fewer drugs at more competetive (i.e. lower) prices?