Will The Children Be Safer Naked?
Alana Semuels writes for the LA Times about new "safety" regulations set to take effect next month that could force thousands of retailers and thrift stores to throw away piles and piles of children's clothing:

The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger -- including clothing -- be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven't been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.

"They'll all have to go to the landfill," said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.

The new regulations take effect Feb. 10 under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was passed by Congress last year in response to widespread recalls of products that posed a threat to children, including toys made with lead or lead-based paint.

Supporters say the measure is sorely needed. One health advocacy group said it found high levels of lead in dozens of products purchased around the country, including children's jewelry, backpacks and ponchos.

Lead can also be found in buttons or charms on clothing and on appliques that have been added to fabric, said Charles Margulis, communications director for the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland. A child in Minnesota died a few years ago after swallowing a lead charm on his sneaker, he said.

...There is the possibility of a partial reprieve. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the law, on Monday will consider exempting clothing and toys made of natural materials such as wool or wood. The commission does not have the authority to change the law but can decide how to interpret it.

But exempting natural materials does not go far enough, said Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel and Footwear Assn. Clothes made of cotton but with dyes or non-cotton yarn, for example, might still have to be tested, as would clothes that are cotton-polyester blends, he said.

"The law introduces an extraordinarily large number of testing requirements for products for which everyone knows there's no lead," he said.

How about we leave it to parents to actually...parent? When I was growing up, there was some problem with the milk in Michigan, so my mom paid extra for Alta-Dena milk from California from the health food store. Parents should educate themselves about which toys potentially contain lead, and make the decision about what to buy, same as they decide what age their kid gets to cross the street without them and all the rest. Manufacturers can choose to put their products up for testing, same as manufacturers do with the UL listing. Otherwise, just when the economy is particularly terrible and people need to shop at thrift stores for kids' clothes and keep their businesses going, a lot of people are going to be in a lot of trouble.

Take my neighbor's toy company, for example. She makes board games out of organic cotton with vegetable dyes. The pieces are wood. Wood that doesn't come from the lead tree. Hers is yet another small business that will be out of business if these regulations aren't drop-kicked. Tammy Vigil writes for Fox about toys needing to be tested for lead:

For the first time, toymakers and those who create goods for children, will have to pay an independent third party to test for chemicals in their products. The change spurred after scares from tainted toys made in China.

A group called Handmade Toy Alliance is coming out against these new regulations. They have members all over the country, including at least three in Colorado.

Jennifer vanVorst of Denver owns Turtle Park Tots. She makes and sells baby and toddler accessories, like bibs, blankets and changing pads, out of her basement.

She supports new stringent testing for lead, but not for everyone--and not at the huge expense.

"As of February 10, everything I make has to be certified its been tested for lead," she says.

But she only uses fabrics--some organic--and none which contain lead or one of six banned chemicals called phthalates.

"The sense I get from the law is a knee jerk reaction to Mattel and the testing going on and finding so much lead," says vanVorst.

She sees it as a one-size-fits-all solution after recalls of thousands of imported toys with lead paint in 2007.

It's testing that will cost vanVorst $600-$700 per $10 bib to test. "For a company like me. I can't take a hit like that. I'm not making a huge profit."

A Few Common Fabrications About The Situation In Gaza
Here, from The Israel Project:

1) Fiction: There's no food in Gaza and people are starving. News reports, including one produced by TV station France 2 on Dec. 29, showed a Gaza resident in a food store saying:

"Apparently, there is nothing, as you can see. There are no natural products for the kids. There is no milk. There is nothing here."[1]

Fact: Warehouses in Gaza are filled to capacity, according to international aid groups.

In the same France 2 TV clip referenced above, upon closer inspection, shelves filled with food can be seen in the reflection of a refrigerated door in the store. To see clip: click on http://jt.france2.fr/20h/; click on "Lundi 29" - below the small screen; to the right of the new screen, click "Vie dans la bande de Gaza" The World Food Program informed Israel that it would cease shipment of food to Gaza because the warehouses there are at full capacity, with enough food to last two weeks.[2]

During a one-day period alone - Dec. 31- Israel facilitated the transport of 29 truckloads of food, including 15 truckloads of flour, into Gaza.[3] And even as Hamas was firing rockets and mortars during Israel during the ceasefire, Israel facilitated the delivery of 2,500 tons (delivered on 93 trucks) of humanitarian aid, medical supplies and medication through the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal.[4]

Since the beginning of the operation, about 6,500 tons of aid have been transferred into Gaza at the request of the international organizations, the Palestinian Authority and various governments. Preparations are underway to facilitate further shipments.[5]

2) Fiction: Gaza has no medical and other aid supplies to help the injured.

Fact: During the first 5 days alone of Operation Cast Lead, Israel has facilitated the delivery of 6,500 tons of aid - 179 truckoads -- into Gaza at the request of international organizations, the Palestinian Authority and various governments.

The deliveries include basic food commodities, medication, medical supplies and blood units. Another 106 truckloads of humanitarian aid are expected to arrive in Gaza on Jan. 31.[6] [7] The crossings to Gaza are open for the transfer of humanitarian aid from all international organizations, in full cooperation with the Israeli authorities and without restriction.[8] In a one-day period - Dec. 31 - Israel enabled the transport of 9 truckloads of medicine and medical supplies, along with 10 ambulances, into Gaza.[9]

3) Fiction: Israel is refusing to allow injured Gazans into Israeli and Egyptian hospitals for treatment.

Fact: Israel has allowed a number of Palestinians into Israel for medical treatment they couldn't receive in Gaza.

On Dec. 31, for example, 12 Palestinians accessed Israel for medical treatment in Israeli hospitals. Two of those evacuated were injured children; the remaining were chronically sick people, and their escorts, who were allowed into Israel for treatment not available in Gaza.[10]

Further, Hamas - in an effort to exploit the suffering of innocent civilians - has refused to allow injured Palestinians to leave Gaza to go to Egypt for treatment.[11] Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit said earlier this week that Hamas was not allowing wounded Palestinians to cross the border into Egypt for treatment: "We are waiting for the wounded Palestinians to cross. They are not being allowed to cross." Asked who was to blame, he referred to Gaza by saying, "Ask the party in control on the ground in Gaza."[12]

4) Fiction: Israel is purposely targeting civilians.

Fact: While Israel goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, Hamas actually places civilians in harm's way and uses them as shields.

Because Hamas is known to use civilian residences to hide their weapons, on Dec. 27, the Israeli military - before launching an attack on such storehouses - called thousands of civilians in Gaza on their cell phones and left Arabic-language messages urging them to leave homes being used for weapons storage.[13]

On Dec. 30, a reformist Iranian newspaper published a statement by a student organization that criticized Hamas for risking civilian lives, including children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The Iranian Culture Ministry shut down the newspaper after it printed the statements.[14]

Israel has publicly stated time and again that it regrets the loss of any civilian life and considers each one a tragedy. However, both Iran-backed Hamas and Iran-backed Hezbollah have a history of faking deaths and funerals. For example, in Spring 2002, Palestinians were filmed as they attempted to stage a fake funeral as part of a gross exaggeration of the number of people killed in Jenin. The film shows Palestinians wrapping, then carrying a 'corpse' on a funeral pier; the 'corpse' falls off several times and gets back on - including in front of a large and surprised crowd.[15] Click here for video of faked funeral. Although some reports say a quarter of the deaths during "Operation Cast Lead" have been civilians, Palestinian terrorists' history of deceptions and false claims require reporters to work to verify such information.

During Israel's defensive war against Hezbollah two years ago, the phenomenon was so common that it became known as "Hezbollywood."[16] One of the best-known instances was when a man purporting to be a rescue worker at the site of a bombed village appeared in various photos in the international media, repeatedly displaying the same child's dead body at different times - and in different poses - throughout the day. The man, identified as Salam Daher, wore a green helmet in all of the photos, earning himself the nickname "green helmet guy." Daher was also found to have directed a camera shooting the scene.[17]

What's The One Question?
If you could ask one question of the romantic partner you're with -- or could've asked the one you were with -- what would that question be?

Habitat For The Cockroaches
Some of those Habitat for Humanity homes aren't faring so well, writes John Harlow for the Times of London about one of Jimmy Carter's pet projects:

Fairway Oaks was built on northern Florida wasteland by 10,000 volunteers, including Carter, in a record 17-day "blitz" organised by the charity Habitat for Humanity.

Eight years later it is better known for cockroaches, mildew and mysterious skin rashes.

A forthcoming legal battle over Fairway Oaks threatens the reputation of a charity envied for the calibre of its celebrity supporters, who range from Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt to Colin Firth, Christian Bale and Helena Bonham Carter.

The case could challenge the bedrock philosophy behind Habitat for Humanity, claiming that using volunteers, rather than professional builders, is causing as many problems as it solves.

April Charney, a lawyer representing many of the 85 homeowners in Fairway Oaks, said she had no problems taking on Habitat for Humanity, despite its status as a "darling of liberal social activists". She said the charity should have told people that part of the estate had been built on a rubbish dump.

One man pulled up his floorboards to find rubbish 5ft deep under his kitchen. Other complaints include cracking walls and rotting door frames that let in rats and ants. Many residents have complained of mildew and mysterious skin rashes.

Now, is this just recipients of charity looking for a quick buck in a lawsuit? Perhaps. But, check this out in the comments on the Times of London piece:

This is not a typical Habitat project. This was a photo-op for the worst President who is also the worst former President the US. has ever had. I am on the board of a local Habitat and we do great work. We only build about three houses a year but they are made well and last if maintained.

lulu bert, columbus,ms, usa

Is Lulu Bert real -- and for real? I found a couple of comments in that name on articles. But, here's a bit about the Columbus-Lowndes, Mississippi Habitat for Humanity. And it looks like Lulu has it right: they're about to start construction on just two homes; one for a woman and her disabled son and one for parents with six children who've just adopted eight more out of foster care.

Here's a counterpoint from another guy who's apparently worked on Habitat houses, the blogger at The Ripley Porch:

For years...I've sat and watched Jimmy Carter's Habitat for Humanity charity do its work. In my mind, there were always negatives mixed with the positives. Everytime they did a video piece....they interviewed people who were real carpenters, and then you came to the majority of the group...who were regular people like myself, with no construction background whatsoever. I usually got the impression that a good sixty to seventy percent of the participants had no background in construction. It was a charity support thing...which I can apprciate but then I kept thinking...would I want a house from these guys?

Ummm...somebody who's homeless without one? Ripley continues:

Carter's charity might have great intentions but the truth of the matter is that people have come to expect a house with no issues. And when you rush in with thirty people...of which only four are professionals...you are getting questionable workmanship. I'm thinking this is going to be a tough sale in the future as people began to realize what you are getting. In some ways...you might be better off just spending $30k and buying a RV trailer....or $60k to get a house trailer...rather than accept charity at your front door.

Getting back to realism again, I don't think the people living in Fairway Oaks had the money to get a trailer. They got real sweetheart deals on their housing (from the NYT: $500 down, 300 hours of sweat equity, and no-interest mortgages of around $45,000 to $61,000. Monthly payments, including insurance, are generally less than $300). Without those deals, many would very likely be in some very dire straits now.

And yes, the NYT piece has the EPA reporting the Fairway Oaks land safe -- just like they did my old neighborhood around the WTC after 9/11. Hilarious! (Unless, of course, you were breathing the air.)

Leader Monkeys For The Blind
It's a zoo out there -- of the various kinds of service animals (and "service animals"), writes Rebecca Skloot for The New York Times. One blind woman has a tiny pony leading her around. Another woman, Rose, has a monkey:

(Rose) has agoraphobia and severe anxiety disorder with debilitating panic attacks. Until getting Richard four years ago, she required heavy doses of anti-anxiety drugs just to go out in public. "I couldn't have come in this store before Richard, let alone handled all these people talking to me," she said. "Now I like it."

Rose adopted Richard in 2004; he was badly neglected and near death. She and two of her six children -- whom she raised as a single mother -- run an exotic-animal shelter. Rose says she believes that Richard was trained as a service animal for his previous owner, an elderly woman whose son gave Richard away when she died. He had been neutered, and his tail had been surgically removed. He'd also had his large and potentially dangerous canine teeth pulled, a procedure commonly done with service monkeys for safety (and often cited as one of several ethical concerns with using wild instead of domesticated species for such jobs).

As Richard returned to health, Rose realized that he had begun to recognize her panic attacks before she did. Her doctor suggested that she train him to help with her disorder, then wrote a letter approving of him as a service animal, saying that Richard was "a constructive way to avoid use of unnecessary medications." Rose took that letter to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, got permission for Richard to accompany her in public and has been drug-free ever since. She ordered a service-animal ID certificate online; she even got a restriction on her driver's license saying that she can't operate a car without a monkey present. Now he sits in her lap with a hand on the wheel while she drives, and she never leaves home without him.

But the number of places Rose and Richard can go is decreasing. In September 2006, after receiving complaints that Richard was sitting in highchairs in restaurants, touching silverware and going through a buffet line with Rose, the Health Department sent a letter to all local restaurants announcing that Richard was a risk to public health and not a legitimate service animal. It instructed businesses to refuse him access and to call the police if Rose protested. Businesses posted the letter on their doors and in their bathrooms; soon Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences, where Rose was attending nursing school, refused Richard access, too. Stories­ started appearing about Rose and her monkey in the newspaper and on TV. "Suddenly," she told me, "everyone knew I had a mental disorder."

Rose dropped out of school and filed a lawsuit against her local Health Department, the nursing school, Wal-Mart and several other local businesses that had forbidden Richard access, saying that they violated the A.D.A. Kevin Gipson, director of the local Health Department, told me that he had asked Rose to show him what "tasks" Richard performed that would qualify him. "She couldn't," he said.

Defining "task" is often a point of contention in these cases, especially with psychiatric service animals, whose work generally can't be demonstrated on command. Before going to T. J. Maxx, I saw Rose begin to panic while sitting in her lawyer's office talking about her case. Her face flushed; her voice quivered. Richard, who had been dozing in the chair beside her, leapt onto her arm and began stroking her hair. He hugged her, rubbed her ear and cooed while she talked. She immediately calmed down. "He snaps me out of it before the attacks happen," she said. "If they start at night, he'll turn on the light and get me a bottle of water."

For Gipson, that's really beside the point. "Even if Richard is a legitimate service animal," he told me, "if he poses a public-health risk, the A.D.A. says he can be excluded. And we believe primates pose a significant health risk."

Rose says that Richard is perfectly safe and immaculately clean. She showers and blow-dries him every day and uses hand sanitizer on him regularly, and he always wears diapers. But that doesn't impress the Health Department. Monkeys can carry viruses, like herpes B, which are essentially harmless to them but usually deadly to humans. Those viruses can be transmitted through saliva and other bodily fluids. In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study titled "B-Viruses From Pet Macaque Monkeys: An Emerging Threat in the United States?" saying that 80 to 90 percent of adult macaques like Richard carry herpes B. It's possible to test them for viruses, which Rose does every year with Richard, but those tests often give false negatives. Plus, Gipson told me, "he could catch it any time from contact with other monkeys, which we know he's had." Five days before the Health Department banned Richard, a local newspaper ran pictures of him and several other monkeys hanging out at Rose's family's sanctuary.

Lex Frieden, a professor of health-information science at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and a former director of the National Council on Disability, says:

"People shouldn't be able to carry their pets on a plane or into a restaurant claiming they're service animals when they're not," he says. "But that has nothing to do with what species a service animal is." The appropriate response in those situations isn't a species ban, he says, but rather strict punishments for people who pose as disabled. "It's fraud," he points out, "and it results in increased scrutiny of people with legitimate disabilities."

...We've now said, by law, that regardless of their disability, people must have equal opportunity, and we can't discriminate. In order to seek the opportunities and benefits they have as citizens, if a person needs a cane, they should be able to use one. If they need a wheelchair, a dog, a miniature horse or any other device or animal, society has to accept that, because those things are, in fact, part of that person."

How Islam Deals With Criticism
It's the religion of people with the self-esteem of bullied eight-year-olds. Criticize Judaism or Christianity and Jews or Christians will call you "mean" or "rude." Criticize Islam and you might just end up dead. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz says Bernard-Henri Levy, who wrote a book on Daniel Pearl's murder at the hands of Islamists, is on the death list:

The planned assassination was apparently thwarted after group leader Abdelkader Belliraj, a Belgian of Moroccan ascent, was arrested last February in Morocco, the newspaper reported.

Belgian authorities found the list during a raid on homes of local Muslim community members last November, according to the report.

The hit list mentioned the names of five other well-know Jewish figures in Belgium and France: Josy Eisenberg, producer of the A Bible ouverte (Open Bible) television program on FR2; Simone Susskind, a leader of Belgium's secular Jewish community; attorney Markus Pardes, president of the International Association of Jewish lawyers and jurists; Belgian writer Jean-Claude Bologne and La Derniere Heure reporter Edmond Blattche.

I'm waiting for the big outcry from "moderate Muslims."

Meanwhile, recently, on this very site, when I made remarks critical of Islam, a propagandist for Islam who calls herself "Jenny," with an IP from suburban Detroit, left this in the comments:

"Let's just say you continue to post shit like this and shit will happen to you."

The earlier Jennyganda is here. My favorite comment on that entry was this Gog reality check to Jenny:

(JENNY)"Jesus was a man of peace. Muslims actually uphold his values and ideals a lot more than any of you do."

(GOG): Jenny, that's why Christians appear on tv holding severed heads and threatening the nonbelievers...

Apostasy (leaving the religion) is kind of a problem, too. Islamic apostasy = death. Here's the long and the short of it (the long of it is at the link), from Answering Islam:

We have examined the theological foundation of Islam and found that Islam's established ruling is that apostates are to be killed wherever they are. The Quran implies this while the Hadith, Sira, and works of jurisprudence state it clearly. When the breadth and depth of Islam are examined this is the only conclusion that can be drawn.

Islam brings a knife to the throat of all that is non-Muslim, be they Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, or apostates

"Religion of peace"? No, religion of pieces! Body parts of all the people murdered in the name of Islam!

Three Good Questions About Israel
Robert asks them over at Pelalusa, echoing one I always ask people who complain about Israel defending itself.

My usual question: If the Canadians were sending rockets over the river into Detroit, or if Mexicans were planting bombs under cars on Wilshire Boulevard, do you think we'd just shrug our shoulders and say "Whatever"?

Robert puts it like this, with "three simple questions" for people who condemn Israel for fighting back against Hamas' rocket attacks:

1. Do you truly and honestly think the current Palestinian leadership wants peace with Israel?

2. Do you believe that Israel has the right to exist?

3. If missiles were being sent into your neighborhood from a nearby independent Indian Reserve, would you just sit back and say, "That's alright"?

Personally, I think Israel should get out of the Middle East and do as Ken Layne suggests, and buy and relocate to a chunk of Baja. The Muslims have been murdering each other for centuries. The Jews over there are just an excuse and a distraction from business as usual.

Protecting Kids From An Education
The problem is, the guy who wanted to pay for it, for inner-city kids, is white, and his plan would eliminate the stranglehold the teacher's union has on the schools (the severely failing Detroit Public Schools). Nolan Finley writes in The Detroit News:

With the Detroit Public Schools near disintegration, it ought to be noted that it's been five years since Plymouth philanthropist Bob Thompson was told to take his $200 million and get back to the suburbs.

Thompson, a retired road builder obsessed with spending his fortune to get urban children a high-quality education, ran into a political buzz saw when he offered to open 15 charter high schools in the city that would guarantee to graduate 90 percent of their students and send 90 percent of those graduates on to college.

Community activists denounced Thompson as a white meddler out to steal their children. They were joined in their absurdity by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who threw their lot in with the teacher union.

The rejection of Thompson's millions became a national story of a city so seized by racial divisions it couldn't set them aside even to save its children.

So instead of a network of alternative schools that would have rescued roughly 5,000 students from the sinking DPS, look what Detroit has today:

A school district that fails to graduate 70 percent of its students; a school board that's fired two superintendents and an interim superintendent in four years; 18 of its 19 high schools on the failure list; and a fiscal meltdown.

Five years after Thompson was given the boot, Detroit is officially the worst big city school district in the nation and still sends more children to welfare and prison than it does to college.

Think about how different things might have been. Had the Thompson schools been built, they would be preparing to graduate their first class in the spring. Two thousand Detroit seniors would be making college plans. And Detroit's fast-fleeing middle class would have a reason to stay.

Yet no one has dialed up Thompson to apologize, to say they were wrong, to beg him for a second chance.

In fact, the governor and Democratic lawmakers are stubbornly blocking other Bob Thompsons from saving Detroit's children.

Idiotically, Michigan governor Granholm is refusing to lift a cap on charter schools.

And the teacher's union was, apparently, a big part of keeping him out. Here, from 2005:

Thompson, of Plymouth, Mich., originally offered the money in 2003, but was rebuffed by the Detroit Federation of Teachers and others. Despite passage of a new state law that year allowing for the creation of up to 15 new charter high schools in Detroit, none were built. The Detroit Federation of Teachers held a rally in Lansing, which was followed by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Gov. Jennifer Granholm deciding to withdraw support for Thompson.

The incident shed a negative light on Detroit both statewide and nationally. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein said the DFT "led a furious, and scurrilous, campaign against (Thompson's) generosity." The Metro Times, a weekly paper, said Thompson's offer was "amazingly generous," especially "in a city where the schools, like the government, are a stunning failure."

...The Detroit Federation of Teachers, however, remains staunchly opposed to the plan.

"We believe Mr. Thompson earnestly wants to make a positive difference in the lives of the children in Detroit," Janna Garrison, DFT president, told Michigan Education Report. "But we think he's going about it the wrong way."

Of course you do. Because he's exposing and will continue to expose how teachers' unions ruin it for the kids they're supposed to be educating. If teachers truly cared about educating the kids, they'd weep with gratitude for Thompson and his money. Greed and the promotion of failure in the service of it are especially ugly where kids' welfare is concerned.

Here's another story, from The Weekly Standard, by Henry Payne:

For thirty years, Detroit has been hemorrhaging population as a result of high crime, high taxes, soaring insurance rates--and a crumbling system of public education, which has left Detroit's adult population with a staggering rate of functional illiteracy (47 percent, according to the federal government's National Center for Education Statistics). This leaves a shallow employment pool for any enterprise looking to locate in the city.

Seeking educational alternatives, state Republicans--against fierce opposition from teacher unions and Democrats--succeeded in passing legislation in the 1990s authorizing charter schools. These public schools are governed independently of local school boards; each is sponsored by a city or a university, and most are nonunion and have a distinctive educational approach. Since then, 39 charter schools have opened in Detroit, yet the number of Detroit families on charter waiting lists is estimated in the thousands. Moreover, most charter schools serve grades K through 6 (elementary schools are the cheapest to build), which leaves a crying demand for high schools.

In 2002, Republican governor John Engler answered parents' pleas for aid with a push to bring 15 more charters to Detroit. Enter Robert Thompson.

A Michigan farm boy who later taught school in Detroit, Thompson went on to found the state's biggest asphalt paving company, working out of the Detroit suburb of Plymouth. When he sold his company in 1999 for $461 million, he and his wife, Ellen, created the Thompson Foundation, dedicated to helping Detroit's poor. They first funded University Preparatory Academy, a successful K-12 charter school with a 90/90 system that is the model for the high schools Thompson now wants to build.

Thompson credits his own success to the education he received, and he is determined to give Detroit's poor the same opportunities. "The only way to get those kids out of there is through education," says the soft-spoken Thompson.

IN DETROIT, officials reacted to Thompson's proffered $200 million not with gratitude but with rage. The Michigan Federation of Teachers urged a walkout, declaring a school holiday so that union members could march on the state capitol in protest of charter schools. State Democrats cowered before the union, while Detroit's politicians bristled at a white suburbanite's "meddling" in the city's affairs. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick--whose own children attended a charter school--responded to Thompson's offer by saying, with a dismissive wave of the hand, "Let us make the rules, and if he can't abide by the rules . . . "

Says Thompson, "We thought if we tried to do good things, people would appreciate it. I guess we were naive."

You have to laugh at the Kwame quote. Kwame's now abiding by the warden's rules, after failing to abide by society's.

Sex Sells
Dennis Prager is often an annoying and irrational blowhard, but he's right about this -- smart women put out for their husbands and boyfriends. (And vice-versa -- but men and women are different, and he illustrates one difference here, in how not putting out is viewed by a man.) An excerpt from his essay, "When A Woman Isn't In The Mood, Part I":

It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.

First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think men's natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a woman's nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.

This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

And here's Prager's Part II:

1. If most women wait until they are in the mood before making love with their husband, many women will be waiting a month or more until they next have sex. When most women are young, and for some older women, spontaneously getting in the mood to have sex with the man they love can easily occur. But for most women, for myriad reasons -- female nature, childhood trauma, not feeling sexy, being preoccupied with some problem, fatigue after a day with the children and/or other work, just not being interested -- there is little comparable to a man's "out of nowhere," and seemingly constant, desire for sex.

2. Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love she can show him? What else in life, of such significance, do we allow to be governed by mood?

What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex? Most women would gradually stop respecting and therefore eventually stop loving such a man.

What woman would love a man who was so governed by feelings and moods that he allowed them to determine whether he would do something as important as go to work? Why do we assume that it is terribly irresponsible for a man to refuse to go to work because he is not in the mood, but a woman can -- indeed, ought to -- refuse sex because she is not in the mood? Why?

And no, I'm not suggesting anything remotely close to rape. This is just Prager's rather long-winded restatement of what I said in my Advice Goddess column, "A Tale Of Naked Whoa," from May of 2007:

Relationships are filled with little tasks that don't exactly bring a person to screaming orgasm. A man, for example, doesn't wake up in the middle of the night with some primal longing to bring his girlfriend flowers, rehang her back door, or clean the trap in her sink. Like sex, these things can be expressions of love, but if a guy's going to lock himself in the bathroom, it's not going to be with "Bob Vila's Complete Guide to Remodeling Your Home."

So, couldn't putting out when you aren't in the mood be seen as just another expression of love? Joan Sewell, author of I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido, told The Atlantic Monthly, "If you have sex when you don't desire it, physically desire it, you are going to feel used." Well, okay, perhaps. But, if a guy rotates a woman's tires when he doesn't desire it, physically desire it, does he feel used?

Actually, we all do plenty of things with our bodies that we don't really feel like; for instance, taking our bodies to work when we have a hangover instead of putting our bodies in front of some greasy hash browns, and then to bed. For women, however, sexual things are supposed to be out of the question. I think the subtext here is not doing things we really don't feel like if it GIVES A MAN PLEASURE. And no, I'm not advocating rape or anything remotely close to it. And, of course, if you find sex with your husband or boyfriend a horrible chore, you're in the wrong place. Otherwise, if you're with a man, and he's nice to you, and works hard to please you, would it kill you to throw him a quickie?

The real problem for many couples is the notion that "the mood" is something they're supposed to wait around for like Halley's Comet -- probably due to the assumption that desire works the same in men and women. The truth is, just because a woman isn't in the mood doesn't mean she can't get in the mood. According to breakthrough work by sexual medicine specialist Rosemary Basson, women in long-term relationships tend not to have the same "spontaneous sexual neediness" men do, but they can be arousable, or "triggerable." In other words, forget trying to have sex. Tell your girlfriend about Basson's findings, and ask her to try an experiment: making out three times a week (without sex being the presumed outcome) and seeing if "the mood" happens to strike her. You just might find the member getting admitted to the club a little more often.

Sexperts will tell you "a sexual mismatch needn't mean the end of a relationship" -- which sounds good but tends to play out like being hungry for three meals a day and being expected to make do with a handful of pretzels. Expressway to Resentsville, anyone? If it comes to that, breakup sex is a better idea. You're always going to have issues in a relationship, but for a relationship to work for you, the biggie'll have to be something like your falling asleep after sex, not her falling asleep before.

Urban Alienation Is A Myth
Living alone is a good thing -- for me, anyway. I'm annoying (all people are) and much more fun in small doses. And while I'm very social, I also like being by myself. It seems to work for a lot of people, too, especially in an environment like New York City.

I never though about how many people that I knew lived alone in Manhattan, and without it being "sad," or anything. But, Jennifer Senior, in her New York Magazine piece, points out that it's an astonishing one out of every two. An excerpt:

"Every 20 or 30 years, we have a lament about the decline of community, and it's usually due to cities and urbanization," says Robert Sampson, the criminologist who chairs Harvard's sociology department, when I visit him one sunny morning this fall. He mentions one of the classics of the genre, Louis Wirth's Urbanism As a Way of Life. "It's all about the impersonal way of life in the city--how it almost deranged people, led to this sort of schizoid personality, to psychosis and loneliness." He smiles. "It's a fun piece, actually. There's some great quotes in it." He leans back in his chair. "But this idea that cities are bastions of lonely, despairing people is a myth," he says.

In American lore, the small town is the archetypal community, a state of grace from which city dwellers have fallen (thus capitulating to all sorts of political ills like, say, socialism). Even among die-hard New Yorkers, those who could hardly imagine a life anywhere else, you'll find people who secretly harbor nostalgia for the small village they've never known.

Yet the picture of cities--and New York in particular--that has been emerging from the work of social scientists is that the people living in them are actually less lonely. Rather than driving people apart, large population centers pull them together, and as a rule tend to possess greater community virtues than smaller ones. This, even though cities are consistently, overwhelmingly, places where people are more likely to live on their own.

...Cities, in other words, are the ultimate expression of our humanity, the ultimate habitat in which to be ourselves (which may explain why half the planet's population currently lives in them). And in their present American incarnations--safe, family-friendly, pulsing with life on the street--they're working at their optimum peak. In Cacioppo's data, today's city dwellers consistently rate as less lonely than their country cousins. "There's a new sense of community in cities, an increase in social capital, an increase in trust," he says. "It all leads to less alienation."

And so, contrary to popular belief, does the Internet.

Your Abstinence Dollars At Work!
Rob Stein writes for the WaPo about the failure of abstinence programs -- just as Congress and the new Obama administration are about to reconsider over $176 million in funding for such programs:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

...By 2001, Rosenbaum found, 82 percent of those who had taken a pledge had retracted their promises, and there was no significant difference in the proportion of students in both groups who had engaged in any type of sexual activity, including giving or receiving oral sex, vaginal intercourse, the age at which they first had sex, or their number of sexual partners. More than half of both groups had engaged in various types of sexual activity, had an average of about three sexual partners and had had sex for the first time by age 21 even if they were unmarried.

"It seems that pledgers aren't really internalizing the pledge," Rosenbaum said. "Participating in a program doesn't appear to be motivating them to change their behavior. It seems like abstinence has to come from an individual conviction rather than participating in a program."

My mom told me it was best not to have sex before marriage (we see how well that advice worked). However, no taxpayer was harmed in the dispensing of her message. I'm not understanding why we need to pay to tell kids to keep it zipped -- especially in such a tanking economy.

The Content Of Their...Skin Color
A commenter e-mailed me this:

"I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee while you castigate the appointer," Rush said at Blagojevich's news conference. "Let me just remind you that there presently is no African-American in the U.S. Senate." (From Yahoo! News)

Because, like, that's what's important. Having more African Americans in the US Senate. Right?

I don't vote for women, whites, blacks, or people with really nice hair. This isn't junior high school; it's the United States Senate. I'm for voting for (or, in this unfortunate case) appointing the best person for the job -- and for ignoring vile, low people who suggest that vetting a candidate is "hanging" or "lynching" him.

More Reasons Rick Warren Should Get The Boot
Hitchens writes on Slate on the dictator-ass-kissing ugly that is Rick Warren:

It seems to have been agreed by every single media outlet that only one group has the right to challenge Obama's promotion of "Pastor" Rick Warren, and that group is the constituency of politically organized homosexuals. But why should that be? Last week, I pointed out that Warren maintains that heaven is closed to Jews and that his main theological mentor was a crackpot "end-of-days" ranter. Why is this not to count against him as well? Do we need our presidential invocation to be given by a bigmouth clerical businessman who is, furthermore, a religious sectarian? Let me add a little more to the mix. In November 2006, Warren made a trip to Syria and was granted an audience with the human toothbrush who has inherited control of that country and all its citizens. Bashar Assad, the dictator of Syria, is also a religious sectarian--his power base is confined to the Alawite sect--and in the intervals of murdering his critics in Lebanon, he does not expect to receive very many distinguished American or European guests. Of late, the most eminent I can think of have been David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and George Galloway of Britain's so-called Respect Party, and I believe only Galloway--an old fan of Baathism in all its forms--got an audience with the Grand Toothbrush himself.

...Our good pastor also found the time to tell his captive audience--if I may use such an unoriginal phrase in a literal way--that 80 percent of his countrymen opposed the administration's policy in Iraq. Assume yourself, dear reader, to be one of that possible 80 percent. Did you ever ask to be spoken for by Warren, who was a guest of a regime that sponsors al-Qaida infiltrators in Iraq, or to see him denounce the administration in front of an audience of Syrians that had no choice but to listen to whatever it was told? For shame.

And a shame, too, that on Inauguration Day we may also have to stand still--out of respect rather than fear, it is true--and listen to a man who is either a half-witted dupe, a hopeless naif, a cynical tourist who does favors for the powerful, a religious nut bag, a cowardly liar, or perhaps some unappetizing combination of all five. I personally think that the all-five answer is the correct one, because you cannot just find yourself in Syria, smirking into the face of the local despot and being treated like a treasured guest. The thing has to be arranged, and these things take time. So what was the motive? Listen again to Warren's driveling broadcast for the folks back home at the megachurch:

In fact, you know Saul of Tarsus--Saul was a Syrian. St. Paul, on the road to Damascus, had his conversion experience, and so Christians have been here the longest, and they get along with the Muslims, and the Muslims get along with them. There's a lot less tension than in other places.

I can absolutely see what Warren hoped to get out of this sordid little trip, the evidence of which he vainly tried to conceal when it threatened to become embarrassing. He wanted to be on video for his open-mouthed followers as he posed "on the road to Damascus." And he didn't care what deals he had to make, with Baath and Toothbrush Central Command, in order to bring off such a fundraising coup. But now it's the sandals of Obama that are being exploited by the same tub-thumper, and one has not merely a right but a duty to object to having as an inaugural auxiliary a man who is a pushover for anti-Semitism, Islamic sectarianism, "rapture" theology, fascist dictatorship, 10th-rate media trade-offs, and last-minute panicky self-censorship all at the same time. Is there nobody in the Obama camp who can see that this is not just a gay issue?

Islamic Literacy
Pulp friction, shall we say?

redsquirrel08 via JihadWatch

Sonja Lyubomirsky And The Joneses
It's hard if your life sucks. It seems it's less hard if everybody else's life sucks, too.

UC Riverside prof, Sonja Lyubomirsky, whose terrific, data-based book, The How of Happiness, comes out in paperback today, has a piece in The New York Times about why we aren't all in as much of a panic as we might be over the tanking economy:

Research in psychology and economics suggests that when only your salary is cut, or when only you make a foolish investment, or when only you lose your job, you become considerably less satisfied with your life. But when everyone from autoworkers to Wall Street financiers becomes worse off, your life satisfaction remains pretty much the same.

Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000.

Similarly, Daniel Zizzo and Andrew Oswald, economists in Britain, conducted a study that showed that people would give up money if doing so would cause someone else to give up a slightly larger sum. That is, we will make ourselves poorer in order to make someone else poorer, too.

Findings like these reveal an all-too-human truth. We care more about social comparison, status and rank than about the absolute value of our bank accounts or reputations.

...So in a world in which just about all of us have seen our retirement savings and home values plummet, it's no wonder that we all feel surprisingly O.K.

I wouldn't say I feel "surprisingly O.K.," but it's nice to know I probably don't feel as bad as I would if people were all still getting ridiculous ARMs and flipping houses while I rent and live frugally.

Loving On Loving And Gay Marriage
Susan Dominus writes for The New York Times about Mildred Loving, of the case Loving v. Virginia, over inter-racial marriage:

In June 1963, Mildred Loving, the 22-year-old wife of Richard Loving, a bricklayer, sat down with a piece of lined loose-leaf paper and wrote a letter in neat script to the Washington branch of the A.C.L.U. "My husband is White," she wrote, "I am part negro, & part indian." Five years earlier, they married in Washington, she explained, but did not know that there was a law in Virginia, where they lived, against mixed marriages. Upon arriving back home, the two were jailed, tried and told to leave the state, which is how she ended up back in Washington. Her request to the A.C.L.U. was heartbreakingly humble: "We know we can't live there, but we would like to go back once and awhile to visit our families & friends." A judge had told them that if they set foot, together, in the state again, they would be jailed for one year. She hoped to hear from the lawyer there "real soon."

The Lovings eventually heard from the Supreme Court -- in 1967, from Chief Justice Earl Warren:

Declaring that "the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," Warren argued that the Virginia statute violated the 14th Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and due process.

...Last year, the 40th anniversary of the ruling, three colleagues working on behalf of Faith in America, a gay rights group, visited Loving at the small ranch house that Richard built after they moved back to Virginia. The organization was hoping to persuade her to make a statement in favor of gay marriage at a celebration of her own court ruling that the group planned to hold in Washington. "I just don't know," Loving told them. She hadn't given it much thought. She listened sympathetically, a worn Bible on her end table, as the group's founder, the furniture entrepreneur Mitchell Gold, told her of his own struggles as a teenager to accept that society would never let him marry someone he loved. She was undecided when the group left a few hours later, but told Ashley Etienne, a young woman who consulted for the group, that they could continue to chat about the subject over the phone.

Etienne, who said Loving reminded her of her own grandmother, started calling every few days. She asked Loving about how she and her husband endured their setbacks; Loving told her that she didn't understand why two people who loved each other could not be married and express their love publicly. She talked, as she always did, about how much she loved Richard and what a kind, gentle man he was. On her own, she talked to her neighbors about the request; she talked to her children about it. And in the end, Loving told Etienne, yes, she would allow the group to read a statement in her name supporting gay marriage at the commemoration. "Are you sure you understand what you're saying?" Etienne asked. "You understand that you're putting your name behind the idea that two men or two women should have the right to marry each other?"

"I understand it," Loving said, "and I believe it."

Boulevard Sebastopol Wakes Up

Paris, near Les Halles, where there's a vast and hideous underground mall that also contains a bunch of inventive fashion from relatively unknown but pretty exciting designers at L'Espace Createurs.

Mid-East Perception And Reality
I found two insightful comments on a WSJ article about Israel's retaliation to the Hamas attacks. Kevin Willis wrote:

I've spent enough time in the Middle East to know that practically nobody--with the exception of Palestinian immigrants--actually cares about the Palestinian people. It's a fake cause bandied about by the litany of Arab tyrants and despots in order to deflect attention from real issues at home: no jobs, no education system, no infrastructure, lousy economy, disaffected youth, etc., etc.

The Palestinians are viewed as the rednecks of the Arab world.

So it's more than just a bit humorous to see the reactions of Arab tyrants to the Israeli actions to stop the rocket-fire from the terrorist group Hamas. Like clockwork, they denounce Israel and talk about the needs of the poor Palestinians. Make no mistake: these dictators care nothing about their fellow Arabs. If they did, they wouldn't run their own countries the way they do, nor would they remain silent when monsters like Saddam Hussein slaughter Arabs wholesale.

Death to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest of this rot. May they bleed and die in mass. Instead of condemning Israel's right to self-defense, the US should be using its role on the UN SC to defend the most vibrant democracy in the Middle East.

Stanley Deutsch wrote:

Hamas is an Islamic fascist organization, whose charter calls for ethnic cleansing of Jews from Palestine and includes the Muslim eschatological claim that there must be global genocide of the Jews before the end of days. Why is Israel expected to come to an agreement with such people, or even tolerate their presence on its border?

If Mr. Grundy believes that Hamas' rocket attacks are so innocuous, I suggest he go live in Sderot for awhile and worry about whether one will hit his kids' school on any given day. Israel has shown extreme forbearance under the circumstances. Israel has been supplying Gaza with most of its power and water throughout these attacks. What other nation would do that?

Mr. Butz should recall that Israel voluntarily evacuated Gaza back in '05, in the hope that the Palestinians would respond by normalizing relations. Instead, rocket attacks against southern Israel began almost immediately, and intensified after Hamas came to power in early '07. So I guess this isn't about the occupation, after all. And if this is all about "gaining land" as you say, why did Israel evacuate?

And Mr. Habib needs to learn some history. If the nearly unbroken Jewish presence in the land for 3000 years is not enough to justify a state, what is? The Arabs have over 20 states, including 80% of the original Palestinian Mandate (now called Jordan, which is by law off-limits to Jews), stretching from Morocco to Iraq. And yet instead of taking in their brothers (as Israel did with over 500,000 Jews forced out of their homes throughout the Arab world in the wake of its victory in 1949) the Arabs pushed them into refugee camps, a deliberate move to fan the hatred that now pervades the region.

Speaking of people being rescued, the Israelis took in Muslim refugees from Darfur. When's the last time you heard of that sort of thing from a Muslim country toward Jewish or Christian refugees?

The Double Standard
In the WSJ, Michael B. Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi write about how it works -- like how the international media ignore the shelling on Israel, but when Israel finally defends itself, everybody rises up to condemn it:

Israelis across the political spectrum agreed that the state had the right, indeed the duty, to protect its people. But one question remained: Would the international community consent?

That question grew urgent in the days before Dec. 19, when the tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Hamas expired. Nearly 300 missiles landed in Israel, paralyzing much of the southern part of the country. Yet Israeli leaders held their fire.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni flew to Cairo to implore Egyptian leaders to urge restraint on Hamas, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told viewers of Al-Arabiyah Television that Israel had no interest in a military confrontation. If Israel was guilty of acting disproportionately, it was in its willingness to seek any means, even at the risk of its citizens' lives, to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

Yet the U.N. Security Council abstained from condemning Hamas and convened only after Israel resolved to act. The U.N.'s hypocrisy, together with growing media criticism of Israel, is reinforcing Israeli concerns that territorial concessions, whether unilateral or negotiated, will only compromise the country's security and curtail its ability to respond to attack. This fear is compounded when Israelis consider withdrawals from the West Bank, which is within easy rocket range of its major population and industrial centers.

Gaza is the test case. Much more is at stake than merely the military outcome of Israel's operation. The issue, rather, is Israel's ability to restore its deterrence power and uphold the principle that its citizens cannot be targeted with impunity.

Without the assurance that they will be allowed to protect their homes and families following withdrawal, Israelis will rightly perceive a two-state solution as an existential threat. They will continue to share the left-wing vision of coexistence with a peaceful Palestinian neighbor in theory, but in reality will heed the right's warnings of Jewish powerlessness.

I think the Arabs will keep killing the Jews no matter what, as long as they're there. The existence of the state of Israel is merely an excuse, and the other Arabs in the Middle East don't give two shits about the Palestinians, except as an excuse to hate Jews.

Why?
I'm always fascinated when I see one shoe left on the sidewalk. This one I spotted last night in L.A.'s Chinatown, across from Empress Pavilion.

Quantum Of Solis (And A Time Of Warner)
The title of the Bond film, Quantum of Solace, stems from an Ian Fleming short story. It says on Wikipedia:

Ian Fleming says that if you don't have a quantum of solace in your relationship then the relationship is over. It's that spark of niceness in a relationship that if you don't have you might as well give up."

Unfortunately, what we're left with is Solis, Obama's nominee for Labor Secretary. Here's yet another disappointment (but, of course, no surprise). From the WSJ, the story of a rigged wireless auction derailed:

The good news is that Republican Chairman Kevin Martin's recent attempt to rig the auction was derailed at the last minute, but the same political forces will be back in the Obama Administration.

We say this with confidence because we've learned that one of the politicians lobbying Mr. Martin was none other than Barack Obama's nominee for Labor Secretary, Congresswoman Hilda Solis of California. In an October 3 letter, she urged Mr. Martin to move ahead quickly with an auction with rules that would have benefited a single company, telecom start-up M2Z, at the expense of other bidders.

She did so by playing the race and class cards, suggesting that the auction would make Internet broadband more affordable for poor Hispanics. "As the first Latina to serve on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and a Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, I am very concerned about our country's stark broadband divide," she wrote.

You have to give her credit for nerve. The way to increase Internet access and affordability is to promote competition to spur investment and keep prices falling. Experience shows that a rigged spectrum auction slows the process of getting licenses into the hands of those companies best able to put the airwaves to use. It would also cheat the Treasury out of the higher revenues that a clean auction would garner.

Far from aiding the Hispanic working class, Ms. Solis's letter was designed to help M2Z, which is backed by John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and donor to Democratic politicians. In a December 9 letter to the FCC's general counsel, M2Z vice president for regulatory affairs Uzoma Onyeije explicitly cited a letter from Ms. Solis to the FCC endorsing the auction.

We're happy to say Mr. Martin scrapped the proceeding following intervention by others in the Bush Administration. But, Solis will be around for a while, and the policies of pretending to aid the poor while aiding rich special interests at the expense of us all are no better than those who aid rich special interests without the pretense. Personally, I'd love to see a competitive free market that would end the monopolies of Time-Warner (in my area) and other companies.

Speaking of the problems with monopoly services...contrary to the claims in the Time-Warner lawyer's snotty letter back to California Atty. General Jerry Brown's office in response to my complaint, the technician who showed up for the umpteenth time at my house told me the near-month of intermittent Time-Warner cable for a pretty large stretch of West Los Angeles was ONLY fixed because I kept complaining and kept complaining "to the right people."

For those in the technical know, he told me it wasn't just "the node," as they originally claimed and kept claiming, it was a problem at the "head end." He said they had divided people working on it, so they didn't figure it out until I kept complaining that my cable Internet and my neighbors' STILL wasn't working, despite Time-Warner's Alex Dudley and others' insistence that it had been fixed. Yes, squeaky redhead gets the working service -- for a lot of people, apparently, which pleased me to no end.

Oh, and regarding snotty lawyer letters back to the Atty. General about me and my complaint, do I really seem a good person to play nasty with? Back when my service was sucky, I had a book to finish and I was off in Paris right afterward, so I'd pretty much forgotten about blogging the Time-Warner's month of frustratingly shoddy and intermittent service (when I had service at all). The snotty lawyer response was a nice little reminder. Thanks!

I did find it cute, too, the suggestion by the snotty lawyer I should have pricey "business" service if I'm sending a large volume of e-mail. Of course, I'm not -- I spend most of my day writing, and typically have a few acquaintances mad at me from time to time for not getting to their e-mail (friends know to put it in the subject line if they need a rapid response). I just wanted the service I'm paying for to work, imagine that, and I'd really love it if Time-Warner didn't have a monopoly where I am, but unfortunately, they do.

On the bright side, after I FINALLY got my complaint to some higher-higher-up in So. Cal -- a lady who called me on her cellphone from a conference she was attending --their technicians have been pretty great. The tech supe in the West L.A. area, a woman named Andrea Jefferson, promises things will be different now that she's in charge. So far, so good. But, what I hate is the fact that I had to scream and yell and scream and yell to get what I was already paying for.

Not Exactly Top Ramen
Pot au feu, eaten by a friend of ours, Paris.

Sorry the photo's kinda yellow, but it looks better without the flash.

If Women Over 40 Can Marry And Spawn, Why Not First Cousins?
Brandon Keim writes on Wired that cousin marriage is okay by science -- about as okay when producing kids as it is when a woman in her 40s does:

"Women over the age of 40 are not prevented from childbearing, nor is anyone suggesting they should be, despite an equivalent risk of birth defects," write zoologists Hamish Spencer and Diane Paul. Bans against cousin marriage, they say, should be repealed, "because neither the scientific nor social assumptions that informed them are any longer defensible."

Thirty-one states outlaw marriage between first cousins, making the United States the only developed country in which the practice is regularly banned. Most were passed in the Civil War's aftermath -- not, say Spencer and Paul, to reduce the chance of defects caused by combinations of deleterious genes, but as part of a radical expansion of government authority over private lives.

"Unlike the situation in Britain and much of Europe, cousin marriage in the U.S. was associated not with the aristocracy and upper middle class but with much easier targets: immigrants and the rural poor," they write.

CousinmarriagemapBut their argument is far from consensus: in Forbidden Relatives: The American Myth of Cousin Marriage, Kansas State University anthropologist Martin Ottenheimer argues that the bans were driven by now-discredited 19th century research on birth defects among children born to first cousins.

Whatever their motivations, the laws are not supported by science. According to the National Society of Genetic Counselors, birth defects are 2 to 3 percent more common in children born to first cousins than among the general population -- a real risk, but not enough to justify the bans.

"It's a form of discrimination that nobody talks about. People worry about not getting health insurance -- but saying that someone shouldn't marry based on how they're related, when there's no known harm, to me is a form of discrimination," said Robin Bennett, a University of Washington genetic counselor who led the NSGC study.

Precise statistics on cousin-union frequency in the United States are hard to come by, she said, but discrimination and ignorance have serious consequences.

"I'm aware of people who have been afraid to tell people that they're in love with their cousins, who've become pregnant and potentially terminated a pregnancy based on false information," said Bennett. "Or they didn't marry the person they loved because of their concerns."

"Please Don't Divorce Us"
The face(s) of gay marriage.

Thanks, DuWayne

Don't Forget To Vote For Me
Here. The poll was zeroed out and reposted, so if you voted earlier, you may be able to vote again.

Nightlight
So you won't stumble making it from the restaurant on Paris' Right Bank to the bathroom in the apartment on the Left.

Up Yours, White Man
Fellow Seipp friend Rip Rense, who reports that he was once told by the LAT that they couldn't hire him because they had "too many white male columnists," posted a great piece on the elefante in the room:

A friend of mine at Associated Press sent me a column by the L.A. Times's Hector Tobar recently. It was a feature about the controversial elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo, but wait, it wasn't a feature---it was a first-person piece, as you found out a full three paragraphs in. And it was. . .strange.

Wrote my friend:

"If I didn't know better, I'd swear this elephant story was written from a Latino perspective. It could be the elephant in the room."

He's right. You read this feature story, or quasi-column, or whatever it is, and you find Tobar talking about his Guatemalan parents, interviewing a guy named Jose Cardenas, and quoting little latino children pointing to the pachyderms: "Boys and girls yell 'elefante!' and cry out 'grandotote,' which is Spanish for 'huge.'"

Ah, thanks for the Spanish lesson. You get a lot with your L.A. Times.

Well, it turns out that my AP pal was actually right: the elefante article was deliberately written with a latino perspective. Never mind that elephants don't speak Spanish, and their plight at the L.A. Zoo has little to do with race relations. Species relations, perhaps. . .As LAT "California editor" David Lautner (wow---he's editor of a whole state!) explained in a memo to the staff, Tobar is "a columnist whose frame of reference includes the experience and culture of Southern California's Latino population."

...Call me old-fashioned, but I seem to remember that newspaper columnists were people who had a little writing panache, a little flair, a little cigar-chomping cynicism, and a lot of broken-hearted idealism. They knew their turf, knew their trade from the back shop to the copy desk, had been around the block, and wrote with compassion, amusement, and wit. They told damn good stories about the city and (all) its people: stories of injustice, of triumph over bureaucracy, of struggle, of goodness, kindness, irony. They exposed city hall hypocrisy and living room heroism, heartlessness and heart. They didn't write from a latino perspective, or black or filipino. They wrote from a human perspective. The Times's Steve Lopez is a good example.

Lopez? Funny thing: you can read Lopez's columns till the vacas come home and gee whiz---no latino angle! No white angle, black angle, red angle, yellow angle. No race angle, unless it happens to be germane to a story. Now why would that be? How in the world did he get a column at the Times? His ethnic background is incidental to his writing and perspective, if not irrelevant. Count your blessings, Steve. You must have lucked out. Maybe somebody thought you spoke Spanish.

So now we have columnists openly getting gigs because of their race, ethnicity. Columnists who go to the L.A. Zoo and wind up writing about the elefantes. And writing paragraphs like this, about the little latino kids outside the elefante enclosure: "Boys and girls yell 'elefante!' and cry out 'grandotote,' which is Spanish for 'huge.' They ooh and ah, and ask questions of their parents in English, Korean, Tagalog and many languages more."

Huh? Right, I had the same thought. Those are damn smart kids! How great to know a half-dozen languages (or "many more") by age nine or ten! Geniuses! But then I realized, Tobar meant kids in general---not just the ones yelling "elefante!" (Geez, Hector, watch that basic English syntax stuff. You'll confuse people.)

The article is not merely mediocre, though---it is insidious. Note the way Tobar begins by quoting Spanish, then goes on to list English as just another one of the many languages being spoken at the zoo, on equal footing with Tagalog(!) Well, shut my mouth, but that's propagandizing. Subtle, maybe, but grandotote propagandizing, in my book. Maybe this is the kind of journalism you learn while studying sociology at UC Santa Cruz. See, gabachos, your language is no more important than any other---and ours is grandotote now! After all, the state is 60 percent latino! You stole our land! Payback!

I mean, why even mention that English was being spoken at all? Isn't that a given? Not in Tobar's L.A. Is it any coincidence that this guy is the author of something called "Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States?" Think he's got an agenda?

Boys and girls who cry out "elefante" and "grandotote" are most likely boys and girls who haven't learned English or learned English very well. But, perhaps if the LAT hires more and more like Tobar, it won't become that necessary.

via LAO

Dilbert On The Stock Market
Scott Adams on your chances of getting rich from investing in individual stocks:

The myth of stock investing is that a person who does more research has better results. But there is no science to support that view. Indeed, the person who understands the most about individual stock investing avoids them completely and invests in ETFs or index funds.

The problem with doing your own research on stocks is that you must rely on the information coming from the management of a company, and managers are generally misinformed or lying. Even the most seasoned investment professionals running mutual funds perform worse than the indexes on average. Brains and research can't overcome the fact that much of your data is deliberately tainted at the source.

When people go to Vegas to gamble, they usually set some sort of limit for their losses. And they go with the full knowledge that winning is unlikely. It makes sense for that sort of activity to be legal, within limits, because it is viewed as entertainment and not investment. But if it were common for people to bet their retirement savings on Blackjack, you can be sure it would be illegal.

We don't allow unlicensed people to practice law or medicine, sell real estate, or even build a house. It is entirely consistent to restrict the untrained from making risky stock investments.

I reiterate that this runs against my own libertarian philosophy. I would feel I had lost something important if I couldn't invest in individual stocks. But it is also true that my net worth would be larger if I had never done it. And it would be larger still if I hadn't allowed professionals to do it on my behalf.

I'm not for restricting people from being stupid, but I'm interested in what he says about the value of information about big companies and the thinking and behavior of stock market investors.

Now, this isn't my area of expertise, so perhaps somebody who knows can weigh in on whether this is true: "Even the most seasoned investment professionals running mutual funds perform worse than the indexes on average."

Finally, an interesting point by a commenter over there, "crazy carlos":

If the company you invest in, and of which you become a "part owner", makes money -- you profit. Surely, if the company you've taken a stake in, does damage, and takes a loss -- YOU, the investor, the part owner, should be liable for the resulting costs?

So before you invest in a company, you have to show that you have the assets, the back-up, the reserves, to take responsibility if that company, makes a big mess.

This is actually the principle on which Lloyd's of London takes on investors in the form of "Names". You can read a very good book called Ultimate Risk by Adam Raphael on the Lloyd's meltdown in the 1980s, when Names (Raphael was one) were sucked into being investors without being warned that if there were underwriting losses, they faced *unlimited liability* with respect to these losses. One syndicate chief, in signing up new Names, was responsible enough to tell the new investor to sign and hand over a blank cheque, which he would put in his shirt pocket, to drive home the point that if the syndicate made a loss, the Name would have to pay up. Many Names lost all the money they had, their homes, their life savings, and not a few committed suicide.

If people were faced with this kind of genuine responsibility, and had to show this kind of financial backing before making a substantial investment (I think this kind of thing should be mandatory for investments of over 1% in a company, say) -- I *guarantee* you that people would do much more pointed research before investing, and would also be forced to keep reserves (which could be a passive part of the deal) which would actually keep their investments much safer in the long term.

A lot of companies -- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, fast foods, big polluters -- would immediately find it harder to gain investors. It would completely transform the way people approached the market, and the way companies put out information on their doings. And investors would be forced to consider themselves truly responsible for where they put their money.

That would sort out a lot of the nonsense quick time, and lead to a much more ethical business world.

What do you think is the wisest way to invest and get a good return on your money -- without putting yourself at a big risk?

Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut...

What better way to spend Christmas eve than with friends, downtown, in L.A.'s Chinatown? And without needing one of those stylish government bailouts when the check comes.

Got a bunch of appetizers, two glasses of wine, and fantastic Peking duck at Empress Pavilion. Dinner, with tip, $20 -- and that's per person, for a whole group of people. Parking, $3.50. Like this guy, who I shot through my rainy car window on the road home from dinner, I was just upside-down with glee.

Oh. Please
The "War on Christmas"? Right. Taranto at the WSJ follows Bill O'Reilly in getting his panties in a wad over it, in a piece boohooingly entitled "The "war on Christmas" is over. Christmas lost." (Slow news day on the web?):

Which brings us to the "war on Christmas." Have you noticed that hardly anyone says "Merry Christmas" anymore? At an institutional level, this has been going on for years, with schools declaring "winter" vacations and companies throwing "holiday" parties. But of late we've noticed an interpersonal change: People are much more timid in offering seasonal greetings, as if they're walking on eggshells for fear of giving offense.

Why? We blame John Gibson. Three years ago, he published a book called "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." Here's the Amazon.com description:

Yes, Virginia, there is a war on Christmas. It's the secularization of America's favorite holiday and the ever-stronger push toward a neutered "holiday" season so that non-Christians won't be even the slightest bit offended.

Traditionalists get upset when they're told--more and more these days--that celebrating Christmas in any public way is a violation of church and state separation. That is certainly not what the founders intended when they wrote, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

John Gibson, a popular anchor for the Fox News Channel, has been digging up evidence about the liberal activists, lawyers, politicians, educators, and media people who are leading the war on Christmas. And he reveals that the situation is worse than you can imagine.

Gibson is certainly right that the ACLU types who go around suing over Nativity scenes and the like are pests and knuckleheads. But those who declare themselves pro-Christmas belligerents in this "war" have done more than anyone to promote the notion that significant numbers of people are offended by "Merry Christmas" and that expressing that anodyne sentiment is an act of aggression.

Most people, when greeting acquaintances or strangers, don't want to start a culture war, and now they're taking extra care not to offend. That is why Christmas lost the war on Christmas.

Personally, I'd like to see a war on writers using "Yes, Virginia..."

If you're a municipality, no, you shouldn't put out a nativity scene. But, I'm an atheist and I go around wishing people a Merry Christmas, and I like when people wish it to me. To me, it's the Christmas season, and if they're happy because it's Jesus on the cross time (oh, wait, that's Easter) or whatever, good for them. Better they wish me merry Christmas than to tell me to fuck the hell off, huh?

And if your business is located in some small town in the deep south, Merry Christmas is probably what everybody's going to be having. In Sherman Oaks, California, if you work at Macy's, maybe it makes sense to say "happy holidays." Is that really such a big deal?

The fact remains, Christians are the majority in this country and to pretend they're somehow persecuted because the ACLU complains when somebody erects a cross or throws up the Ten Commandments on the lawn of the courthouse is just silly.

Oh, and Merry Christmas.