Well, this doesn't bode well for the plastic bag ban that's working its way through the system. If we can't even stop creating waste that serves absolutely no purpose, it's hard to see how something that at least gets used once stands a chance of being banned. My favorite bit:

Sen. Mark Wyland (R-Escondido) disputed the argument that the bill is necessary to address significant waste. He said he periodically throws away large stacks of newspapers and junk mail. “It's just one more item. It's not a big deal,” Wyland said.

Because everyone knows that there's no incremental cost to additional waste. It's not like printing more books and then throwing them away kills more trees and takes up more landfill space. It's completely binary!

Oh, and way to set a good example there Mark. Remember kids: real men throw away all their paper; recycling is for commies!

Category: Society

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It's officially Christmas. This isn't a surprise, of course, but just in case I had somehow missed it, Safeway was thoughtful enough to remind me during the entirety of my shopping by playing non-stop from a collection called “Top 100 Bad Holiday Covers And Remixes By No-Name Artists”.

At least, that's what I assume it was called.

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While the national races are looking pretty good, some of the state and local issues are looking not so pleasant. I'm really hoping that the precincts that have reported are not representative of the remainder of the state. Sure, I knew that several things I voted for wouldn't pass (because it would just be crazy to tax the multi-bazillion-dollar-earning oil companies for destroying the environment extracting oil) and that others were borderline (education? housing? the environment? who uses them?), but there are times I just foolishly like to think, if not the best, at least some decency of my fellow man. Overwhelming support for permanently tagging sex offenders with GPS devices? I'm not a big fan of sex offenders by any stretch of the imagination, but come on. Let's review that for a second: they will be tagged (you know, like cattle) for the rest of their lives. I'm sure that won't increase any sense of alienation that would hinder their ability to potentially become functional members of society again. Oh, and they get to pay for it too, as an added bonus. And then they can't live within some distance of schools and parks (because, you know, sex offenders have no means of transportation). The writers of this initiative did miss one obvious component: we want to keep them away from schools, and we don't care about removing any shred of dignity. Clearly the solution here is to surgically implant electric dog collars. Maybe next election.

I know I feel more secure the more Big Brother watches over me. I have nothing to fear if I haven't done anything wrong.

Freedom is slavery. War is peace.

Category: Society

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With all this uproar about Yahoo! turning over information to the Chinese government, I'm sure glad we have congress to step in and set people straight. It really warms my heart to know that our government is here to help make sure that everyone knows that it's simply not acceptable to go around turning over records concerning information access to a government with a proven record of human-rights abuse against enemies of the state.

Thank goodness we won't stand for that sort of thing in the good old U.S. of A. I'd say more, but I have to run; There are some books I need to pick up at the library.

Category: Society

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In the state of the union, our esteemed president told us that we need to band together as a nation to stand firm against a grave new threat to our nation—and indeed to our very way of life. He was talking, of course, about the growing problem of the creation of human-animal hybrids.

And that's why it's simply shocking to see that the Department of Homeland Security—the very group that is supposed to keep us safe—is trying to brainwash America's children into not only accepting human-animal hybrids, but looking up to them. This is a threat far more serious than that posed by Harry Potter, more serious even than the war against Christmas. After all, once our children have meekly submitted to the government-sactioned, half-animal spawn of Satan, and are forced to do their evil bidding, holiday greeting cards will be the least of our worries.

So I call on everyone to stand up and demand that the government stop paying lip service to preserving the sanctity of creation while behind our backs it teaches our children that abominations of nature are to be respected and emulated. This is our sacred duty. The animal-people must not prevail.

Category: Society

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I went to vote today, and it was deeply depressing. Since I have this crazy desire to have a system where, you know, votes actually count, I refuse to use the current electronic voting machines. Yet, when I refused the electronic card and asked for a paper ballot, I was told there was no paper-ballot voting. At least when I insisted that yes, there in fact was paper ballot voting, and the desk-workers found someone with a clue, he was happy to give me one, but it was so very sad. First, the poll workers were so badly trained that many people who were only somewhat aware of the issue would probably have just buckled and been pushed into using the electronic voting machines—when poll workers are actively disenfranchising people through poor training, that's just wrong. Second, the clueful person said, “We were just commenting about how there has only been one paper ballot today.” And third, that one ballot was Laura. So the poor training probably didn't even come into play, which is even worse. (I suppose it's possible that one or two people were dissuaded after requesting paper, but I doubt it).

Why are people such sheep? Is it because they trust machines blindly? Or trust authority blindly? I don't even know which is worse. Maybe it's just apathy—I was talking with some co-workers today, who I know know better than to trust the current machines, but they still voted by machine. It's sad. Rigging elections at a national level is now something that requires the know-how of a high-school student, and most people don't care. Now, I'm not politically active—I've never written my congressperson—but if my only option were to vote using the currently-available machines, I wouldn't vote. I'd make a scene at the polling place, I'd write to my representatives at every level, and I'd probably protest at the polls at every election and try to get others to do the same. Would anyone care then? I doubt it.

In summary: the most important vote I feel like I made today was requesting a paper ballot—and it feels like it was a write-in.

Category: Society

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While I'm on the subject of vile things, I heard the most disturbing commercial on the radio the other day. Verizon is now offering a service where you can customize your ring tone, not just for yourself, but for your caller. You get to pick songs that will play for specific callers instead of the ringing sound.

In other words, you can pay extra to take away a standard, useful piece of feedback, and replace it with something that is almost guaranteed to make the caller feel like they are on hold with a company that “values their call”. Nothing tells the people in your life you care quite like playing muzak at them.

I think I'll pass though. I'm holding out for the ability to require callers to first navigate an annoying automated menu driven by a peppy but chronically deaf voice-activated system. The ability to periodically break in to the muzak in such a way that the caller will think they have finally gotten though, just to give them the critical news that they in fact are still waiting would be a nice bonus, but I'm flexible on that point.

Category: Society

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I was reading about the Kansas school system intelligent design debates (after a co-worker introduced me to the Flying Spaghetti Monster), and talking to Laura about it, and came to a realization. I know how to deal with the question of intelligent design in schools, and I better understand why I don't think intelligent design belongs in biology class.

It belongs in math class.

That's right, you heard me. Math. See, creationism is an alternative to evolution (and when I say evolution, I refer only to the physical mechanics; that will be important later). Intelligent design is not—it's an alternative to probability as it is currently presented, or, to be more accurate, intelligent design is an alternative to random chance in all of its forms. Nothing about intelligent design is actually unique to evolution; at its core it's just a restatement of the idea that “God does not play [fair] dice”. Fundamentally, I see nothing wrong with teaching that in schools, in the context of probability. All of probability is based on the precondition of “all other things being equal”, and intelligent design just says things can never be known to be equal, because there could be a higher power waiting to meddle at its whim. You could argue that it's weak science, because it's not provable or disprovable (the whims of an intelligence we don't understand being by more or less by definition indistinguishable from random chance), but it's not science—it's a basic assumption. And the same is equally true of the idea that all things are governed by random chance, and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that we should question basic, unfounded assumptions. Probability (or at least the application thereof to anything in the real world) is then recognized not as a mathematical truth, but a generally useful theory for prediction, which is exactly as it should be given that all of its applications are based on an assumption we can't prove.

Then, all that remains is to remove the word “random” from most scientific teaching materials, since random is in opposition to intelligent design, and thus an endorsement of atheism in most cases. If we simply talk about “chance”, and understand that to be either random on not, according to our beliefs, then we all gain a better understanding of the difference between fact and theory, our teaching is more belief-agnostic—and the issue of evolution becomes simply one special case of that.

So that's my plan, which I think is very workable. Except of course for the fact that that most of the scientific community would rebel against it, since it weakens the public facade of infallibility so many people of science wish so wrongly to cultivate. It wouldn't really weaken science in any real way; probability would remain exactly as useful as a prediction tool provided that any intelligent forces continue in the same fashion they have through all the experiments that led to the creation of the theory of random chance... and that caveat is nothing new, since all of science predicts based on the assumption that things will generally stay the same. It's just a case of all of us learning to be a little more aware of how deep that caveat runs.

I bet you didn't think this was going to be an endorsement of teaching intelligent design when you saw the title, did you? I didn't either, when I started thinking and talking things out with Laura. It just goes to show that you can learn some startling things when you question what you haven't really thought to question about your education.

Category: Society

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Imagine if you will that you are driving in a center lane on the interstate, and come up behind someone going slower than you. You want to pass, then return to your current lane. The lanes to the left and right are both clear ahead and behind. Do you pass on:

1. the left, or
2. the right?

If you picked a), congratulations, you aren't an idiot! If you picked b), take comfort in the fact that you will fit right in in California.

Category: Society

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You know who would look totally hot in pants a number of sizes too small for her?

Nobody.

I'm not clear on how someone who has thought through the need to wear a thong (which reminds me, wearing too-tight pants made of thin white material is a whole extra level of not-hot) to avoid having visible lines can miss the fat bulging out all around the top of her pants.

The lesson here is, if the answer to the question, “do these pants make me look fat” is painfully clearly “Yes, very much so, and skanky to boot!”, then don't wear them.

The preceding has been a public service announcement on behalf of everyone has to go out in public and be subjected to that sort of thing.

Category: Society

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Sometimes the religious right just pisses me off, but other times they make me feel downright sick. Take the following gem from an article about vaccines being developed for the human papilloma virus:

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favor vaccinating their daughters. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

“Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex,” Maher claims

Remember kids, it's wrong to allow terminally ill people to end their life in a manner of their choosing, but it's okay to withhold potentially life-saving treatments from people who don't choose to live their lives according your rules!

So here's what really gets me. Lets assume the existence of a 100% effective HPV virus (it doesn't exist yet, as far as I know, but it theoretically could). There's no reason to think that these people wouldn't be at least as against it as they are against the 90%+ version being tested now. Given that vaccine, every case of HPV that leads to cervical cancer and possible death would be preventable. Morally, there is no difference I can see between withholding such a vaccine from everybody when it could be administered, and intentionally introducing a new potentially deadly STD into the population. You know what the latter would be called? Biological warfare. Terrorism. It would get you locked in a small cell in a military camp existing outside of normal US laws. But the former is just “protecting family values”.

Oh, and that 80% number? I was heartened by it until I read it the other way: 20% of parents would like to see their daughters get cancer and possibly die if they engage in pre- or extra-marital sex (or even just marry someone who has/does).

Category: Society

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Part of my birthday present from Laura is an iTMS gift card (a potentially dangerous gift, since I'd been avoiding buying anything there because it's so freaking easy I have my doubts about being able to stop) and I decided that the 2004 top 100 songs list would be a good place to start looking for fun songs. As it turns out though, most people have really bad taste. Who knew?

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We watched the second presidential debate last night, and I'm definitely glad I've been watching. Each time I see them I feel better about voting for Kerry—he presents himself very well, he's clearly intelligent, he's respectful, he's not a robot like Gore was, and he is able to clearly articulate definite plans. Bush keeps looking bad in the debates: he gets flustered and angry, steamrolls the moderator, and mostly doesn't have concrete rebuttals. For example, they've had several exchanges that essentially went like this:

Bush: My opponent is wishy-washy! He's flip-flopped on the issue of <whatever>

Kerry: No, I've been consistent, and here's exactly why I made each of those decisions and how it fits with my overall convictions. <clear and concise explanation>

Bush: He's inconsistent! That's just how it is!

Why doesn't he just jump up and down and say “Are too! Are too!”? Obviously I'm biased, but I truly believe that Kerry's points are significantly more based in facts, whereas Bush's are more based in rhetoric. And while it's not like I'm an undecided voter, I'm really glad I can feel good about voting for Kerry, instead of being resigned to voting for him.

Now two moments that struck me most: the funniest moment and the scariest moment.

The funniest moment was Bush's comment about the sort of judges he wanted on the Supreme Court. He basically said he wants constitutional literalists. Then as an example of what he doesn't want, he talked about the Dred Scott decision:

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all—you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America. And so, I would pick people that would be strict constructionists.

www.washingtonpost.com

This is priceless stuff. He was clearly about to say that the Constitution says that we're all equal. So... he wants judges on the Supreme Court who don't know the difference between the Constitution and the preamble to the Declaration of Independence? I don't think that a document that at the time counted some people as three-fifths of a person can really be said to be one that “speaks to the equality of America.”

The scariest moment was when Bush spoke about the Patriot Act:

Our law enforcement must have every tool necessary to find and disrupt terrorists at home and abroad before they hurt us again. That's the task of the 21st century. And so, I don't think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all.

Wow. He could have said something about why it's important, and then talked about making sure it's done carefully and adjusted as necessary to protect rights, but he didn't. Instead he said several times that he doesn't believe it treads on our rights at all. That's a disturbing stance, as is his statement that “every action being taken against terrorists requires court order, requires scrutiny”, in light of the fact that part of the Patriot Act was ruled unconstitutional for lack of judicial oversight. The fact that he thinks that preserving our rights is the same as giving law enforcement “every tool necessary”—would he say that a police state wouldn't infringe our rights because it's necessary to keep us safe from the terrorists, then? I'm not saying that I think he really wants a complete police state, but the idea of being led for another four years by someone who thinks that giving more power to law enforcement is the same thing as preserving our rights is very scary.

Category: Society

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Perhaps not. As a ballroom dancer, formerly competitive, I was excited to see a major article in the NYT about ballroom—but the content of the article, I'm sad to say, doesn't surprise me in the least. When the dancers said that the rules of competitive ballroom are “archaic”, they were really not kidding. In fact, by far the most surprising thing in the entire article was that the YCN stood up to the rest of USABDA and got them to allow same-sex partners at the collegiate level. I've been at college competitions where in order to be considered an official YCN/USABDA competition, there had to be a rule that women could not wear pants while dancing—dresses or skirts only. And this wasn't just a lip-service thing, because the YCN coordinator was on site making announcements, and preventing at least one couple from competing again until they changed costumes. Never mind that there are plenty of great Rhythm and Latin outfits with pants. Progressive they are not.

I had always assumed that USABDA was the biggest group of fuddy-duddies, but reading what the IDF folks had to say to the media I'm realizing that the IDF is at least at the same level of fossilization. This was my all-time favorite section:

“Just as the Hopak dancers do not have to start adding other ethnic groups' elements to their dances because to do so would fundamentally contradict what the dance is about, DanceSport does not have to start adding dances about some other relationship,” Jim Frasier, who heads the legal commission of the Europe-based federation, wrote in an e-mail message, referring to the Ukrainian folk dance to explain why his organization has sought to restrict same-sex couples.

Citing as an example the pasodoble, a dance based on movements performed during a bullfight with the man in the central matador role, Mr. Frasier added: “It is performed by a man and woman because it is about the relationship between a man and a woman, using the metaphor of the matador and the cape to express one more aspect of the man/woman relationship.”

What the hell are they thinking over there, letting this guy do their PR? The pasodoble is they example they choose, of all the dances in their repertoire, to hold up as an example? Pasodoble, while a very interesting dance, is pretty much the black sheep in terms of the equality of the roles of leader and follower. They may as well have issued a press statement saying, “Well, we don't really see ballroom dance as an art form, or a way of exploring the dynamics of partnerships in a broader sense—we like to think of it as a way of preserving the misogynistic elements of our society's past. If there's no woman in the couple to push around, what's the point?”

Also not surprising was the mention of the Olympics as a possible factor in the IDF's stance. Three or four years ago, even at the YCN (collegiate) level, the powers that be in this area were already obsessed with the Olympics. That was already becoming a primary motivator. And when I say “Olympics”, I of course mean “money”

I seriously wonder if any of the leaders of these organizations remember what it was like to enjoy dancing.

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Articles like this one really frustrate me. Sure, the BSA/RIAA/MPAA/whoever are going to lie to serve their own interests. But does every journalist have to parrot their report as if it were gospel? Every story I saw today about the BSA's report on software piracy contained a paragraph functionally equivalent to the following:

A BSA study of $80 billion in software installed on computers last year found only $51 billion was legally purchased, resulting in a $29 billion loss.

Now, I only took a year of economics, and that was in high school, but I'm pretty sure I have a basic understanding of the laws of supply and demand. Dumbed down, and ignoring weird fringe effects like prices of luxury status symbols, it goes like this: more people buy stuff when it's cheaper. And yet, everyone who reports "losses" from illegal software/movie/music trading seems to have skipped this basic lesson, and blithely assumes that every high-school and college student with a pirated copy of Photoshop would have shelled out $650 dollars for a legal version if they didn't know a guy who could give them a free copy. Yeah.

I'm not condoning piracy, saying that it doesn't legitmately hurt any industries, or that no-one with pirated software would buy it if they had to, but please. If the real number is even a few percent of the $29 billion they quoted, I would be shocked. Some of the countries where they quote the biggest piracy numbers are places where Office or Windows would cost months, sometimes years, of the average salary of their inhabitants.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to set up a paid subscription to my weblog. I figure I'll charge $100,000 or so per page view—so far, people have been getting this content for free, resulting in millions, maybe even billions, in losses for me.

[Edit 7/8: Apparently I can't type. Hopefully it was clear that I was not condoning piracy. Thanks Laura!]

Category: Society

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Imagine, if you will, a very large island (or a small continent if you prefer). On this island there are horses, but for various evolutionary reasons they are all brown. Every last one of them. Also on the island are people, who develop completely isolated from the rest of the world. They develop language, writing, and eventually create dictionaries, all without interacting with any other civilizations. Not unsurprisingly, their dictionary defines their word for horse basically as a large, brown, four-legged, hoofed animal.

One day, a boat arrives with people from another island/continent. Cultural exchanges of various kinds ensue, and eventually one of our island-folk visit the other island. Shortly after arriving, he sees someone riding a black horse. "What's that animal?" he asks his guide. "Why, it's a horse," she replies, confused. "I've seen many people riding them on your island." "Ridiculous," replies the man from our island, "horses are brown!" "But surely," says his guide, "you can see that it is in every practical way identical to the horses on your island, except that it happens to be brown." "Perhaps," says our islander, "but it's clearly not a horse. As you can see, it says right here in this dictionary that horses are brown, so that creature must be some entirely different animal."

At this point, it should be apparent that our islander is rather foolish. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine how this story applies to people who try to base their primary argument against gay marriage on the fact that marriage is defined to be between a man and a woman.

(For those of you already compiling a list of reasons why this is a terrible analogy, I invite you to consider the definition of "person" at the drafting of the US Constitution, and what bearing that has on the validity of the civil rights movement.)

Category: Society

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Anyone unsure about Blizzard's target audience should take a look at their wallpapers. These artists are clearly all people who grew up on the old D&D books, which teach us the important lesson that fantasy-genre women wear basically no clothing. I always felt sorry for the women depicted in these books, on the covers of fantasy novels, and in now in many video games. Don't they realize how doomed they are? Their male fighting companions get full suits of plate armor, or at least a nice hauberk or something. What do the women fighters get? Chainmail bikinis, and if they are really lucky some thigh-high boots. Helmets? No way. So basically, they will be fine if their opponents attack only their breasts (or rather, the third of their breasts that's protected), but otherwise that they are SOL.

On the other hand, heroines are better off than evil women, who often don't get any clothing at all. I guess the fact that she's not human makes the nudity ok? At some point, they should give up the pretense and just strap feathers to some women's arms and legs and film porn to sell to teenagers.

Category: Society

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Living here is a constant voyage of discovery when it comes to traffic law. For example, I'm well aware of the "right on red" rule, but on the way to campus today I was reminded about another rule I often forget about: the "left on red at a busy 5-way intersection from a direction where you are only allowed to turn right ever" rule. I'm not sure if that's a special Cleveland traffic law, or just a consequence of the popular "any red light can be treated as a stop sign" rule; someday I really should pick up an Ohio driver's manual and check.

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I just came across this editorial by Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts. Basically, it's a plea to the country to pass "defense of marriage" acts—which is fine with me; it's a free country and he should feel free to make all the pleas he wants to. I did find it interesting that he specifically mentioned the Dred Scott case, given the parallels many draw between these rulings and the progressive civil rights rulings in the 60's. I guess it's an attempt to point out that the Supreme Court isn't always right. This is, however, a sword that cuts both ways, as you can substitute "slavery" for marriage in his arguments (and other terms in other places as appropriate) and get a document that, in many places, reads like arguments for slavery that might have been made at the time had the Supreme Court decision gone the other way. For example:

In a decision handed down in November, a divided Supreme Judicial Court of [the United States] detected a previously unrecognized right in our [100]-year-old constitution that permits [slaves] to [be free]. I believe that 4-3 decision was wrongly decided and is deeply mistaken.

Contrary to the court's opinion, [slavery] is not "an evolving paradigm". It is deeply rooted in the history, culture and tradition of civil society. It predates our Constitution and our nation by millennia. The institution of [slavery] was not created by government and it should not be redefined by government.

A few simple substitutions shows how absurd some of his arguments truly are. But that's just an interesting mental exercise, and not the main point. The main point is this:

I am deeply disturbed by some of the statements he makes about the way our government works. I am not sure whether he is truly ignorant, or simply trying to manipulate people through their ignorance; either way it is entirely unacceptable behavior. Here is one of his primary arguments:

Beware of activist judges. The Legislature is our lawmaking body, and it is the Legislature's job to pass laws. As governor, it is my job to carry out the laws. The Supreme Judicial Court decides cases in which there is a dispute as to the meaning of the laws or the constitution. [...] If the powers were not separated this way, an official could make the laws, enforce them and stop court challenges to them. No one branch or person should have that kind of power.

It is inconsistent with a constitutional democracy that guarantees to the people the ultimate power to control their government.

By its decision, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts circumvented the Legislature and the executive, and assumed to itself the power of legislating. That is wrong.

What? The court did exactly what he says they should be doing: it interpreted a dispute as to the meaning of the state laws and constitution—and found the law wanting in light of the constitution. So by the definition he gave, they did nothing wrong, and yet he calls what they did "[assuming] the power of legislating." I can see no other interpretation of his statements except that he believes that the court should be able to make only minor interpretations of laws, and that disagreeing with a law—even if that decision is based firmly in the state constitution—is overstepping their power. So what is he saying? If you read between the lines, it looks a whole lot like he believes that the Legislature should have complete control over laws (or in his own words, "stop court challenges to [laws]"). He invokes separation of powers but uses it to argue against separation of power! The argument is of course even more absurd than that, because he leaves out the crucial point that there exists a check already in place, namely the ability to create constitutional amendments, for exactly the case where an overwhelming majority of people disagree with the court's decision... odd that he's forgotten it, when only a paragraph earlier he urged people to pursue and support that course of action. Or is it truly that it has not occurred to him that the only reason to have the power to make constitutional amendments is if the drafters of the constitution intended the courts to have exactly the power they exercised in Massachusetts?

I also take issue with the one-liner about the constitutional democracy, and his later statement that "This issue was seized by a one-vote majority of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. We must now act to preserve the voice of the people and the representatives they elect." Taken together, it sounds suspiciously like he is trying to make everyone feel like the courts trampled on their right to have the government respond to "the voice of the people"—also known as "majority rule". In fact, our government is a constitutional republic, precisely because mob rule was seen by our founders to be a terrible idea (partly because our founders are, like me, elitist snobs, but partly because life under the Articles of Confederation had pointed out some serious problems with majority-rule government).

In summary, I have this to say to the governor of Massachusetts, and others who make similar arguments: You don't like the idea of gay marriage? Fine. You disagree with the court's decision? Fine. Convene a constitutional convention, and vote on a Discrimination against Homosexuals act (I refuse to call it Defense of Marriage; I am married, and feel entirely unthreatened. To me, it looks like a spade, and I'll call it such, even though some of those promoting it genuinely believe that it's not a spade). Maybe it will even pass, and I would be saddened by that. But what I will not be, if that day comes, is dishonest and manipulative. I will never claim that a constitutional amendment is an abuse of power, or that any branch of government has overstepped its bounds in creating such an amendment. I will not try to sow misinformation about the workings of our government and conflate a moral issue with one of governmental process in an attempt to win people to my side.

I know it's too much to ask that everyone be honest about how our political process works and is intended to work, but it is not too much to ask that our politicians do so. Mr. Romney, I pity you—you are clearly driven by fear to lash out in this way—but I cannot respect you.

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Screw you.

The best part is how they keep pointing out that there is absolutely no legal precedent for the position the telemarketers took (i.e., "But it's not fair! It should be fair"), and that in fact many similar rulings were against them. That and they called the stupid "The economy will collapse as we fire everyone" bluff, pointing out that it's pretty stupid to argue that not being able to call people who are just going to hang up on you will hurt your business. All in all, the decision reads like a slightly legalese version of, "You're idiots; go home."

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I've discovered that the reason such a large chunk of the people coming here are looking for statics on homosexual promiscuity is that I'm magically the number two Google result for "(gay OR homosexual) promiscuity statistics"— maybe even number one after this gets indexed. I feel bad about all these people wanting statistics who are just getting my rant, so as a public service I did a little bit of looking and found this survey of papers about promiscuity among gays and lesbians, which is far more worthy of being a front-page Google result (but doesn't look as useful from the blurb).

Disclaimer: the author is himself gay, so has a vested interest in his interpretation of the papers. However, he is very explicit about places where he is interpreting data instead of just quoting it, and he gives full references for every study and paper he uses, so you can go get the data yourselves if you don't trust him. That, and his presentation of studies that give bleaker results than other studies rather than just glossing over them, makes me inclined to trust him. If nothing else, it's a good list of papers.

If you are just looking for information proving that all homosexuals are terrible people, you can do your own damned research—or just keep misusing the same partial statistics from a few questionable studies like all the other intolerant homophobes.

And there you have my unbiased effort to bring light to all sides of this issue.

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Well, the Thanksgiving leftovers are dwindling away, the dishes are almost done, and we're all starting to regain mobility after the Turkey-induced stupor. That's right, it's officially Christmas!

I hope everyone looking forward to a month of non-stop Christmas music and crazy shopping. I know I can already feel the Christmas spirit all around me! Or is that rampant capitalism?

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While reading about the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling against the ban on Gay marriage (personal note to Scalia, who said, "The premise of our system is that those judgments are to be made by the people and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best": if you are going to be a Supreme Court Justice, please learn the difference between a democracy and a republic. Thanks) I found the fascinating article "The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality" by the Family Research Council. Since this group is fanatically opposed to homosexual marriage, they fall into one of the common traps of fanaticism: trying to twist everything to be evidence in their favor, instead of sticking to the points that actually make sense for them to argue. While it's unfortunate, it also makes for some highly entertaining reading at times. My personal favorite is this choice quote:

The journal AIDS reported that men involved in relationships engaged in anal intercourse and oral-anal intercourse with greater frequency than those without a steady partner. Anal intercourse has been linked to a host of bacterial and parasitical sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

Well gosh, that's just shocking! Clearly they must be against heterosexual sex (I'm pretty sure that's also linked to sexually transmitted disease) which begs the question: are they against heterosexual marriage, or do they support it because they have studies that show that married couples have less sex than unmarried couples?

Even better is when they don't seem to remember which side they are on:

Homosexual and lesbian relationships are far more violent than are traditional married households: The Bureau of Justice Statistics (U.S. Department of Justice) reports that married women in traditional families experience the lowest rate of violence compared with women in other types of relationships. [...]

It should be noted that most studies of family violence do not differentiate between married and unmarried partner status. Studies that do make these distinctions have found that marriage relationships tend to have the least intimate partner violence when compared to cohabiting or dating relationships.

So... married women are abused less than unmarried women, and lesbian (and thus by definition unmarried since these are U.S. statistics) women are abused more than married couples. That seems pretty obvious, so I'm with them so far. But what's their point? Is it that they are pro–lesbian marriage, or that they are pro–abuse of lesbians?

More insidious, and thus more disturbing, is their manipulation of (lies, damned lies and) statistics. They quote statistics about things like homosexual promiscuity left and right, but never once do they give statistics on heterosexual promiscuity. They quote one study that compared promiscuity of married and unmarried gay couples in the Netherlands, and give only the statistics from the married couples—from which I can only conclude that they were, in fact, better than those of the unmarried couples. So the majority of their arguments may sound impressive, but are in fact totally meaningless since they have no context.

And finally, some food for thought. They go on and on about the abnormally high incidence of long-term depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide among gays and lesbians. Am I the only one who finds it likely that this has more to do with, oh, say, living in a society where they are stigmatized, discriminated against, and tormented by their peers, rather than how they get their kicks in the bedroom?

So on the balance, the article reads to me more like advocacy for homosexual marriage than against it. What disturbs me isn't that people write things like this—it's that they (and many others) undoubtedly believe everything they are saying at face value.

Category: Society

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And for me, today, Dave Barry is that hero. After his original commentary on the Do Not Call list generated some negative feedback in the telemarketing world, he really let them have it. Of course, the ATA spokesperson played right into his hands; you just can't make up quotes that good. But basically, he's my hero for writing the sort of article that we would all write if we were a) that clever, and b) had a nationally syndicated column. Way to stick it to them! It almost makes me want to sent money when the "Barry for President in '04" campaign rolls around.

Category: Society

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So I knew about Sunday alcohol laws, and I always thought that they were silly... I had no idea how silly they really are (in Ohio at least). So this morning, we're doing a grocery run, and I thought, "Hey, I should grab some hard cider". I knew that they didn't sell wine or liquor in the morning, but since beer is ok, I foresaw no difficulties. Sadly, they were out of hard cider, so I grabbed some Bacardi instead. But will they sell me the Bacardi? No. "Oh, I thought, I guess beer isn't ok after all". But no, of course that's no it, because that would make too much sense. They won't sell Bacardi because it's a cocktail containing hard liquor. Never mind that it has the same alcohol content as beer. Never mind that they would almost undoubtedly have sold me the hard cider. But if I had wanted, say, 4 cases of Miller, hey, no problem. Who thinks these things up?

In unrelated weird-law news, today I saw the strangest ordinance ever. I can't decide which is weirder—the fact that a city would adopt an ordinance in 1982 that requires heads of households to own guns, or the fact that it contains an exemption for, among other things, people "who conscientiously oppose maintaining firearms as a result of beliefs or religious doctrine." I can just see everyone sitting around drafting ordinance, when someone says, "What we really need is to make everyone own a gun!" "But wait," says another guy, "What if people don't want to own guns?" "Good point," says the first guy, "Lets make the law say that everyone has to own a gun, but only if they want to."

And apparently, nobody thought that was a stupid idea.

Category: Society

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This is the biggest piece of government stupidity since... Well, since not nearly as long ago as it should have been since something this unbelieveable. Looks like another winner from DARPA.

Category: Society

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I saw this headline on Google news, and found it somewhat disturbing: Mice succumb to HIV at last. From the article:

"Mouse cells are naturally resistant to HIV in many ways. Some of these barriers have been overcome by adding human genes to mouse cells."

Um... hooray for us, because we've genetically engineered mice so that they can contract a deadly disease that they would otherwise be immune to? And next on their list is figuring out ways to make the HIV virus spread even more quickly in the mice, so they can get sicker faster.

I understand the research significance, but still. It seems a bizarre thing to celebrate.

Category: Society

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It's a good day to die if you are a telemarketer, that is: the National Do Not Call Registry is now open. Ok, it would be open if it weren't for the fact that it's such a fantastic thing that it was "slashdotted" before it was even posted to Slashdot. The new FTC Telemarketing Sales Rules has some other nice features as well; I sure won't miss all of the dead calls we get.

Despite all the bitching from the telemarketing industry, I am convinced that this is a bright day for humanity. I only wish we could get a similar law for spam, and a way of enforcing it.

Category: Society

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At this moment, I can think of no crueler ordeal for good people than to have the whole future of another person given into their hands, with the imperative to Decide.

Who are any of us to set the whole course of another person's life in a single moment? What is an hour's deliberation, even a day's deliberation, in the attempt to understand any person?

Category: Society

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In any semi-stable group of peers, there is almost inevitably someone who needs to be argumentative in meetings. So the question is, are argumentative people attracted to stable, friendly groups, or does the nature of a non-antagonistic group transform one of its members into a spiteful person?

Category: Society

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