Category: Politics

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Because Raped Women are a Series of Tubes

One of the pleasures of living in a world where anti-intellectualism rules a major political party is that it’s fairly easy to spot the political leanings of the shockingly ignorant.

Image courtesy of Matt Katzenberger (source)

These are the people who consistently vote against their best interest, and are completely immune to the cognitive dissonance that rational people encounter when they attempt to hold diametrically opposed opinions in the same brain.  They want to repeal Obamacare because socialized medicine is bad, while protecting Medicare because socialized medicine is good. They want the incredibly rich to get ever larger tax breaks, even though the very rich pay proportionately less than they – the working and middle class – do. They actually believe the obvious bullshit of the ultra-rich Romneys and Koch brothers of the world, who promise they would be creating oodles of jobs (Really!) if not for the unduly burdensome 13% or less that they now pay in taxes. They are the same people who are completely in favor of the death penalty, but anti-abortion no matter what the reason.

They support defunding government grants for poor students since only snobs want their kids to be educated. The budget proposal put forth by Paul Ryan, the new star of Mitt Romney’s presidential ticket, would not only reduce the size of Pell grants and even eliminate access to them for tens of thousands of students but would have cut the Head Start program to ribbons, too. Education? Our kids don’t need no stinkin’ education! We can compete with the educated workforce of countries like Sweden, Japan, and Germany without all that schooling. It doesn’t take education to know stuff.

It isn't legitimate rape if she gets pregnant.
(source)

Just ask U.S. Senate candidate, and current U.S. Congressman, Todd Akin (R-Mo).  He knows stuff. Akin is the guy who has been all over the news in the last couple of days because of his cocksure knowledge that “legitimate rape” doesn’t result in pregnancy. He knows this because “doctors” told him. In his interview with Charles Jaco on a St. Louis television broadcast, Akin said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole [conception] thing down.” (If you want the full context, watch the full interview. The abortion comments are in the second video, and start at 1:54.)

There are about 32,000 women in America who are now relieved to know that the rape by which they were impregnated last year wasn’t “legitimate” rape. They can now conclude that despite the non-consensual nature of that sexual congress, they actually enjoyed it. And that’s good news for this year’s approximately 32,000 impregnated victims of non-consensual sex, too. Thank you, Congressman Akin, for your words of comfort. All those women can stop going to therapy now that they realize that they weren’t really traumatized at all. That’ll save a bundle on their health care costs, seeing as how your party would prefer not to insure these women’s health, either.

To be fair, Akin did say that he misspoke. He meant to say “forcible” rape, not “legitimate” rape.  Because non-consensual sex with a drunk college student isn’t really rape, whether or not she’s cognizant of what’s happening. And it’s totally not rape if the parties are married, even if they happen to be going through a divorce. It’s not rape if one partner is under the age of consent, because children who have sex know what they are getting into and are making intelligent, informed decisions about it. Especially children who have had abstinence-only sex education.

A woman's body can totally tell if this is rape or not.
Roulette determines the lucky winner. (Source)

 

Life starts at conception, according to Akin. (It’s right there on his website, so it must be true.) Or maybe it starts two weeks before conception, like Arizona recently legislated, which means that women are in a perpetual state of “pregnancy” because conception could happen two weeks in the future at any time. Akin must be right, because he knows this stuff. He sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and pregnancy is sciencey, right?

Oops. No. I’m wrong. It’s God stuff, not science stuff. Totally my bad. Sorry.

 

Where better to look than to God for guidance on, well, everything? Now, God doesn’t speak out loud, or even very clearly, but fortunately he wrote his completely unclear directions down for us. Reading the Bible for instruction on life is tantamount to reading the instructions from Ikea, except that once you’re done with the Ikea instructions you have a piece of furniture that either wobbles, or doesn’t.  Reading the Bible is tougher, so fortunately we have crowds of really, really smart preachers to tell us exactly what God actually meant when he dictated those mystifying instructions. Now, a disturbing number of those really, really smart preachers, especially the fundamentalist ones, haven’t been to college, much less seminary, but they can read Elizabethan English and understand it just fine because they’re touched by God. Yes, we’re back to the refrain of “We don’t need no education.” Thank you, Pink Floyd.

Yes, I said they are touched. Touched in their various God Spots.  (image source)
(source)

The Bible is crystal clear about when life begins, if by “crystal” you mean “obsidian.” If you don’t believe me, check out the Open Bible site, which has all the references its author deems relevant gathered carefully in one place. You can even vote for which verses make things clearest for you. Of the 40 or so verses excerpted from various English translations of the Bible (we know God meant the Bible to be in English), I found two that were absolutely on point and helpful. Oddly, they were the same verse, just in slightly different translation: Exodus 21:22-24, which says that if a bunch of men get together and hit a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage, then they either get fined as the husband sees fit, or they get punished to the same extent that the woman was injured. Go ahead and click the link on that verse. Read it in multiple English translations. If you know other languages, read the translation in other languages, too. Now you tell me which one is the best translation, given your expertise in ancient Hebrew.

Now, just for funsies, look at the rest of Chapter 21 of Exodus. It’s all relevant and pertinent to life today, isn’t it? So it makes perfect sense to use it as our go-by.

The homepage of Akin’s campaign website opens with a religious statement that puts the cart before the horse:

First, I want to give thanks to God our Creator who has blessed this campaign, heard your prayers, and answered them with victory. Through the months we have seen frequent instances of His blessing and are reminded that with Him all things are possible!

Evidently he credits prayer and divine intervention with his success in the Republican primary rather than the hard work of his supporters. I suppose that makes sense, seeing as how his list of endorsers lean heavily toward leaders of conservative Christian religious institutions. (Surely there’s no impermissible politicking going on in the churches those endorsers represent. Surely. Because that would jeopardize the tax-exempt status of those churches.)

This situation with Rep. Akin demonstrates exactly why I have a huge problem with politicians using an inconsistently translated collection of  Bronze Age “wisdom” to guide modern government policy. This situation, among others, is why I advocate, agitate, and get politically active – not to mention write passionate blog posts – when elected officials decide it’s okay to blur the lines between church and state. It’s also why I get cheesed off when people want to base their lives on a book of superstitious tales and ancient customs we no longer observe.

When we allow our leaders to cherry-pick verses of this collection of ancient manuscripts, we set ourselves up to go back to that time. Me, I’d rather live in a world of universal health care than a world of leper colonies and plagues. And if that makes me a socialist, then I am a proud socialist.

Furthermore, when a page of platitudes masquerades as “clearly the Bible says life starts at conception,” then I think it’s way beyond time our elementary schools taught critical thinking and logic to children – because if their parents buy the crap on that page as “proof” of anything, they won’t teach their kids to think at home or anywhere else.

Apparently what makes a human different from other living creatures is that we have a soul. How religious people can tell whether we have a soul, and how they know animals do not, remains an insurmountable mystery. Science cannot say when the soul comes into existence, since there is no evidence that such a thing as a “soul” even exists. But ignoramuses like Todd Akin want to legislate matters pertaining to women’s health based on their Bronze Age “wisdom” without any proof whatsoever. If we permit this to happen, we will get the same draconian laws as places like the Dominican Republic, where pregnant teenagers are denied chemotherapy because the life-saving treatment might harm a 13-week old fetus. Yeah, that happened.

The problem is ignorance,  lack of education, and reliance on “facts” gleaned from questionable translations of Bronze Age texts.

The problem is that people with no more background in science that this Akin clown sit on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Presumably he would know something about science if he’s sitting on a major legislative committee devoted to it. Of course, his Bible-based philosophies are contravened by science, so he cannot possibly wrap his head around them. Like that other ignorant politician who attempted to speak about a subject he knew nothing about, Akin apparently believes that women are a series of tubes, tubes that can easily be rerouted just by the nature of forced intercourse, to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

(source)

What complete jackassery.

 

 

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Atheists Banned

According to Article 19, Section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution of 1874 – which my third-great-grandfather helped write – I am ineligible to hold any office in the civil departments of the state government, nor may I testify as a witness in any court.

Why? Because I don’t believe in a divine being.

It will take over 70,000 signatures of registered voters (from Arkansas’s total population of about 3 million) to get the repeal of the constitutional provision on the ballot. Since we are in the buckle of the Bible Belt, the effort to find that many signatures would be Herculean. I seriously doubt many churches would do anything to support the initiative, and most would actively work against it.

That being said, put me down as a scofflaw. I’m a Notary Public and worked for years as a state employee. I’ve testified multiple times and served as a Special Circuit Judge.

Federal law prohibits enforcement of this provision, but its presence still rankles.

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Hot Coffee and Tort Reform

Over the weekend, I hosted a movie night for a group I belong to. Usually our movie nights are casual, frivolous affairs. We watch a comedy or something. Monty Python and Kevin Smith are perennial favorites. Not this time, though. On occasion, our movie nights are used to educate ourselves. Our group is composed of politically-minded, intellectual, highly intelligent people, most of whom have humanist tendencies, and all of whom have strong opinions.

Last year at the Sundance Film Festival, Hot Coffee, a documentary about tort reform and its effects on ordinary people premiered to very positive reviews. I decided to show it to my politically-minded friends. The rhetoric spewing from the tort reformers, whose voices seem to be the only ones I ever hear, doesn’t even begin to treat the problem with any sense of even-handedness.

Because of the way it’s being pushed on an unsuspecting public, tort reform makes my heart pound. Its wrongness takes my breath away. The idea of capping the amount someone can recover for wrongs done to them simply cannot be set at an arbitrary amount. An amount of damages that is fair in one case is not fair in another. Putting an arbitrary amount on how much someone should be compensated for serious injuries flies in the face of the very purpose of our civil justice system. The way the current reform movement wants to change how people are compensated makes no sense at all.

Each state’s tort reform law is different, but the idea behind them tend to be the same. Most famously, these reform laws want to limit punitive damages. They also want to put limits on who can file suit, and when.

I should make a disclosure here. I am a lawyer. I’ve had a civil practice for 24 years. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a tort lawyer. Oh, sure, I’ve handled a minor car accident here and there over the years, but never when much money was involved and never when I thought the case would not settle.

 

What about all those frivolous lawsuits?

No one likes the notion that there are people out there working “the system” and being rewarded financially for filing frivolous lawsuits. The truth is, though, that frivolous lawsuits rarely get off the ground. There are several reasons why.

One reason is that tort lawyers tend to finance tort claims. Unless there is a very good chance of a pay day at the end of the line, no lawyer is going to invest his own money into someone else’s case. That’s just simply a bad business decision. The discovery process, through which the lawyer prepares for trial, costs thousands of dollars. Expert witnesses cost thousands of dollars. Court reporters cost hundreds, if not thousands, depending on how many depositions are taken. Unless the case has a good chance of being won, no lawyer is going to accept it. Furthermore, the case has to be worth enough money that the settlement or judgment will cover the plaintiff’s actual damages, the costs of litigation, and an attorney’s fee. If it won’t compensate the lawyer for his time and expenses, the lawyer won’t take the case.

Another reason is that sanctions against an attorney who files frivolous suits are harsh. Fines, disciplinary actions, public censure by the courts, and damage to the lawyer’s reputation deter frivolous filings. I have heard the objections to this line of reasoning. Within the last month a young lawyer reported to me that he was told that the way to earn good money was to file frivolous suits and settle for “nuisance money,” or any amount of money that the insurance company will pay just to make the case go away. While I was appalled at the thought that there are people in my profession who operate this way as a matter of course, I won’t say that suits are never resolved this way. At times, they are. But if they are completely frivolous, I’ve never known an insurance company yet that would pay a single dime to a litigant.  Defense attorneys do not hesitate to file motions for sanctions when they believe sanctions are warranted.

 

What is a tort, anyway?

Many Americans do not even know what a tort is.

My torts professor in law school told us that a tort is a civil wrong. Very simply put, people commit torts when they injure someone else. Automobile accidents and medical malpractice are the  torts that most quickly come to mind. We suffer torts when the neighbor’s dog bites us or when the guy at the bar takes a drunken swing at us. The defamatory conduct that makes up libel and slander is tortious. Poorly designed products that hurt us are the subject of tort actions, including drugs, toys, tires, and automobiles.  Interfering with someone’s business is a tort.

Many crimes are also torts. While the state has an interest in prosecuting someone who physically injures another person, the injured person gets nothing from the criminal prosecution. To redress the wrong done to him, the injured person sues the perpetrator in a court of law. There, the court can award damages to compensate the injured person for his injuries.

 

What is the point of a jury?

 

The very same people who say they are behind tort reform make up the juries that award damages to injured people. They are the same people who, when they have been grievously injured, demand the right to sue so that the person responsible pays for the harm. And then they are shocked when they can’t be compensated fully, because, after all, theirs was not one of the “frivolous” lawsuits that caps on damages was supposed to guard against.

Why are there large awards? Because in a court of law, with both sides being represented by able counsel, the jury decides that proof demands such an award. That is the amount it takes to make someone whole after a grievous harm.

When we allow our legislatures to put arbitrary caps on damages, we are giving up a constitutionally-guaranteed right to be made whole. Furthermore, we are tying the hands of the jury system.

 

But what about those multimillion dollar awards?

Most people object to large awards of punitive damages. Punitive damages are meant to punish especially egregious conduct. They are not awarded in every tort case; they are the exceptions that make the headlines. Punitive damages don’t beggar the perpetrators of torts. They are, however, intended to be felt. Remember the “excessive” punitive damages award in the McDonald’s coffee case? McDonald’s offered the victim, who had undergone months of skin grafts because of the extent of her burns, $800 – not even a drop in the bucket toward her medical bills. The punitive damages award represented two days of McDonald’s coffee sales. Just two days of profits. Just on coffee.

 

So, what should we do?

It is shocking that we should be talking about depriving people of just compensation. If we don’t like that punitive damages “enrich” victims of torts, then the conversation should be about what else to do with the money – because especially egregious conduct deserves to be punished.

One suggestion: How about a fund to improve access to justice for people who can’t afford lawyers? Currently in Arkansas, our legal services agencies are spread so thin that poor people can only get divorce lawyers if they are also physically abused.

 

 

 

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Who are the Job Creators?

I had an interesting conversation with a pair of one-percenters last week. I specifically asked them whether lowering their taxes would result in them creating jobs. Neither one hesitated to answer.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said one.

“Nope,” said the other.

Why not? I wanted to know. The Republican party has been telling us for years that the way to create jobs is by lowering the taxes on the wealthy. Where’s the fault in the position?

Both of my one-percenters agreed that established companies don’t create new jobs unless they are also expanding, something they do when their business model and business plan indicate the time is right, not when the amount of taxes they pay changes. Tax savings amounts to larger profits remaining with the company, not expansion plans. Every corporation’s main priority is its bottom line. The large business interests and high-income individuals who will benefit from this tax deduction definitely want to improve their bottom line – who wouldn’t? – but they aren’t so altruistic that they are going to hire people they don’t need to do jobs that don’t need doing.

Payroll is the single largest expense of any company. It seems that people who own businesses want to get more done with fewer employees, not with more, because getting more done with a smaller payroll increases profits. That’s why outsourcing is so popular among the most profitable companies.

So who are the real job creators?

According to 2007 and 2008 economic census figures, “nonemployer” firms account for a vast number of businesses in the country – more than 78%. The Census Bureau defines nonemployer businesses as those that have no paid employees and are subject to federal income tax. Nonemployers include self-employed individuals operating unincorporated businesses, which may or may not be the owner’s principal source of income.


Of the remaining 22% of businesses, 89% are companies employing less than 20 people. That means more than 97% of the businesses in this country are small businesses, not large corporations.

Looking even more closely at the numbers, we see that businesses with more than 500 employees employ about half of all Americans who work for someone else. Even though they account for only 0.0036% of all firms, truly giant megacompanies with more than 10,000 employees put 27% of Americans to work.

More than 17% of people in America work for companies that employ between 20 and 100 employees. These are medium-sized companies, and constitute about 9% of the businesses out there. The next jump in statistical size is the large companies, which employ between 100 and 500 workers. These large companies put 14.5% of Americans to work.

So, although 97% of the companies in the US are small businesses, 82% of employed Americans work for large, very large, and mega-sized companies. Eighteen percent work for small businesses. Those figures add up to about 121 million people who earn income in the United States, not counting the 21 million whose self-employment provides them with some or all of their income.

If the big companies get the tax breaks, which apparently have no impact on whether or not they create jobs, who benefits? The big companies, of course.

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What Good is a Higgs Boson?

The confirmation of the Higgs Boson brings this question: how can we use it?

Peter Higgs (source)

Even Professor Peter Higgs has no idea, despite the fact that he is likely to win a Nobel Prize for the discovery that bears his name.

There’s no telling when we might come to realize the practical applications for this particle. If we look at the history of particle physics, our ability to understand, use, and control the elements of each discovery took more than just decades. They took well over a century.

(source)
Alessandro Volta with the voltaic pile (left) and the electrophorus (right). (Source)

 

In 1733 French chemist Charles-François de Cisternay du Fay discovered that electricity had both negative and positive charges. A decade later, Benjamin Franklin would claim that the tiny particles of matter contained co-existing positive and negative “fluid” electricity. Utilizing the discoveries of the positive and negative charges, Alessandro Volto invented the first known battery in 1800, and proved that electricity could travel through metal wires.  (When I say “first battery,” I am discounting the so-called Baghdad battery, since its function is unknown.)

But the existence of electrons and protons were first theorized in the 1840’s – over a century after DuFay – by natural philosopher Richard Laming, who conceived the atom to have a central core surrounded by layers of both negative and positive charges. Working with these theories, Farraday made his cage and discovered electromagnetism.

(source)

Discoveries in the 19th century proceeded at what seemed like a breakneck pace. Then, in 1897, J.J. Tomson developed his notion that the positive and negative charges were actually particles in each atom. In the meantime,  and Tesla and Edison were using the positive and negative currents of charged particles to invent ever more amazing electrical devices. Simultaneously, Pierre and Marie Curie would isolate radioactive isotopes of polonium and radium. The lightning speed of 19th-century discoveries was supplanted by the 20th century’s explosion of knowledge. Within 40 years, we had not only discerned the nature of isotopes, we had split the atom and devastated a country with the raw power of fission. Only a generation after that, we walked on the moon. Each new discovery led to many, many more. Magnetic tape, the computer, interplanetary travel, the microchip. By the end of the century, we had such a dizzying array of devices that even science fiction couldn’t keep up.

Now, in the second decade of the new millennium, we continue to develop technology at such a speed that it is obsolete almost the moment it gets into the hands of consumers.

So when we ask ourselves whether we should pour resources into researching theoretical physics, history tells us that we not only should but must. Had researchers not pursued the weirdly conflicting positive and negative charges present in electricity, you couldn’t read this blog post and I couldn’t write it. We cannot imagine the advances of the next 300 years any more than duFay could have conceived of smartphones.

 

What technology are we missing?

What about something cool and heretofore science-fictiony, like, say, Faster Than Light (FTL) travel? Well, no. The Higgs boson doesn’t change the laws of physics. It confirms what physicists already thought. So, if the smart guys already have ideas about what it is, why don’t they know what it can do for us?

Wireless power delivery would be nice. So would cheap, renewable energy. How about a substitute for plastic that does not rely on petroleum? Even if we can’t go faster than light, speeding up and cleaning up the environmental cost of travel would be a most excellent way to use new technology. Matter transference. Beam me up, Scotty.

Advances in optics go hand in hand with advances in particle physics. Because of both, we know that the universe is expanding, how stars are formed, and where we might find sibling planets. We are learning the stuff of the creation of life itself, which leads us back to the medicinal uses of technology. Hypocrites could never have imagined the x-ray, that allows doctors to see hairline fractures and dental caries. He certainly could never have imagined the MRI. And what about shrinking deadly tumors with radioactive elements? Even the most learned Arab doctors of the Middle Ages weren’t thinking of such a thing.

So, medical applications. We’re missing medical applications.

And there have to be more out applications out there.

We spent tons of money to go to the moon, and many say that we did it for political reasons, not scientific ones. It’s been said that the missions to Mars are just a way to keep ahead of the Chinese, the way Apollo 11 was our competitive “gotcha” against the Soviets. We have to allocate the limited resources we have.

 

How do we prioritize spending on research and development?

Without a bottomless well of money to tap, how do we prioritize where to spend? Shouldn’t we look at what we hope to get out of it?

Absolutely. For instance, there are some who believe that everything we classify as “life” violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics, because as evolution goes on entropy should increase; life should not get more complex. This argument has holes in its logic that won’t be addressed here, but even assuming that it is true, we definitely stand to benefit from the research. If we don’t understand what happens on the quantum level, we may never understand how life arose. We need to understand how and why life has evolved to better understand our own bodies, the living plants and animals we share the Earth with, and the earth itself.

But that answer begs the question, in a way. If all research is important, where do we start? And if some R&D projects are funded at the expense of other projects, how are we supposed to choose?

We cannot spend all our money only on things that seem to promise immediate benefits. We have to spend on things that do not yield instant applications so that someday we can hope to realize those applications. Faraday’s cage was a nifty creation in 1836, but its use was not readily apparent. Further study in the behavior of electricity showed that its structure protected its contents from high electrical charges. Now, Faraday’s invention is put to a mind-boggling array of uses. Without the Faraday cage, we wouldn’t have microwave ovens, coaxial cable, or MRIs.

And no one starved because we went to the moon.

So should R&D be completely unrestrained?

Physics students don’t have to take ethics courses. In fact, most students of science don’t take ethics courses. This seems somewhat at odds with the ethical outcry that is raised about certain kinds of research. Stem cells come to mind immediately, as does the atom bomb.

Technology scares some people. We should not assume that technology will always be put to positive use. We want to improve standards of living, but negative uses of new technology – and old technology – are still a danger.

 

Should ethics training be required?

Of course, the more technology we have, the more practical applications we’ll find. But should physicists be required to take classes in ethics? Should ethics be part of the continuing science education curriculum?

We cut corners on technology. For instance, buildings wired with aluminum are more likely to catch fire. Yet we continue to use aluminum wire, even though resources aren’t an issue, because of comparative budgets.  this seems to be as much an ethical issue as anything.

And so, at Socrates Cafe, we had this discussion:

Chris: Assume the existence of a supervirus. If it is at only one lab, should it be given to other labs to study? Is the added danger of a weaponized virus worth the risk of spreading it around to study it?

Rudy: 100 years from now, or 1000? What will life be like?

Wilson: Humanity won’t kill itself off within the next millennium. We’ll keep improving our lot.

Lisa: If science is tied to economic gain, how can the fields that are only theoretical really expand?

Chris: Relations between those on the ground and those developing theory. How will we pay for R&D if there are no practical applications?

Paul: Inspiration for future generations is worth the cost of doing theoretical research today.

Wilson: Part of being alive is seeking out an understanding of how we connect to other people and things.

Elaine: Some stuff is just plain fun to think about, like string theory.

Paul: And multiverses.

Wilson: String theory is a cult. The string theorists adjust their theory to fit the world; it’s not provable or stable.

Paul: So, you’re saying that string theory is no more than a religion.

Chris: If we can apply theory to reality and get a predictable result, the theory is proven.

Wilson: String theory is neither provable nor observable; therefore, it is a cult.

Elaine: Scientists hold on to theories, and despite their best efforts tend to be stubbornly biased in favor of their own interpretations. They are just as guilty as the religious in that regard.

Stellus: But observational science bows to peer review.

Wilson: Religions evolve, too, according to the popular will. They aren’t provable like science is, but something makes adherents.

Chris: Let me recommend a book: Doubt: A History, by Jennifer Michel Hecht.

Rudy: Who decides what is worthwhile? In fact, we should define “worthwhile.”

Roxana: If it gives me pleasure, if it has some benefit in the world, then it’s worthwhile.

Lisa: To have science considered worthwhile, people have to believe in it, despite its lack of immediate practical application.

Stellus: Highly educated people work as menials because there are not enough positions available in their fields. IS what they do worthwhile? Are their lives and talents and purpose worthwhile?

Rudy: So, what are worthwhile endeavors?

Anne: Something worthwhile will improve the world. It might eliminate reliance on non-renewable resources, for example.

Elaine: Or ensure adequate clean water.

Paul: Or eliminate over-reliance on electronics.

Lisa: “Worthwhile” is always someone else’s judgment.

Rudy: What good was Hubble? Was the flawed telescope worthwhile?

Wilson: We learned that the universe is expanding, and we got amazing pictures of nebulae.

Elaine: And the optics were repaired in a feat never before attempted. The flaw itself was worthwhile because we had to figure out how to fix it.

Paul: We also learned more about the size of the universe.

Wilson: The knowledge Hubble gave us changed how we relate to the world. Check out the YouTube documentary “Mindwalk.”

Elaine: If we had to choose between science and poetry, which would we deem more worthwhile?

Anne: We can’t eat poetry. Science is how we survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Holding That Sword of Damn Oakley’s Over Congress

Wenceslas Hollar - The Sword of Damocles

America has asked why Eleusia has the happiest citizens and enjoys unprecedented economic stability and security. Our government structures appear to be the same as yours, yet our government functions smoothly while yours is rife with gridlock and acrimony; our people are happy while yours suffer and argue acrimoniously.

The difference is integrity.

Over each Electi’s seat in our Cubiculum Corpus Electi hangs a heavy sword held in place by four hair-thin strands. The swords are copies of the one carried 346 years ago by the great philosopher and founder of Eleusia, Damn Oakley. According to legend, the hairs holding the swords came from the heads of Damn Oakley’s virtuous daughters, Liberty, Truth, Justice, and Compassion. They are charmed and adhere strongly and firmly to those swords. They don’t stretch, sway, or move, even when someone touches them. Each Electi casts votes only when occupying their assigned seat below the sword.

They say Damn Oakley hated his name from a very early age. Why was his name a word other children were not allowed to say? A typographical error on his original birth certificate doomed him but made him reliable, kind, and thoughtful.

He learned that the teasing laughter turned into companionable laughter when he joined in. First, he would agree with his bully and say something humble. A conversation would ensue, and a conversion would occur. Inevitably, a friendship would form. Damn Oakley never gave orders. He always suggested and then explained why. Others understood his reasoning and followed him. If they disagreed with him, they explained and sometimes persuaded Damn Oakley to a different position.

As he grew to manhood, Damn Oakley (even his closest friends and family always used both names, slurring the words together) became the ethical barometer by which his contemporaries gauged everyone’s actions. They asked themselves, “What would Damn Oakley do?” They recognize that while Damn Oakley acted a certain way during his time, now he might choose differently. The question always assumes that Damn Oakley has sufficient information to assess a situation.

As Damn Oakley taught, our Electi cast votes in the Cubiculum based on their conscience and only after Deep Thought. They carefully weigh the consequences of each vote. Each cynical or disingenuous vote causes a hair holding the sword above them to snap. If they cast a vote based not on conscience but upon promises of gifts, upon deals made in smoky back rooms or over tiny but delicate cups of the rarest caf shat from the asses of even rarer wild cats of the night, or in consideration of money promised toward re-election (or the Electi’s daughter’s wedding, or their son’s education, or their mistress’s jewels, or to compensate the parents of the child the Electi molested most recently), one hair holding the sword releases its grip. We believe that a single hair from the head of only one of Damn Oakley’s daughters is strong enough to suspend the sword, but no Electi has yet had the nerve to test that theory. No great sword has ever fallen to split the skull of a dishonest member of our Corpus Electi. None has needed to.

Unlike in your realm, these swords of Damn Oakley’s result in a pork-free diet in the halls of our Cubiculum. None of the Electi must temper loyalty to one issue by his loyalty to another. Our Eleusian Electi have more integrity in one hair of their heads than all your legislators collectively have in their greedy, grasping hands and their factional allegiances.

Of course, our Electi may try to persuade their colleagues to act on legislation that would benefit the home Canto of only one or two members of the Corpus Electi. To succeed, they must make a good case for their causes. If your Congress did this, American spending would fall sharply. The Deep Thought requirement would be sobering enough to stop voting based on greased palms.

Are your politicians capable of Deep Thought? Just to be able to engage their thought processes, they will have to stop sniping at one another like middle school siblings. It is painfully evident that these Electi of yours are not doing the jobs they were elected to do.

The Hedonist school was a short-lived Philosophical Fancy. It is well known in Eleusia that for any government to succeed, the philosophies of all political factions must bend. None need break, but all must bow. Honor compels it, just as honor compels thoughtful rhetoric.

When our Electi carefully consider the ramifications of each vote, regardless of whether it is cast for, against, or held null, they are impervious to the charms of luxury vacations, sexual dalliances, or personal adulation. Our Electi will never hesitate to accept such gifts, but they retain strength of purpose. They will enjoy the gifts for what they are and, in the morning, stride purposefully to the Cubiculum Electi and cast their conscience with the pull of the bronze lever, leaving the sword above to hang firmly in place. Your lobbyists are as corrupt as the Senators and Congressmen whose favor they seek to curry. They shout each other down in the hallways of your Capitol Building, each spending more than the last in bribes for your elected officials. We cannot understand why you are not ashamed of these lobbyists’ behavior. Half act as though they own the Congressmen and Senators, while the other half are such boot-licking, sniveling, obsequious suck-ups that even we cringe for them.

You ask us how to repair your system. Eleusia has ten suggestions. Change will be difficult, and your politicians will not be happy. Perhaps you should replace them all at the start.

First, amend your constitution to declare that only living, breathing human beings are persons. Corporate personhood is fiction. Your government was laudably established as one “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” not for economic entities or blocs of people acting solely for financial interest. Corporations should not have a right to vote or government representation. By treating corporations as people, your country has stifled the voices of the people who must live within it.

Second, pay your highest elected officials the average wage of your state or nation. Allow them access only to the same health care plans and retirement benefits as ordinary workers. When they share the status of those they rule, they will govern with compassion, reason, and integrity. Officials who do not perform their jobs adequately should lose them. Require an automatic “no confidence” ballot when the official’s popularity polls show that 35% or fewer of their constituents approve of their job performance. Require elected officials to attend every session of their Corpus Electi, excusing absences only for illness, tragedy, or other unavoidable matters. More than three unexcused absences should trigger the “no confidence” ballot. If one is to represent, one must be present. It’s part of the word.

Third, limit the bills presented for votes to a single subject. Of course, some will be more wide-ranging than others, but by keeping the components of each bill relevant to its primary purpose, you will remove the temptation of a quid pro quo. Limiting these bills to a focused subject will allow them to pass or fail on their own merits.

Fourth, limit your congressional sessions. Convene them twice yearly, for two weeks each in February and August. The public should be knowledgeable and able to discuss bills with their elected representatives, who would be accessible to their constituents in the weeks preceding the session. Publish proposed bills at least two months before the semi-annual sessions. Demand that your officials study any bills introduced and be able to discuss them intelligently. Any preliminary committee or other business should occur in the months before the session. The two weeks in session should be dedicated to voting on bills, with safeguards that require the integrity of your elected voting officials.

Fifth, require that public discourse by your elected officials remain civil. Censure anyone who engages in name-calling, insults, stereotyping, or shouting, and remove from office anyone who repeatedly violates the civility rule. Require debate to include substantiated facts, statistics, witnesses, data, and analysis that makes sense. Inquests and committee hearings should function to gather information. At this time in your country, they do not; instead, they serve as a platform for shameful grandstanding. Forbid filibusters and forbid blocking of votes. Rational, compassionate laws come only from logic coupled with sincere empathy.

Sixth, address appointments to the executive or judicial branches of government promptly. The appointee should take office automatically if their appointment is neither approved nor disapproved within two sessions.

Seventh, open your country’s borders to admit those who want to live there and can contribute to their communities. Even the most negligible contributions of menial or unskilled labor help a community. Everyone residing in your country should have the right to guide its laws and policies through an elected representative. Ensure that anyone legally living within your borders can vote in local, regional, and national offices.

Eighth, recall and replace any elected official who demonstrates an appearance of impropriety. Improprieties include violations of the law, sexual misconduct in which there is an imbalance of power or coercion, knowingly false statements, and statements and actions of intolerance based on race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, or any other status held by any identifiable group.

Ninth, limit the length and cost of election season. No candidate should spend more than the sums available to every other candidate in any contest. The electorate should not be subject to election advertising for longer than six weeks. Hold only one election per year. Institute ranked-choice voting for every position.

Tenth, institute a code of ethics and oversight independent of the political process. While you do not have access to our magical swords of Damn Oakley’s, find another device that works equally well. Your lack of integrity compromises your government and your nation.

Remove money and disproportionate influence from government decisions. Create an atmosphere where integrity is valued. Emphasize ethics.

In Eleusia, our Electi know that the swords are only a symbol of our founding myth. Still, those swords remind them to act with integrity, which our culture values.

If your culture and its politicians valued integrity, your society could be as great as ours.

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Christian Bigotry

There are people who say they don’t have to accept that people who have darker skin are entitled to equal rights. There are people who claim that simply because I don’t believe in the same god they do, I am not a moral person or that I am not worthy to be in their presence. There are bigots and small-minded people everywhere.

Fortunately, when they come right out and spew their bigotry and hatred for the world to hear, we can see them for the small-minded, hateful bigots they are.

When they name themselves “Christlike” as they vomit this hate, I always have to wonder what their Christ would think of them. If he ever existed, and if he really preached love and acceptance as they claim, wouldn’t he want them to accept the people who are different? After all, according to their New Testament, the vile, bad-tempered, mercurial god of the Old Testament – the one that smote thousands of people for no apparent reason other than they were in the way of his chosen people, who stoned people to death for making a fire on the Sabbath, and who said homosexuality was a sin, etc.  – that mean god wasn’t really the god anymore. Their new, improved god was a loving god called “Abba” or “Father.” New Testament = new rules. New rules = love thy neighbor, not hate thy neighbor.

It kind of makes me wonder why the hate-mongers spew Old Testament hate with such abandon, yet the Jews, who actually follow those old books, are much more tolerant of things like gay marriage.

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TED Talks to Julian Assange

If you aren’t familiar with TED Talks yet, I am about to change that.

TED started in 1984, the year I graduated from college, as a conference to bring together people from the fields of Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It is a nonprofit that holds annual conferences in both Long Beach and in Palm Springs each spring, and has grown to hold the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer. The TED Talks are published on the TED Talks video site, which has the capability of translating the talks into up to 27 different languages at this point. More are planned. TED does much more each year to facilitate advancement of the arts and sciences.

The video site on the web offers hundreds of 18 minute talks – not lectures – on subjects as diverse as Cassini’s discovery of the surface tectonics on Saturn’s moon Titan to Sam Harris’s explanation of how morality is hardwired into humans and other animals. The speakers are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

The spelunker who plans to lead the expedition to mine moon ice is absolutely riveting. Watch him. How can cave exploration and space exploration be related? How can a spelunker think that he can go into space and mine water on the moon as a propellant for space vehicles to then go to Europa? Is this science fiction? Not the way he tells it. Watch the video. If it doesn’t make your jaw drop, you aren’t paying attention.

TED isn’t just about science.A pair of  beautiful dancers perform Symbiosis – and it is understandable. Isabel Allende tells  true tales of passion, Natalie Merchant sings nearly forgotten children’s poems from the 19th and 20th century from her recent album Leave Your Sleep.

TED is on the edge of what is happening in the world. In July 2010. Chris Anderson of TED interviewed Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks had just released the documents related to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and there were rumors that it had still more documents that would set the US government on its ear.

Consider what Julian Assange says in this interview. He explains how the site operates, what it has accomplished, and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad in which a number of civilians and two Reuters reporters were killed.

Did you note that Assange specifically denies having the embassy cables? In the same breath he said assertively that if WikiLeaks had them, it has a duty to release them so that the world knows.

Assange asserted that “it’s a worry that the rest of the world’s media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined”? Mainstream media does not release documents like  these – not since the Pentagon Papers, that is. One has to wonder if our corporate media even would release such explosive news in this day and age. The news we do get is slanted in such a way as to suit the editorial desires of the publisher, and so often one publisher publishes numerous large newspapers, owns numerous television stations, and even owns radio stations. The news is the same on each one. We no longer have news. We have propaganda. The days of Walter Cronkite are gone.

Photograph by Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

What does WikiLeaks seek to publish? According to Assange, anything that an organization wants to keep secret. If there is an economic reason for keeping a secret, then it is in the best interest of the world to expose that secret in order to level the playing field. That, he says, is what journalism is.

That is what investigative journalism should be.

Assange pointed out that releasing the video of the Apache helicopter firing on the group of civilians that included the Reuters reporters was not done to inform the Afghans or the Iraqis. They see it every day,” he claimed. “But it will change the perception and opinion of the people who are paying for it all. And that is our hope.” Knowing in advance that innocents were killed in that incident may color our perception of what happened. We hear the soldiers in the helicopter talking and laughing, but to know that the firing was indiscriminate changed how we feel about their demeanor. Is this incident isolated? Or is it typical? We do not know We know this incident happened. We saw it; We do not know if more, similar incidents have happened. We hope not; we fear so.

WikiLeaks’s activities around the globe have resulted in major changes for the better, and for human rights and freedom. The Kenyan election was one example, and recently the Iceland legislature’s passage of a law allowing freedom of speech for journalists that is perhaps the broadest in the world is another.

Americans are divided on the issue of the Embassy documents, and on the war documents. WikiLeaks released them to show abuses. Our country is committing those abuses. It is natural to defend our country, but at the same time, we should not be committing the abuses. We have been caught, Our misdeeds have been exposed by our own words. Yes, it is embarrassing. Yes, we have lost face on the world stage.

Perhaps had we not committed those abuses, our faces would not be so red right now.

Thank you, WikiLeaks, for showing us the truth.

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Jobs like China

U.S. Congressman -wannabe Tim Griffin wants to create jobs here in the US “like China does.”
Child labor. Prison labor. Virtual slave labor. Sweatshops. Lack of regulations maintaining worker safety. Low pay. Unsanitary work sites. Industrial pollution rivaled by none. Staggering environmental damage perpetrated unchecked by industry as well as smaller employers.
Gosh, Tim, I don’t agree. I just can’t see creating jobs like China does.
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