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Russellings
Apr. 30th, 2008
12:33 pm - Religious Exemption for Child Neglect
Rep. Spencer Black
Wisconsin Legislature
Rep.Black@legis.wisconsin.gov
Dear Rep. Black:
I’m sure you’ve heard of the awful situation in Weston, where a 12-year-old girl died a horrible, lingering death of an eminently treatable form of diabetes while her parents stood by praying, thinking that this was somehow better than professional medical care. Even after she died, her mother said it would be only temporary, that she’d be coming back from the dead in a day or 2. All this while friends and relatives were desperately urging them to get the girl to a doctor or hospital.
Now it comes out that the parents may be able to get away completely without consequence for this appalling act of child neglect, because the Wisconsin state statutes contain an exemption for religious “treatment” of medical conditions.
This is the 21st Century. Would we write into the law exemptions for bleeding with leeches? Would we excuse such behavior if the proper number of pins had been stuck into voodoo dolls? Would it be OK if the parents said they were due to win the lottery? Suppose they claimed that healing gamma rays from Ganymede were already on their way? How is this any different?
We as a society know better than this. Why do we let parents walk away scot free from the dead bodies of their neglected children because of ignorant superstitions?
I hope you will do everything in your power to repeal this insane (literally not sane) exemption as soon as possible before the death toll mounts any higher.
With outrage,
Richard S. Russell
Apr. 26th, 2008
08:19 pm - Plant a Tree Today
2008 April 26
Voice of the People
The Capital Times
PO Box 8060
Madison WI 53708-8060
tctvoice@madison.com
To the Editor:
In the time it takes to read this letter, another species will have gone extinct somewhere on the planet. That’s knocking them off 500 times faster than the rate before the rise of human “civilization”. Some of those species would still be alive if there were more trees generating oxygen, dropping needles to mulchify on the forest floor, providing root systems to aerate the soil and minimize mudslides, and so on.
But, about 7-8 months from now, many Wisconsin families will celebrate the season of rebirth and renewal by finding a beautiful, healthy exemplar of eternal life — an evergreen tree — and killing it. They will then drag its corpse home and set it up in a corner where they can watch it dessicate into a fire hazard. After a few months, they’ll drag its body to the curb to be dismembered, discarded, and forgotten. And year after year, decade after decade, they’ll do it again.
If this annual rite of wanton arboricide in the name of “eternal life” strikes you as going beyond the ironic into the hypocritical, now’s the time you’ve been waiting for. Hie thyself to a garden nursery and get yourself a tender young LIVING tree, plant it in your yard, and enjoy it for generations to come.
Apr. 16th, 2008
01:44 pm - Forbidden Words
Recently one of my Yahoo groups bounced an e-mail from me because its subject line consisted of the forbidden word "Photos". Yahoo had identified this horrifying word as a likely subject line on a message containing a virus, even tho my own message had 2 short text paragraphs and no attachments and came from a Mac.
Curious to see just how extensively Yahoo is checking for subject lines even more suspicious than "Photos", I ran a little experiment to see what else might set them off. FYI, messages with the following subject lines all went thru just fine:
• This Is Spam
• Pornography Attached
• Biggus Dickus [apologies to Monty Python]
• Nigerian Money Laundering Scam
• PEN IS mightier than sword
• Malicious Virus Enclosed
But at least we're safe from "Photos".
Apr. 12th, 2008
02:16 pm - We're All Doomed!
= = = = = =
Grim Reaper: Silence!!! I have come for you.
Angela: ... You mean to ...
Grim Reaper: ... Take you away. That is my purpose. I am Death.
Geoffrey: Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?
— Monty Python, The Meaning of Life
= = = = = =
Most Americans are appalled at the forced imposition of the burka and chador — or even the hijab — on women in Islamic countries. Yet if a woman were to walk down State Street without a shirt (or a man without pants), we would soon realize that we have our own body taboos and hang-ups that we’re usually oblivious to.
I think the same situation is true with regard to global warming. Those of us on the left can ridicule the troglodytes like Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, who has called the threat of catastrophic global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", thereby firmly aligning himself with the flat Earthers, creationists, and Holocaust deniers. But even people who are fully on board about climate change (damage to the atmosphere) are blissfully oblivious to the rest of the picture.
The American Farmland Preservation Coalition decries the loss of good Iowa topsoil to erosion down the Missouri and Mississippi valleys. Environmental Action bemoans the decapitation of mountaintops in West Virginia. Mining slag pours into rivers in the Rockies. The Fertile Crescent is now desert. The Sahara encroaches on farmland in Sudan, producing the flood of Darfurian refugees. The lithosphere (soil and rocks) is taking it in the neck.
Mayors and governors along the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway try to rebrand their part of the world as the Fresh Coast (much more appealing than “Rust Belt”) and make the case that fresh water will be the oil of the 21st Century. It’s almost impossible to swim in many inland lakes, and the seacoasts are awash with sewage and medical waste. New Orleans wonders what happened to its buffer of wetlands. It’s an all-out assault on the hydrosphere.
And perhaps the biggest catastrophe is what’s happening to the biosphere (life forms) of our only planet.
All of nature is engaged in a continual struggle for scarce resources. Big cats (pumas) compete against big dogs (wolves) to eat deer, sheep, and rodents. Every year wolverines and badgers compete for burrow space as well as on the gridiron. It’s trees vs. grasses for access to good soil and sunshine. (And, in that war, both sides have eagerly formed alliances with human beings, the former bribing us with fruits and the latter with grains.)
Who are our fiercest competitors for resources? Not surprisingly, it’s the species that are most nearly like us, the ones that require virtually identical kinds of food, water, shelter, temperature, habitat, etc. (We don’t spend a lot of time duking it out with shrimp over phytoplankton.)
And how have our nearest relatives fared in their competition with us? Let’s have a look:
Family Hominidae
o Genus Pan (chimpanzee)
– Species paniscus (bonobo) Status: endangered
– Species troglodytes (common chimp) Status: endangered
o Genus Pongo (orangutan)
– Species abelii (Sumatran orangutan) Status: critically endangered
– Species pygmaeus (Bornean orangutan) Status: endangered
o Genus Gorilla
– Species gorilla (Western gorilla) Status: critically endangered
– Species beringei (Eastern gorilla) Status: endangered
o Genus Homo
– Species sapiens (human beings) Status: 6,600,000,000 and growing
Short story: We have outcompeted the hell out of everything in our environmental niche. We’ve completely wiped out all other species in our genus (most recently the neanderthals, about 25,000 years ago), and we’re on the verge of being the only remaining species in Family Hominidae. We are truly the meanest sunzabitches in the valley.
Nor does it stop there. We are decimating other species at a prodigious clip as well. In the time you take to read this essay, another couple of species have gone extinct (a rate of 1 every 4 minutes, or about 500 times the pre-human historical pace).
The following is a sig line I sometimes use at the bottom of my e-mails, where it’s easy to ignore. I think it’s time to pull it up into the main body of the message, to make it unavoidable and painfully clear:
= = = = = =
In Earth's history, there have been 5 previous massive die-offs of almost every species on the planet. We call these Mass Extinction Events. We don't know what caused the 1st 4, but we're pretty sure that the 5th — the one that got the dinosaurs — was caused by a huge meteor striking the Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula. And we're absolutely certain what's causing the 6th, the one we're in now, the Holocene Holocaust. It's us.
= = = = = =
It has been said that we do not inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children. Regrettably, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note .... Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the ... people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’.”
So we are witnessing a historically unprecedented degradation of the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. All at once. And accelerating. And even people who are aware of part of the problem fail to connect the dots and place it in the context of the big picture. We are ruining the world.
The basic problem is obvious: too many people.
A lot of the pro-growth crowd (economists loosely aligned with the political neo-conservatives) have contended that Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb has been discredited, because the disasters he predicted didn’t come to pass on the timeline he had laid out. It’s true that human ingenuity and massive infusions of capital and science managed to stave off the worst of his predictions, but “postponed” is not the same as “avoided”. Today we are starting to see the death tolls mounting from the famines, droughts, and forced migrations Ehrlich predicted 4 decades ago. The chickens are coming home to roost.
But, adding to the problem, there is the simple fact that we ignored the warnings of Ehrlich (and Thomas Malthus before him), thinking we were somehow immune to the disasters they had predicted, and therefore just kept adding more and more people to the overburden we were already placing on the planet. So now, when a typhoon sweeps ashore in Bangladesh, say, it doesn’t just take out a few thousand people, the way it would have in Ehrlich’s day; it now claims victims by the hundreds of thousands.
But now let us introduce some nuance. Not every person has an equal effect on the environment. For example, we could add 99 Zimbabweans with less total impact than 1 incremental American. The clear-cut implication of considering consumption and waste instead of merely counting bodies is that migration becomes at least as significant a consideration as birth rate.
Now you might think, from a standing start, that it would be the richest countries — the ones that could most easily afford to support large families — where the population growth would be greatest. Not true. It turns out that it is these very countries that are most able to provide women with liberty, money, education, and access to birth control, and those factors combine to produce the lowest birth rates among the community of nations.
Indeed, most of the nations of Europe have long since achieved the goal of zero population growth and embarked on the even more enlightened and civilized path of negative population growth. The USA would be in the same boat if we counted only net natural growth (births minus deaths) and legal immigration, but illegal immigration continues to drive our population (the most ravenously consumptive in the history of the world) steadily higher.
No discussion of overpopulation can go for long without placing great gobs of blame at the feet of the world’s 2 largest religions, Catholicism and Islam, both of which hold to a grossly unrealistic “every sperm is sacred” view of the world. They are unapologetically conservative forces with a vested interest in denigrating their chief intellectual competitor, science. They deserve to be reviled and opposed at every turn. They are the chief architects of our coming ruin.
Yet, in keeping with my introductory theme about blindness to that which is familiar around us, it’s also true that forces at the opposite end of the political spectrum (my end, the liberals and progressives) are guilty of exacerbating the problem by denying that there’s anything wrong with large-scale migration, legal or illegal.
I myself am all too happy to glorify, in the abstract, diversity, compassion, and liberty (including the freedom to travel). But, in doing so, we on the left need to pay attention to the opposite pan on the balance scales. It’s not a pretty picture over there, my friends.
= = = = = =
A young couple was out in the country, not far from a grove of trees, when it started to rain. The guy said, “Quick, let’s run under that tree for shelter.”
“But what will we do when the leaves get all wet and start to drip thru on us?”, wondered the young woman.
“Simple,” said the guy, “we’ll just run under a different tree.”
= = = = = =
And, in fact, this tactic will work for a little while, if you can find a taller tree where the rain is still working its way down. However, if the rain keeps on coming, eventually it’ll saturate even the tallest tree, and you’ll end up sopping wet, with the additional fringe benefit of having cleverly positioned yourself in the place most likely to be hit by lightning.
All the immigrants in the world can’t run under the sheltering umbrella of the tree called the United States and expect to stay dry indefinitely. For one thing, there isn’t enuf room for all of them. For another, simply running from tree to tree does nothing whatsoever to stop the rain.
Migration is not the answer to the world’s population problems. All it does is relocate the problem temporarily, consuming irreplaceable resources in the process. And, make no mistake, it’s the population problem that’s driving most of the others, including the horrific Holocene Holocaust I mentioned above.
Try this as a mental exercise. When you hear a problem description, try reversing it.
Instead of “peak oil”, think of it as “too many people for the available petroleum”.
Instead of “famine”, think of it as “too many people for the available food”.
Instead of “drought”, think of it as “too many people for the available water”.
Instead of “slums”, think of it as “too many people for the available housing”.
Instead of “war”, think of it as “too many people for the available land”.
Instead of “poverty”, think of it as “too many people for the available money”.
Instead of “plague”, think of it as “too many people for the available health care”.
= = = = = =
So …
Sorry to have cast rather a gloom over your evening.
It’s traditional to try to end these depressing essays with some upbeat ray of hope, and I will comply with tradition:
= = = = = =
The dangers that face the world can, every one of them, be traced back to science. The salvations that may save the world will, every one of them, be traced back to science.
— Isaac Asimov
= = = = = =
We know what the problems are. We’ve got a handle on how to fix them. If we can hold off the religious fanatics long enuf to get a good start, we’ve still got a fighting chance.
But — and you may go right ahead and consider this chauvinistic of me — there’s gotta be a spot of dry land to stand on before it does you any good throwing out a lifebouy to the drowning victims. If we can’t maintain a high level of thriving, technological society here in the United States, there really isn’t any hope for the rest of the world. We’re all doomed.
Yup, upbeat to the end, that’s me.
Mar. 27th, 2008
03:44 pm - What Democrats Want
Well, it seems only fair that, since I just posted a survey from the Republican National Congressional Committee (RNCC) under the heading “What Republicans Want”, I should follow up with the one I got yesterday from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). These 2 organizations are not exactly counterparts of each other. The RNCC is focussed particularly on elected GOP candidates to the US House of Representatives, while the DNC’s remit is broader. It’s dedicated to electing Democrats at all levels, but particularly, in this year divisible by 4, to the US presidency.
I’ve gotta say (tho it’s possible I’m biased) that the Dems’ survey seems a lot more like what I’d expect from an independent polling organization, objectively devoted to finding out what people really think. It’s entirely possible that the DNC really DOES tally these results and use them for broad guidance.
At bottom, of course, it’s still mainly a fund-raising gimmick.
The RNCC survey gave me exactly 3 options for each question: “Yes”, “No”, and “Undecided”. The DNC survey wasn’t quite so simplistic, offering instead a range of choices tailored to the specifics of each question. Therefore, I show below not only the questions but the options under each one.
1. Age
[ ] 18-30 [ ] 31-40 [ ] 41-50 [ ] 51-64 [ ] 65 and over
2. How often do you vote for Democratic candidates?
[ ] Always [ ] Most of the time [ ] Rarely [ ] Never
3. How likely are you to vote in the 2008 elections?
[ ] Very likely [ ] Somewhat likely [ ] Not likely
4. Have you participated in any of the following campaign activities?
[ ] Volunteering time at a local campaign or party headquarters.
[ ] Making phone calls from a phone bank.
[ ] Organizing an event or fundraiser in my home or community.
[ ] Going door-to-door in my neighborhood.
5. How closely have you been following the 2008 presidential campaign?
[ ] Very closely [ ] Closely [ ] Somewhat closely [ ] Not at all
6. How optimistic are you that a Democrat will win the White House in 2008?
[ ] Very optimistic [ ] Optimistic [ ] Not very optimistic [ ] Not at all
7. Do you believe that John McCain’s pledge to keep troops in Iraq for another 100 years will be a liability in the General Election?
[ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] Unsure
8. Which issues would you like the Democratic presidential nominee to focus on in the campaign? Please rank the following issues from 1 to 14 based on their importance to you, with “1” being the most important.
___ Education
___ Environment
___ Health care
___ Civil rights/liberties
___ Immigration
___ Social Security
___ Ethics in governmenet
___ Reproductive rights
___ Homeland security
___ Stem-cell research
___ Iraq
___ Taxes
___ Energy policy
___ Jobs/economy
9. Thinking about our Party’s plan for the 2008 campaigns, which of the following strategies do you think is the key to electing more Democrats in November?
[ ] Investing in grassroots efforts like canvassing and get-out-the-vote drives.
[ ] Devoting more resources to radio and television ads that reach the most voters.
[ ] Ensuring a fair election process so that every vote counts.
[ ] Democrats need to invest in all of the above strategies to win in November.
10. With our 50 State Strategy, the DNC has been strengthening our Party in states that have traditionally been GOP strongholds. What is your opinion of this strategy?
[ ] I support it. Our Party needs to compete in eveyr part of the country and make the Republicans spend campaign money in states they have taken for granted.
[ ] I oppose it. Our Party should focus its resources in those states where we have the best chance to win, and not waste money in solidly Republican states.
11. How likely do you think it is that John McCain and his Republican allies will launch a “Swift Boat” style smear campaign against our presidential nominee?
[ ] Very likely [ ] Somewhat likely [ ] Not likely
12. How concerned are you that Republican voter suppression schemes will disenfranchise Democrats and impact the outcome of the presidential race?
[ ] Very concerned [ ] Somewhat concerned [ ] Not concerned
13. What is your main source of news and information about the presidential campaign and the 2008 elections?
[ ] Television [ ] Newspapers [ ] Talk radio [ ] Internet/blogs [ ] Newsmagazines [ ] Other _______
[Aside from Richard: I half expected to see a separate category for “The Daily Show”.]
14. Do you think mainstream news organizations are biased in favor of Democrats, biased in favor of Republicans, or do you think news organizations have been fair in the way they have covered the presidential election?
[ ] Biased in favor of Democrats
[ ] Biased in favor of Republicans
[ ] No bias in favor of either party
[ ] No opinion/not sure
15. If you could offer one piece of advice to the Democratic presidential nominee, what would it be? Please use the space below to write your comments.
16. To help our Party win the White Housse and score victories up and down the ballot in 2008, will you join the DNC as a contributing member today?
[ ] Yes — go to next question [ ] No
17. If you answered “Yes” to question 16, please indicate the membership level at which you will join the DNC today.
[ ] $25 [ ] $35 [ ] $50 [ ] $100 [ ] Other $____
Mar. 26th, 2008
01:17 am - Partial Veto Power
2008 Mar. 25
Voice of the People
The Capital Times
PO Box 8060
Madison WI 53708-8060
tctvoice@madison.com
Suppose you’ve recently acquired an old clunker of a car. It runs, but it needs work on the brakes, steering, alignment, and lights. You dealt with the brakes first, then a couple of months later you could afford to take care of the steering. Now you’re in a position to fix the alignment. But your usually reliable brother says “Hey, man, don’t work on the alignment until you can take care of the lights at the same time. Put the whole thing off until you can do it ALL and do it right.”
That’s the advice we’re getting from Fred Wade and John Nichols on the governor’s partial-veto power. I contend that they’re right strategically but dead wrong tactically.
A misguided decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court gave our state’s governor the most powerful veto pen in the nation. He can effectively create new laws — never intended by the Legislature — thru creative editing.
Already we have passed 2 Constitutional amendments to rein in the worst abuses of this power. This April 1 we’ll have a chance to adopt yet another amendment to fix still a 3rd aspect of the problem. Fred and John would have you vote “no” on this because it doesn’t finish the job.
And they’re right about one thing: this year’s vote WON’T finish the job. More work remains to be done. The deciding factor for me is “What system will we be living under until we get the NEXT amendment passed, one that’s only 1/2 fixed, or one that’s 3/4 fixed?”.
Remember that this year’s amendment had to pass both houses of the Legislature in 2 consecutive biennnial sessions to get to you, the voters. Do you really want to start the clock all over again, with no guarantees as to how some future, supposedly “perfect” amendment will turn out? Or will you settle, here and now, for an incremental gain?
I recommend a “yes” vote this April, followed promptly by the introduction of an even better, 4th amendment for another vote in 2012.
Mar. 25th, 2008
02:25 pm - What Republicans Want
As a lot of my political friends are aware, I’m a member of 5 different political parties:
• Democrats
• Greens
• Libertarians
• Progressive Dane (a local party, in Dane County)
• Republicans
There are a couple of reasons why I send my money to all these different groups. The deep, philosophical reason is that I believe in party politics as an abstract concept. Political parties are, practically by definition, multi-issue organizations, because it is their purpose in life to appeal to a majority of the population, and you can’t do that with just a single issue. Furthermore, they don’t have their very existence tied up with a particular issue, the way the special-interest groups do.
Consider, for example, a case now before the US Supreme Court, in which the District of Columbia’s strict “gun-control” law has been challenged as unconstitutional under the 2nd Amendment (which grants the “right to keep and bear arms” or RKBA). Now, if you’re a top executive at the National Rifle Association, the best thing that could happen is that the Supremes would throw out the “gun-control” law. And the SECOND best thing that could happen is that they’d uphold it. If you work for Handgun Control Inc., the reverse is true.
Now why is it, do you suppose, that being on the LOSING side in a court case is a good thing for a special-interest organization? It’s because it gives them something alarming that they can point to when they send out their next fund-raising letter (probably the very next day after the decision) to try to rally the faithful (and, not at all incidentally, persuade them to send in even bigger checks in light of this new threat to all that is good and true and holy).
In a perverse sort of way, the NRA and HCI really need each other, because then each of them has an opposite number to fulfill the role of demon.
Not so much the political parties. It used to be that the Republicans (and especially the Libertarians) were gung-ho on the RKBA, while the leftish parties were much more sympathetic to “gun control”. (I always put “gun control” in quotation marks, to emphasize the fact that it won’t control the guns of criminals, police, or the military, only of ordinary, law-abiding citizens.) But, thru the years, the Democrats at least have come to recognize that “gun control” is a loser as a political issue. It pisses off way more people way more intensely than it attracts. So they’ve just gradually let it die.
As a multi-issue organization (especially one that wants a broad range of support), the Dems can not only AFFORD to do this, they practically HAVE to in order to keep winning elections. But would Handgun Control Inc. ever adopt the same “Oh, well, we gave it a good try.” attitude? Of course not, because its very EXISTENCE is tied up in keeping that issue hot and highly visible. And by “existence”, I mean “paychecks for the HCI officers”.
There are only a very few instances of an organization having utterly lost its raison d’etre and dealing with it successfully. One is in a place you’d least expect it: the federal bureaucracy. The Rural Electrification Administration completed its work, polished off its final reports, turned them in, turned off the lights, and went out of business in an orderly way.
The only other one that comes readily to mind is the March of Dimes, which was originally set up to find a cure for polio. When the Salk and Sabin vaccines came along, and they had actually achieved what they set out to do, the March of Dimes could have followed the REA’s example and closed up shop. Instead, they reasoned that they had a good infrastructure in place and a lot of terrific good will to go with their name (ESPECIALLY after having met their primary goal), so they chose to reinvent themselves as a charity devoted to preventing and curing birth defects (something that’s gonna take a lot longer than finding a cure for polio).
Political “cause” organizations, like religions, don’t seem amenable to these 2 avenues.
But political parties, as I said, can just walk away when they feel the need. That’s one reason why I want to send my money to parties rather than pressure groups. They don’t have to be fanatics to be effective.
The other reason is a lot simpler and more mundane: It gets me on their mailing lists, so I can see what they’re up to.
Which brings me to the main point of today’s essay, “What Republicans Want”. I recently received a fund-raising letter from the Republican National Congressional Committee. Now, you have to understand that what these guys really want is your money. They don’t give 2 hoots in hell about your opinion. Nonetheless, long experience has shown them that they get MORE money if they pretend that they ARE interested in what you think, so these pitches almost invariably come with a “survey” that pretends to solicit your advice in formulating national policy.
The survey is, of course, strictly a propaganda gimmick. I doubt that they even invest the time to record the results. They probably just separate the checks from the completed forms, deposit the former, and recycle the latter unread. The REAL point of the survey is to ask you questions in a manner designed to fire up your taste for red meat.
Note that, while this particular example quotes a pitch from the Republicans, the technique is equally available to the Democrats, and they use it just as enthusiastically and shamelessly. Both sides love to haul out some demon image from the other side to use as a horror story. The Republicans for years have cited Teddy Kennedy, while the Democrats have hopscotched from Jesse Helms to Strom Thurmond to Dick Cheney. This particular letter, since its from the “Congressional” (IE, House of Representatives) campaign committee, slots House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into the role of chief demon. The one thing the Republicans have that the Democrats don’t is the use of the adjective “Democrat” rather than “Democratic”, always a sure sign of burr-under-the-saddle partisanship, guaranteed to irk the Dems.
So, without further ado, here’s what the Republicans seem to think is on the minds of their party members in early 2008, half a year before the presidential elections. The 3 options I was given for each question are “Yes”, “No”, and “Undecided”.
1. Do you feel voters in Wisconsin’s 2nd District support making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent?
2. Do you support the Hosue Democrats’ “slow-bleed” strategy to “choke-off” funding for our troops in Iraq, leading to their withdrawal and a perception of American defeat?
3. Should Republicans continue fighting for full implementation of a ballistic missile defense system?
4. Do voters in Wisconsin’s 2nd District agree with the Nancy Pelosi Democrat Majority’s decision to impose massive tax hikes on the American people?
5. Do you think that House Republicans should continue to push for pro-growth policies that create jobs and oppose tax increases that would add a burden to working families and set back our economy?
6. Do you support Congressional Republicans’ efforts to decrease domeestic government spending in order to reduce the national deficit?
7. Do you support the Democrats’ efforts to give federal government bureaucrats complete control of your health care costs and choices?
8. Should Republicans in Congress make expansion of Veterans’ benefits a priority?
9. Do you support maintaining anti-terrorism laws that give law enforcement and intelligence agencies the far-reaching powers to track detain and prosecute terrorists and their accomplices?
10. Should Republicans in the House of Representatives make securing our nation’s borders and enforcing our nation’s immigration laws, including combating the hiring of illegal workers and ending the “catch and release” policy, a top priority?
11. Do you think House Republicans should continue fighting for comprehensive education reform to ensure that every child in America receives a first-rate education?
12. Do you agree that winning back a Republican Majority in the House of Representatives is essential to stopping the Nancy Pelosi Democrats from raising our taxes, destroying our economy and endangering our homeland?
13. Will you support our Party’s campaign to defeat the Pelosi Democrats and elect a Republican House Majority in 2008 by joining the NRCC with a generous financial contribution today?
This last question was followed not by the standard “Yes”, “No”, and “Undecided” options but rather with a big “YES” box followed by a much smaller one for “I cannot pledge my support for this year, but I would like to include a contribution of $11 to help the NRCC fund this survey and its tabulation.”.
Mar. 19th, 2008
06:27 am - A Computer Parable
Most of my writing is of essay length and either didactic or expostulatory. However, every now and again I take off on a little flight of fancy and gin up something that might be called “creative writing”. Recently I was struck by just such a mood in responding to a question on a discussion list devoted to FileMaker Pro, a particular piece of computer software I use a lot. It was well received there, so I thot I’d share it here.
Before launching into my little parable, you should be aware that Claris was originally the application-software arm of Apple Computer. It was eventually spun off into a wholly owned subsidiary. At that time, it still published Claris Works, Claris Write, and Claris Draw, among others. But its principal cash cow was its database manager, FileMaker Pro.
After a few more years, Claris severed its links to Apple, dropped everything else in its product line, and concentrated on FileMaker. In recognition of this, it changed its corporate name to FileMaker Inc. (FMI).
And now, the story. ( A Computer Parable )
Mar. 10th, 2008
01:25 am - Atheists Are Your Friends
Yesterday I discussed Kurt Williamsen’s sign-off (blessings for the faithful, not so much for everyone else), so today I offer up my own last word — a summation of what I hope I’d been able to demonstrate over the course of a month’s worth of commentary: ( Atheists Are Your Friends )
And that wraps up this series. Thanks for your patience if you’ve been following along.
Mar. 9th, 2008
02:09 pm - Blessing the Faithful
Ever notice how politicians seem to feel compelled to wrap up every public address with “God bless America”? Thomas Paine woulda puked.
But at least they cast a wide net and include everyone as the supposed recipients of the blessings. Not so our intrepid interlocutor of the Appleton Post-Crescent, who restricts himself to ( Blessing the Faithful )
Tomoro: Atheists Are Your Friends
Mar. 8th, 2008
11:10 am - How We Decide, Part 2
Continuing my own, original work on the root of the problem with religion: ( HOW WE DECIDE, PART 2 )
Tomoro: Blessing the Faithful
Mar. 7th, 2008
10:48 am - How We Decide, Part 1
Heretofore, I’ve simply been reacting to Kurt Williamsen’s original article. But now I do some original work of my own as I lay out a systematic analysis of the basic problem that underlies Williamsen’s thot processes: ( HOW WE DECIDE, PART 1 )
Tomoro: How We Decide, Part 2
Mar. 6th, 2008
12:26 am - What They Say about Faith
When I entitle a posting “Faith Sucks”, you can pretty much tell where I’m coming from on the subject.
So, before we go any further, let’s see what some other people think: ( What They Say about Faith )
Tomoro: How We Decide, Part 1
Mar. 5th, 2008
06:38 am - Faith Sucks!
Time after time, for one subject after another, Kurt Williamsen displayed the most astounding ignorance, error, faulty reasoning, and lack of proportion. And he did so proudly, as if he were sharing something of value with his fellow citizens, thereby improving their lives.
So, in wrapping up my analysis of his original article, I decided to stand back a step or 2 from the symptoms of his multiple egregious offenses and spend some time on the underlying causes of them. And the most fundamental problem with his entire misbegotten rant can be summed up in 2 words: ( Faith Sucks! )
Tomoro: What they say about faith
Day after: The decision-making hierarchy
Mar. 4th, 2008
11:01 am - Atheism As Faith
If you really want to insult an atheist, say that atheism is just another form of faith.
You guessed it! That’s exactly what came up next: ( Atheism As Faith )
Tomoro: Faith, the ultimate hole in the head.
Mar. 3rd, 2008
05:36 pm - The Christian Anthropic Principle
While I’ve often taken fully deserved cracks at the Bible’s bad science, I must admit that it’s chock full of dandy stories and metaphors. One of my faves involves the admonition to be less concerned about the mote in your brother’s eye than about the beam in your own.
Today I tackle a primo example of this willful blindness, as I look at ( The Christian Anthropic Principle )
Tomoro: Atheism As Faith
Feb. 29th, 2008
01:35 am - Odds against the Universe
Carl Sagan once remarked “In order to truly create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create the Universe.” Well, how hard could that be?
According to the fundies, lots harder than you’d think. This is where they get to quoting the ( Odds against the Universe )
Next: What Christians would have you believe instead.
Note that I wrote “next” instead of “tomoro”. I’m not quite sure when my next posting in this series will be, since I’m headed into UW Hospital for a knee-replacement operation tomoro, and it’ll probably be awhile before I’m fully functional again.
Feb. 28th, 2008
03:36 am - Humans As Machines
How to win an argument: You get to make up what the other side says!
Yup, guaranteed win, but hardly a fair fight.
And also not very good training for what to do when you encounter an opponent who actually punches back, as I did when Williamsen started to speak of ( Humans As Machines )
Tomoro: The Odds against the Universe
Feb. 27th, 2008
12:27 am - The God of the Gaps
Yesterday I wrote about the odd habit that True Believers have of pointing out flaws or omissions in the findings of science and then leaping from there to the idea that their own unscientific beliefs are thereby (somehow or other) validated.
To oversimplify, this is akin to having me claim that a car is red, having them point to the grill and door handles (chrome-plated metal) and saying that, since those particular parts aren’t red, the car must be blue. They’ve made no affirmative case for their own blueness point of view, only pointed out that my redness claim isn’t 100% pure.
It turns out they’ve been using this trick for quite a long while — so long, in fact, that the practice has acquired a name. It’s known as ( The God of the Gaps )
Tomoro: Humans As Machines
Feb. 26th, 2008
01:12 pm - Evolution vs. Wishful Thinking
Kurt Williamsen is not merely an ordinary Christian bashing atheism. No, he’s a fundamentalist Christian who also has to bash evolution. He’s a proponent of so-called “intelligent design” (ID), which is creationism gussied up with a veneer of scientific-sounding jargon designed specifically to conceal its theocratic underpinnings.
I pulled back the covers as I took on ( Evolution vs. Wishful Thinking )
Tomoro: The God of the Gaps
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