May 11, 2008

The Real Reason Proportionally More Blacks Are In Jail?
Proportionally more blacks commit crimes.

Quick, somebody tell Al Sharpton to march against that one -- or, better yet, do something to help change it.

And next there's the claim that judges overcharge and oversentence blacks. Heather MacDonald writes on City Journal:

Obama describes this alleged postarrest treatment as "Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others." Jena, Louisiana, of course, was where a D.A. initially lodged attempted second-degree murder charges against black students who, in December 2006, slammed a white student's head against a concrete beam, knocking him unconscious, and then stomped and kicked him in the head while he was down. As Charlotte Allen has brilliantly chronicled in The Weekly Standard, a local civil rights activist crafted a narrative linking the attack to an unrelated incident months earlier, in which three white students hung two nooses from a schoolyard tree--a display that may or may not have been intended as a racial provocation. This entrepreneur then embellished the tale with other alleged instances of redneck racism--above all, the initial attempted-murder charges. An enthusiastic national press responded to the bait exactly as intended, transforming the "Jena Six" into victims rather than perpetrators. In the seven months of ensuing headlines and protests, Jena became a symbol of systemic racial unfairness in America's court system. If blacks were disproportionately in prison, the refrain went, it was because they faced biased prosecutors--like the one in Jena--as well as biased juries and judges.

Backing up this bias claim has been the holy grail of criminology for decades--and the prize remains as elusive as ever. In 1997, criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen reviewed the massive literature on charging and sentencing. They concluded that "large racial differences in criminal offending," not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms. A 1987 analysis of Georgia felony convictions, for example, found that blacks frequently received disproportionately lenient punishment. A 1990 study of 11,000 California cases found that slight racial disparities in sentence length resulted from blacks' prior records and other legally relevant variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country's 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, however--an outcome that reflected the gravity of their offenses as well as their criminal records.

Another criminologist--easily as liberal as Sampson--reached the same conclusion in 1995: "Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned," Michael Tonry wrote in Malign Neglect. (Tonry did go on to impute malign racial motives to drug enforcement, however.) The media's favorite criminologist, Alfred Blumstein, found in 1993 that blacks were significantly underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their presence in arrest.

This consensus hasn't made the slightest dent in the ongoing search for systemic racism. An entire industry in the law schools now dedicates itself to flushing out prosecutorial and judicial bias, using ever more complicated statistical artillery. The net result? A few new studies show tiny, unexplained racial disparities in sentencing, while other analyses continue to find none. Any differences that do show up are trivially small compared with the exponentially greater rates of criminal offending among blacks.

Next, MacDonald clears up the racist crack penalties myth. All and all, this is another great piece of debunking by MacDonald.

What does this piece tell us? Well, that the mainstream media are indeed unfair to blacks -- but in the wrong direction, pandering to the notion that the justice system is racist, and howling, "Why are so many blacks in arrested or in jail?" instead of asking the black community, "Why are so many blacks doing things that get them arrested or thrown in jail?"

Easier for the Al Sharptons of the world to march on whitey than to start looking for answers and coming up with solutions, then put them into action, in the black community.

Heather MacDonald, like Bill Cosby, asks the right questions:

How many convicts were living in a stable relationship with the mother (or one of the mothers) of their children before being sent upstate? (Forget even asking about their marriage rate.) What kind of positive guidance do men who are committing enough crimes to end up in prison, rather than on probation (an exceedingly high threshold), provide to young people? Further, if Fagan is right that keeping criminals out of prison and on the streets preserves a community's social capital, inner cities should have thrived during the 1960s and early 1970s, when prison resources contracted sharply. In fact, New York's poorest neighborhoods--the subject of Fagan's analysis--turned around only in the 1990s, when the prison population reached its zenith.

...This popular "social ecological" analysis of incarceration, as Fagan and other criminologists call it, treats prison like an outbreak of infectious disease that takes over certain communities, felling people on a seemingly random basis. "As the risks of going to jail or prison grow over time for persons living in those areas, their prospects for marriage or earning a living and family-sustaining wage diminish as the incarceration rates around them rise," Fagan says. This analysis elides the role of individual will. Fagan and others assume that once one lives in a high-incarceration--that is, high-crime--area, one can do little to avoid prison. But even in the most frayed urban communities, plenty of people choose to avoid the "Life." Far from facing diminished marriage prospects, an upstanding, reliable young man in the inner city would be regarded as a valuable catch.

via aldaily

Hooters
Great tits cope well with warming.

May 10, 2008

Tolerance Is A One-Way Street
A British Muslim converted to Christianity, yet somehow missed out on his turn experiencing that fabulous "tolerance" the Muslims demand from the rest of their countrymen -- as they dot the country with mosque after mosque and preach the conversion, death, or dhimmitude of Christians, Jews, and atheists.

In fact, the "locals," as Times of London religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill calls them (and let's take a wild guess and assume they aren't a bunch of Protestants or Orthodox Jews), responded to news of the British Muslim's conversion to Christianity by threatening to burn his house down:

Nissar Hussein, 43, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who was born and raised in Britain, converted from Islam to Christianity with his wife, Qubra, in 1996. The report says that he was subjected to a number of attacks and, after being told that his house would be burnt down if he did not repent and return to Islam, reported the threat to the police. It says he was told that such threats were rarely carried out and the police officer told him to "stop being a crusader and move to another place". A few days later the unoccupied house next door was set on fire.

Of course, it probably isn't fair to single out Islam for its treatment of apostates.

I mean, consider what Jews do to other Jews who convert to Christianity, or what Christians do to Christians who convert to Judaism or Islam:

Yes, that's right. Absolutely nothing.

Okay, come on, somebody tell me how unfair I am to Muslims.

(Just see to it that your smoke detector has new batteries before you do.)

The Kids With Nothing And Nobody
I got an e-mail from LA Weekly writer Daniel Hempel the other day, and figured I should print it here:

Hello Friends,

As you may know I have been covering Foster Care for some time now. Among the many problems I have found, one is at the crux of the problem for these kids. After their parents die or the court takes them from their homes because of abuse and neglect these children very rarely interact with people who are not paid.

Foster parents get paid monthly. The social workers who are the liaison between these kids and the nebulous foster care administration are on salary. The psychologists who are charged with helping the trauma and depression of separation that these kids endure are paid by the state. Their handlers at group homes are paid.

While many around them are there because they are truly concerned for these children, they are ultimately there for the money. And these kids know that very well, leaving them with a feeling of being unwanted that cannot be staunched by a hundred psychologists or the thousand score social workers employed by the system.

In my research I have come across one foundation in particular that provides that missing element to these kids. Children Uniting Nations (CUN) links foster youth up with mentors. In my case, the mentoring I do is informal. I met the foster youth who I have been engaged with before I ever knew of CUN or even starting writing about the subject. But I did go to a CUN training session to help me understand what this young man I know is going through.

What I found was a packed room on Pico Blvd. where a bunch of volunteers were preparing to make a difference in a child's life. While stumbling through the stark statistics and the anecdotal nightmare of any given child's experience, this group of people was happy to give up their Saturday and plan how they were going to change the world for one kiddo.

I can give you the facts. By age 24, about one-quarter of LA's Foster Youth who leave the system at 18 will experience homelessness, one in five will land in jail, and more than half will be unemployed. (Read my story on the subject for more information).

But all those facts are pretty useless if there is no action taken to remedy them.

I am not one to solicit my friends or my family. I feel that soliciting help like this is like pulling from a non-renewable resource. But in this case I am asking for help on behalf of CUN.

Please visit their website at: www.childrenunitingnations.org and sign up as a mentor. If the time requirement is too much or you do not live in the Los Angeles Area either find a way to mentor or please donate a minimum of $25.00, or an old computer or a backpack filled with school supplies.

If you feel inclined, please pass this message to your friends and family.

Thanks,
Daniel Heimpel
www.dheimpel.com

P.S. D. Heimpel (as he's known by byline) and I started corresponding from time to time after he wrote about the foster care scandal, in which "Los Angeles County foster-care employees decided to take a share of the crumbs taxpayers provide to foster children as they struggle in an often frightening and lonely life." I blogged his story here.

Echoing D. Heimpel's thoughts above on the backpacks: I sat next to this amazing woman on the plane home from the evolutionary psych conference in Manchester. I actually want to hang with her and her family in Los Angeles. She and her kids go to Staples and buy backpacks and office supplies for homeless kids, and her workplace has a program where they tutor "at risk" kids, and give them scholarships to college.

My own program is going well -- mainly because I'm not doing it as part of the system. I go speak to kids at an inner city school (Brentwood's University High, where kids are bused in from other neighborhoods) to demystify "making it."

As I just wrote to a friend: I've just been getting a teacher I pretty much stalked to get me into various classes. I thought it would be nice if she didn't have to do all the scheduling, so I talked to the official career day lady, and told her I'd bring in the likes of Rob Long, who, of course, said yes when I asked him, Denise Hamilton, Kerry Madden-Lunsford, a Harlem-born, self-made real-estate dude, and self-made black female fashion designer who's a friend of mine.

The woman whose job it is to coordinate this stuff told me it'd take her six months to propose the "program" and six months to see if it would get appproved. I thought, "Hey, fuck you lady...I'll call the teacher and get them in in a matter of weeks." Sadly, I'm not the least bit surprised by this shit.

G'wan! Have Lots Of Children You Can't Afford!
It's how the Catholic church produces parishioners. All the more in their collection plates after the kids grow up to have litters of children they can't afford.

The Pope, clearly one of the world's foremost authorities on fucking, maintains that it's wrong for Catholics to use artificial means of birth control. Yeah, but wrong for whom?

Benedict expressed concern that human life risks losing its value in today's culture, and worried that sex could "transform itself into a drug" that one partner had to have even against the will of the other.

Tell that to all the people whose partners won't have sex with them anymore. How many people you know who aren't getting it at home are also raping their partner at gunpoint?

Make the Pope a happy man, and keep on procreatin' and fill up those collection plates, kiddies! After all, the Church has got all those pedophilia fines to pay for protecting and moving around all the kiddie-diddling priests. Hmmm, perhaps the Pope should be more worried about the fuckers within?

May 9, 2008

Operation Stupid-Ass Way To Spend Tax Dollars
You'll never believe this but...frat boys smoke pot! And even take other drugs. And if you ask a frat boy at San Diego State to sell you a little weed, he just might do that!

Luckily, as Tony Perry writes in the LA Times, there was "Operation Sudden Fall," a six-month investigation where taxpayer dollars went into a bunch of cops playing dress-up, passing themselves off as frat boys, and entrapping a bunch of kids who are getting high and helping other kids get high:

SAN DIEGO -- The undercover officers started to appear at San Diego State fraternity parties about six months ago.

They dressed like students, complained about their parents and professors, and talked freely and knowingly of things of great interest on campus: music, sex and drugs.

Soon they were accepted, with no questions asked. They were spotted at student hangouts on and off campus. They swapped cellphone numbers with other partygoers. They text-messaged their newfound friends.

The real students appeared to accept the pretend ones -- most but not all of whom were men. On a campus of 34,000 students, blending into the crowd was not difficult. Neither was collecting evidence of drug dealing and drug use.

On Tuesday, authorities announced that 96 young men -- including 75 students -- had been arrested on a variety of drug charges as a result of Operation Sudden Fall, which infiltrated seven fraternities on Fraternity Row and Fraternity Circle. Officials said the name of the operation referred to the prospect of sudden death from drug usage.

The investigation involved marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and Ecstasy.

One of the alleged drug dealers is 19 and recently had been praised as a model student in a university publication. Another was just a month away from earning a master's degree in homeland security and had worked with the campus police as a security officer. One allegedly was selling cocaine to high school students.

A criminal justice major was arrested on suspicion of possession of cocaine. As he was being arrested, he asked officers if this would hurt his chances for a law enforcement career, officials said.

Now, best of all, taxpayer dollars will be spent to prosecute and imprison these kids.

Yet, as my pal Stanton Peele points out, all drug use is not abuse. How many of you know highly productive members of society whose version of the after-work martini comes in cannabis sativa?

My late friend Roy Walford, a UCLA gerontology professor, used to take coke to write his papers. He wasn't "destroyed" by drugs (and most users aren't). He used them to be more productive.

How about we end the drug war and start fighting the war against stupidity? Legalize drugs, the price will go down to the point where pot costs what you pay for organic salad, and the feds can make their coin by sticking a tax on it, like for cigarettes, instead of getting our dollars for prosecuting and/or keeping a bunch of not-exactly-dangerous-felons in prison.

Alice Walker's Motherless Daughter
Alice Walker was a little too busy being a feminist/civil rights icon to be a parent to her daughter Rebecca, writes Margerette Driscoll in the Times of London:

Walker's success as a campaigner was to her detriment as a mother. Like Dickens's Mrs Jellyby, who neglects her home and her children as she directs her energy towards the poor of Africa, so America's icon often went to feminist meetings and rallies and left Rebecca to fend for herself. Her daughter experimented with drugs and became pregnant at 14.

"My mother did a lot of leaving to go to her writing retreat, which was over 100 miles away -- so she'd go there and leave me a little bit of money, leave me in the care of a neighbour," recalls Rebecca, now 38.

"When I was pregnant at 14, I think it was because I was so lonely that I was reaching out through my sexuality. My mother's a crusader for daughters around the world, but couldn't see that her own daughter was having a difficult time. It was me having to psycho-emotionally tiptoe around her, rather than her taking care of me."

Walker is furious with Rebecca for making such sentiments public, and mother and daughter are estranged with little hope of reconciliation. Rebecca has a three-year-old son, Tenzin, whom her mother has never seen. Their last meaningful exchange, during Rebecca's pregnancy, ended in Walker sending a terse e-mail in which she resigned from "the job" of being her mother, and told her that in any case their relationship had been "inconsequential" for years.

The depth of her anger was such that she refused to budge even when Rebecca had a difficult birth and Tenzin's life hung in the balance in a special-care baby unit. "My father called her to tell her what was happening. He couldn't imagine that she wouldn't run right over . . . In some ways, I wanted her to -- but in other ways, I didn't. I knew she wouldn't be able to be there for me in the way I wanted. It would be problematic."

I love that she outed her mother. It's disgusting that this woman is so respected as a savior of the many instead of being vilified as a neglector of the one person who should have been her single greatest responsibility.

I don't have kids, both because I don't have the kid lust other women do, but also because I'm impatient, self-involved and make my career priority number one. If you're a person who feels similarly...please don't reproduce.

May 8, 2008

Parenting As Lockdown
My old New York Daily News colleague, Lenore Skenazy, now a columnist at the New York Sun, recently became internationally known for, get this, letting her 9-year-old out in New York without a team of nannies and armed guards.

Nancy McDermott writes for Spiked that Skenazy is considered by many to be guilty of child abuse because she gave her son, Izzy, 9, a $20 and a subway map, and trusted him to figure out that, from Bloomingdales, he should take the Lexington Avenue subway downtown and the 34th Street crosstown bus to get home.

"If he couldn't do that," Skenazy wrote in her column, "I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, 'Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead.' Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence."

McDermott reports:

Many people have reacted positively to Skenazy's column. 'It's like it's opened the floodgates. Lots of people are saying: "Thank God there's a name for this and I'm not the only one. She's doing what I do with my own kids."'

The name Skenazy has coined is 'Free Range' and the blog she has set up in response to the article - Free Range Kids - is filled with stories from parents who have let their children have the freedom to do things on their own and many more who would like to, but don't. Skenazy talks cautiously about a new movement. 'Some people are already doing these things on the website and some are just waking up to the idea that a little freedom is not the same thing as parental neglect.'

I asked her why she thinks parents are hesitant to give their kids more leeway. 'I think there are a lot of people who don't really see these things (like riding the subway or walking to school) as risks but they aren't letting their kids have more freedom because they get flak from their neighbours.

'It can be the simplest, stupidest thing. One lady wrote to me about how she had to go to work early so she let her 11-year-old daughter walk across the street alone to wait at the bus stop. The other mothers waiting with their kids were outraged and this mom ended up feeling horribly guilty. But when she came across the website she thought: "This is crazy. I've been torturing myself because I let my daughter walk across the street on her own!" Another woman told me how a stranger walked by and admonished her because she wasn't paying enough attention to her children playing in the yard in front of her. She was just reading her book.'

Why are strangers so quick to give parents a hard time? Skenazy thinks part of the reason is the proliferation of stories about the terrible things that happen to children. There are 'no other stories in the public [realm]', she says. 'If there's a story about how a child was left alone it's about him or her ending up dead. You never get a news story like "Kid Rides Subway Alone, Has Fun, Is Fine". It's always the other kind.'

Parents for their part, she says, 'are afraid of the media exposure if something did go wrong'. She describes how another woman wrote about the time one of her brothers cracked his head open on an amusement park ride when they were kids. 'Everyone was kind and sympathetic, but imagine if that happened to your child today? There'd be no sympathy. You'd be on TV in bad make-up stammering about how you were close by.'

Part of being a parent is being willing to let your kids grow up, and part of growing up is making mistakes and testing your independence.

One of the differences I see between France and the USA is the willingness to let kids get hurt, to fall down and cry. It seems to be seen as a normal part of childhood. Yet, here in the States, there are no more monkey bars anymore. Kids might fall and need stitches! Well, yes, they might. And that's how they find out they should be a little more careful. The way they're more likely to hurt themselves is if they're coddled the whole time they're growing up, and then don't know how to make a move without moment-by-moment micro-management from mommy and daddy.

And newsflash: If you aren't hanging out outside your drug dealer's tenement at 3 a.m., flashing a wad of $20's, New York City is pretty damn safe.

Sorry, Mr. Muslim, Women In America Haven't Had Their Rights Revoked Just Yet
Most conveniently, if you're a Muslim man living in a Muslim country, and you want to ditch your wife, you say "talaq" ("I divorce thee") three times.

To a Muslim man's dismay, judges ruled that that sort of thing isn't going to fly in Maryland. Nick Madigan writes for the Balt Sun:

Yesterday, the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man's argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband's say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.

May 7, 2008

I Know What You Did Last Weekend

Psychologist/photographer/mischief-maker Nando Pelusi caught me, uh, meditating on the after-dinner speaker at NEEPS, the evolutionary psychology conference I attended in Manchester, New Hampshire this weekend.

Here are a few of the great columns Nando writes for Psychology Today, called "Neanderthink," combining his Albert Ellis-trained background in clinical psychology with evolutionary psychology.

"W" Is For Welfare
These days, savvy liars have gotten in the habit of calling whatever they're shilling "scientific" or "data-based." Jeffrey Tucker at Mises Economics Blog outs the latest cadre of welfare recipients sucking off the taxpayer hog -- echoing my notion that George Bush is the biggest Big Democrat we've had in office in years:

President Bush and the Republicans are no better than the naive Great Society liberals of yesteryear in thinking that a new law and new government spending can accomplish glorious things here and abroad, and one of those programs was called Reading First and it generated billions in spending. Billions.

I swear that the propaganda for this program reads like stuff from the Soviet Union in the 1960s or something: "This program focuses on putting proven methods of early reading instruction in classrooms. Through Reading First, states and districts receive support to apply scientifically based reading research--and the proven instructional and assessment tools consistent with this research--to ensure that all children learn to read well by the end of third grade. ... Only programs that are founded on scientifically based reading research are eligible for funding through Reading First."

Well, two things. First, it turns out that it didn't work. The Department of Education--more more specifically, named in the tradition of Elena Ceausescu, the "Institute of Education Sciences"--released a report yesterday (I don't see it online but the NYT reports on it here) that says, well, the program didn't do a darn thing.

But, second, that doesn't mean there weren't winners. It turns out that the program was really a subsidy to certain GOP-connected publishers, and that is what scientific really means.

Come up with a party of responsible, actually data-based (small) government, and I'll gladly vote for your candidates. As for the parties in power now, how disgustingly arrogant of those in them to think they get to spend our money on all this crap that doesn't work...all the while running this country's economy like a bottomless cash advance on a credit card. Scumbags.

Angry Dumbshit Of The Week
Get your entry in now, don't let SpiderMBA win this week's crown! (Although, I do have to say, the guy is quite the contender.) He e-mailed me this on Tuesday (the chin hairs line is a reference to a joke in my column):

In a message dated 5/6/08 6:50:36 AM, spidermba@cox.net writes:

Hey "Advice Goddess," are you still single and shacking up with some loser who can't stand the thought of the "M" word?

You may be whacking off your own chin hairs before you ever walk down that aisle.

My response:

I would never live with anyone, and I don't believe in marriage. To describe my boyfriend as a "loser" without knowing anything about him other than the fact that he isn't married to me says a lot about you. You should be so lucky to have even passing contact with him.

Hmmm, of course, if he did live with me, he wouldn't have such a long journey to bring me chicken soup in the middle of the night when I'm sick. He typically picks it up at Cantor's all the way across town, and hurries over to bring it to me here at the beach.

And then there's that Paris trip in February that he sent me on for our anniversary. Paris is too frou-frou for him to take more than once a year, but he knows it makes me happy, and that made him happy, even with the euro cresting at $1.50.

And then there's the way he brings me a bag of groceries when he worries that I haven't made my way to the store I call "The Ghetto Ralph's," and will be subsisting on a can of Wolfgang Puck clam chowder, or "The Chantal Special" (named for the French friend of mine who eats it in a pinch): a tin of sardines on a buttered English muffin.

And then there's the other night, a little while ago, when I accidentally ate something I was violently allergic to. I called him at 3 a.m. because I knew he'd be mad if I didn't, and then he just hung on the phone and listened to me throwing up so I wouldn't be alone.

Yeah, you're right. I should probably trade up.

Tell me about the person in your life so I can know what I should aspire to.

P.S. Apparently, this is an annual affair for SpiderMBA, e-mailing me to ask why Gregg and I aren't married yet.

May 6, 2008

All Drunk Sex Is Rape?
Don't drink and, uh, dive...among other things, in Australia. There, when the jury hears he says/she says cases (where he says sex was consensual, and she says it was rape), a jury may be forced to convict the man, and on nothing more than the woman's word. Janet Albrechtsen writes for The Australian:

Let us be clear. Rape is wrong. It is a crime that calls for imprisonment. It can destroy a victim's life. But let us be clear about something else. Wrongful claims of rape are made. And they can destroy a man's life. ... But under the old laws of rape, the defendant's actual state of mind was critical. If the accused had an honest belief that sex was consensual, the rape charge failed. And when the evidence became a simple contest between "he said, she said", a reasonable doubt would lead to an acquittal. Criminal law says that is as it should be; we are talking about a serious crime and imprisonment.

The new laws say that if a woman is "substantially affected" by alcohol, she may lack the capacity to consent to sex even if she says "yes" to sex. More disturbing, even if a man honestly believes consent was given, his state of mind is now irrelevant. Now, the man is effectively deemed to have knowledge of lack of consent if there are no reasonable grounds for believing consent was given. And it gets worse. When asked to determine whether the man had no reasonable grounds for believing the woman gave consent, the jury must ignore the fact that the man was drunk.

In other words, the fact that the woman who says "yes" to sex is drunk is highly relevant: it may vitiate her consent. But the man's intoxication must be ignored when working out whether he had "reasonable grounds" for believing consent was given. It is a curious law that says alcohol only affects the cognitive abilities of women.

Hello? Australia is pretty much the land of the free and the land of the free to drink their asses off, and then sing or pound each other silly, and they're saying alcohol doesn't affect the male brain?

And what about this thing: "If a woman is 'substantially affected' by alcohol"? Unless somebody drops something in her drink, isn't seeing to it she isn't "'substantially affected' by alcohol"...her responsibility?

As for a man's responsibility to himself, if he's Australian, I bet it won't be long before he can buy a discount legal document to have his dates sign to say it's consensual. Oh yeah -- followed by the in-home breathalizer test. Mmmm, sexy!

thanks, Jeff

How To Talk Like You're Nobody's Feminist
During my strugglingest year, I once worked as a mover (for an all-girls moving company in Manhattan), so it's not like I'm incapable of lifting anything heavier than a feather pen.

But, Gregg was bringing me home from the airport, and knowing me, realized I would have maybe one dented can of soup in my house (well, along with five cases of Pellegrino, five bottles of white wine, and six pounds of coffee), and pulled into Bristol Farms.

We ended up with three bags of groceries. I was closest to the bagger, who went to hand two of them to me.

I shook my head: "Oh, no...I'm just for decoration."

Yeah, that's right. The one with the man paws carries anything weightier than a potato chip. Try it sometime...it's really fun, letting the boy play the boy parts and the girl play the girl parts.

May 5, 2008

Putting The Civil Back In Civilization
Or what passes for it in Detroit. A kid named Keira Bell tells a city councilwoman how the manners thing works. Wipes the floor with her, as a matter of fact. But, with civility -- a rare quantity, apparently, in Detroit city council meetings:

via Instapundit

Do You Agree With Peggy Noonan?
Noonan doesn't see what all the fuss is about, and thinks Obama's friendship with and mentorship by Wright shouldn't be the deciding factor in the election.

Noonan writes in the WSJ that she disagrees with what Wright said (in her words, "The U.S. government did not spread AIDS among the black community, 9/11 was not the chickens coming home to roost, etc.") and she disapproves of his remarks, too, but...

I do not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks, in part because I don't think his views carry deep implications for our country. I have been watching America up close for many years - if you count a bright childhood, for half a century. I have seen, heard and respected the pain of a people who were forced to come here when they did not want to and made to live in a way that no one would want to. Who could deny them their grief or anger? I have seen radicalism and extremism, too. I have seen Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, the Black National Anthem, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan. I came to see their radicalism as, putting the morality of policy based on rage aside, essentially unhelpful and impractical. It wouldn't work as an American movement, not long-term. Hatred plays itself out, has power in the short-term but is nonsustaining in the long. America, and this is one of its glories, has a conscience to which an appeal can be made. It may take a long time, it may take centuries, but in the end we try hard to do the right thing, and everyone knows it. Hatred is a form of energy that does not fuel this machine and cannot make it run.

And all the time I was watching the old days of rage, blacks in America were rising, joining the professions, becoming middle class, assuming authority, becoming professors and doctors. No one is surprised anymore to meet a powerful man or woman who devises systems by which others should live - that would be a politician - who is black.

I came to think all the talk of radicalism and extremism amounted to little, and was in the end rejected by the very people it was meant to rouse. They didn't buy it.

This week I talked to a young man, an Irish-American to whom I said, "Am I wrong not to feel anger about Wright?" He more or less saw it as I do, but for a different reason, or from different experience.

He said he figures Mr. Wright's followers delight in him the same way he delights in the Wolfe Tones, the Irish folk group named for the 18th-century leader condemned to death by the British occupying forces, as they say on their Web site. They sing songs about the Brits and how they subjugated the Irish and we'll rise up and trounce the bastards.

...Is this terrible? I don't think so. It's human and messy and warm-blooded, as a human would be.

The thing is to not let your affiliation with bitterness govern you, so that you leave the Wolfe Tones concert and punch an Englishman in the nose. In this connection it can be noted there is no apparent record of people leaving a Wright sermon and punching anyone in the nose. Maybe they're in search of solidarity too. Maybe they're showing loyalty too.

"We Can Fact-Check Your Ass!"
I love the above Ken Layne-ism about bloggers going after the lazies in the mainstream media. I only wish I knew how to say "fact-check" in French.

Susan Spano, the LA Times travel reporter with all the curiosity of a comatose hedgehog, must have the safest job in the world.

I didn't want to do it, but last week, when I read her LA Times piece on how to do Paris on a budget, devoid of much practical information (and with hot tips like buy a Paris Museum Pass to save money!), I just had to respond.

I wrote an exceedingly restrained (i.e. devoid of biting humor in order to give it a shot at being published) letter to the editor, and they ran just a bit of it.

Not surprisingly, they left out the advice that, when in need of really good tips on Paris, one should turn to PollyVousFrançais or TheParisBlog.com.

Here's my entire letter:

27 April 2007

Susan Spano mentioned only a single bus (the Roissybus) from Charles De Gaulle airport to a single location in Paris. Going from the Roissybus drop-off point at rue Scribe to the other side of Paris can be one pricey taxi ride.

The Air France bus goes to more locations - Gare Montparnasse, Porte Maillot, Étoile (beside the Arc de Triomphe), Gare de Lyon, and between Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports. It's plush, air-conditioned, extremely comfortable, and open to all travelers, not just those who fly Air France. It costs between 14 or 15 euros one way, and 22 or 24 euros round trip. See cars-airfrance.com, and use the pull-down menu to get information in English.

Travelers taking the RER B train from the airport to Paris should have luggage no wider than about 20 inches across, or they won't be able to fit it onto the escalators. It can be pretty much any height, but ideally, should be on wheels. Also, it's important to take precautions against pickpockets on the train, and consider keeping one's passport and money inside clothing. I've never had a problem, but it's easy to underestimate what jet lag can do to a person's street smarts.

There are numerous free exhibits in Paris every week. Some are really terrific, like the "Paris en Couleurs" photo exhibit at the Paris town hall (Hotel de Ville) that I saw in February -- 300 photos of Paris, from the Lumiere brothers' days to contemporary times. To find free exhibits, buy a copy of the weekly guide Pariscope at a newsstand for 40 cents. Travelers who don't speak French can navigate Pariscope if they know these few essential words: "Gratuit" is free. "Sauf" (probably abbreviated as "sf") basically means "except," as in, the museum is open all days except the day listed. So, "Sauf lundi" or "sf lundi" means a venue is open every day except "lundi," which is Monday. "Mardi" is Tuesday. "Mercredi" is Wednesday. "Jeudi" is Thursday. "Vendredi" is Friday. "Samedi" is Saturday. And "Dimanche" is Sunday.

TheParisBlog.com, a blog featuring the top Paris bloggers (mostly expats, like one of my favorites, pollyvousfrancais.blogspot.com), is another great source, both of cheap or free events and reviews of which events and venues are worth paying for. It also features some fun and often fascinating commentary on life in Paris and in France.

--Amy Alkon, Santa Monica

P.S. I'm guessing she only recommended the Roissybus because it was the bus she took, and felt no need to find out whether there were any other similar services. "Comme toujours!" as they say.

May 4, 2008

Hook-Up-ily Ever After
The piece by the winner of The New York Times' Modern Love college essay contest reflects something I heard from David Sloan Wilson grad student Justin R. Garcia during Saturday's lunch (at NEEPS, the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference).

Garcia's research shows that a good many college students who "hook up" are doing so out of a desire to get into a longterm relationship. I'm not surprised, although, per the wisdom of the 50s (which really was wise in many ways), a woman is unlikely to get much more than an embarrassed 5 a.m. goodbye from a guy she hooks up with.

Garcia also points out that there's a substantial gap of time between when people are physically able to have kids and the desired age of actual kid production, and speculates that "hook-up behavior may result from this time gap."

Marguerite Fields, a junior at Marlboro College in Vermont, writes about her experiences with hooking up writes in her winning Modern Love essay:

...Despite the fleeting nature of most of my encounters, and despite my own role in their short duration, I think what I have been seeking in some form from all of these men is permanence.

Sometimes I don't like them, or am scared of them, and a lot of times I'm just bored by them. But my fear or dislike or boredom never seems to diminish my underlying desire for a guy to stay, or at least to say he is going to stay, for a very long time.

And even when I don't want him to stay -- even when he and I find each other as strangers and remain strangers until we stop doing whatever it is we are doing -- I still want to believe that two people can meet and like each other well enough to stay together exclusively, without the introduction of some 1960s rhetoric about free love or other noncommittal slogans.

While so many are so busy tsk-tsking about college students hooking up, I think, for many, the twenties, especially the early twenties, are -- and should be -- "the fuck years," a time when you play around sexually while you're getting yourself and your life together...lest you get into a serious relationship with somebody before you've really developed into who you're going to be...and lest you stunt your growth in becoming that person.

The early twenties certainly were "the fuck years" for me, and I sabotaged every brief relationship I got into (sometimes simply by getting into a relationship with exactly the wrong person). The problem was my trying to meet the standards I was "supposed" to have by telling myself I wanted a boyfriend -- because you were supposed to want a boyfriend -- when all I was really ready for was to have a lot of wet, naked fun.

Yes, for many or most people, the hooking up stage is probably just a stage, and there's nothing wrong with it, providing you're having sex because you want to have sex (okay, because you're raging hormones with legs), and if you aren't somebody who'll be emotionally devastated by the person not sticking around the next morning, and if you take precautions not to end up diseased or pregnant.

But, maybe, with a little experimentation, you'll find, as Fields did, that it doesn't feel "casual, careless, lighthearted and fun." Fields writes:

I tried to remember that no one is my property and neither am I theirs, and so I should just enjoy the time we spend together, because in the end it's our collected experiences that add up to a rich and fulfilling life. I tried to tell myself that I'm young, that this is the time to be casual, careless, lighthearted and fun; don't ruin it.

A person in her position has two choices: either accept the reality of hookups or modify their strategy. In short, if it feels bad, don't do it. And yes, it really is that simple.

And either way, eventually, if you're like a lot of people, you'll probably start feeling ready to settle down with somebody when you're in your late twenties/early thirties, and you're likely to find more prospective partners are ready to settle down with you.

See..there's really no need for tsk-tsking. Unless, of course, you've got something stuck between your teeth and you find making that sound is an effective strategy for removing it.

Of course, the real reason for a lot of people's disapproval isn't really those twenty-somethings who aren't getting what they wanted out of their hookups but those twenty-something who are.

I'm reminded of my favorite Mencken quote somebody left here in the comments the other day. "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

I'll throw in "Neo-Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be getting a really great blow job."

May 3, 2008

Amy Alkon, Child Slaver
I'm in New Hampshire, at NEEPS, the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference, and I was waiting for Kaja, Nando, and Satoshi to come down to go to dinner, so I went into the computer room to hop on the 'net. I typed in a-d-v-i-c-e-g-o-d-d-e-s-s-dot-com, and you'll never guess what came up.

I wrote in the little protest space that I'm a newspaper columnist, and of course I had this word on my site -- in a blog item criticizing the Catholic church for the practice. I'm loath to say it again, lest it reawaken their nanny-ware.

Hmmm...just wait until I post (Harvard linguistics prof) Steven Pinker's talk -- which involved a considerable section on swearing. There's the ghost in the machine and the idiot in the machine, and I've met the latter.

May 2, 2008

Live Free Or Die Getting There
There was a pretty view or two along the way.

But, otherwise, it was a pretty hellish two-part trip from L.A., through O'Fat and Hare'y, to Manchester, New Hampshire.

That's where I am now, to attend NEEPS, the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference. Pinker is keynoting here tomorrow. Should be interesting.

As I was waiting for my plane at LAX, I ran into Christopher Hitchens, who said he was in town to debate Dinesh D'Souza in Long Beach. He said D'Souza is the best of them he goes up against, so it should be well-worth a listen -- as is just about any forum Hitchens participates in. If anyone finds video of it, please e-mail me the link and I'll post it.

Meanwhile, here's an old one of Hitchens and D'Souza.

Unfortunately, whoever taped it cut it off before Hitchens really responded to D'Souza's silliness about "atheist regimes." There really is no such thing as an "atheist regime." Atheism is, simply, requiring evidence before believing in something. Since, to borrow from Sam Harris, there's no evidence that frozen yogurt can fly, nor is there evidence god exists, I don't believe my frozen yogurt will levitate, and I don't believe in god.

Clearly, Vervet Monkeys Have Been Watching Too Much Television
When I finally got to my hotel last night, I saw Satoshi Kanazawa, author, with the late Alan S. Miller, of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do. And a good thing I did, because the bar was closed by the time I got downstairs, and he had a bottle of wine.

I'd forgotten that Satoshi had been blogging over at Psychology Today, the magazine my other friend, Kaja Perina, has really turned around. (Here's Satoshi with Kaja and my friend and her husband Nando Pelusi, whom she actually picked up [or rather, I think it was the other way around] at one of these ev psych conferences.)

Anyway, he had an interesting post, "Why do boys and girls prefer different toys?" -- detailing, surely to the great dismay of feminists, that it's not only human boys and girls who prefer different toys:

In 2002, Gerianne M. Alexander of Texas A&M University and Melissa Hines of City University in London stunned the scientific world by showing that vervet monkeys showed the same sex-typical toy preferences as humans. In an incredibly ingenious study, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, Alexander and Hines gave two stereotypically masculine toys (a ball and a police car), two stereotypically feminine toys (a soft doll and a cooking pot), and two neutral toys (a picture book and a stuffed dog) to 44 male and 44 female vervet monkeys. They then assessed the monkeys' preference for each toy by measuring how much time they spent with each. Their data demonstrated that male vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the masculine toys, and the female vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the feminine toys. The two sexes did not differ in their preference for the neutral toys.

Alexander and Hines's article contains a wonderful picture (reproduced here in full living color, courtesy of Gerianne M. Alexander) of a female vervet monkey conducting an anogenital inspection (examining the genital area of the doll in an attempt to determine whether it is male or female), as a girl might, and a male vervet monkey pushing the police car back and forth, as a boy might. If children's toy preferences were largely formed by gender socialization, as traditional sociologists claim, in which their parents give "gender-appropriate" toys to boys and girls, how can these male and female vervet monkeys have the same preferences as boys and girls? They were never socialized by humans, and they had never seen these toys before in their lives. Yet, not only did male and female vervet monkeys show the identical sex preference for toys, but how they played with these toys was also identical to how boys and girls might.

Satoshi reports that there's now another similar study out, with rhesus monkeys, with similar results in the boy monkeys' preferences. And I see this sort of division along toy lines in my neighbors' kids, a girl, 4, and a boy, 7.

Now, these kids are being raised by architect parents who don't allow them to watch television, and who didn't direct them in particular to any sort of toy, but the little boy gravitates (no, is pretty much mad for) transportation toys like planes and trucks, and dinosaurs, and building Lego forts, and the little girl plays mainly with dolls and a toy kitchen, and actually walks around their backyard carrying a purse! And not just *a* purse. She changes them. She carries a different tiny purse each day...around the backyard!

May 1, 2008

Sandy Banks Gets Paranoid BEFORE Smoking Pot
I don't smoke pot, so I didn't know the law on pot. I learned about it today while reading the LA Times letters section: a letter from Robert Constant in Cebu City, Philippines. But, if I were writing a column on my experience with medical marijuana, I sure as hell would familiarize myself with federal drug laws before I came off looking like an ass in print, like Sandy Banks ended up doing in her LA Times column on buying doctor-prescribed pot to relieve the pain of her seriously arthritic hands. Banks writes:

This new doctor told me marijuana could help. He recommended I not smoke it. Bad for the lungs. Better to use it with a vaporizer. Or ingest it, infused in tea or baked in brownies.

...I left with a red vial of sweet-smelling Yumbolt, at $55 for an eighth of an ounce. I carried it home in the trunk of my car, convinced that every cop I passed could tell I was transporting marijuana.

At home, I couldn't get the bottle open. My fingers weren't strong enough to pop the top. Which is just as well.

I'm not going to smoke it. The feds don't recognize California's medical marijuana law. The DEA has been raiding dispensaries here; I don't want federal agents knocking on my door.

So, on Friday, I brought the bottle into my office and my editor watched me flush it down the toilet.

The experience left me with so much to think about, it's best I'm clear-headed while I work through it.

Robert Constant, in a letter to the editor, writes:

(Banks) concern is misplaced. There is no federal law that prohibits using marijuana. The law prohibits possession. Therefore, Banks already violated the federal law and admits it in writing.

She would have been better off smoking her dope. It likely would have given her just enough paranoia to stop her from exposing herself to the very knock on the door she is so worried about.

I don't get it. How do you write a column for a major daily about a law on the books without actually taking a look at that law...and keep your job? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

Here -- for those who are interested -- our ridiculous drug laws.

Here's more on the vaporizer, which a pot using friend of mine swears by, by Reason's Jacob Sullum, a guy whose newspaper and magazine writing generally involves actual reporting.

When people talk about why newspapers are failing, and why people don't trust the media, part of the reason, I believe, is these fat cat older "reporters" who are used to just spewing whatever they please without ever picking up the phone, tapping into a search engine, or displaying the slightest bit of curiosity.

The Religion Of Pieces
Yes, Islam, the religion of body parts -- all the people who, in the 21st Century, have been blown to bits or hacked apart after having their throats slit or who had their heads sawed off by Muslims in the name of Allah.

On WorldNet.Daily, there's a piece about CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) attacking a new book, Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out, by those who've not only have the humanity to walk away from Islam, but the courage to speak out against the violence the Koran and far too many followers of Islam advocate.

And note, as I pointed out yet again yesterday, when I speak out against the evidence-free belief in god in Judaism and Christianity, nobody talks about me having "courage." They wouldn't, because it would be silly, because 21st Century Christians and Jews don't go around murdering people who "insult" their religion. As Wafa Sultan pointed out on TV in the Middle East, you don't see Jews going around blowing up German restaurants.

An excerpt from the WND piece:

"Why We Left Islam" is filled with first-person stories of former radicals who began to question the Quran and ultimately changed their lives.

Khaled Waleed, for instance, said he was indoctrinated with the same type of teaching as fellow Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden.

"Our teacher and other Islamic scholars told us that as Muslims, we are the best people in the world," he writes. "I listened to my imams and was disturbed when they used abusive language to describe non-Muslims as the grandsons of monkeys and pigs ... [they] told me that it was my duty to revile and ridicule non-Muslims."

Waleed says the attack on the World Trade Center changed him: "On Sept. 11, 2001, I saw the real face of Islam. I saw the happiness on the faces of our people because so many infidels were slaughtered so easily. I saw many people who started thanking Allah for this massacre."

More on CAIR's real missions here, at The Investigative Project on Terrorism. And here's an interesting piece by Jacob Laksin and Jamie Glazov on FrontPage.com, about CAIR's war against Jihadwatch's Robert Spencer:

Spencer, who heads the site JihadWatch.org and is the author of a recent biography of the prophet Muhammed, The Truth About Muhammad, is a reputable scholar who draws on Islamic sources to substantiate his work. Contrary to CAIR's objections, Spencer does not engage in theological polemics. He simply reveals what Islamic sources say.

Which calls forth the question: Why would a group that, by its own account, has no truck with Islamic militants, take such heated issue with an authority on Islam who is guilty of nothing more than highlighting those features of that religion that inspire and sanction Islamic terror? If CAIR was genuinely opposed to Islamic terror and wanted to bring Islam into the modern and democratic world, why wouldn't it embrace individuals such as Spencer? After all, Spencer's work equips Muslim moderates and reformers with the knowledge they need to confront the Islamic extremists in their midst. Armed with that knowledge, Islamic reformers who undertake the monumental challenge of liberalizing Islam stand a much better chance. As Spencer himself says: "You can't reform what you won't admit needs reforming."

In the end, it is clear that what CAIR calls "bigotry" and "Islamophobia" is in fact a perfectly defensible historical argument, advanced by Spencer and others, that the roots of modern jihad terrorism can be found in classic Islamic theology. This is a matter of fact, not prejudice: if it is true, policymakers should take it into account, no matter how inconvenient it may be. Unless one thinks, as CAIR evidently does, that any critical analysis of Islam is a form of actionable hatred, the notion that Spencer is a bigot who must be drummed out of polite society looks like what it really is: the intellectually empty bullying of an extremist fringe.

April 30, 2008

Murder Bugs Me
Last week, at a journalist event I went to, a squat, gray-haired older woman -- one of those sad-eyed multi-culti types -- overheard me talking rather opinionatedly, shall we say, about the dangers to Western society from Islam. More about her later.

I was talking to some PR agency woman who looked like a public service announcement for why not to have plastic surgery and her female friend/client whose book the PR lady mistakenly tried to push on me.

It turns out the author woman had married one of Arafat's chief advisors, and seemed to have a problem with that only because her husband tried to keep her children -- and keep them in the West Bank, to boot -- after they had marital problems. I was appalled at the woman's choice of partner, and appalled that she wasn't appalled, and made no bones about that. In fact, I got on my broom, and didn't get off for about 20 minutes.

My favorite was when the author said we need more "interfaith" sessions. "No we don't!" I said. "Christians and Jews aren't the problem!" Lecturing them on Islam doesn't change Islam, the real problem, an iota.

I pointed out that I am no fan of the evidence-free belief in god, and find plenty wrong with all religions. I find "The Chosen People" moniker immature and offensive and think religiously-based circumcision of boys is barbaric. I fight efforts by Christians to legislate their beliefs on me, and I don't know how anybody can continue in the Catholic church after the pedophilia scandals and the way they covered them up. I went on to express how disgusted I am by the way Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony is going to parishioners with his hand out, so the Church, said to be the wealthiest landowner in the world, won't have to part with any of their real estate wealth. Whatta scumbag.

That said, of all the religions in the world, Islam is by far the worst. As I pointed out to the woman, there are maybe five Christian nutbags running around blowing stuff up, but they're batshit crazy, or at least sociopathic, and you don't see rabbis or ministers standing up before their flock and telling them to go out and murder people who don't believe as they do.

You can predict what came next: "Not all Muslims..."

No, but far too many Muslims... Twelve percent of Canadian Muslims, for example, thought it was okay to murder the Prime Minister and blow up Parliament, for example. That's 84,000 people.

I told her that I'm an atheist, and if atheists were murdering other people in the name of their beliefs (or, rather, nonbelief), I'd be out marching the streets loudly proclaiming them to be barbarians. Where could I find her speaking out about those who murder in the name of Islam?

She argued that the problem is that people get Islam wrong (as in, it's really "a religion of peace"). Heh. Wrong girl to trot that one out for. I informed her that I'd been reading about Islam since 9/11, and the Koran actually commands Muslims to kill, convert, or tax and humiliate (through "dhimmitude") anyone who is not Muslim. And there's all manner of creepy stuff in there, probably written to justify Mohammed's immoralities, like how he married Aisha when she was six, and consummated the marriage when she was nine.

Islam threatens everything I value -- Western Enlightenment values -- and I think Muslims who remain silent while people are murdering in the name of their religion (and by "silent" I mean Muslims who do not go on the air and vocally protest this, or stage protest marches and the like, just for starters) are near-accomplices to the terror.

I do understand, I told the woman, why Muslims don't speak out. When former Muslims like Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali do, there are death threats against them. And that's probably why, as Christopher Hitchens told me, Sam Harris doesn't write or speak in his real name, and when he writes a letter to the editor of a magazine, his location is always printed as something like "via Internet," while others have "Stamford, Connecticut" and the like printed under their names.

I pointed out that I say all manner of offensive things about how ridiculous I think it is to believe, without evidence, in god, but when I do, Jews and Christians sometimes tell me or e-mail me that they think I'm "offensive" or will "burn in Hell" (Christians say that), but nobody ever e-mails me to tell me they're worried for my safety, as many people did after I wrote THE most mild column mentioning some of the problems for women in Islam.

I could tell that the author and her apparently surgically reconstructed friend/handler were appalled by what I said, and frankly, I was glad. I only wished that they were appalled by what comes out of Islam instead of the fact that I have a problem with it, which I have no problem being vocal about.

I turned to leave, and the squat, gray-haired older woman approached me. She, said, with solemn earnestness, she wanted to tell me about a "study" she'd heard about. "Yes?" I said, smiling a little, and laughing on the inside. (I knew this was going to be good.)

The woman was one of those sad-eyed "spread the love!" types who doesn't understand the difference between "tolerance" and tolerance for a religion in which large numbers of the leaders tell their worshippers to go out and kill the "infidel" (people like the woman and me, who I highly doubt was a Muslim).

The woman described a situation somebody'd set up -- one I'd actually read about in passing but wasn't terribly interested in -- where a man in a cafe refused to serve a girl in a hijab.

The point of the study, apparently, was whether others in the café would speak up against the guy behind the counter. The woman said she was moved to "tears" by how people behaved.

Oh, boo frigging hoo.

I wonder if she's moved to tears for all the people who've died in the 9,000-some attacks by Islamists since 9-11...like the Tibetan Buddhist teachers who were killed for being infidels. As I asked before..."D'ya think that one has something to do with Gaza?"

It seemed she thought the idea that she was moved to tears would be enough and I would be persuaded that Islam isn't a death cult. (Of course, she doesn't think in those terms.)

Whoopsie!

Furthermore, I'm largely libertarian, and rather fond of the act of thinking (as opposed to the act of blind acceptance), so I asked the woman a question: What if the person who came up to the counter was somebody who believed in Nazism, and in full Nazi regalia?

"That's different!" said the woman.

"No it's not," I told her. I told her I find Nazism reprehensible, and I was guessing she did, too, but if you dislike somebody's belief system, and it's your café, why shouldn't you have a right to decide not to serve them?

And yes, this, of course, goes for those café owners who don't want to serve atheists with red hair and skin the color of fresh Wite-Out (me, for example) -- Wite-Out-skinned atheists whose problem isn't that they don't understand Islam...but that they do.

50 Pounds Overweight? Your Husband "Should" Want You Anyway
Just posted another one of my Advice Goddess columns, my response to a silly letter in response to a previous column. The letter writer ends her screed with:

For a few extra pounds to prevent a man from seeing why he fell in love with his wife is barbaric. If you're really in love, you transcend the external. If this woman can find it within herself to love the stuff she's made of, she'll attract attention she never thought imaginable -- the sort only unconditional self-acceptance brings.

An excerpt from my response:

If a woman's sex appeal sprang from inner beauty, Eleanor Roosevelt, who looked like a scone in a housedress, would've been Playboy's hottest selling cover girl of all time.

And a note to those of you who'd like to read me in their local papers, which is how I earn my living. Please e-mail the features editor at your local daily and/or the editor and/or publisher of your local alt weekly. Tell them you'd like to read Amy Alkon's column in the paper, tell them why, and give them my e-mail address (adviceamy at aol dot com) and the address of my site, advicegoddess.com. Many thanks.

E-Mail 'N Run
I love people who write me and tell me I can't write back. Perhaps some of you care to respond in my place, since our little coward here says my e-mail address is blocked:

In a message dated 4/29/08 10:50:27 PM, bbsoldado@riseup.net writes:

I think it would be a good idea to fully read something before making a comment about it. I am talking about your comment on the Special Order 40. The people being protected from this are the "victims" not the criminals. As I read the rest of the comments I realized there was many people like you who just want a little bit of attention and want to put their two cents. Stick to your childish blog and leave politics to other people.

PS. Don't bother writing back I already blocked you re e-mail. By the way did you know that the majority of crimes in the US are white on white? of course you didn't TV has you asleep.

The problem is, few cops understand Special Order 40, and don't ask or do anything about a criminal's illegal status, which is why I gave the following quote (in 40 words or less, per the LA Times' requirements for their piece on the topic):

If I want a job cleaning your company's toilets, I'll have to present proof of citizenship and swear under penalty of perjury I'm legal, but if I mug you, beat you, and leave you for dead, it's no questions asked?

--Amy Alkon, syndicated columnist, advicegoddess.com

An excerpt from my blog item on this, "A Lot Of Especially Confused Police Officers":

I've talked to cops about this, including an FBI agent I met recently, and the way this plays out in real life is that police officers don't ask criminals about their immigration status.

Immigration status should not just be gingerly inquired about but rigorously checked upon arrest. And, in fact, I'd like to see all our immigration laws rigorously enforced. Am I willing to pay more for a head of lettuce? Even dollars more? Sure I am. And more for a carwash, too. Especially now, with the danger from terrorism, it's especially stupid for us to have porous borders and barely enforced immigration laws.

My pal Heather MacDonald, a Manhattan Institute fellow, testified before the House on "sanctuary laws" like Special Order 40, which she calls "a serious impediment to stemming gang violence and other crime" and "a perfect symbol of this country's topsy-turvy stance towards illegal immigration."

Plus, we're paying to keep these people in jail instead of dumping them over the border where they belong.

Here's a link to the actual, printed Special Order 40. I actually linked it in the blog item I've excerpted above, but, apparently, magically, without reading it as I did it!

April 29, 2008

When Life Gives You Idiots...
You could've filled Tiger Stadium (aka Comerica Park) with the tidal wave of idiot-ade in this little drama.

Start with one University of Michigan archeology professor, a little more versed in ancient culture than consumer culture, who takes his 7-year-old kid to the ball game.

He spots a sign: Mike's Lemonade, $7. Being a nice dad, he buys his kid a lemonade. Yeah, the price is kind of inflated, but it's the ball park, and he's probably focused on having a nice time with his kid.

Whoops, seems that's not just Mike's Lemonade, but Mike's Hard Lemonade, with a whopping 5% alcohol in it. Brian Dickerson tells the tale for the Freep:

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.

The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

...It wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.

"You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor.

"You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.

...An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.

Leo betrayed no symptoms of inebriation. But the physician and a police officer from the Comerica substation suggested the ER visit after the boy admitted he was feeling a little nauseated.

The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo's blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol.

"Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he is cleared to go home."

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

...And so what had begun as an outing to the ballpark ended with Leo crying himself to sleep in front of a television inside the Child Protective Services building, and Ratte and his wife standing on the sidewalk outside, wondering when they'd see their little boy again.

And yes, the CPS nitwits actually put the kid in foster care. Meanwhile, there are probably hundreds of kids in Detroit, in foster care and out, direly in need of assistance.

My big wish? That there were a TV show to replicate the role of the town stocks in the Middle Ages, where "public servants" shown to have their heads planted halfway up their small intestine will not simply be rewarded with pay raises, pensions, and vacation time, but with the kind of reception they actually deserve.

P.S. I vote for Professor Ratte to pitch the first rotten tomato of the season.

Oh yeah, and about childhood alcohol consumption, I agree with addiction treatment specialist Stanton Peele who contends that the healthy approach is giving kids alcohol in moderation, and teaching them healthy habits. When alcohol's not forbidden, it's really not such a big deal. And I say that also from personal experience, as somebody who, as a kid, was offered "tastes" of whatever liqueur my dad was drinking, and wine on Jewish holidays.

Yep, Manishevitz, the Amarone of the suburban Detroit Jews. On that note, I do have to admit: It is possible that if my parents served better wine I'd now be a crack whore/blogger posting this piece via borrowed Wifi from my favorite gutter.

Meanwhile, let's just hope the statute of limitations has expired, as my dad's a little old to manage in DeHoCo (Detroit House of Corrections).

Sword Control
In other kid-related idiocy today, two students were expelled from Minnesota high schools for buying souvenir swords during a spring break trip to the UK. Bao Ong writes for the Pioneer Press:

A chaperone found the duct-taped boxes that held the swords after the students left the store. The swords were confiscated on the trip and never made it to Minnesota. The students flew home several days early, and the district disciplined the students when they returned.

"The severity of the punishment didn't fit the crime here," said Brad Briggs, 45, an Eagan resident and father of one of the expelled teens. "There was no intent of violence."

Briggs spoke at a Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School Board meeting after his son, a 16-year-old sophomore at Eagan High School, was kicked out of classes for the remainder of the school year after buying a $60 set of three samurai swords in York, England.

...The other student, a senior, was expelled from the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley for the remainder of the school year. At first, she was not going to be allowed to participate in graduation ceremonies. However, after negotiations, school officials agreed to let her graduate with her class.

She had bought an 18-inch sword that was a "Lord of the Rings" replica for Father's Day, said her father, Dennis Fischbach.

..Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, went through a similar situation when he was superintendent in Northfield, Minn.

"Schools are in a real Catch-22," he said.

A popular student once brought a toy gun to the high school, and Kyte had to expel him.

"Had I let him off the hook, the signal would've gone to students that we didn't care about the policy," Kyte said.

A fourth-grader from an Asian immigrant family once brought a big knife, without his parents knowing, for a show-and-tell activity at school because the knife was important in the family, Kyte said.

The student was suspended, he said.

Whatever you do, don't think of school as a place that kids learn to think, because they're learning by example from the adults running the place, that there's no place for reason in their lives. Genius.

Oh yeah, on a related note, here's Cathy Seipp in a 2002 Reason piece, "When 'Zero Tolerance' Collides With Children's Health":

Just before the beginning of this school year, the Bristol Township School Board in Pennsylvania decided that students with asthma must keep their emergency inhalers in the school office, rather than on hand.

On September 7, the board received a letter from Nancy Sander, executive director of the Allergy and Asthma Network/Mothers of Asthmatics (AANMA), a national asthma support and education group based in Fairfax, Virginia. Sander's letter neatly encapsulated the all-too-common frustration of parents when their doctor's advice about how to care for an asthmatic child encounters a school with an entrenched hall-monitor mentality. The letter read, in part:

"The decision to accommodate and facilitate a child's needs with asthma is far easier than pretending their needs do not exist or that restricting student access to medications is for the safety of all students. To do so places your students with asthma at greater risk of death or missed school days, their classmates at risk of witnessing their death, and your school board at risk of lawsuits....

"If a student placed a plastic bag over a teacher's head for a brief moment, the student would be charged with assault. But a school board voting to restrict a child's access to his life-saving asthma medication is no less guilty of a crime. Is Bristol Township School Board really ready to accept responsibility for violating a child's right to breathe? Are you prepared to breach the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act?"

The answer: School administrators will do almost anything to avoid the need to think, and will only reverse their asinine blanket policies when pushed by tireless advocates like Nancy Sander.

April 28, 2008

Richard Dawkins' Bitches
Poor dears, fired from their jobs in science or persecuted for supporting "Intelligent" Design -- as detailed in the silly movie "Expelled." Evolved Rationalist explains the real deal:

(Stein) interviews people who were supposedly expelled or persecuted for supporting ID. He touts the case of Michael Egnor as an example of this great 'Darwinist' persecution that rivals what Hitler did to the Jews. Now, get ready for this - all that happened to Egnor was that some people criticized him on the internet. Yes, let me repeat myself if this does not shock you enough: Egnor was criticized on the internet. This is one of the examples of 'Darwinist' persecution of ID that threatens the very idea of freedom and is comparable to the Holocaust. Egnor was the very same medical doctor (!) who remarked that one of the reasons evolution is false is because 'brain tumors don't evolve to make better brains'. Come on now, Egnor, how could you make such ignorant statements and then get all whiny about being 'persecuted' when you are called out on your fallacy? If you can't take the heat, get the fuck out of the scientific ring. If you can't handle criticism, shut the fuck up. Since some creationists have criticized me on the internet; according to Stein, I am the victim of creationist persecution. A sword cuts both ways, IDiots.

Stein also lies about how Richard Sternberg's life was nearly destroyed after he was fired from the Smithsonian for supporting ID. However, the truth is a lot less sensational than what the IDiots claim. Sternberg was never employed by the Smithsonian. He was an unpaid research associate and he still has full access to research facilities at the museum. As I don't want to continue beating a dead horse, the real stories about the so-called 'academics' who were expelled for supporting ID can be found here.

The biggest surprise about the movie, reports Evolved Rationalist, is what an utter bore it was. What I did get a laugh out of was this little side note on Evolved Rationalist's site:

If you are a Bible-thumping, anti-science, theistarded fundie hoping to convince me that your book of horseshit lies is the true word of your zombie god because your imaginary sky daddy said so, don't bother. Prepare to use your brain if you want an actual response from me. Thanks!

For the funniest take I've read on "Expelled" (via Respectful Insolence), check out the piece in Real Detroit Weekly by Jay Davis (scroll down, second-to-last and last entry):

Mark Mathis, one of the producers of Expelled, wants the "theory" of Intelligent Design (ID) taught in science classrooms alongside evolution. Proponents of ID are fond of saying that it's not the same as creationism (read: creationism sans the talking snake and the magic rib). But if ID isn't creationism, then oral sex isn't sexual relations. Beyond semantic nuances, the underlying argument of creationism and ID is the same: If there is any phenomenon that science has yet to provide an explanation for, there clearly is no scientific explanation--God did it.

...If we do decide to teach Intelligent Design along with evolution, let's at least be consistent and give equal time to other supernatural theories. Here are a few suggestions:

•The theory of relativity will be taught alongside the theory of divinity, which maintains that E = whatever God good and well pleases.

•Gravitational theory will be taught alongside the theory of Deliberate Motion, which proposes that celestial bodies do not move as a result of gravitational force, but as a result of an Intelligent Mover pushing them around.

•The germ theory of disease will be considered, but so will the Divine Retribution theory, which posits the existence of an intelligence who distributes diseases in order to punish sins. Of course, this will necessitate that medical schools give time to traditional pharmaceutical approaches to healthcare, as well as "faith-based" approaches, which will rely on prayer and the sacrifice of baby rams.

Mileys Of Bad Road
If you're 15, and a role model for millions of girls, and still look like a child, can you maybe wait a few years before you pose semi-naked (and looking ridiculous in red lipstick) for Annie Liebovitz?