revolutions are messy, street art wallpaper, newly elected republicans side with rapists

When street to street fighting between several sectarian groups in Iraq started to heat up and most of us were thinking of the disastrous quagmire that was predicted, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously quipped democracy is messy. The observation was correct, just not the smug indifference he conveyed as American troops were caught in the cross fire of a half dozen different agendas. Violence is messy. Once it starts, however just its goals, it is difficult to accurately predict outcomes. Conflict can create vacuums in power. What starts out as a movement for democracy and justice turns into the next generation of tyranny. Former International Atomic Energy Agency head and Nobel Peace prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei seems to be a the most well known and visible spokesman for the Egyptian protesters. On the other hand the Muslim Brotherhood or Muslim Brethren or the Ikhwan is the single largest opposition group. Egypt’s branch of the brotherhood has long ago denounced violence and is considered an enemy of Al Qaeda. The Brotherhood recently defended Coptic Christians in Egypt against violence and while the official church leaders have warned them not to, Copts have also joined in the demonstrations ( thus this is not a completely Muslim phenomenon). Bush administration former U.N. ambassador John Bolton ( who thought invading Iraq was a keen idea and has advocated a nuclear strike against Iran) thinks the Brotherhood is too radical and will ultimately hijack any democratic political agenda by the protesters. Taking advice from Bolton is like taking fire safety advice from an arsonist. He was part of the neocon cabal during the Bush era that was going to spread democracy. Iraq was supposed to be an example of that. With over four thousand American dead, tens of thousands wounded or maimed, over two million Iraqis turned into refugees and maybe as many as 1.5 million dead Iraqis, Iraq is now something of a satellite state of Iran. Concerns that a revolution advocating some kind of democratic state can create a need for order, a vacuum which can be filled by any group strong enough to seize the moment, are legitimate concerns. It does not currently look as though this is a bid by fundamentalist Muslims to seize power. Five Things to Understand About the Egyptian Riots

America can’t stop this revolt. Commentators across the political spectrum can’t seem to keep themselves from implying that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, by their choice of adjectives, can “save” President Mubarak. We must disabuse ourselves of the idea that we can determine how this turns out. As Michael Hanna has written on Democracy Arsenal, this is less about the state of our union than “the tattered state of their unions.” We can, however, exert some control over whether we are perceived by the citizenry in Egypt and elsewhere as part of the solution. Our diplomats and spokespeople are now at pains to prove, in real time, that when we talk about stability, we mean it in a way that favors the governed, and not just the governors. As Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution told the Washington Post, our policy options are currently very limited: “The most the U.S. can do in the short run is reorient their rhetoric. … People want moral support; they want to hear words of encouragement. Right now, they don’t have that. They feel the world doesn’t care and the world is working against them.” But, with talk of a negotiated departure for Mubarak shooting around Twitter, there may come a time when the United States has to become even more involved.

One thing is certain. The conservative spin on Egypt will be events happened in a vacuum with no history. As such any and all blame is to be laid at President Obama’s feet. Just because Reagan and both Bushs sent millions in aid and armaments to Egypt’s government does not mean those actions had anything to do with current events. All these past events took place longer ago than two weeks worth of nightly news so will stay down the memory hole. Bush and company preached the gospel of democracy while illegally rendering enemy combatants to Egypt and Uzbekistan. Any authoritarian or totalitarian dictator who cooperated with U.S. policy was exempt from the spread of democracy. No adult should expect a politician to be completely honest, but the neocons pushed utter propaganda to new heights.

 

street art wallpaper

House Republicans Plan to Redefine Rape – Drugged, Raped, and Pregnant? Too bad — Republicans are Pushing to Limit Rape and Incest Cases Eligible for Government Abortion Funding

Drugged, raped, and pregnant? Too bad. Republicans are pushing to limit rape and incest cases eligible for government abortion funding. Rape is only really rape if it involves force. So says the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.

[  ]…For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, with another exemption covering pregnancies that could endanger the life of the mother.

But the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to drastically limit the definition of rape and incest in these cases. The bill, with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors, has been dubbed a top priority in the new Congress by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to “forcible rape.” This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible.

For example, if a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. Rep. Smith’s spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.

Given that the bill would also forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old’s parents would also not be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn’t be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.

Some pop psychology article I read years ago suggested that sometimes we vehemently hate some people because they remind us of our own worse qualities on some subconscious level. I would not go so far as to make that a universal rule, but I have observed that phenomenon of a personal level. Reality TV frequently features conflicts between people who are eerily similar in personality, intelligence and world view – the Real Housewives and MTV’s Real World are good examples. I’m not the first to notice – American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right – a disconcerting  similarity between America’s Christian fundamentalist and and Islamic fundamentalists especially in regards family, women and sex issues. The American Right and the Taliban always blame women for men’s inability to be able to control their behavior. Florynce R. Kennedy once said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I’d add that if Conservative men got pregnant as a result of rape they’d demand an abortion and the rapist be hanged immediately. While conservatives are capable of compassion and empathy, both qualities are in short supply in the conservative mentality. Maybe they use their limited allowance on zygotes and have none left for actual human beings. There is some kind of voodoo magic in conservative thinking. Miraculously, a mass of tissue has all the rights in the world, while the rights of the human being carrying the tissue suddenly disappear.

odette’s autumn wallpaper, new reactor powered by sunlight produces fuels, sen. mike lee (r-ut) endorses soviet era child labor practices

odette’s autumn wallpaper

Not another cold fusion bit of alternative energy vapor ware, but an actual device that could save our buy stuff and more stuff or die trying culture, New Reactor Paves the Way for Efficiently Producing Fuel from Sunlight

The researchers designed and built a two-foot-tall prototype reactor that has a quartz window and a cavity that absorbs concentrated sunlight. The concentrator works “like the magnifying glass you used as a kid” to focus the sun’s rays, says Haile.

At the heart of the reactor is a cylindrical lining of ceria. Ceria—a metal oxide that is commonly embedded in the walls of self-cleaning ovens, where it catalyzes reactions that decompose food and other stuck-on gunk—propels the solar-driven reactions. The reactor takes advantage of ceria’s ability to “exhale” oxygen from its crystalline framework at very high temperatures and then “inhale” oxygen back in at lower temperatures.

“What is special about the material is that it doesn’t release all of the oxygen. That helps to leave the framework of the material intact as oxygen leaves,” Haile explains. “When we cool it back down, the material’s thermodynamically preferred state is to pull oxygen back into the structure.”

Specifically, the inhaled oxygen is stripped off of carbon dioxide (CO2) and/or water (H2O) gas molecules that are pumped into the reactor, producing carbon monoxide (CO) and/or hydrogen gas (H2). H2 can be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells; CO, combined with H2, can be used to create synthetic gas, or “syngas,” which is the precursor to liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Adding other catalysts to the gas mixture, meanwhile, produces methane. And once the ceria is oxygenated to full capacity, it can be heated back up again, and the cycle can begin anew.

This break through was done by Dr. Sossina Haile, William Chueh and colleagues at the Califorina Instute of Technology. They created a proof of concept model with the help of Paul Scherrer Institute’s High-Flux Solar Simulator in Switzerland. It doesn’t do away with the problem of sequestering CO2, but in some cases a reactor might be placed at a manufacturing plant and use the CO2 as it is produced to make syngas or other portable fuels.

Remember Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) – who thinks that unfortunaetly child labor laws are unconstitutional. Conservatives have never been ones to let constitutional quackery go unrewarded, Republican Leadership Puts Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)On Senate Judiciary Committee

Placing Mike Lee in charge of overseeing the Constitution is a bit like putting Dick Cheney in charge of hunting and gun safety, yet the Senate GOP was so eager to put this radical tenther on the Judiciary Committee that it waived a rule prohibiting both of a state’s senators from serving on Judiciary in order to ensure Lee’s membership. Bizarrely, this move exposes a very real divide between Senate Republicans and the President. While President Obama’s State of the Union Address specifically highlighted “child labor laws” as an example of the kind of “commonsense safeguards” that all Americans can embrace, the Senate GOP apparently sees no problem with Lee’s view that federal child labor laws cannot constitutionally exist.

Where did Lee and his sycophants get their views on child labor. I cannot say for sure, but they could well have been inspired by Stalin and the Soviet Union, Forced Child Labor: The Soviet Legacy in Post-Soviet Central Asia

The use of forced child labor in the harvesting of cotton in Uzbekistan began in the Stalin era when the country was part of the Soviet Union. Since then students from schools and universities in Uzbekistan have been conscripted by local authorities for agricultural work. Uzbekistan’s independence ushered in little change: The coercive use of labor of children as young as 10 years of age continues today.

Despite the end of collective farming and the renewal of private farms, 1.5 to 2 million schoolchildren are sent by central and local governments for 2–3 months every autumn to the fields to pick cotton under hazardous conditions, which result in severe injuries to children and deprive them of their right to education.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is a Mormon. Is this political dogma and attitudes  part of their religious beliefs or just part of Lee’s bizarre concept of constitutional orginalism. Are there current or former Mormons, or Republicans, out there want to defend Lee’s ideological alignment with Soviet communism. If comparisons to Uzbekistan seem too harsh perhaps the conditions of good old England would be more appropriate, Child “hurriers” working in mines. From official report of the parliamentary commision.

Many children worked 16 hour days under atrocious conditions, as their elders did. Ineffective parliamentary acts to regulate the work of workhouse children in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day had been passed as early as 1802 and 1819. After radical agitation, notably in 1831, when “Short Time Committees” organized largely by Evangelicals began to demand a ten hour day, a royal commission established by the Whig government recommended in 1833 that children aged 11-18 be permitted to work a maximum of twelve hours per day; children 9-11 were allowed to work 8 hour days; and children under 9 were no longer permitted to work at all (children as young as 3 had been put to work previously). This act applied only to the textile industry, where children were put to work at the age of 5, and not to a host of other industries and occupations. Iron and coal mines (where children, again, both boys and girls, began work at age 5, and generally died before they were 25), gas works, shipyards, construction, match factories, nail factories, and the business of chimney sweeping, for example (which Blake would use as an emblem of the destruction of the innocent), where the exploitation of child labor was more extensive, was to be enforced in all of England by a total of four inspectors. After further radical agitation, another act in 1847 limited both adults and children to ten hours of work daily.

Gosh if only Lee, conservatives and libertarians like Rand Paul (R-KY) could turn back the clock to the good old days when children earned their way and we had whites only lunch counters, and didn’t have all this liberal interpretation of the Constitution.

black and white winter lake wallpaper, rand on social security, the french sherlock holmes

black and white winter lake wallpaper

Almost as good as the post – Tea Party Patron Saint Ayn Rand Applied for Social Security, Medicare Benefits – are the clowns holding the signs. Libertarianism is in dire straights if these are the John Galts of Rand’s fantasies. If one thinks of Atlas Shrugged as an old graphic comic book sans illustrations, it is somewhat entertaining. Libetertaians stole its only worthwhile tenets from liberalism and the rest can be found in some degree or another in the writings of late 19th and early 20th century anarchists and communists. Just as conservatives tout themselves as the financially responsible movement even though they have never balanced a budget, libertarians have never produced a working example of a libertarian community. They remind me of some die hard Marxists who claim that communism has never worked because everyone that has tried misinterpreted Marx. Libertarians and Marxists seem to share the same gene for denial and rationalization. I’m happy to tolerate those faults on a personal level, but the misery they produce are gross immoralities when used as a straight jacket for a nation.

Lots of people link to Spiegel on-line, but it is not exactly a bastion of great journalism. That said Spiegel does a nice, if a little sensational, account of Alexandre Lacassagne, How a French Doctor Helped Create Forensic Science

At about the same time, Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional character, the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes, was busy solving impossible cases. “Fascinating technique,” Lacassagne concluded, “But why does he never perform an autopsy?” Criminologists considered Lacassagne to be far more capable than Holmes. Unlike the fictional London detective, the real-life criminologist from Lyon revolutionized his field. “He was one of the first to recognize that everything doesn’t end with death, but that instead the existence of the body enters a new phase,” says author Starr.

By tracing the movement of insects on a corpse, Lacassagne could determine with some certainty how long the process of decay had been underway in the body. He used traces of blood on the skin of a dead person to determine how the body had been moved. Using the arm and thigh bones of a dead body, he could precisely determine its height. Lacassagne also discovered that different types of rifles and pistols left different markings on the ammunition.

Lacassagne did not solve and find the famous French serial killer Joseph Vacher, but he did figure out Vacher’s motivations. Vachers would be today what we would consider to be a psychopath – possessing no real concept of remorse or empathy. Vacher at one point claimed he was sent by God to make people understand the virtue of faith. While Lacassagne made great strides in promoting forensics methods in solving crimes, the science of forensics surpassed him in his own lifetime. He had rejected the than popular of idea of the “born criminal”, but he held onto a belief in phrenology. The quasi-scientific belief that one could tell a person’s personality and anti-social tendencies through patterns, depressions or bumps on the human skull.

black and white window wallpaper, what they say versus reality, making substance a priority

black and white window wallpaper

Mostly some quick takes today.

There is little chance of repealing health care reform ( The Affordable Care Act), but that did not stop Republicans in the House of Representatives from putting on a little dog and pony show at tax payers expense with their recent symbolic vote to do so. What sugar frosted goodness could average working class Americans reap from such a repeal,

Prior to passage of the Affordable Care Act, individuals and families were faced with skyrocketing premiums. Premiums for individuals increased 120 percent and family premiums increased 130 percent from 1999 to 2009. The Affordable Care Act controls these costs. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office or CBO looked at the law’s effect on premiums in 2016 and estimated that the health reform law would cut premiums for millions of Americans.

By all means let’s bring back the inflationary spiral of death and repeal reform. Hold on there, those stellar representatives of rectitude and snowy white values John Boehner(R-OH) and Mitch McConnel(R-KY) have sworn the Affordable Care Act is a job killer.

The Affordable Care Act helps create as many as 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade by lowering costs and helping promote a healthier workforce. It includes cost-containment measures to slow the rate of growth of health care spending. Small businesses in particular are helped through exchanges that allow them to pool resources to lower costs as well as tax credits to make it more affordable to offer their employees health coverage.

But..but..but health care reform is bad for grandma. If you care about grandma, health care reform is one way to show it,

The Affordable Care Act eliminates the “donut hole” in the Medicare prescription drug program by 2020. Seniors with high prescription drug expenses before health reform had to pay full price for their prescription drugs—without any help from their drug plan—once their prescription drug spending reached a pre-defined limit. People who hit this limit in 2011 will get a 50 percent discount on their name-brand prescription drugs, saving some Medicare enrollees as much as $1,500 in out-of-pocket drug costs. Those savings will not be realized if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.

It has never been true that conservatives care about deficits. Have any senior friends who have talked about building a boat and sailing around the world. They’ve been talking about that boat trip for as long as anyone can remember. Republicans have been talking about their boat of fiscal conservatism since Nixon. They have never balanced a budget. Never. So for those who pay attention to what conservatives actually do rather than the boiler plate nonsense that escapes their pie holes it is no surprise that repealing health care reform will increase the deficit. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the Affordable care Act will reduce the federal budget deficit by $143 billion over the first 10 years and more than $1.2 trillion over the next two decades. Conservatives, and not for the first time, are pro deficits. The noise they make otherwise is part of a decades long tradition of hollow words and peacockery.

Just because I cannot write does not mean I can’t find good articles about writing, How To Write a (Good) Sentence. Adam Haslett on Stanley Fish.

The trouble with the book isn’t the rules themselves, which the authors are sage enough to recognize “the best writers sometimes disregard,” but the knock-on effect that their bias for plain statement has tended to have not only on expositional but literary prose. In this, admittedly, Strunk & White had a few assists, in particular Hemingway. If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead. The terse, declarative sentence in all its masculine hardness routed the passive involutions of a higher, denser style. (James, from “The Altar of the Dead”: “He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved them still less when they made a pretence of a figure”; Hemingway, from “A Way You’ll Never Be”: “These were the new dead and no one had bothered with anything but their pockets.”) As a result, pared-down prose of the sort editor Gordon Lish would later encourage in Raymond Carver became our default “realism.” This is a real loss, not because we necessarily need more Jamesian novels but because too often the instruction to “omit needless words” (Rule 17) leads young writers to be cautious and dull; minimalist style becomes minimalist thought, and that is a problem.

Adam’s reaction might be a little overboard, but his general thesis seems sound. As others who have read his essay have noted, to begin to be a good writer it is important to get down to the bare bones of what one is trying to say before going off on some poetically enhanced flight of purple prose. If one has just read Henry James or William Faulkner it is understandable to aspire to those standards of prose. The former a master of the compound sentence and the latter a master of creating multiple layers within one sentence. Rather than start at those complex heights it is better to concentrate on conveying one’s basic premise. There is plenty of time on rewrites to work on adding the flourishes that will distinguish and add layers to one’s meaning. You would not build a house starting with a beautiful art-deco facade and add in the framing and foundation later. A related essay here, In Defense of Purple Prose,

Of course, purple is not only highly colored prose. It is the world written up, intensified and made pleasurably palpable, not only to suggest the impetuous abundance of Creation, but also to add to it by showing – showing off – the expansive power of the mind itself, its unique knack for making itself at home among trees, dawns, viruses, and then turning them into something else: a word, a daub, a sonata. The impulse here is to make everything larger than life, almost to overrespond, maybe because, habituated to life written down, in both senses, we become inured and have to be awakened with something almost intolerably vivid. When the deep purple blooms, you are looking at a dimension, not a posy.

It is usually irritating to read someone who seems to have gift for highly imaginative prose, but who has never reflected on the substance. Such an undisciplined talent is like looking at a painting with wonderful colors but which fails to provide any insight for the viewer. Substance first, style later.

I highly recommend Adam Haslett’s essay at Slate. It was a pleasure to read as well as informative.

new york street wallpaper

Largely because of America’s deep-rooted Calvinistic and boneheaded attitudes about suffering and what is frequently the illusion of independence, health care reform is controversial. A modern republic should want to put such a fundamental human need in the column of basic necessities, rather than acting like spoiled children who have had their TV privileges taken away. If America’s private health care system and its administrators were in charge of running my household, they’d be in sitting the corner on a time out contemplating the paint texture. Imagine the temper tantrums if we shifted the next great hurdle in the health care debate to America’s dental health. Because of state budget cut backs there have been Medicaid cut backs. Balancing the budget literally at the expense of seniors teeth. All the aches and pains, the atrophication of muscle and increasingly poor eyesight, seem punishment enough for living a long time. To do so without proper dental care is especially deplorable. Maybe some day down the road America will get over its infatuation with social-Darwinism and those seniors will be able to grow a new set of teeth, Dentistry: from restorative to regenerative with stem cells

Dr. Jeremy Mao: The interest in stem cells is based on their unique characteristics. Stem cells are master cells in the body that can transform into many types of cells that form nerves, bone, teeth, cartilage, and muscle, for example. Some of the unique characteristics of stem cells are the basis for the field of regenerative medicine, which uses the body’s own ability to maintain and repair itself to treat diseases, trauma, and tumor resection defects. Scientists are breaking new ground on a regular basis — developing therapies, growing organs, teeth, and bone using stem cell solutions.

[  ]…Dr. Jeremy Mao: The patient and dentist relationship will change on several fronts. Dentistry will move from restorative to regenerative, as dental stem cells show their capability to regrow teeth, jawbone, and muscle tissue. In addition to being the person you go to for a root canal or cavity filling, the dentist will serve as a gateway to a wide variety of regenerative therapies.

[  ]… Instead of turning to dentures or dental implants, I believe patients will be able to regrow damaged or missing teeth with their own dental stem cells. Regenerated teeth or tooth components would be a long-lasting alternative, whereas dental implants can fail and cannot change to mold to surrounding jawbone that undergoes changes over time

pagan trees winter snow wallpaper, brain differences affect perception, nuclear activist dagmar wilson dies

pagan trees winter snow wallpaper. something similar with warmer, rather than cooler colors here.

On going disagreements about social issues or personal issues that are a constant source of conflict with family or friends can range from darkly funny to intensely frustrating. Will these conflicts ever end. One might pause to consider some solace. Some part of us thinks that by coming up with newer or better arguments, or just master the art of the casual debate we can wear our opponents down. We can win. Sometimes it takes a while, but we do have incremental progress. History testifies to that concept to some degree. Once we were a world of knuckle draggers who believed in things which bumped in the night. Religion was an a rational empirical answer to those bumps but was progress by way of at least giving our fears some systematic organization. If you believed in green ooze covered goblins, the church may have declared there is no such thing. The church only accepts the existence of while ooze free goblins and belief otherwise is heresy. Your total population of apparitions goes down quite a bit when they have to be accounted for and agreed upon some a central authority. Progress in cognition and the realization of the normative and its consequences is not a neat straight line on a graph. Bits and pieces of the past are held on to way must their usefulness. Tyrants remain tyrants, abusive individuals remain abusive, after all the evidence should lead them to see the error of their ways and beliefs. Official bogeymen are difficult to have removed from the record in order to move on to the next ladder of enlightenment. Yes, progress is like a video game with trolls, dragons and fallible gods. What if the trolls are not just on official decrees, but deeply embedded in our organic being. So much for those grains of solace we just had from thinking a proper argument and some perseverance would save the day. How Perception Reveals Brain Differences – The ways in which brains differ from one another show up in the ways their owners perceive the world

Not surprisingly, subjects differed greatly in the accuracy of their judgments (independent of the level of their performance). Think of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, where contestants have to judge whether they want to use a lifeline before they know the answer, depending on their confidence. Some people are astute, using the lifelines wisely; other people fritter them away. The cognitive scientists extracted a measure of variability of introspection and discovered that this measure correlated with variability in gray matter volume in the right anterior prefrontal cortex. The more neurons you have in this region in the front of the brain, the better your introspection. Not that your performance goes up, but the insight you have into your performance—whether you thought you did well or not—increased. Patients with lesions in these regions typically lose the ability to introspect. And this part of the neocortex has expanded more than any other region in primates. Again, the neuronal mechanisms underlying this correlation remain unknown for now.

Rees’s studies establish that differences in the morphology, or shape, of our brains are mirrored in differences in the way we consciously experience and apprehend the world, including our own brains and bodies. In this way, neuroscience maps the physical structure of the material brain onto the inner geometry of phenomenal and ineffable experience.

Some the cocoon of our own self-awareness and our emotional and physical needs and desires is often difficult to see others thinking, truly thinking, much less thinking about thinking ( running a down a laundry list of  beliefs, without being informed by knowledge, is marginally thinking). If you want to make the world a better place much easier to think in terms of getting everyone food, clothing and shelter than trying to get them to think about the cognitive processes needed to be reevaluated in order to stop wasting water, stop persecuting women, stop dumping toxins into the atmosphere, stop thinking you can have a civilization without taxes or stop killing all the black rhinoceros. So you’re an adult who wants your parents to stop thinking of you as someone who will eat crayons if left to your own devices. Good luck with that, your chances are better than even. Want a mass of people to stop doing bad things. That’s a lifelong project that may not reap benefits until long after you’ve rejoined the carbon cycle.

From an interview with author Mary Cappello about her book “Swallow”, “Swallow”: The strange things people swallow

The one story from the book that really stuck with me was the story of the “Human Ostrich.”

Yes, I read about him in an article that appeared in the Brooklyn Medical Journal for 1922. He would swallow things that members of the audience would pass up to the stage. In the course of an evening, this might amount to 80 pins, a lot of hair pins, and long wire nails, most of which, according to the doctor who wrote about him, he would excrete without harm to himself. One night, however, he accidentally swallowed a 4-foot-long window chain that he had been inserting into his throat and pulling back out (much in the way a sword swallower might with a sword). He arrived at Dr. Hopkins’ offices in a great deal of pain, and begged to be operated on. Upon opening his stomach, Hopkins discovers “129 pins, 6 hair-pins, two horseshoe nails, 12 half-inch wire nails, 2 door-keys, 3 chains, and a large ring.”

From here on in, the unnamed Human Ostrich decides to give up his career and try to make a living selling pictures of the cut the surgeon’s knife inflicted on his stomach, but a few months later he returns to the hospital with more stuff inside him and claims he was forced to swallow things by a group of men who recognize him as the “Human Ostrich” in a bar. Perhaps his compulsion was fed by his audience’s need in a symbiotic sort of way. As I put it in the book, “he was forced to swallow hard, sharp bits of the object world by a hungry crowd.”

Just reading this made me uneasy. I have issues with hearing about, much less watching anyone swallow strange objects. And as uneasy as I am with people like the Human Ostrich, what is wrong with the people who showed up for his performances and would bring metal or broken glass for him to consume. It’s odd they did seem to have some kind of symbiotic relationship. Sorry for the pun, but each seemed to feed off the others compulsions.

Also in world oddities, State Senator Jim Alesi Sues Couple that Declined to Press Charges Against Him. In short. A Republican state senator breaks into a home that is under construction. Criminal trespassing. Having illegally entered the premises he feels the need to use a ladder. He slips and falls off the ladder – which was in good repair. He hurts himself. Property owners decide to be gracious and magnanimous enough not to press charges. As the statute of limitations runs out on the couples time to press charges the Republican state Senator sues for his injury. When contacted about the lawsuit Alesi issues this statement – “My attorney has filed a civil lawsuit on my behalf… beyond that I have no comment.” Attorneys do not get up one day and decide to file a civil suit. Their clients have to initiate said suit. The couple could still sue Alesi for trespassing and possibly criminal mischief. If it was me and the Senator wanted to play psycho hard ball, I’d give the senator about five minutes to drop the suit, publicly apologize and offer restitution for any expenses the couple has incurred, or file a counter suit.

Dagmar Wilson, Anti-Nuclear Leader, Dies at 94

Ms. Wilson led a 51-member contingent to Geneva in April 1962 to raise their voices before delegates to a 17-nation disarmament conference. They met with the conference’s co-chairmen, an American and a Russian, and handed over bundles of petitions with more than 50,000 signatures calling for an end to nuclear testing. Coretta Scott King, the wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was a member of that group.

In August 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain signed a historic treaty banning atomic testing in the atmosphere, in space and underwater. The idea to form Women Strike for Peace, Ms. Wilson said, came to her in 1961 while she was sitting with friends in the backyard of her house in the Georgetown section of Washington. They were troubled by the jailing in London of the philosopher Bertrand Russell for his part in antinuclear demonstrations.

[  ]…In 1965, Ms. Wilson’s activism attracted the attention of a subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which summoned her and two colleagues to testify in secret about their efforts to gain a visa for a Japanese professor who had come to the United States for a lecture tour espousing pacifism. They were convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify unless the hearing was opened to the public. A year later, an appeals court overturned their convictions.

Considering the opening article this would be considered closing on a positive note. Not very often, but once in a while, good and rationalism wins out. Their rarity is one reason to cherish those victories.

Interior of Bomb Shelter 1955. Original caption,

Garden City, L. I.: H-Bomb Hideaway. Snug as a bug in a rug, a family can sustain itself for three to five days after an H-Bomb blast in this buried tank shelter, called a Kidde Kokoon, is manufactured by Walter Kidde Nuclear Laboratories of Garden City, L. I. It offers protection from blast damage in a zone extending three to 12 miles from a nuclear explosion. The shelter also protects against exposure to radioactive fallout. At far end is the fan which draws purified air through a special filter. The handle is used in the event of power failure. Equipment includes a radiation detector, portable radio, protective clothing, blankets, tools, first aid equipment and food supplies. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

neon sign wallpaper, pop culture and torture

neon sign wallpaper

Torture is not quite the hot button issue it was just a couple of years ago. One of President Obama’s first acts on becoming President was to ban the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” or torture. Unfortunately he was also persuaded not to pursue a full investigation into CIA torture. The television program 24 played into the culture of torture after September 11, 2001. As popular entertainment is apt to do, the program was a reflection of certain attitudes at the time. Those attitudes have not gone away. When President Obama and Attorney General Holder suggested an investigation into the CIA’s violation of the Convention Against Torture there was a hail storm of whining from the torture/Bush-Cheney supporters. The scope of the investigation proposed was limited. So much so that it offered a tacit agreement that no one would likely be prosecuted if they said the magic words – they were acting with the best intentions under what they thought was the legal umbrella of the Bush DOJ legal counsel – i.e. torture aficionados John Yoo and David Addington. Holder did hire a special investigator to look into whether there is evidence that CIA agents or contractors violated the law when they used brutal methods to interrogate terror detainees. That investigation is not complete. There has been some prosecution of low level military personnel for torture, but much like a political thriller, the CIA has quite a bit more pull than your average grunt. Did 24 have any affect on whether citizens of the United States tortured anyone. Sans research, in a casual conversation I would say that many people took 24 too seriously. Moe and Curley did not cause a wave of blindness from people sticking their fingers into other people’s eyes. There are some strange videos of self abuse on YouTube, but few people are strapping themselves into rocket packs a-la Wiley Coyote. Then there are the modern horror movies like the Saw series. Torture porn. I tend to think the standards for proving cause and effect between media – books, TV, movies, magazines and comic books and criminal acts should be very high. One of the problems I have come to appreciate is that some people have a lower threshold for being influenced by popular culture than others. That’s quite a problem in a liberal democratic republic likes the United States. Our heritage via the Founders and the Constitution places a very high value on free speech and freedom of expression. It is not coincidence they are guaranteed in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. Without those basic rights the rest of democracy is on a poor foundation at best. If some people watch 24 and come away approving of torture that is part of the price paid for freedom of expression. If people torture other people the same standards apply. Though it may not reach the legal standard of culpability that does not mean one is free from the cultural ramifications of portraying immoral and illegal behavior in a glamorized fashion. Does 24 deserve cultural condemnation for setting and exploiting a certain national tone. Since some those people with a low threshold for assimilating what they see and hear did act out what they saw, the criticism of 24 has some validity, The Ever-Ticking Bomb: Examining 24’s Promotion of Torture against the Background of 9/11

One of the key methods used in 24 to achieve security is torture. Over the course of the first six seasons, more than eighty-nine scenes of torture were shown. With the exception of season seven, the general level of violence has gradually risen with each season (Danzig). In season four, the majority of episodes focus on torture in one way or another (Howard 137). The series’s ‘hero’ alone has killed more than 185 people within six days, i.e. seasons one to six (Kruttschnitt), including several civilians and colleagues.3 Since 9/11, the general display of torture on prime-time television has risen dramatically (Miller). According to the Parents Television Council, there were only 102 scenes of torture from 1996 to 2001, but that number rose to 624 between 2002 and 2005, with 24 showing more torture than any other television program (qtd. in Miller). This includes Jack Bauer torturing not only suspected terrorists but also innocent citizens (Howard 138). Additionally, these unethical and illegal activities are, at times, executed under official command. In one scene of season two, the torture of an NSA official is explicitly authorized by the President, although this radical decision is merely based on the suspicion that he might have information about a bomb (Caldwell and Chambers 104). In a similar scene during the third season, the President asks Jack Bauer to kill his supervisor at CTU, which he does without hesitating (Monahan 112).

Some of the researchers who are in this research papers foot notes also noted that viewers of 24 tended to justify these acts of torture and murder as justifiable under the circumstance. Popular entertainment, much like your average Sunday sermon, is manipulative by it’s very nature. The producers of that manipulation may not be cynical, but the exploitation is there never the less. As an audience, people want to be manipulated. Failure to do so can result in bad movie sales by word of mouth or changing houses of worship to someone more charismatic. We expect our heroes and heroines to win. If they have to bend the rules, and we generally hope they do – part of our inner 6 year old – they are justified in doing so. The audience of a popular film has the advantage of having a god’s eye view of events. And not being under any stress ourselves, not having to answer for simply wishing for the victory of the protagonist, or dealing with the consequences what they do, we are free from any complex moral judgments. We are both caught up in the action and yet distanced from it. If the action – murder, torture or break down of authority makes sense within the narrative than the average person can justify the actions taken. Even more so if we find the persona of the actor likable. If Matt Damon or Angelina Jolie does it, it was probably justified.

This kind of affirmation in a show as popular as 24 facilitates the public discourse on the legitimacy of torture by proxy of casual conversations about 24. In a similar vein, Monahan notes that the legitimization of transgressions of law through government agencies might be “increasingly normalised by entertainment programmes such as 24” (110). Unsurprisingly, this advocacy for torture is a focal point of the criticism the show has received. On the other hand, it may come as a surprise that a small group of experts from the US military are some of the most vocal critics. Surnow, who has sardonically called himself a “right-wing nut job,” has mentioned that his show is very popular with the US military and members of the former Bush administration (qtd. in Mayer). As the criticism coming from the military proves, this popularity carries a negative influence. According to former US Army specialist Tony Lagouranis, many interrogators are young, relatively untrained, and frequently under pressure to extract information as quickly as possible (qtd. in Bauder). While questioning prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other facilities in Iraq, Lagouranis witnessed 24-esque mock executions as well as fellow interrogators copying strategies they had just watched on DVD (qtd. in Bauder). The fact that there is “no official doctrine about what to do” (Lagouranis qtd. in Human Rights First) has led to people copying ideas from television and movies. Lagouranis, however, notes that he has never seen “pain produce intelligence” (qtd. in Mayer) while he worked in Iraq. Another former member of the armed forces, Colonel Stuart Herrington, notes that if Jack Bauer had worked for him, Bauer would have faced a military court for his actions, and adds that he is “distressed by the fact that the good guys are depicted as successfully employing […] illegal, immoral and stupid tactics” (qtd. in Bauder). Gary Solis, a retired law professor who has taught the law of war to US Army commanders for years, also emphasizes that Jack Bauer would be a criminal in real life under both US and international laws, but that many of his students sympathize with Jack Bauer. Solis says that he “tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill” (qtd. in Mayer).

Gordon responded to criticism by saying that 24 is “not a documentary or a manual on interrogation […] not a primer on the war on terror. [It is] a television show” (qtd. in Bauder). However, Solis and Lagouranis are not the only experts who witness the direct impact of the show on soldiers, intelligence agents, and the viewing public. General Patrick Finnegan, dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, feels that the show “promote[s] unethical and illegal behavior and […] adversely affect[s] the training and performance of real American soldiers.” When it comes to international viewers, Finnegan fears that 24 may reinforce negative stereotypes about the US and that it “hurts the country’s image” (qtd. in Mayer). A government report released in 2004 also confirms the imitation of techniques shown in popular culture by the US military in Iraq (Human Rights First). According to Jane Mayer, the 2006 Intelligence Science Board (ISB) alludes to several scenarios shown on 24 and their implications for intelligence professionals. The ISB’s consensus is that the public opinion as to how and how fast threats need to be averted is directly influenced by television.

Maybe these military experts, intelligence experts and human rights weenies are taking this all too seriously.  John Yoo, the former Bush appointee at the Department of Justice used Jack Bauer as an example of scenarios in which torture was justified(the logic deficit ticking time bomb cliche) in his book, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror. When questioned about the legality of torture at a speech Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives […] [a]re you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Radio goofball Laura Ingraham said that the popularity/ratings of Jack Bauer was proof of a national consensus that torture was OK. Apparently these well educated supporters of torture are part of that low threshold crowd who believe fictional characters do indeed have an influence beyond entertainment and two dimensional characters on a screen. This would seem to conflict with many of the same conservatives in recent weeks who have claimed that violent imagery and rhetoric has no effect on creating a violence charged atmosphere. I continue to think it is complex. It is like some people who seem to be able to eat all the sugar they want without gaining weight or getting cavities, while others pack on pounds and rack up dental bills. So this is the point where it is expected, and it would be nice to have a simple final answer. Western democracies would surely become nightmarish dystopias if we  put government sanctioned baby safety latches on every bit of media for fear it would be a bad influence on someone. That does not relive the producers and cheerleaders of shows like 24 ( there are rumors of a movie based on the series which ended last year) from their moral responsibilities.

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. … This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.” ( Bertrand Russell -1967)

little tidal pools wallpaper, montreal night skyline wallpaper

little tidal pools wallpaper

Kids, do try this at home. Have the unmitigated gull to take credit for some good that someone else did. Only do not be surprised since you live in the real world to suffer some loss of privileges for a week. And wage slaves, you try it too and see if anyone will ever have lunch with you again. That is if you still have a job,  Republicans: Job, Economic Growth The Result Of GOP Victories (VIDEO)

In December, the Department of Labor announced that unemployment had fallen from 9.7 percent to 9.4 percent. Its data suggests private sector job growth has been increasing since the fall. The GOP has controlled the House for just over two weeks, but has yet to enact any major economic legislation — and economists agree that even enacted fiscal policy will not be immediately reflected in economic growth.

Kyl is claiming the indicators such as unemployment are related to the tax and stimulus bill passed in December. That would be the bill passed by a House and Senate that both had a Democratic majority and signed into law by a Democratic president. By implication, Republicans who voted for TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), who were running away from it in the mid-term elections are now taking credit for the same program. They are also taking credit for the Obama-Democrats stimulus package ( American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). As Brian Beutler notes this Republican version of reality does require a time machine. Either that or a public dumber than a bag of hammers.

montreal night skyline wallpaper

Texting Girl at Mall Falls into Fountain (video). At first thought it was marginally funny and then I felt sorry for her. She goes head first into that fountain and gets completely soaked. her cell phone might have been damaged. Some of her clothes and belongings ruined. Why can’t I just enjoy other people’s misfortunes. I’ll have to work on that.

This one I enjoyed and it does make some people look foolish so maybe I’m improving already, Two Girls Scale Border Fence In Under 20 Seconds (VIDEO). That fence was the Right’s easy answer to illegal border immigration. They just don’t do complexity.

Even if you leave out the Jared Loughner analysis this is an interesting correction of the impression many people have of Friedrich Nietzsche, Loughner’s Terrible Violence and His Misunderstanding of Nietzsche

To say that Nietzsche was a nihilist is to presuppose that he considered existence devoid of any and all meaning; by extension implying that Nietzsche considered life “chaotic” and individuals dominated by their respective wills to power could justifiably pursue the most heinous crimes in a God-less universe without fear of retribution.  However, this sort of dark and destructive interpretation would be a grave misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Nietzsche was an affirmative thinker, one who endorsed the value of life and saw in humanity the potential to overcome the malaise of modernity in late nineteenth-century Europe.  The will to power was a constructive doctrine:  the conscious subjective striving to distinguish oneself as a unique individual, one who has overcome their most base instincts to create a sound moral system and achieve their true human potential.  The will to power was ultimately a means to self-control, not the infliction of pain on others.

It did not convert me to being a Nietzsche fan. Sartre and Camus, or Woody Allen for that matter all did or are stilling doing better at providing some insight into existentialism and the problems humanity faces in giving a life meaning. Meaning which is not dependent on invisible friends in the sky. Nietzsche’s concept of will to power is also scary, even if that scariness comes from decades of misinterpretation. To be clear, Nietzsche is not as scary as some of his misguided misinterpreting  followers. The Nazis and self-help charlatans will always haunt Nietzsche.