The new "this is your brain on drugs" spot

You remember the commercial, right?  With the egg cracking into the sizzling pan, all scrambled gray cell metaphor and squishy goodness?

One would think this would be enough to keep the kids off the crack.  The first hit may be free, but you could be eaten by an alligator:


He was a big gator, too, described as being "the size of a bus."

Some commenters at CBS suggested the gator was doing society a favor.  That's a little too cynical, even for my chilly blood, but I do have to admit ending as swamp gravy gator grub seems a more visceral deterrent than "just say no," hmm?

*Thanks to CBS for the catchy headline.

For those of you neither from the MidSouth nor interested in the country music business, Belmont University, located in Nashville, TN, is the place to pursue your degree if you want to make it in the Music City.  It is also financed by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a highly fundamentalist brand of Christianity which, while very wealthy here, is generally incompatible with those who gravitate toward the entertainment business.

As such, Belmont doesn't have a majority SBC enrollment in their student body (it's about 1/3), though their trustees are 100% SBC.  In light of their diversity of enrollment, their status as a feeder to the country music industry, and their need to raise additional funds, Belmont is attempting to reduce its SBC trustee load from 100% to 60%.  The Convention, however, had other ideas, informing the school that if they let other so-called Christians (that would be any denomination other than SBC, including but not limited to Primitive Baptist or Bible Baptist or Old Regular Baptist), then Belmont could expect to stop finding $2MM annual checks in the mail.

Belmont responded with refusing to accept any additional funds.

The Tennessee branch of the SBC subsequently filed a suit in October seeking reparation of the $57MM it's given the school since the Convention took over in 1950. 


Interesting, since Belmont didn't actually want to sever the connection completely, just loosen the stranglehold a bit.  But what else can we expect from a dogma sees most everything in black and white?  If the SBC doesn't own that college lock, stock and barrel, then just hanging on to the lock and the barrel don't count, and they'll spend countless thousands getting that freaking stock back in their pockets.

Belmont is still looking for a way out of being held at SBC gunpoint.  I've got a great idea for them.  They should do what Georgia's Mercer College did earlier this year and host a campus "Coming Out Day."  The Southern Baptists dropped Mercer like a sackful of unblessed snakes, no lawsuit required.

And it had the added benefit of being the right thing to for their students.  Funny how that worked out.

Time for another installment of Conversations With My Logs!

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1)  Is chicken fighting a misdemeanor in SC - Section 16.17.650 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, current through the end of the 2005 Regular Session, lists cock fighting as a misdemeanor.    South Carolina Act #68 of 2005, amending the laws relating to uniform traffic tickets does not, as enacted, include language amending cock fighting from a misdemeanor to a felony, so in the absence of other information I assume the misdemeanor classification still stands.

2)  What does adore voce mean - In Portuguese it is adore você, which translates to he/she worships (or adores) you.  Or, it could be a misconjugation of the Italian verb adorare (to adore), which should be adoro voce (I adore [the] voice) or adori voce (you adore [the] voice).  Most likely, it is the Portuguese. 

As a side note, a voce in Italian means "word of mouth," while in Portuguese a você means "to you."

3)  Where to hire skywriters in Massachusetts - Superpages.com has one listing for AeroAds.com, which does serve the entire state but seems to focus on banners rather than actual skywriting.    I was unable to find a listing for an actual skywriter (though a number of articles ever so helpfully suggested I use the Yellow Pages and look under "skywriting"), but if you contact AeroAds and they do not offer the service, they may well know who does.

4)  Feminist dystopia - I would think a feminist dystopia would be a dystopia for most.  While a primary theme of the feminist dystopia is the oppression of women by a patriarchal society, most dystopias, of any category, are patriarchal in nature.  In that sense, every dystopia not run and controlled by women (and there are but few literary examples of those) is a feminist dystopia on some level.  However, for the more explicit and overt examples, you can look to Gilead in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, and Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country.

5)  Definition horsepucky - It's something of a polite colloquialism.  In a word, it means bullshit.

I read Townhall twice, I think.  Both times I closed the window with much eye-rolling and tongue-clucking and self-flagellation with a very dry noodle (didn't last as long, but was slightly more emphatic than the wet version).  The place is chock-full of self-congratulatory invective that anyone who isn't a real conservative is, by default, an America-hating, God-smearing, mongrelized latent terrorist bent on destroying western civilization (translation - anyone who doesn't agree with every word they spout is bad, bad, bad, made of pure evil on par with Hitler, Pol Pot and possibly Mother Teresa).

Needless to say, it turned me off.  So, I tend to leave them safely ensconced, unmolested by any of Kiosan's bad, evil, red-headed stepchild-ish thoughts, in the little bubble world they've created for themselves.  I ignore them.  It's been working quite well.

But then today I start noting at Memeorandum, and at several blogs (most lately, BlondeSense) that one of the frothing fanatics has come up with a real gem of an idea: Dennis Prager suggests that Congressman-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN) should not be permitted to swear his oath of office on the official holy book of the religion he has espoused for 20 years.  One of the world's major religions, by the way, which happens to be Islam.  Mr. Prager is, shockingly, of the opinion that Mr. Ellison, being permitted to so swear, would undermine American civilization, and that Mr. Ellison should therefore be forced to swear his oath on a Christian bible.

Where, oh where, to begin?

First, being a Muslim, Mr. Ellison will not hold a Christian bible as one of his holy books.  That being the case, he might as well swear on a copy of Twelfth Night, or Charlotte's Web, for all the difference the particular tome under his palm would make in obligating him, on any supernatural level, to his oath.

Second, the Constitution does not require the presence of any book, holy, technical, or Monty Pythonesque to anchor the subject to his oath.  We are to take him at his word, that he will support and defend, bear truth and allegiance, and faithfully discharge his duties.  The addition of "so help me God" had a nice little ring to it, but rampant corruption throughout the 109th Congress (and other Congresses) proves the trite little phrase no more binding than "We must get together sometime" or "I'll call you."

Third, contrary to Mr. Prager's assertion that swearing on a Christian icon is not only preferable when taking office, but required, the Constitution specifically prohibits any religious test from ever being required as a condition of office.  The bald language indicates, to me anyway, that forcing a person of any religious stripe, whether Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Flying Spaghetti worshipper, to swear on any "holy" book at all, whether one they privately espouse or not, is not only unreasonable, it is, in point of very plain fact, unconstitutional.

Mr. Prager rants on at one point regarding racists swearing on Mein Kampf and wondering how all of the evil, America-hating constitutional constructionists might feel about that little bag o' crap.  I cannot speak for all of the other freakishly reasonable people in the world, but I can attest that I, personally wouldn't like it.  However, I'd have to find a way to deal with it, just as I have to find a way with dealing with the fact that this issue has even been raised.  Mr. Ellison has as much right to swear his oath on the Qu'ran as Mr. Prager has to scream about how vehemently he disapproves of it. 

Let the man swear on what he feels will bind his oath - I don't care if it's a bright green marshmallow dipped in sulfur and drizzled with pine sap.   I'd stand by and let a duly-elected purple dinosaur swear on a stack of The Prince if it meant he'd keep the promises he was making.  I'd hold my nose, of course, not being overly impressed with purple dinosaurs, but I'd do it.  It's called putting my money where my mouth is: valuing our collective freedoms so much that I will stand by and watch them exercised in ways I don't like without demanding that they be revoked to satisfy my oh so delicate sensibilities.  Call me crazy.

I do offer one constructive compromise solution, however.  We could simply do away with the contrivance of having people swear to any higher being, on any book at all.  Then no one would have to worry about Mitt Romney swearing on a Book of Mormon, or Tom Cruise swearing on Dianetics, or hypocritical Christians lying swearing on top of their own holy Bible*.  We could, quite simply, remove religion from this process altogether - which is how it was intended to be in the first place.

*Yes, anyone can be a hypocrite, and people of all stripes, both religious and non, are.  However, the suggestion is that everyone must swear on a Christian Bible, and to date I believe most have.  Ergo, the corrupt Congressmen we've seen come and steal and bribe and go, have been those professing to be Christian who have lied with their hands on their holy book.

I don't know if I have any Rightie readers.  The few people I recognize passing through tend to be left of center.  But if there are any right-leaners who read here, I'd like to ask them a question:

How is it certain members of your side of the aisle can demand "bipartisanship" while using terms like "dhimmicrat" or "moonbat" or "traitor" or any of the other dozens of derogatory terms I see gleefully spouted on my occasional foray into the extreme rightwing blogosphere?  A series of comments at Atlas Shrugs, a blog I admittedly don't venture to often (and to which I'm afraid I will not link) has me asking, because a commenter there (lefty) asked a question to which she actually wanted an answer, on a thread whose title contained the word "bipartisanship" and was castigated, quite roundly, for seeking the opinion of the other side.

The only commenter who would constructively engage her took several posts to do so, and then only on the basis of talking about talking to people, without ever actually addressing her original points.  I'll grant that the lefty's initial post was poorly phrased if she was looking for legitimate answers, but her clarification in her subsequent post outlined that she was, indeed, seeking dialog.

Yet none would answer, except with old bugaboos and well-worn epithets.

Personally, I try to avoid the partisan invective here.  I don't believe I've ever used the term "wingnut" or "Repugnican" and I do attempt to direct criticism at specific people and/or opinions held by certain sub-groups of the right, rather than at all Republicans or all right-leaning people.  I cannot for the life of me understand this proclivity for demonizing a full half of the American population simply because I find certain elements of their opinions or beliefs either distasteful or unfathomable (or even, in certain cases, reprehensible).

Is it not incumbent upon us, as reasonable people (and I still tend to think most people are reasonable, despite partisan attempts to divert said reason into pure emotion) to find a way to live, peacefully, with one another in the same country that we all, in our varying ways, love and call home?  Is it necessary to call someone who espouses differing views names predicated entirely on the divergence of those views from one's own cannon and, if so, what purpose does it serve?

I fully understand and appreciate passion; but passion without reason eventually reduces to nothing more than blind fanaticism - a devotion to which history proves will eventually founder and fail (though some may require longer than others and some fewer adherents, admittedly, never do manage to escape its grasp).  How do the people who regularly engage in this practice expect to accomplish their aims?  True, while such kindergarten tactics held sway in politics, they could simply strong arm their way through, but as the worm turns their ill-gotten might ebbs and they only erode it further by insisting on continuing the farce.

Seriously.  What is the point?

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Filed under "Republicans" because I'm asking this of those who lean right, and I hesitate to create a new category for a subject I hope to be able to avoid revisiting, just as I will avoid revisiting the Atlas site, which offered nothing constructive whatsoever.  Except, I guess, the impetus for this post, the constructiveness of which is, of course, subject to the reader's opinion.

Certain members of our notably advanced western culture believe that Muslim women who wish to live on the land for which we duly paid our two shekels should be permitted to do so only on the condition that they forgo their peculiar religious dress, the all-encompassing burqa.  The argument goes that the enveloping ensemble, meant to hide the woman (a.k.a. temptation, uncovered meat) from the world, in our Euro-centric culture actually achieves the opposite, calling attention to her and forcing all of us to remember that we are not a homogenized Borg race of waspy, light-skinned protestants tossed with maybe a few Anglicans for spice.  Some people take offense at the idea that others might not be quite so enamored of our singularly spectacular way of life, including belly shirts, and baby blue eyeshadow, and jeans two sizes too small, that they are not willing to abandon everything they knew or have been taught, or their own crazy brand of values, just to fit in.  Wearing the burqa in the west gives the finger to every person who doesn't wear it.  It's just rude to place so much value on your own cultural heritage that you won't embrace every single contrary aspect in the new culture.

Okay, I'll go with that.

Now, someone please inform the Catholics that their priests and nuns will no longer be allowed to wear their particular religious get-ups.  The Cardinals will have to buy some Levis, and the Pope will have to both give up his Prada shoes and burn his silly hats.

We'll need to write a letter to the Amish and the Mennonites - mainstream western culture abandoned those hats and old-fashioned dresses 100 years or so ago.  They've also got to sell their buggies and buy Fords.  It's absolutely shameful to live in America while refusing to support our industry.

The Hassidim will all need a decent haircut and a shave, of course.  It is unthinkable that they should be able to flaunt their weird style of supernatural hairdo while the rest of us worry over whether bangs are in, if the shade of blonde we've chosen is right, and why we can never make it look like the picture the stylist promised he could make work.

Let us not forget the Buddhist monks, who aren't just men wearing dresses (unnatural in the west, outside of Scotland), but orange dresses at that.  Talk about calling attention to one's refusal to integrate - those freaky monks with their lame focus on nirvana, and peace, and doing good instead of getting ahead and amassing wealth and being as comfortably insulated as possible, they go out of their way with the bright orange dresses to rub our faces in it.  They should be made to wear The Gap for the rest of their lives to atone for their outrageous insistence on such showy separatism.

Oh, and also the Duggars (Arkansas parents to 17 children), and all of the cracked quiverfull like them, we'll have to do something about them.  First of all, having that many children is entirely too ostentatious a declaration of difference - some of those kids will need to be put into foster care immediately (perhaps give them to the priests and nuns who we'll force to marry so we can create insta-families).  Then, the women will need IUDs implanted and decent haircuts.  Finally, they will no longer be able to dress the remaining children in cutesy-wootsey matching homemade outfits; they'll have to buy their kids' clothes at Wal-Mart like every other good, upstanding American.

Yes, in the west the burqa is an expression of religious freedom, of cultural heritage, of personal values, of intentional and unrepentant dissimilarity from the otherwise uninterrupted whole.  And we cannot have that here.  Difference is divisive.

I say we ban it all.  I know you all agree with me.  You must.  We are all the same, yes?

Acephalous has a theory about blog memes - how they spread, why they spread, etc.  He's a grad student looking for guinea pigs, so I am hereby linking for the sake of science.  If you read this, please consider linking if you haven't already done.  Then just ping Technorati.

h/t Shakespeare's Sister

In his infinite wisdom, Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin prefiled House Bill 1 (HB1) for the upcoming General Assembly legislative session.  Such an innocuous title, HB1, but that's because they have not yet come up with a title that appropriately masks the intent to use women as breeding stock in appropriately pious terms.

HB1, you see, proposes a ban on all abortions, at any time, for any reason.   It includes no exceptions, not for rape, not for incest, not for health, not even to save a woman's own life. 

In addition to asserting that the State of Georgia knows life begins at conception (which, last I checked, was still up for debate in terms of sentience), Franklin suggests several findings of fact:

(6) Studies have shown that women who have had an abortion require psychological treatment of such symptoms as nervous disorders, sleep disturbances, and deep regrets, with 25 percent of one test group of women who have had abortions visiting a psychiatrist while only 3 percent of a control group did so;

(7) Another random study showed that at least 19 percent of women who have had an abortion suffered from diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, with 50 percent suffering from many, but not all, symptoms of that disorder, and 20 to 40 percent of the women studied showed moderate to high levels of stress and avoidance behavior relative to their abortion experience;

(8) Approximately 60 percent of women who have had an abortion and who reported post-abortion trauma also reported suicidal tendencies with 28 percent actually attempting suicide, of whom half attempted suicide two or more times;

As relates to the mental health aspect, correlation does not prove causation between 2 variables.  This is both  a widely accepted scientific standard and a fundamental tenet of the practice of accurate science.  It is as likely that women with existing mental health problems are more likely to seek and abortion as it is that abortion causes mental illness.  It is equally as likely that some third, unmeasured variable contributes (either equally or in some measurable part) to both mental illness and the likelihood of abortion.  On cannot reasonably infer cause from this presentation - just because A frequently accompanies B, does not mean A actually equals B.

(11)  Most couples find abortion to be an event which shatters their relationship, causing chronic marital troubles and divorce

So can marital infidelity, or having the in-laws move in for a few months, or a move, or the prolonged illness and subsequent death of a loved one, or being out of work for a period of time, or deciding you just can't take the snoring any more - I don't see the GGA moving to outlaw any of those in favor of protecting Georgia's marriages.  And I bet plenty could use a law forbidding the in-laws from moving in.

(12) Abortion exploits women, treating them and their children as mere property, and abortion is contrary to feminist values, and the great suffragette Susan B. Anthony referred to abortion as 'child murder';

Correction: if the decision of whether or not to abort is left to me and my doctor, the state is treating me like a sentient, adult human in full possession of my faculties and able to make my own medical decisions for my own health and well-being.  If, on the other hand, the state insists that I cannot terminate any pregnancy under any circumstances, ever, it is treating me as nothing more than a baby-factory, worth only so much as the children I can spit out.  Which sounds more like property to you?

(15) The practice of abortion has caused the citizens of this state an inestimable amount economically including, but not limited to, the costs and tax burden of having to care for individuals and their families for the conditions cited above, as well as a significant reduction of the tax base and of the availability of workers, entrepreneurs, teachers, employees, and employers that would have significantly contributed to the prosperity of this state. (emphasis mine)

Ah, truth in advertising at least; buried in the fine print, but still.  Abortion is bad because it means women produce fewer workers who can pay more taxes and consume more goods to support political fat-cats and corporate CEOs in their quest for more wealth.  Women who have abortions are bad because they refuse to contribute to the tax base as often as biologically possible.

In other words, women are only as good as the last taxpayer they birthed.  Otherwise, they should probably just shut up, submit to their husbands and try to stay out of therapy.

This is a terrible law on a number of levels.  South Dakota sort of surprised conventional wisdomers by defeating a similar law in the recent elections.  If Georgians seriously want to be viewed as equal citizens, and not backwards, uneducated, secret Ned Beatty-lovers, we'll need to do the same.  Passing such a bill, codifying forced pregnancy, makes us no better than the Chinese, who require abortions.  Both treat women as inconvenient, ancillary chattel to be worked around - like some sort of absurd lamp in the middle of a room, turning it on when absolutely necessary, but otherwise cursing its exasperating unwieldiness.

My computer is having issues today.  This, combined with travelling for Thanksgiving will mean light - if any - posting this week.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) announced his intention to reintroduce legislation reinstating the military draft in the US.  Rangel last introduced such a bill in 2003.  It was defeated when the Pentagon insisted the all-volunteer force was both capable of and sufficient to the tasks at hand - namely, fighting multiple wars on multiple fronts with woefully inadequate numbers.  The president's refusal to put his money where his mouth was - namely, refusing to ask sacrifices of Americans for fear of upsetting the applecart he carefully balanced on deception, hubris and willful blindness also contributed.  And finally, extrapolating from my own circle of acquaintances, the draft, as an idea, is not popular, since the American people, as a whole, were able to take away slightly more of a Vietnam lesson than the president's slack-jawed revelation "we'll win as long as we don't leave."

Rangel posits hawks would support the war less forcefully if they were forced to give up the lives of their own privileged children in furtherance of Bush's neocon folly rather than relying upon other people kids to do the fighting and dying for their blustering, contemptuous rhetoric.  Rangel notes, of course, that many of the volunteers is our current all-volunteer force are there because they have few, if any, other viable choices in pursuing a living wage which provides basic healthcare without sacrificing little luxuries like food and shelter. 

I have two boys.  Though they are yet young, the draft is a prickly, personal issue for me.  Should they eventually choose national service, I would support their efforts to the best of my ability.  I do not, however, want them sacrificed on the altar of myopic arrogance by stiff-necked, bull-headed priests of other people's accountability. 

I'm sure Rangel's betting on a similar reaction from the politically powerful who still support staying the course, in whatever pretty phrase they care to wrap it today.  While I appreciate Rangel's frustration, and understand - even share a belief in - his underlying point, I fear that the practical application of his theory will not lead to the desired outcome, as the politically connected will always have a way to shield their own children from the sacrifice they ask of other's.  Our current leadership, including both the president and vice-president, provide ample proof of that.

We have long known that the Bush administration not only allows religion to interfere with public policy, but in some instances - as with the FDA/Plan B case - even demands it.  In another move designed to further limits the rights of citizens, particularly women, Bush appointed Dr. Eric Keroack to the position of deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health & Human Services, reporting to Secretary Michael Leavitt.

Though the title doesn't really indicate it, Keroack's position will oversee $283 million in federal family planning grants.

The kicker, of course - Dr. Keroack assumes the new position immediately after that of medical director of A Woman's Concern, a small chain of anti-contraception, anti-choice outposts operating in Massachusetts as pregnancy crisis centers.  And this is the kicker because an integral part of Keroack's new job involves distributing federal funds to programs "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons" (WaPo).

Mark Conrad, president of A Woman's Concern, said Keroack would be able to make the transition to leading a federal program in which provision of birth control is an integral part. "I don't think it's going to be an issue for him," he said.

Really?  It is so comforting to hear another leopard insisting this one can change his spots with ease, but I'm not buying it.  It is not reasonable to believe that a person, any person, can go from affirming that "birth control is degrading to women" to funding birth control programs fully and fairly within the space of two weeks.  If Keroack believed this to be true, I have concerns regarding his ability to carry out his new duties without prejudice.  If he never subscribed to this belief, yet worked for such an organization anyway, I have concerns over his ethics.  Either way, he is as completely unsuited to this sort of national position as Roy Moore is unsuited to the Supreme Court. 

This is not because of his beliefs, per se, as he is of course entitled to whatever personal beliefs he may choose, but because his history demonstrates a willingness, a determination, in fact, to exercise those beliefs in a way that is contrary to the best interests of the people he would serve in this new capacity.

More than being just another giant flip of the bird to the American people, putting a person with this history in charge of funding family planning for everyone - not just people who voluntarily subscribe to his ideas - is the equivalent of putting a Holocaust denier in charge of funding Holocaust memorials.

Anyone want to make Mel Gibson's daddy Director of the US Holocaust Museum?